''li
SENSATION
^[n^^/iM^^
m
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
Animal Episodes
and
Studies in Sensation
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2008 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/animalepisodesstOOpowerich
Animal Episodes
and
Studies in Sensation
By
G. H. ^Powell
London
George Redway
1896
^Ar
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
Ctvu.
PREFACE
Of the stories collected In this volume three
are reprinted from MacmillarCs Magazine^ two
from Temple Bar^ and one (at least, in part)
from the St, James's Gazette^ with the kind
consent of the proprietors of those periodicals.
A full account of the actual authorities for
the more remarkable of the incidents described
would, it is feared, occupy too much of the
reader *s time. It need merely be observed
that most of the * Episodes ' originally came
into existence in the form (here carefully pre-
served, as far as literary exigencies would
allow), of narratives communicated to the writer
by other persons, as to whom a few words of
explanation and introduction have been added
where this seemed advisable.
M375200
CONTENTS
FACE
I. IN PRAISE OF * MOPS,' .... I
II. MACHINA EX CCELO ? . . . . 1 8
III. THE BLUE DRYAD, . . . .68
IV. HOW THE FIEND FETCHED SHARON FULKSAY, 86
V. ' LET OFF WITH A CAUTION,' . . - ^37
VI. FROM THE DARK PAST, . . . . 163
VII. MY FIRST * KILL,* . . . . 189
VIII. THE RERESBY MOTE GHOST, .227
IN PRAISE OF 'MOPS'
The varieties of canine character have always
seemed to me matter for the most interesting
study.
What diverse degrees of morality, intelli-
gence, and self-control separate, for example,
that narrow and uncertain-tempered specialist
the greyhound from the universally popular
and trusty fox-terrier !
Not that specialists are all open to objection.
One of the most lovable beasts I ever saw in
the world was a lost foxhound puppy that I
once met on the Surrey Downs. The grave
pathos of his long face — humans have to make
such ' long faces ' — his anxiety to be recognised
and taken home, and his gratitude meanwhile
for a kind word, would have drawn tears from
a stone.
But animals — human or other — that do only
one thing, however well they do it, are subject
A I
Animal Episodes
to drawbacks. And reliable temper is of course
the first question in a friend, four- or two-footed,
that you mean to live with.
Such differences of character are not always
indicated by expression. It is true that
retrievers and other reliable animals usually
carry about with them a conventional and
somewhat fatuous smile, some eighteen inches
in length — the smile which in the greyhound
degenerates into something like hypocritical
flattery, as in the wolf it becomes the symbol
of hideous treachery. The demeanour of a
fox-terrier is decently pleasant. But look at
his cross-grained cousin — who could accuse him
of looking artificially pleasant ?
Strange — is it not ? — that the ugly-muzzled,
bow-legged little brute (with a liberal dash of
bull in his composition), who has never been
known to smile even when devouring a stolen
mutton-chop, should lie so resignedly upon
the hearthrug — where the baby never leaves
him one moment's peace — although but an
hour ago engaged in the perilous but ex-
hilarating sport of pulling tail-feathers from
a furiously indignant swan on the lake.
For this did his master — as the right man
2
In Praise of ^ Mops '
may the right dog for the wrong action — hold
the said animal at arm's length and ' wallop ' it
until weary of the painful duty.
A spectator might have noticed that the
beast — which kills rats and cats with a grace
and precision that amount to poetry — made
several violent and successful efforts not to bite.
For that matter, as there are human so are
there canine natures, and those not always the
worst, that do not take * punishment ' kindly.
The difference lies in a more refined sensibility
both of soul and skin, and perhaps in a rarer,
more feminine, if one may say so, and more
spiritual nature.
Of such sort is the dog of whom we write.
Mops is one of those long-haired terriers whom
to know is to love. No one could ever
venture to beat him ; he would probably go
wild with fright or passion ; as it is, he has
hardly ever had a rough word spoken to him,
simply because in ordinary circumstances he is
as good as gold. If his sensitive temper be
ever hurt, that is generally the fault of some
person who has approached him either without
proper introduction, or in a manner unsuited
to his dignity. It is his habit to mark these
3
Animal Episodes
occasions by pretending not to know his
dearest friends, as they pass while he lies on
his particular mat in the hall ; or (in very
extreme cases) by retiring to the housekeeper's
room, much to the elation of that elderly
dignitary, and growling from the low and
cushioned window-sill at all who venture into
his presence with overtures of friendship.
There are points in his character which, in
such an animal, it is hopeless to attempt to
alter ; but these are not the low or mischievous
tricks of common dogs. He would scorn to
run after a chicken or a sheep.
Once, indeed, he caught a very little rabbit
on the front lawn and brought it with tender
fondlings, yet half alive, to bed with him in
his basket by the drawing-room fire, whence
the horrified housemaid removed its corpse
during his absence at dinner-time. He has
also been confronted with a live rat, with
which, though exasperated by its want of
humour, he for long endeavoured to play, till
it bit him, when there was an abrupt end of
the game, and of the rat.
But Mops has decided instinctive notions
about how certain things ought to be done,
4
In Praise of * Mops '
and equally decided aversions to certain people.
To Mr. Buller, the local banker, who comes
over to dine regularly once a fortnight, he
will never be more than severely civil. Mops'
olfactory nerves have doubtless informed him
of this gentleman's secret preference for fox-
terriers, of which an adorable specimen is, at
home, cherished in his bosom ; but there
possibly are other reasons.
Mops, it might be added, is as beautiful
as the day, though this is not a very appro-
priate simile for one whose first appearance
suggests a chaotic heap, or cloud of dusky
hair, through which now and then you catch
the sparkle of two gleaming dark-brown eyes.
*A dancing shape, an image gay
To haunt, to startle, and waylay.'
At haunting, startling, and waylaying Mops
is an admirable proficient ; but it would be idle
to say that every one regarded him as a phantom
of delight. The old Rector, who is no sports-
man, and, truth to tell, has intolerably fussy
notions of the dignity of the human species,
resents as undue familiarity what to the mind
of Mops is a mere formal politeness. An
S
Animal Episodes
eminent divine is, of course, nothing to him. .
Nor was there the slightest use in that dicta-
torial old gentleman screaming out to the
butler as he entered the room — ' Now, keep
that beast of a dog away from me ! ' Why,
before the words were well out of his mouth.
Mops, squeezing into the room in a frantic
hurry, had rippled all over the sofa and its
occupant, licked both the latter's cheeks with
his long scarlet tongue, and was already out of
the drawing-room window, and in full cry after
a swallow on the lawn.
To more appreciative eyes it is a joy to see a
being of such unbounded affection and enthusi-
asm, * tearing ' or rolling down the stairs to fly
into the arms of some welcome arrival, or
(supreme joy !) to be taken out for a walk by
the right sort of person, usually of the male
sex. At such a moment he will fling shrieking
up and down the passage and over and under
the furniture like an animated football ; but
when he stops dead short, or jumps upon your
knees, shakes back his hair (which is really
silver-grey, and, when combed out smooth,
shines like the wave of a streamlet in the sun)
— and, showing all his splendid teeth, grins
6
In Praise of ' Mops '
ecstatically in your face, then indeed not the
famed Peloton of Du Bellay,
*Faisant ne 5937 quelle feste
D'un gay branlement de teste,'
could be more bewitching. Having mentioned
the subject of teeth, we must add that one of
the greatest pleasures of Mops* life is to ' play
at rats' with some competent human friend.
This pastime (which is only allowed on the old
leather settle in the smoking-room) consists
chiefly in your trying to bury him in cushions,
which should not be of expensive material.
Then, if you have on an old velveteen coat,
you may after a quarter of an hour come out
of the game (which is deliriously exciting) with
only a black and blue arm, for which you will
be amply repaid by the sight of Mops erect,
breathless, and in admired disorder, with his
large eyes gleaming like coals of fire at you
through their hairy curtain, simply dying to
begin again.
He sleeps downstairs in the pantry — if indeed
so sensitive and highly strung a being can be
thought to sleep at all. The burglar would
have a tread lighter than that of Camilla flying
7
Animal Episodes
o*er the standing corn, who should pass within
fifty yards of that * rude heapy blackness ' at
the foot of the dimly lit backstairs, and not
awaken Mops ; and Mops once thoroughly
awake and alarmed, it is a case of ' sleep no
more ' for other denizens of the same house,
till he is pacified. Musicians tell us that if you
only get upon the right note and flay it loud
enough^ the vibration will bring down any
fabric, as the trumpets of Israel did the walls
of Jericho. This reflection recurred to me
one night when a 'ridiculus mus* contrived
both to catch itself and to upset the mousetrap
in the kitchen about 2 a.m. At once the silver
voice of Mops announcing this awful fact rent
the silence of night into palpable and shudder-
ing strips, and brought down the butler at the
double, though fortunately nothing else. It is
all right out of doors, in the open country. He
is an early riser, and after 24 brisk turn in the
garden, a brief and somewhat stereotyped chasse
after the squirrel on the lawn, which he has
long left off expecting to catch, he comes up-
stairs with th^ footman and the hot water. If
he enters your room together with that func-
tionary, it is then de rigueur to pretend to be
8
In Praise of ^ Mops '
asleep. There ensues a fearful scraping of the
carpet — Mops taking off, he is not good at high
jumps — a stumping and scratching up the bed-
side ; a cheery greeting, and several histrionic
bites directed at any exposed part ; and further
pretence is out of the question.
If he happened to be late, you may be
awakened by a noise like a small and fine
steam saw working spasmodically on the lobby
just outside. That is Mops * roaring like a
sucking-dove.' It expresses a purely imaginary
indignation.
It has been suggested that he is not what is
vulgarly called a * sporting dog/ and that is so.
But though he has no idea of being all things
to all men, like many an honest dog of our
acquaintance, he can be anything he pleases
(for his genius is rich and versatile) with the
people he really loves. We often summon
him to come partridge-shooting with us in the
fields close round the house. If we find him
not in the gun-room, we are used to give a low
whistle. Instantly a responsive and piercing
bark echoes through the back * premises, —
Mops' demand addressed to domestics in
general to open all doors that chance to be in
9
Animal Episodes
his way. Then another, and louder, on the
first landing, announces his approach. Then
follows the noise of a carpet being dragged
swiftly down the front stairs, — and there is
Mops. But when one carelessly picks up a
breechloader (which should always be done in
his presence) as though it were merely a stick,
his excitement boils over, and his yells are but
gradually allayed as we get outside the front
door.
Among the turnips and potatoes he presents
the strangest figure, his long hair draggled with
the wet, and his pointed nose and broad head
(for once visible in their natural shape) peering
up every now and again to see how things are
getting on. Though a little slow among cover
which often hides him altogether from sight, he
will quarter his ground, work backwards and
forwards at a wave of the hand, and set at his
game in the most orthodox manner. • Mops, I
verily believe, would scent a cockchafer ; and
the only fault in his pointing (a thing beauti-
ful to behold in its amateurish energy and
self-consciousness) is that it almost as often
indicates the presence of a thrush as of a
partridge. As to passing by any living thing
lO
In Praise of ^ Mops '
two inches high, until it had been thoroughly
explored by one or both of us, why, he would
never dream of it. And when the day's sport
is over, he will return, grinning like no other
dog, his little legs plastered with mud and
shrunk to half their size, and his splendid hair
hanging down like a Cretan goat's, exhausted
but supremely happy ; and retire to the pantry
to be brushed. For Mops is a robust animal.
Indeed, a dog of this size need be strong to
carry about pounds of soil and quarts of water
in his coat all day. The coat, by the way,
conceals the bull neck of his species, and the
long and solid trunk is supported by substan-
tial quarters and fine stout forearms, so that
the animal is by no means only ornamental.
As to his use, — well, let this sketch be
finished with the story of Mops' only real
adventure.
Two years ago his owner was acting as land-
agent in a much disturbed district of Ireland,
and lived in a large and ugly mansion where,
to tell the honest truth, some one else ought
to have been living. But as an agent our
friend. Major D., did his duty and was detested
by the peasantry. At an earlier stage they had
II
Animal Episodes
'carded' one of his herds, drowned and
strangled his calves, and even fired at one of
his daughters (a pretty girl of sixteen) as she
sat in loose array at her window one summer
night. The bullet is in the window-frame to
this day.
Her father, who was annoyed, replied with a
shot-gun and two sawdust cartridges from a
lower story, and it is believed, to some effect.
This, however, is by the way. Once a week, at
the time referred to, Major D. used to drive
into the neighbouring market-town, and on
these occasions Mops (considerably to his relief)
had never shown the slightest wish to accom-
pany him further than the park-gate. One
Wednesday, however, — it was a day or two
after some ill-looking fellows had been seen
hanging about the park, — Mops suddenly
changed his mind. He was determined to go.
This was embarrassing for the Major, who,
apart from the trouble of looking after the dog,
was afraid of risking so valuable an animal in
a locality so distinguished for what is called
in Ireland ' agrarian feeling.' What was to be
done ?
Mops was carried upstairs the picture of
12
In Praise of ' Mops '
despairing misery, and locked into an empty
room on the first floor, generally used for
carpentering. His lamentable howls gradually
subsided, and the rest of the household went
about their business. Meanwhile Mops, as
afterwards appeared, was doing a little carpen-
tering on his own account. The door was a
good sound door, but the floor beneath it was
rather worn, which just enabled him to get to
work.
It is a pity that no one could have seen his
muscular little form as it lay there curled up
on one side, the shaggy, head savagely shaking
as at each scrunch of his gnawing teeth fresh
splinters of the deal board came away, and were
swept aside by his little paws. It must have
been hard work, harder than scraping at any
rabbit-hole, but probably more delightful.
Nearly six hours had passed when an
astonished domestic noticed and duly reported
the alteration just executed by Mops. At that
moment a small dark form might just have
been discerned in the dusk of the evening
scudding across the fields. This was Mops
going to meet the Major, — and why, in
Heaven's name, going at all ? — and why going
13
Animal Episodes
this way (the shortest cut as it happened) and
not along the highroad ? Who shall peer into
the workings of that strange little mind, or
whatever we please to call it ?
It is certain that the point on the highroad
aimed at by Mops, consciously or unconsciously,
was just about where an intelligent being would
have expected the Major to be if he were walk-
ing home (as a rule he drove) at his usual
hour ; and it is equally certain that the Major
was there. It does not appear, moreover, that
Mops had the slightest doubt of this, or indeed
exhibited the slightest hesitation as to what he
meant to do, throughout the whole course of
this, his one really serious adventure. The
Major was there, and nothing separated Mops
from him but a high and rough stone wall,
such stone walls as are peculiar to Ireland,
where they have witnessed, and in their mute
way assisted, many ugly deeds. One of these
in fact was in process when Mops arrived, after
a frantic struggle, on the top of that wall.
Only a few yards before reaching this point
on the road, the Major, who for reasons of his
own had sent the carriage on and was walking
home easily and circumspectly with a cigar in
14
In Praise of ^ Mops '
his mouth and a double-barrelled shot-gun
under his arm, was suddenly confronted by a
ragged and dirty masked ruffian who seemed
to have dropped from the skies, but who soon
proved his infernal origin by firing a heavy
horse-pistol of antediluvian date right into the
Major's face. As the heavy slugs whistled by
the Major's ear, the dirty ruffian turned and
fled down the deserted road into the gathering
darkness.
Our friend, whose temper had been soured
by the society of a disturbed neighbourhood,
leant against the wall for a moment to steady
himself, and, allowing the conventional forty
yards' grace, deliberately let off two barrels into
and about the stern of his retreating enemy.
The man howled fearfully, but continued his
course. The Major smiled, but the next
moment cursed his folly with a mighty oath,
and turned to grapple with a second opponent
who, having waited his opportunity, sprang
upon him while encumbered with his useless
gun, and in the surprise bore him almost to the
ground. What this second monster, who was
also masked and unshaven, intended to do with
the rude agricultural instrument, a sort of
15
Animal Episodes
broken sickle, which he produced at this
moment, must be left to the imagination, for
at this moment his attention was distracted.
With one of his curious little gurgling shrieks
(like the bursting of a small musical instrument)
the breathless Mops jumped, or fell rather, on
all fours from the top of the wall. He did not
spring at the man's calves, as dogs so often do ;
he had no time to think of that, — and in fact
alighted a little higher up. The man wore
moleskins, but what are moleskins to a little
dog who makes a light afternoon meal of a
bedroom door ? Before any one of the three
knew very clearly what had happened. Mops
had buried ten little teeth, each sharp as a new
carving chisel, in the most fleshy part of the
objectionable man.
That was all, and that was quite enough.
The Major, who has assisted (in the French
sense) at many an Irish row, and seen a good
deal of service in Egypt, confesses that he never
heard a man swear as that ruffian did just before
he was knocked down by the butt of the empty
gun.
That night there was a good deal of coming
and going of police. One of the individuals
i6
In Praise of ^ Mops'
arrested will carry to the end of his life (which
may be conterminous with the end of his
imprisonment) such a ' pretty pattern of No. 5 '
that the Major has more than once expressed
a wish * to send it to the makers,' which of
course is out of the question. The other will
remember Mops, I daresay, as well as any of
us, but for a different reason.
MACHINA EX— CCELO?
A METROPOLITAN EPISODE
There was a big fire — to speak correctly,
two big fires — in London on the night when
* Emergency ' Walford went to see his beloved.
Walford's baptismal name was Henry, and the
sobriquet here recalled was one which a few
college friends had once suggested in memory
of what had once struck their thoughtless minds
as a salient phrase in his conversation. Among
flimsy and meaningless epithets none perhaps
stick closer than an ironically ^ practical ' nick-
name to a frivolously expansive and therefore
presumably «»practical individual, whose pre-
cious * ideas ' as to what he or his friends * could'
or ' should * do in any given improbable crisis of
affairs are apt to appear a trifle too ingenious
for an imperfect world.
It was beyond question, however, that Henry
Walford and a party or parties unknown had
once been inadvertently locked into the billiard-
i8
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
room of a strange and vast country-house by a
somnolent butler, who long before their dis-
covery of the feat had retired to a bourne be-
yond the reach of pantry bells, or indeed of any
noise not calculated to waken a household long
since lapt in the arms of Morpheus. Under
such circumstances, embarrassing at 1-45 a.m.,
to open various clanking shutters, get out into
the garden, and throw stones at what may or
may not be the bedroom windows of highly
nervous ladies or irritable elderly gentlemen,
with whom you have but a superficial visiting
acquaintance, seems to the boldest and the
sleepiest an inartistic resource. Yet it would
probably have been adopted in this case but
for Walford, whose absurd fecundity of inven-
tion had of course been challenged in the bitter-
est irony to reveal another and better way of
escape.
Yet in less than half an hour this imaginative
individual, with no experience of practical bur-
glary, had examined the heavy mahogany door,
thrust under it (after pushing back the out-
side mat with a large paper-knife) a stiff sheet
of paper, selected from the mantelpiece two of
the metal instruments known as ' pipe-cleaners,'
19
Animal Episodes
twisted them into a sort of pincers, and then
with indefatigable labour and the assistance of
a friend holding the candle at exactly the right
level and pouring much wax upon the floor,
twisted round the key, and thrust it out of the
lock. Thence it fell inevitably upon the paper,
and finally, amid a burst of muffled but enthusi-
astic applause, was drawn under the door, and
the two, heated but triumphant, made their way
to bed. Talking of keys, also, a friend, from
whom Walford was once parting at some lonely
village in the Tyrol, lamented to him that he
had got to rise early next morning and had lost
his watch-key. ^ A confounded bore,' he added;
^ my watch has stopped. Could you '
' Pooh 1 * said Emergency Walford, ' wind it
up with the key of your Gladstone bag. Hold
it sideways.'
The reader is perhaps sceptical of this feat.
If so, let him in some half-hour of leisure open
the inner case of his watch, and try it. If the
winding-up of a watch were oftener a matter of
life and death, the experiment would be more
popular.
It may be added that Henry Walford in his
expansive moments claimed, with what degree
20
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
of truth cannot now be determined, to have been
the ^true and first inventor' of a number of
useful and labour-saving devices, the lucrative
evolution of which by other hands aroused in
him no cynical jealousy whatever. The houses
which he built — for he was himself an architect
in small practice — fortunately exhibited no signs
of abnormal ingenuity ; and the prattle of one
long-forgotten evening at college was presum-
ably the remotest of all matters from his well-
occupied mind, as he sauntered across spacious
highways towards the little street in West-
minster where dwelt, with her widowed mother,
the lady of his love.
As he stood upon a pillared island in the
thoroughfare opposite the oldest church in the
metropolis, his ear caught the harsh and jarring
cry — partly of excitement, partly of warning —
which usually heralds the approach of a fire-
engine. The phenomenon is not an unfamiliar
one to the hahitui of London streets ; but Wal-
ford had for many years, in after-office hours,
cherished a passion for dramatic adventure by
practising among the few privileged amateurs
attached to the Fire Brigade. He was, therefore,
not much surprised to recognise the engine-men
21
Animal Episodes
and horses of his own company, and shot an
inquiry at the mail-clad Jehu as the latter pulled
his pair into a hand-canter to avoid colliding
with an unwieldy van. ' Amberwell Wharf
warc'ouses ; well 'light,' retorted a sailor with
half-turned head, holding on to the rail behind.
* Yah-h-h ! ' said the foot-passengers from the
pavement to left and right ; and to the ac-
companiment of a sempre diminuendo roar, the
smoking, clanging, glittering chariot tore away
to the eastward.
On another occasion Walford would very
likely have pursued or hailed a cab, and pelted
— uniform or no uniform — to the scene of ac-
tion ; as it was, he merely gazed wistfully after
the disappearing vehicle with a ' no-more-of-
that-for-me' sort of look, and held on his
course.
The course of true love had run quite smooth
for Henry Walford ; not that he and Kis fiancee
were meeting to-night merely for the idle plea-
sure of the thing. There was a business in hand
most serious to the female, and not indifferent
to the masculine, mind — no less, in short, than
the adaptation of the furniture of his own roomy
bachelor * diggings ' to the more cramped apart-
22
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
ments of their new * bijou ' family residence in
a distant square in Bayswater.
Meeting, as it were, by appointment at the
door of the little ivy-covered house in Old
College Street, Walford and his fiancee were
soon on their way to the very different yet not
very remote ^ neighbourhood ' of Gloria Road,
a large thoroughfare leading directly away into
the heart of the wild and unfashionable south-
west. As you follow it, walking away from the
clock-tower, the fifth or sixth turn to the left
brings you to the front of a large but not very
prosperous-looking edifice hight St. MichaeFs
Mansions, Catchbrook Street, on the seventh
floor of which were situate the chambers above
mentioned. This cheap and airy altitude Wal-
ford naturally spoke of as St. Michael's Mount.
Indeed, on foggy nights the pile, if approached
in a diagonal direction, presented, with the
assistance of a ' shoulder ' supplied by the ad-
joining factory and warehouse, a distinct resem-
blance to a well-known peak in the Bernese
Oberland.
^ Suppose we walk up,* said Walford, ' for a
change. The lift 's so stuffy and slow.' And
the lift official had the habit peculiar to his kind
^3
Animal Episodes
of turning round and staring fixedly at the
occupants. \* Don't hurry. Hook on to me.'
As a matter of fact, when they reached the
door she tripped up lightly before him, and he
ran after her, and so they both reached the
third floor in a condition so breathless as to be
incapable of intelligent conversation.
She was a sprightly, active little woman, with
jet-black hair, now a little dishevelled, and dark
eyes, eyes solemnly impressive till she laughed
— they were both laughing now, as she finally
condescended to take his arm — and then dis-
turbing in quite another way to your very vitals.
♦^ That being so, there should, strictly speak-
ing, have been a chaperon (who, however, could
not have been expected to run up six flights of
stairs), for in the whole house there were pro-
bably not more than two other people — a care-
taker and his wife — somewhere downstairs, all
the other occupied floors being offices, which
were naturally deserted at such an hour. Not
that any chaperon could have shown more
anxiety for her safety when they had reached
the happy top.
^ It 's a wonderful height up, isn't it ? But
I wouldn't lean out of that window,'
24
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
It appeared, however, that he would upon
certain simple conditions, and with his arm
encircling her small person in the most natural
manner imaginable. He drew it closer, indeed,
as at that very moment another murmur swelled
up from the under-world. Again that ringing,
metallic vibration mingled with the rapid beat
of horses' feet, and, craning out of the window,
they both caught sight of a second fire-engine
threading its way — the driver half-erect over
his dancing steeds — along the channel so deep
below them, while straggling pedestrians scat-
tered this way or that. Scarcely had he drawn
his- precious visitor inside again, when there was
a louder roar, this time quite a cheer of triumph,
as a third driver entered on the scene by a side
street from the north, and, seeing the roadway
clear, spread his team into a racing gallop over
a straight bit of easy going. Walford leant out
again just in time to catch the gleam of flying
brass and a faint trail of vapour floating upon
the evening air.
* They '11 be having a night of it,' he said
half-sadly.
Indeed, long before the next sun rose a
similar reflection was borne in upon the minds
25
Animal Episodes
of almost every individual directly employed in
the extinction of fires in the metropolis, from
the ' chief himself, whirled away from a fashion-
able dinner, in the middle of his favourite Indian
anecdote, by the scarlet dogcart of inexorable
duty, to the humblest salvage man that with
savage glee ever fleshed an axe on costly
mahogany furniture.
The efficiency of that important body, the
* Fire Brigade,' had, so said pessimist critics,
been impaired by the injudicious changes of
a newly constituted local authority. On the
other hand, every one seemed to be agreed that
there were grave reasons for increasing the
number of stations, and that whenever a given
number of fires, of a magnitude illustrated by
recent examples, should happen to occur upon
one and the same night, the date of the coinci-
dence would very possibly be as memorable as
the year 1666. Of course such an event was
improbable ; but its abstract improbability be-
came of little interest at a moment when three
distant conflagrations were each occupying thirty
or forty engines apiece, and the last pair of
horses in the stables of the central oflice had
to be taken from the coal-van to draw the one
26
Machina Ex — CceIo ?
remaining steamer in the direction of a fourth
block of buildings just reported by telephone
as * well alight/
Walford's remark, however, indicated rather
sympathetic excitement than anxiety, for which
there was so far no particular reason, even had
there been nothing particular to distract his
attention.
' How dreadful ! ' murmured the Distraction,
who was reclining at length in the best lounge-
chair after the exertion of so unusual an ascent.
* I say, Hal, what capital arms you — I mean
your chairs— have ! *
^ The better to — ' (his quotation, which caused
her to blush, was cut short by a severe fit of
coughing) — 'Ahem ! By the way, Nellie, when
you 're rested, let 's go up, and I '11 show you
the roof.'
Inside Walford's small ' flat,' which shut its
own front door upon the public stair and lift-
well, there was a private trap-door, accessible
by a short ladder, leading on to the level
plateau above. Around it ran a shuddersomely
low balustrade of masonry, which he would
hardly allow her to touch, all the more that he
remembered once tempting the Providence
27
Animal Episodes
lovers are so anxious to conciliate, by dancing
on the top of it with a few thoughtless friends
after dinner. It made him ill to think of such
a thing now.
They sat down — she close at his side, and
not unimpressed by the eerie height — upon
some lead-covered erection in the middle. To
the east stretched an oblong promontory, the
other wing of the * Mansions/ separated from
the ^ Mount ' on which they sat by the deep
gulf of a passage some twenty feet wide.
On all other sides London stretched away
beneath them, north, south, and west, a level
dusky forest of gable and chimney, dotted here
and there with church spires like giant trees,
and cut into innumerable deep ' rides ' — regular
fissures up which the thousand illuminations of
street and shop were just beginning to throw
their mysterious glow.
But under existing circumstances it was
only possible to look in one direction — where
over the wharves of Amberwell brooded and
blossomed a crimson and golden rose of flame,
blood-red at the heart low down, where it
showed against a jagged outline of black, and
purpling the long banks of cloud overhead.
28
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
For five, perhaps ten, minutes they sat and
watched the finest spectacle that any great city
can afford, and then descended to the sitting-
room for the transaction of the business in
hand. To this they betook themselves, when
he had lighted the lamp, with a dehghtful air
of seriousness, sitting each on one side of the
substantial table in the middle of the room,
she with a pencil in hand and piece of paper
before her, he drumming on the table in pen-
sive abstraction. The occupation had little of
the romantic in it, yet the moments flew quickly,
* That small knee-hole table would go nicely
into the bay-window of the drawing-room,'
said he.
By rights they should both have been look-
ing at the knee-hole table, and thinking of the
bay-window. As it was, each caught the other
looking at him — and her — respectively, in an
absurdly surreptitious manner. This had hap-
pened before, and was followed by a resolution
on the part of both to fix their whole minds
upon the furniture question ; and again the
moments flew.
Several items had in fact been satisfactorily
disposed of — partly through his having shifted
29
Animal Episodes
his position to one nearer but not opposite to
her — when Walford started up with a wild
howl and ran to the window.
* Oh, Hal,' she cried, frightened and startled
by his vehemence, ' what is it ? '
'Paper,' he said, recovering himself with a
quite unsympathetic promptitude. * Paper and
perhaps chemicals.*
Some three and a half miles away, from
one of the heights of north London a stream
of flame shot fiercely up into the night, and
swayed and blazed, a pillar of fire that seemed
to connect earth and sky ; and again for five
minutes they sat and gazed.
Fires, to the student of London at night,
assume rich diversities of character. Some
blaze with a condensed fury, suggesting that
the dome of St. Paul's, inverted and filled with
water, would boil over in three minutes on such
a furnace. Others have more the nature of a
showy pyrotechnic display, which, if it seriously
alarms a few hundred people, rouses the dazed
admiration of thousands of bored and Mas^
citizens.
* How awful ! ' she said ; * but it doesn't
look so bad as the other.*
30
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
* But it is/ said he ; * they Ml want more
engines/
'Why?'
' Because there 's no pressure up there —
not enough to wash the ground-floor windows
with.'
* Pressure ! ' she answered innocently. * I
thought it was the engines always pumped the
water up/
The amateur fireman smiled sweetly. * So
they do/ he explained, ^ when they Ve got to,
but not when the water will go up of itself.
Don't you see, Nellie girl, it all depends on
the fall. You send a manual or steamer to
most fires, because they are usually wanted,
and to take the men, fixings, hose, etc. ; but if
the standpipes from the street were enough
By Jove ! It 's lucky there 's no wind ; doesn't
it flare up straight ! '
^ But, Hal,' she persisted, with the air of a
studious learner, ' would a standpipe send water
up here if we wanted it ^ '
He looked down to the street, which seemed
almost deserted but for a newsboy running
and yelling out some announcement which he
could guess but not hear from the heights of
31
Animal Episodes
St. MIchaePs Mount. A few foot-passengers
were hurrying along, obviously to get a better
view of the great show ; even the policeman had
gone to the extreme end of his beat to satisfy
a similar curiosity.
^ No/ he mused meditatively, * not up here,
but anywhere near the river-level, you know,
the hydrants will throw sixty gallons a minute
over the tops of any of the houses. But of
course, if your fire 's had a quiet start by itself,
you want to throw five or six streams further
than that ; why,' — he concluded, sitting down
in the chair he had first occupied, and playing
on the table — * you must have engines, and
you must have 'em smart, and if they happen
to be wanted elsewhere it's sometimes rather
awkward. That thing up there,' he pointed to
the window, ' would of course be seen directly
all over the place. But then the Amberwell
fire won't be got under to-night, I daresay —
and when they get there, very likely there
won't be water enough to fill a dam ! '
' To fill a dam, Hal ! ' interrupted the young
lady ; ' what 's that .? '
' Oh, nothing wrong. Only a great sort of
canvas tank — haven't you ever seen it ? — that
32
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
they put over the main plug in the street, and
all the engines suck out of it — it runs over all
the time, you know, if there 's a decent supply;
and they call it the "universal dam" (sounds
rum, doesn't it ? like something to do with the
end of the world), because of course each
engine has Ah ! there 's another,' he broke
off, as a faint rattle crossed the end of the
street, ' and going north/
These simple explanations, given from the
height of quasi-professional knowledge, seemed
to possess vast interest for their solitary auditor.
It took the form of a purely academic ebulli-
tion of public spirit.
* Ought you to go and help ? '
The lecturer turned away to hide a modest
smile.
' Very likely they may be short of hands,*
he answered ; * but I expect they '11 do
without me. Let's get on with the furni-
ture.'
But after a minute or two of business, her
mind reverted to the subject.
* Hal,' she said, looking up suddenly with a
subdued and quite respectful chuckle, * I wish
you 'd put on your fireman's things — you 've
c 33
Animal Episodes
got them here, haven't you ? And I should so
like to see how you look in them.'
And he, liking to see that mischievous
sparkle in the black eyes, and not unwilling to
give her some remembrance of himself in a
character in which he did not expect to appear
again, retired and donned the familiar uniform
— at least the jacket, belt, axe, and helm of
glittering brass, wearing which he reappeared
in the doorway at ^'tention.'
'Now, if you only had a spear,' she said,
laughing with delight at his heroic appearance,
' you 'd look just like Achilles or some person
out of " Lays of Ancient Rome " ' ; and she
insisted on handling the helmet to see if it was
real gold.
' It is,' he said, ' but hadn't ought to be.
Should be black. There you stumble on
a breach of the new regulations concerning
volunteers, which however won't concern me
much longer.'
* The garment,* he remarked, rubbing his
buttons, ' apologises for not being Tyrian
purple, which it should be, to suit Mamilius —
wasn't that the Johnny whose headpiece "shone
like flame " ^ — and as to spears,' he said, resum-
34
Machina Ex— Coelo ?
ing his seat and scratching out a perfectly-
nonsensical entry upon a piece of paper, * I can
tell you a hose is as heavy and as difficult to
hold straight as any " longshadowing lance."
By the way, how about this table we 're sitting
at ? would it do for the state dining-room ?
One thing, no slavey — parlour-maid, I mean —
with more than an astral body would ever get
round it with the flap out/
' Oh, the table 's simple enough/ she replied
with necessary firmness ; * but I wish, Hal,
you *d give your mind to that settee, and
measure it now,' she added, getting up from
her chair. * If we could get it into the other
window, you see, it would just hold two.'
' It does that already,' he said — and lo ! they
were sitting side by side again.
There was another momentary delay, where-
upon, after what seemed a severe struggle, she
took the foot-rule from him, and proceeded to
measure, he obediently taking notes at the
table. Excited cries from the street below, and
even the rattle of another engine which seemed
to turn a corner and pass suddenly out of hear-
ing, failed to disturb them.
They had been in the room altogether
3S
Animal Episodes
nearly an hour and a half, and it was by
common consent time for them to get back to
Old College Street, before she paused again to
glance out of the window.
' You can smell it strongly from here, Hal/
* Ah, the wharves,* he said sagely ; ^ the
wind 's that way, you see,' — after a pause of
infinitesimal embarrassment — ' all there is of it.*
She stood for two seconds before the window-
sill with the measure in her hand, musing as if
in doubt, and resumed more quickly, ' Oh yes,
I think that '11 be the very thing. Now we
really must be Hal, what *s that funny white
stuff falHng ^ It looks like snow.'
Long, long, did Walford remember how the
tinkle of those trivial words had rung up the
curtain on the great tragedy of their lives.
Snow does not usually fall in early autumn
even in Great Britain. Was that why his face
turned the colour of the two or three fragments
of ash, one the size of half a postage stamp,
that fluttered into the room and fell upon the
dark tablecloth under the lamp ^
Then suddenly the noise down in the street
seemed to become louder. Far below them,
somewhere on the lowest floors of St. Michael's
36
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
Mansions, there was a stampede of feet, and a
heavy door banged with a thunderous clang
that reverberated up the well. And then above
other noises rose a cry — the scream of a
woman's voice, abject and terrified, no mere
sensational outcry, but one of those personally
addressed appeals that cleave a man's life into
two clean halves : Fire! Fy-ahll Fah-eerU!
At the same instant a brazen drum down in
Catchbrook Street seemed to strike up a sort
of muffled alarum, and before three of its pant-
ing pulsations had echoed up the walls, Walford
realised that the * Mansions ' were well alight,
and that one engine had already got to work in
front of the house.
Cursing his own negligence, he flew to the
inner door, to find the lobby wreathed with
smok^e. He flung wide the close-fitting outer
door, and there rolled in^ not wreaths, but
volumes, dense and dark, streaming up from
below. He craned over the stair-rail and looked
down as well as he might through the stifling
cloud. From the lower floors came a dull,
roaring sound that seemed to stop the very
motion of his heart. He ran down to the next
landing ; there he could hardly face the smoke,
37
Animal Episodes
and the heat was already alarming. The roar
of a conflagration below grew louder ; he could
even make sure that the noise came chiefly from
the warehouse at the back. It must then have
been on fire for some time, and have burnt
sideways into the Mansions. On that side, he
reflected, was the hydraulic lift. The iron
balustrade was warm to the hand, and long
tongues of flame flashed up here and there
through the blinding waves, which now com-
pelled him to beat a hasty retreat. The well
was beginning to draw like a blast furnace.
' Ten minutes ago ! ' he gasped to himself,
as he darted up the stairs. Ten minutes ago,
perhaps, one man wrapped in a few yards of
sopping blanket might have dared the rush
downstairs — perhaps ; but now, and with her
to think of, it was beyond dreaming.
A few steps below the top he found her, half-
leaning, half-crouching against the rail, sick
with terror of the height and of the flames
below; her black hair dishevelled and blacker
than ever against her blanched cheeks, and the
lustre gone from her eyes.
* Can't we get down ? ' she cried to him in a
faint voice, struggling with her fear.
38
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
' Impossible/ he panted shortly, raising and
almost carrying her inside the flat, while he
slammed the door heavily with his back.
^ Don't be frightened,' he added, settling her on
the sofa ; ' they Ve got an engine or two to
work, and an escape will be here in two minutes,
only we must let them know.'
He put his head out of the window, and
yelled lustily, ^ Help ! — help / — s^air — case — on
fire — woman — here^ and, after a pause, ^ the —
long — escape — quick I '
The newly invented American ^ Telescope,*
as the men called it, recurred to his mind.
' That,* he thought to himself, * would get us
down, and it 's about the only chance.'
Perhaps it was. At that very moment a
family of children were spinning down it, one
after another, from the top story of a house in
South London.
But a fireman below, staring a bit, made
answer, making a speaking trumpet of his hands
while he shoved across the roadway with his
booted feet a palpitating python-coil of hose,
from which the spray squirted at every crack
some thirty feet into the air. ' All right,'
he shouted, ' Bill 's got 'er . . . easy there ! ' —
39
Animal Episodes
as another pair of foaming horses trampled and
splashed the broad and shallow rapid coursing
down the kennel, and the sucker of a third
engine was hurled into the boiling dam, — ^ Stand
by, below there ! Ah-h-h I my Lord I '
Walford, unable to distinguish the words
addressed to him, looked straight down below
his window, and saw a sight of terror. There
was a woman imprisoned on the fourth floor, to
which a ladder had been reared that fell short
by some ten feet of the window at which she
stood leaning half out, afraid to retreat, for the
flames were close behind her, and afraid to fall.
The ladder seemed almost erect against the
wall. But * Bill ' was a hero, though accident
or the stress of circumstances provided him with
such poor resources for action.
' Let yerself drop, mum,* he cried hoarsely to
the wizened elderly female trembling above him.
* No, no,' shrieked Walford, momentarily
absorbed in a more acute peril than his own.
' No, no, wait ; get a rope up.'
Half-giddy with fear, the woman sprang,
instead of falling ; it was but a little, but that
was enough. The man leant back to catch her ;
these gymnastics were all part of the day's work
40
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
to him. With a catlike effort he grasped the
falling bundle of clothes, locked his feet in the
rungs of the ladder, and stiffened his back to
break the blow. Probably he knew by that
fraction of a second that all was over. The top
of the miserable ladder leapt out from the wall,
balanced for the space of half a breath, quivered,
undulated, and fell backwards with a crash on
to the pavement.
Walford shut his eyes, till a groan of horror
from the street, audible above the drumming
of three engines, the stamping of horses, and
the cries of men, concluded the agonising sus-
pense. The whole scene had not occupied two
minutes.
^ Poor man ! ' moaned the crowd. ' His wife,
p'raps ... or his mother.'
He turned back into the room. The girl
flew towards him.
' No, no,' he cried, embracing her. ^ Don't
look out, it's too . . . don't be frightened,
darling. There 's been an accident ! '
He looked out again himself and called. The
crowd were making a lane for. something carried
away on a stretcher. He paused and called
again. ... An answer came up, in which the
41
Animal Episodes
word ^walt* was distinguishable, but lacking
that robust assurance which one on whom the
claws and teeth of mortal danger are leisurely
closing likes to hear from a rescuer.
There was a minute of maddening Interval,
during which Walford — the girl helping him,
like one in a dream — collected blankets and
sheets from the bedroom and soused them with
water. Having done it, as there seemed no
other use for the apparatus he heaped it up
against the outer door, under and around which
the smoke was now being forced in fine dark
swirls like curling black hair. Such activity
merely occupied the hands, while his brain
seemed to be racing like a weaver's shuttle,
spinning that warp of useless ' whys ' which,
crossed with the woof of unanswerable ^ hows,'
soon makes up the web of despair. ' Why had
no proper fire-escape arrived ? Why had the
men only ladders, and ladders which were too
short .? * All actual recent shortcomings, all
the complaints he could recall being hurled at
the Brigade, flashed through his mind ; how,
on quite a recent occasion, the only accessible
escape had been found padlocked, and the key
(safe in the pocket of an absent custodian) not
42
Machina Ex— Coelo ?
found at all ; or, again, how casual diners-out
had made mirth of the new superintendent as
one who indeed destroyed less of valuable
property, but put out fewer fires than his
popular predecessor. He caught himself half-
smiling, lost in a wild momentary reverie, from
which the sharp, imperious ' toot-toot ' of a
steam-whistle awoke him. ' Signal,' thought
Walford, — * putting another length on one of
the hoses up in Catchbrook Street.'
In fact, from the top windows of the side
street round the corner a veritable flood was
being poured upon the now blazing wing of the
Mansions. Nevertheless, the particular engineer
with his hand on that shrieking valve was one
of the body encamped in Gloria Road, around
whom a dark hedge of stalwart and serious
police kept off the struggling and yelling crowd ;
and he was looking up at Walford's window.
And Walford, mechanically donning the helmet
which lay on the table, attended to his call
obediently as a fireman balanced on some roof-
top to the familiar note which warns him that
the leaping and pulsating monster his arms can
hardly direct will next minute be an inanimate
log with a decided * list ' streetwards.
43
Animal Episodes
He looked out, leant out, and distinctly
heard a final answer from a superior official in
uniform, who shouted calmly and, as it seemed,
desperately. The girl within, from the sofa at
which she knelt unseen, heard him mention
two Parliamentary divisions of the metropolis,
Amberwell and North Brislington, and, a
second or two later, during momentary cessa-
tions of the turmoil below, had learned the
worst. * The roof at the back ... a rope
over . . . that's all you can do . . , perhaps
in twenty minutes.*
She had risen trembling, before Walford
turned his white face back into the room.
' What is it ? ' she asked idly, with pursed and
quivering lips.
^ Come along,' a strangely faint voice
answered. ^ We must get on the leads.'
4t 4t * * 4t
It was now dark, but the swelling crowd in
the street, impelled by curiosity or the blind
passion that for centuries peopled the amphi-
theatres, pressed heavily and vociferously upon
the living barrier that girt the * laager ' of the
Fire Brigade. The sensation-craving attitude
of the vulgar herd on such occasions is, as a
44
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
rule, but little akin to sympathy. Within the
limits of a peril which does not approach the
uncontrollable, or involve the actual destruction
of lives, it verges rather upon an indifference
to everything but the prolongation of the dis-
play. Not for nothing have imaginative nations
worshipped fire, ' a fetich at once so simple and
sublime that all productions of the chisel paled
before it.' But to-night the sense of impend-
ing tragedy seemed to weigh heavily upon all
spectators, active and passive, and found expres-
sion in a vast hoarse murmur, that only now
and then broke up into discordant cries. Among
the besieging force, short of numbers, resources,
and supplies — a hose-van had come in with the
news that official coal would be unreliable for
the next hour or so, and long before midnight
householders and caretakers of Gloria Road
were bringing out their domestic stores in
baskets — was a scene of frantic activity, hoarse
voices and straining nerves, of which the whole
ardour, impatience, and furious energy seemed
embodied in each of the seven steamers, whose
pantings, like those of fifty brazen-throated
Perillus bulls, re-echoed from wall to wall of
the wide thoroughfare.
45
Animal Episodes
Beneath each gleaming furnace, rocking on
its locked wheels, steadily grew and fell away
the same pile of blood-red cinders. Above
each straining funnel hurtled up into the night
the same fierce jets of flame. The whole level
street, doubly dark against the light above,
was a lagoon dotted with muddy and trampled
islands, a marsh about which wallowed in every
direction the quaking and bursting coils of
hose, like monsters in primaeval slime. But on
every dripping fold and every muddy pool
there flashed now and again rays of crimson
and gold from the fires bursting out of all
the central windows of the doomed building.
Steadily they spread downwards, as blazing
rafters and furniture crashed from floor to
floor, and rapidly upwards, as after each crash
huge tongues and volumes of the fire leapt up
with a shriek and a roar, that drew an invol-
untary responsive murmur from the hundreds
of hungry-eyed gazers. And in the distance
was audible at intervals the noise of all
London, as it seemed, rushing to see the great
fire.
To the chief, just arrived on his rounds,
and anxiously glancing up at the iron frame-
46
Machina Ex — Ccelo ?
work (now rapidly being stripped to the bone)
of the 'fire-proof* Mansions, a grave-eyed officer
of nautical build was curtly explaining the
situation.
The warehouse, a huge building stuffed with
inflammable material, of which only one (and
the smallest) side abutted upon Catchbrook
Street, had had an hour's start, or something
like it. The fire had begun at a point some
twenty yards removed from the street, at the
back of this right wing of the Mansions, into
which it had burnt deeply before they (the
narrator and his friends) had had a call.
There was a hope of saving the left wing.
^ And we Ve lost two lives, one of our '
* Yes, I heard,' said the chief. ' That was
bad.' He bit his grizzled moustachios, and
there was pain in his eyes.
' And we '11 lose two more if we don't '
' Where ? ' said the superior sharply.
' Top window, left wing, this near side.
There, sir, you can see the girl. If we don't
get the South Street escape in a quarter of an
hour ' He broke off. 'Who's to get at 'em ?
We 're short of everything 'cept water,' and he
glanced at the rapid coursing over his feet.
47
Animal Episodes
'That's in use/ said the chief; 'small fire,
top floor. Lord Camptown's in Granville
Square/
' Granville Square/ muttered the man.
' Lord ! what a night ! '
The chief had not taken his eyes from
Walford's windows.
^ There 's a man up there/ he said ; * I saw
his helmet/
The official uttered an execration expressive
of surprise.
^ That *11 be one of Birkett's team . . . they
must have got a ladder up at the back ... or
Birkett himself, I '11 lay a wager ; that chap 'd
go anywhere.'
* Well, I suppose you '11 manage it some-
how,' said the superior, with an accent of
reassurance. ' I must be off north. You '11
have the first four engines I can spare ; and
mind,' he half turned back on his heel, ^ I
wouldn't give those second-floor girders
another ten minutes — they 're pulling in now ;
that wall will fall outwards. Get your men
away.' And he was gone.
The person addressed cast one more glance
upj at the window on the seventh story ; but
48
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
no figure was visible there, and the whole top
floor was beginning to be obscured by the
smoke pouring out of the lower windows and
rolling along the roof. A light wind had risen
and was fanning the flames in that direction.
The corner of the building between the
side and main streets exhibited immediately
before his eyes a sufficiently wondrous and
alarming spectacle. To him it merely repre-
sented a trying but interesting crisis in the
night-long engagement. The towering angle
of the Mansions was thickly wrapped and
swathed almost to the summit in shaggy folds
of coal-black smoke that hung and gathered
like a dense growth of ivy on some ancient
turret, and through which ever and anon
snapped and flashed darts and volleys of angry
flame, like musketry from an embrasure ; and
as from pavement, window, and roof the
glittering torrents of water crashed in in reply,
clouds of shrieking steam boiled up into the
air and showed huge white blossoms against
the murky wreaths that covered the quaking
wall. Suddenly the wild, unearthly ' Yahoo ! *
of a siren sounded over the roofs from the
direction of the river.
D 49
Animal Episodes
* The large float/ he said to himself, * drop-
pin* down to Amberwell ; that '11 maybe let
loose another steamer for this job/
A grimy salvage man with a bandaged hand,
his stalwart form literally besprinkled with
mud and ashes, ran by.
^ Birkett 's got up an escape at the back.
Those fools broke the other turning a
corner. He 's brought down a woman.'
^That's all right,' said the man in charge.
* Below there, Simmons ! '
An avalanche of charred and blazing timbers
fell on the pavement.
•5'r ^'t ^/' -yc 4'r
Walford grasped NelHe*s arm, and together
they stumbled through a stifling cloud up the
little staircase with an oppressively intense
consciousness that a hundred years ago, in a
remote sphere of existence, they had gone
through an exactly similar process, which was
somehow more real than the present. To her
indeed the delusion was less actual, for when
they reached the roof she collapsed an un-
conscious burden into his ready arms. Wildly
he looked about for a spot of temporary safety
and shelter during this fatal delay. He could
50
Machina Ex— Coelo ?
not leave her reclined against the outer balus-
trade, for sheets of smoke seemed drifting up
the wall from the lower windows. Hastily he
scrambled, holding her in one arm, over a
ledge of lead, and reached a secluded spot
behind a huge stack of chimneys, some yards
further from the nearest signs of fire. Here
they were within but a few paces of the cre-
vasse-like passage which separated the burning
wing of the Mansions from that beyond, de-
serted in the last half-hour by its few alarmed
denizens on the ground floor, but presenting
to Walford's eyes the nearest refuge, if it could
be reached.
With this reflection in his mind he had
dashed back across the leads and down the
stairs, fighting his way this time through the
smoke which surged up from the lift well.
To judge from the smell and the heat, the outer
door and the flooring of the bedroom were
already smouldering. He seized a jug of
water, and having found a flask of brandy, and,
as an afterthought, hastily stuff^ed a few valu-
ables of small compass into his pockets, fled
back across the roof To his inexpressible
relief he found her sitting up, white and tear-
51
Animal Episodes
stained, on a grimy ledge below the chimney-
stack.
* I *m all right,' she said, struggling after a
respectable bravery. ' I think it was the smoke.
Where have you been, Hal ? When will they
come and fetch us ? '
For all answer he pressed some brandy to
her lips, and then pointed across the dark
gorge in front of them.
' It 's not far,' he said ; ^ only on to that
other roof. The men will be there soon with
ropes and a ladder.'
Twenty minutes, he thought to himself,
must have elapsed, but what was the help pro-
mised in twenty minutes ? He had not dis-
tinctly heard — was it the American fire-escape,
or what ? Further communication with the
street was Impossible. He turned and looked
back, the girl following his eyes. From the
whole area of roof behind them, on two sides,
rose a seething wave of fire and smoke that
rolled steadily towards them. It was only a
matter of time now. The hostile breeze had
freshened, and a hot draught met him every-
where as he hastily explored in the failing light
all accessible tracts of the roof.
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
* Wait here a moment, darling,' he said,
'while I look round and see if there is no
other way down. *
These indeed were idle words, but he meant
to make surer the assurance of rescue by show-
ing himself at some point on the roof. In a
few minutes he returned, satisfied that those in
the street had seen him. So he said. In his
heart he doubted whether, at that height,
through the gathering darkness, he could have
been discernible. No matter : his first appeal
had reached them. No thought of the dress
and arms which, by the merest coincidence, he
was wearing, and of the delusive significance
these might have to professional eyes, disturbed
his fatal confidence that the helplessness of
their position must be at once realised — that
some adequate force would come to the rescue
of two innocent beings imprisoned on an islet
in the skies and driven towards the abyss by a
tidal wave of fire. But the delay was incom-
prehensible. As the murky pall of smoke
rolled up and mingled with the blackness of
night, the horror of a deadly isolation seemed
to brood over them.
S3
Animal Episodes
A week's agony — the agony of a siege where
relief is despaired of and life failing day by day
— compressed into ten minutes, crushed down
all instinctive struggles of hope against hope,
as the leaden darkness seemed to press down
upon them, and the advancing flames drove
them towards the black and terrible precipice
beyond which lay their only safety. It was
impossible they could be seen now, except
against or amidst the sheets of flame whose
hot breath now and again swept round them —
except, that was, from a point from which none
were looking, or at a moment when the long-
delayed rescue would be of no avail.
•K- 44- ')r -)'? -JJ-
He could not have told how long it was
after this reflection occurred to him — so swiftly
time spun the web of terror round them — that
the situation in a flash loomed definitely fatal.
He could see flames streaming from the stair-
case by which they had twice ascended. The
rooms in which they had sat and trifled an hour
ago, and those adjoining them, now formed an
extended wing of the general conflagration, cut-
ting ojfF all approach (had that been of any use)
to the wall fronting Gloria Road. Some thirty
54
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
yards away on the other side, the warehouse —
four stories, with all the roof fallen in — roared
to heaven in a vast cloud of flame, which shut
out all view in that direction, and made their
voices scarcely audible to one another. Imme-
diately behind them the first high ridge of
chimney-stacks stood out a jetty black against
the seething waves and forked tongues of
flame that, fanned by the freshening breeze,
steadily clutched and devoured the mainland
of roof.
Walford was no hero. He had played ten-
tatively with danger, with the half-pleasure of
wrestling with the untried and little known.
But at this crisis, when the blind horror of
death seemed to be engulfing not only life, but
all the happiness that could fill it, he felt its
cowing, cold-blooded mastery. Yet absolute
surrender was impossible while she still lay
there, white, helpless, but patient, she whom he
had lured up to this hideous height that they
might perish together unnoticed in its stupen-
dous holocaust. He leant far over the parapet
uttering frenzied cries. He paced backwards
and forwards wildly measuring the breadth
of the gulf He climbed upon some raised
55
Animal Episodes
partition in the roof, and gazed Into the
depth, imagination and reason racing in his
brain, while the fire roared in his ears, for
a mortal or miraculous solution of the in-
soluble problem. ' O for a ladder ! ' (and
despairing fancy mocked him with the echo,
' O for wings ! ') ^ O for a rope P (* O for
an angel from heaven ! ') The one seemed now
as likely to arrive as the other. But then the
more bitter reflection forced itself sharply upon
his desperate reverie : ' What was to be done
here with a rope or ladder ? * He could take
her in his arms and carry her — but could he
carry her ? Could he walk twenty feet on the
rungs of a horizontal ladder, swaying like a
withy, when the slightest false step meant to be
dashed to pieces — and he shuddered to think
of what he had seen in Gloria Road — upon the
pavement below? Could he watch her crawling,
struggling across that fearful abyss ? He peered
down into the darkness below, dotted by a few
tiny gas-lamps. In his weakness he almost wished
it could be all over at once — for himself . . .
but for ker ? A gust of new energy and higher
courage shook him like a storm at the thought.
It was not their love or happiness, but her life
J>6
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
alone that was now to be fought for. He
would have a few words yet with the Spectre
of Despair. At that moment a red-hot wire
struck him smartly in the back.
Looking up, he saw towering above him
an object familiar indeed to his eye, but worth
description to a reader unacquainted with the
monstrosities of a modern capital.
From a point on the roof, about fifteen or
twenty feet back from the wall, rose a huge
mast some forty feet in height, surmounted by
a spire, and supported by stays of iron wire
from various parts of the building. Across the
upper half of it were fastened, one below another
and about a foot apart, some dozen stout cross-
bars of wood five or six feet in length. On each
bar were fixed half a dozen large earthenware
* insulators,* and the whole framework — which
now, with smoke-clouds rolling about it, resem-
bled the mast and rigging of a burning vessel —
supported a hundred telephone wires.
* Wait ! wait ! ' shrieked Walford nonsensi-
cally enough, with a wild light in his eyes,
vaguely fearful that his past antics might have
robbed the girl of her last scrap of self-control.
* Wait ! ' he forced his voice through the hoarse
57
Animal Episodes
murmurs of rushing flame and the fainter tumult
from the streets — ' I see ! '
She did not, and indeed at first thought him
mad, as, unbuttoning his axe and pulling tighter
the buckle of his helmet, he rushed to the foot
of the gigantic telephone pole, measuring the
height to the first crossbar, and then back to
the passage, anxiously scanning its width. But
what could she do ? Nothing. ' Sit still till
I call/ he thundered, ' there, right under the
parapet, close as you can get/
Twenty, thirty, forty times did she hear the
sound of the axe swung with hearty goodwill
upon that stout Norwegian pine. Then he
strode towards her again. His voice had a
different accent, a touch of the agonised bitter-
ness of a relapse into despair. ' Half the wires
are down,* he said, ' and one of the back sup-
ports ; I can t get at the other.*
Flames surrounded it and drove him back.
Indeed, the foot of the pole itself was black-
ened on the far side, and a rain of sparks drove
past it.
He groaned aloud. * Water, water ! '
' 'Arf a minute, mate ! ' sounded a stentorian
voice from the opposite roof.
58
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
Walford turned as if at a shot. The short,
squab figure of a Wapping mariner, clad in a
dark-blue uniform, carrying in one hand a heavy
and gleaming musquetoon, and closely followed
by an anaconda of fabulous length, appeared
against the skyline. The splendid dawn of the
conflagration flashed a quite celestial brightness
upon his brass buttons, his red nose, and even
the thick wedding-ring on his left hand.
* 'Arf a minute ! ' he grunted in the same
level tone ; ' one long and two short is Jumbo's
ticket, and when you 'ear that I '11 give you all
the water she can send up/ He adjusted the
musquetoon in both arms, casting an eagle eye
over the territory to be attacked.
* Hello ! 'ow will you get the lydy over ? '
He spoke as if the interval between them were
a streamlet in which she might wet her feet.
^ All right,' answered Walford with a half-
hysterical yell, ' we 're coming across directly.
Put that hose on me.' And then a long, pierc-
ing wail from the depths below, followed with
breathless rapidity by two stifled shrieks that
stuck in the ear like darts, wiped out the rest
of his exclamation as a sponge wipes out the
writing on a slate. He pointed to a skylight
59
Animal Episodes
or trap from which flames were beginning to
stream up and play round the base of the mast,
like some bright-coloured creeper feeling for a
support.
* Lay down.'
As the black coils behind him heaved and
stiffened, the man chucked the words at
Walford like a four of bricks. He lay down on
his elbows, till a passing douche from the hose
directed on to the leads just in front of him
drove all the breath out of his body, and almost
lifted it into the air. Recovering, he staggered
back, axe in hand, through the shower of sparks,
and in a moment was desperately at work again.
Two feet to one side of him the rigid gUsten-
ing torrent hung and thundered with an explo-
sion of hisses into the burning aperture in the
roof The mightier waves of the fire beyond
made the surging roar of a stormy sea. The
sound of blows was audible above it. As the
current first wavered, Walford looked up,
shaking a red ash from his sleeve. The fireman
was addressing him, but he could only hear part
of his remarks.
' 'Ow did yer get up ? . . . ain't no use . . .
fix up this a bit, and go fetch . . .'
60
Machina Ex— Coelo ?
He shook his head, and bellowed back
grotesque and disjointed replies. * I 'm not a
fireman. Keep on a minute,' and a second
later, as he stooped over the iron stay, ' Your
axe, quick ! '
It was bowled over adroitly. Walford
deliberately chipped its edge against the side of
his own, and in a trice was at work filing the
twisted iron wire. The sweat poured over him
and dripped upon the leads like rain, yet still
he worked on. Three minutes passed, and the
squab, red-nosed man, who had been murmuring
to himself, * I 'm not a fireman ! Then 'oo the
doose in all might you be ? ' beginning to fear
that he had to do with some one naturally
lunatic, or deranged by the terror of the cata-
strophe, began to protest in his own language.
With face rubicund as the flames that illumined
it, he implored Walford (who had begun again)
to leave off chopping at a sanguinary pole which
wasn't in the way, and must clearly (whatever
happened) be burnt in another quarter of an
hour. To his despair, the lunatic, whom he
now began to regard as dangerous, continued
to dance about, axe in hand, in a state appar-
ently of mingled exultation and indignation.
6i
Animal Episodes
* Nellie,' he shrieked hoarsely, * get out of
the way, there, to the left ! ' and to the thunder-
struck man from Wapping, ' Shut up, you
fool ! Now, then ! it 's coming down ! mind
yourself ! '
There was a sudden crack as of a rotten
forest tree struck and felled by an October
gale, and the inevitable, which was also the
astonishing, had once more come to pass.
Of the one hundred and eight telephone
wires, a great number had already subsided, in
a more or less liquefied state, into the huge
furnace over which they had stretched. The
stays on the further side being cut away, and
the timber itself half-severed, the strain of the
unbroken wires or supports brought the whole
framework down at right angles across the wall
and the passage. The virtue of this operation
of the law of gravity lay in the simple fact that
the distance of the base of the mast from the
first crossbar and from the wall was about the
same, in which coincidence also was nothing
remarkable. But when an unearthly discharge
of grape and canister in the form of flying
insulators and broken shards of earthenware
had smashed the windows and starred the pave-
62
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
ment a hundred feet below, it became apparent
that there lay across the dreaded gulf, like a
drawbridge unexpectedly let down from the
skies, a solid causeway, across which four men
abreast might easily walk with no possibility of
falling through, and even a small vehicle might
have been driven.
At the sight of this dangerous miracle, the
man from Wapping dropped his hose and fled.
Cautiously returning, he kicked aside the broken
spire and grasped the new structure to test its
solidity. As there seemed no likelihood of its
moving further, he nodded in a reassuring
manner to the two figures advancing towards
him, blackly silhouetted against the background
of fire.
With a frenzied light of triumph in his eye,
Walford himself tramped upon the first cross-
bar to be sure that this wondrous inspiration
would not vanish back into the fairyland of fancy
from which it had so swiftly been bodied forth.
But all was not ready yet. Although many of
the broken wires had fallen, dragged down into
the street, and disappeared, a bosky tangle lay
about the level roof and cumbered the cause-
way. One or two had even entangled the girl
63
Animal Episodes
and charred her dress, till the hose once more
swept across them and left only a steaming briary
tangle in their path. This Walford hastened
with wild fury to trample down or sweep aside,
cutting ofF some of the obstructive strands and
catching others round the crossbars. His hands
were burnt and blackened. The hot blast
pressed on them from behind, but like a solid
marble handrail the gleaming column of water
from the hose stood by their sides, and hurtled
past them into the advancing wing of the fire.
There was yet time. Then he turned and said
simply, ^ Come along . . . come along . . . like
that . . . step on the bars, not on the pole . . .
because they 're flat . . . from one to the
other. . . .'
But the transit was not to be hastily accom-
plished. It was a condensed deliberate agony
of stumbles and struggles, — a passage to be
remembered, as a man remembers his first
rough week in the Bay of Biscay. And just
as they reached the middle of the gulf, a long,
grinding roar shook the building behind and
the bridge beneath them. Crouching down,
they both clutched at the trembling woodwork
till the shock passed by, and the thunderous
64
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
noise died down into a distant chorus of cries
and the rustling as of a mighty wind just
getting up. At the same moment, a new and
towering aurora of light filled the sky behind,
and threw the black outline of their two
figures, and the brushwood of telephone wires
about them, half on the crossbars, and half on
the opposite wall below.
* All right, sir ; all right, lady,' cried a husky
but cheering voice. ' Thet 's the far wall come
down/ And so it was.
Arrived on the shore of safety in a kind of
dream, Walford's first act was to shake hands
warmly with the red-nosed man.
^ You ain't a fireman ! ' ejaculated the latter,
adding with a sledge-hammer emphasis as he
resumed his hose, ^ Golly I '
•5t rr -5fr -je- ^
Not till they had descended into the street
were they clear of dreamland. Then first could
the mind, gradually permeated by the body's
enjoyment of the safe and solid earth, make up
its actual account with happiness. It was he, of
course, who made the first pretence of a recovery,
propounding in a voice carefully modelled after
his own the original inquiry, * How are you ^ *
E 65
Animal Episodes
For answer, the colour slowly returned to
her cheeks, and cautiously, as if fearful of
rousing the jealousy of an eluded fate, she
broke into a tearful smile at the singularity of
her appearance leaning on the arm of a figure
still dripping with water, his clothes torn and
blackened with the grime of the roof. Then
stopping for a minute, with hands that still
trembled, she put back her wandering black
hair into something like presentable tidiness.
4t -J'r 45- 45- -X-
The events above described had not dis-
turbed the serenity of the little cul-de-sac
known as * Old College Street.' Arrived
hurriedly upstairs, and there beset by a torrent
of obvious questions, Walford, while a belated
supper was preparing, led the anxious mother
to the window of her back drawing-room, and
drew up the blind. Beyond the first low roofs,
a vast volcano flared to heaven. ^ There,' he
said, before the speechless lady could articulate
another inquiry, * that 's St. Michael's Mount
. . . and Nellie 's rather tired, and Pm a bit
wet and dirty. Nothing more.*
' The heroism and the presence of mind, not
to say astonishing ingenuity, of one member of
Machina Ex — Coelo ?
the brigade in particular, which will, we trust,
be rewarded by some adequate testimonial,* was
belauded in several leading articles of the next
morning. But the writers who penned these
eulogies knew not that they were but cele-
brating one more manifestation of that which
the Greek poet had long ago described as equal
to all forces of Nature and all emergencies —
of ' Love unconquered in fight.' The hero,
indeed, met, according to his own account,
with an adequate reward ; but it did not take
the form of a public testimonial.
67
THE BLUE DRYAD
* According to that theory' — said a critical
friend, h propos of the last story but one —
' susceptibility of '^discipline" would be the chief
test of animal character, which means that the
best dogs get their character from men. If
so '
' You pity the poor brutes ? '
' Oh no. I was going to say that on that
principle cats should have next to no character
at all.'
* They have plenty/ I said, * but it 's usually
bad — at least, hopelessly unromantic. Who
ever heard of a heroic or self-denying cat }
Cats do what they like, not what you want
them to do.'
He laughed. * Sometimes they do what you
like very much. You haven't heard Mrs.
Warburton-Kinneir's cat-story ? *
* The Warburton-Kinneirs ! I didn't know
they were back in England.*
68
The Blue Dryad
^Oh yes. TheyVe been six months in
Hampshire, and now they are in town. She
has Thursday afternoons.'
* Good,' I said. ^ I *11 go the very next
Friday, and take my chance. . . .'
Fortunately only one visitor appeared to tea.
And as soon as I had explained my curiosity,
he joined me in petitioning for the story which
follows : —
•?'«■ j^ ^ ^ ^
Stoffles was her name, a familiar abbrevia-
tion, and Mephistophelian was her nature.
She had all the usual vices of the feline tribe,
including a double portion of those which men
are so fond of describing as feminine. Vain,
indolent, selfish, with a highly cultivated taste
for luxury and neatness in her personal
appearance, she was distinguished by all those
little irritating habits and traits for which
nothing but an affectionate heart (a thing in
her case conspicuous by its absence) can atone.
It would be incorrect, perhaps, to say that
Stoffles did not care for the society of my
husband or myself. She liked the best of
everything, and these our circumstances allowed
us to give her. For the rest, though in kitten
69
Animal Episodes
days suspected of having caught a mouse, she
had never been known in after life to do any-
thing which the most lax of economists could
describe as useful. She would lie all day in the
best armchair enjoying real or pretended
slumbers, which never affected her appetite at
supper-time ; although in that eventide which is
the feline morn she would, if certain of a
sufficient number of admiring spectators, con-
descend to amuse their dull human intelligence
by exhibitions of her dexterity. But she was
soon bored, and had no conception of altruistic
effort. Abundantly cautious and prudent in
all matters concerning her own safety and
comfort, she had that feline celerity of vanish-
ing like air or water before the foot, hand, or
missile of irritated man ; while on the other
hand, when a sensitive specimen of the
gentler sex (my grandmother, for example)
was attentively holding the door open for her,
she would stiffen and elongate her whole
body, and, regardless of all exhibitions of
kindly impatience, proceed out of the
drawing-room as slowly as a funeral cortege
of crocodiles.
A good-looking Persian cat is an ornamental
70
The Blue Dryad
piece of furniture in a house ; but though fond
of animals, I never succeeded in getting up an
ajfFection for Stoffles until the occurrence of the
incident here to be related. Even in this,
however, I cannot conceal from myself that the
share which she took was taken, as usual, solely
for her own satisfaction.
We live, you know, in a comfortable old-
fashioned house facing the highroad, on the
slope of a green hill from which one looked
across the gleaming estuary (or the broad mud-
flats) of Southampton Water on to the rich,
rolling woodland of the New Forest. I say
wCy but in fact for some months I had been
alone, and my husband had just returned from
one of his sporting and scientific expeditions in
South America. He had already won fame as
a naturalist, and had succeeded in bringing
home alive quite a variety of beasts, usually of
the reptile order, whose extreme rarity seemed
to me a merciful provision of Nature.
But all his previous triumphs were com-
pletely eclipsed, I soon learned, by the
capture, alive, on this last expedition, of an
abominably poisonous snake, known to those
who knew it as the Blue Dryad, or more
71
Animal Episodes
familiarly, in backwoods slang, as the Half-
hour Striker, in vague reference to its malig-
nant and fatal qualities. The time in which a
snake-bite takes effect is, by the way, no very
exact test of its virulence, the health and
condition not only of the victim, but of the
snake, having of course to be taken into
account.
But the Blue Dryad, sometimes erroneously
described as a variety of rattlesnake, is, I
understand, supposed to kill the average man,
under favourable circumstances, in less time
even than the deadly Copperhead — which it
somewhat resembles, except that it is larger
in size, and bears a peculiar streak of faint
peacock-blue down the back, only perceptible
in a strong light. This precious reptile was
destined for the Zoological Gardens.
Being in extremely delicate health at the
time, I need hardly say that I knew nothing of
these gruesome details until afterwards. Henry
(that is my husband), after entering my room
with a robust and sunburned appearance that
did my heart good, merely observed — as soon
as we had exchanged greetings — that he had
brought home a pretty snake which ' wouldn't
72
The Blue Dryad
(just as long, that is to say, as it couldn't) do
the slightest harm,' — an evasive assurance which
I accepted as became the nervous wife of an
enthusiastic naturalist. I believe I insisted on
its not coming into the house.
The cook, indeed, on my husband express-
ing a wish to put it in the kitchen, had taken
up a firmer position : she had threatened to
* scream ' if ' the vermin ' were introduced into
her premises; which ultimatum, coming from
a stalwart young woman with unimpaired lungs,
was sufficient.
Fortunately the weather was very hot (being
in July of the ever-memorable summer of
1893), so ^^ ^^^ decided that the Blue Dryad,
wrapped in flannel and securely confined in a
basket, should be left in the sun, and the
farthest corner of the verandah, during the
hour or so in the afternoon when my husband
had to visit the town on business.
He had gone off with a cousin of mine, an
officer of Engineers in India, stationed I think
at Lahore, and home on leave. I remember
that they were a long time, or what seemed to
me a long time, over their luncheon ; and the
last remark of our guest as he came out of the
73
Animal Episodes
dining-room remained in my head as even
meaningless words will run in the head of any
idle invalid shut up for most of the day in a
silent room. What he said was, in the positive
tone of one emphasising a curious and surpris-
ing statement, ' D'you know, by the way, it 's
the one animal that doesn't care a rap for the
cobra/ And, my husband seeming to express
disbelief and a desire to change the subject as
they entered my boudoir, * It 's a holy fact !
Goes for it, so smart ! Has the beggar on
toast before you can say " Jack Robinson ! " '
The observation did not interest me, but
simply ran in my head. Then they came
into my room, only for a few moments, as I
was not to be tired. The Engineer tried to
amuse Stoffles, who was seized with such a fit
of mortal boredom that he transferred his
attentions to Ruby, the Gordon setter, a
devoted and inseparable friend of mine, under
whose charge I was shortly left as they passed
out of the house. The Lieutenant, it appears,
went last, and inadvertently closed without
fastening the verandah door. Thereby hangs
a tale of the most trying quarter of an hour it
has been my lot to experience.
74
The Blue Dryad
I suppose I may have been asleep for ten
minutes or so when I was awakened by the
noise of Ruby's heavy body jumping out
through the open window. Feeling restless
and seeing me asleep, he had imagined himself
entitled to a short spell off guard. Had the
door not been ostensibly latched he would have
made his way out by it, being thoroughly used
to opening doors and such tricks — a capacity
which in fact proved fatal to him. That it
was unlatched I saw in a few moments, for the
dog on his return forced it open with a push
and trotted up in a disturbed manner to my
bedside. I noticed a tiny spot of blood on the
black side of his nose, and naturally supposed
he had scratched himself against a bush or a
piece of wire. ^ Ruby/ I said, * what have you
been doing .? ' Then he whined as if in pain,
crouching close to my side and shaking in
every limb. I should say that I was myself
lying with a shawl over my feet on a deep sofa
with a high back. I turned to look at Stoffles,
who was slowly perambulating the room, look-
ing for flies and other insects (her favourite
amusement) on the wainscot. When I glanced
again at the dog his appearance filled me with
75
Animal Episodes
horror ; he was standing, obviously from pain,
swaying from side to side and breathing hard.
As I watched, his body grew more and more
rigid. With his eyes fixed on the half-open
door, he drew back as if from the approach of
some dreaded object, raised his head with a
pitiful attempt at a bark, which broke off into a
stifled howl, rolled over sideways suddenly, and
lay dead. The horrid stiffness of the body,
almost resembling a stuffed creature overset,
made me believe that he had died as he stood,
close to my side, perhaps meaning to defend
me — more probably, since few dogs would be
proof against such a terror, trusting that I
should protect him against the thing coming in
at the door ! Unable to resist the unintelligible
idea that the dog had been frightened to death,
I followed the direction of his last gaze, and
at first saw nothing. The next moment I ob-
served round the corner of the verandah door
a small, dark, and slender object, swaying gently
up and down like a dry bough in the wind. It
had passed right into the room with the same
slow, regular motion before I realised what it
was and what had happened.
My poor, stupid Ruby must have nosed at
76
The Blue Dryad
the basket on the verandah till he succeeded
somehow in opening it, and have been bitten
in return for his pains by the abominable
beast which had been warranted in this in-
sufficient manner to do no harm, and which I
now saw angrily rearing its head and hissing
fiercely at the dead dog within three yards of
my face.
I am not one of those women who jump on
chairs or tables when they see a mouse, but I
have a constitutional horror of the most harm-
less reptiles. Watching the Blue Dryad as it
glided across the patch of sunlight streaming
in from the open window, and knowing what it
was, I confess to being as nearly frightened out
of my wits as I ever hope to be. If I had been
well, perhaps I might have managed to scream
and run away. As it was, I simply dared not
speak or move a finger for fear of attracting the
beast's attention to myself. Thus I remained
a terrified spectator of the astonishing scene
which followed. The whole thing seemed to
me like a dream. As the beast entered the
room, I seemed again to hear my cousin
making the remark above mentioned about the
cobra. What animal, I wondered dreamily,
77
Animal Episodes
could he have meant ? Not Ruby ! Ruby was
dead. I looked at his stiiF body again, and
shuddered. The whistle of a train sounded
from the valley below, and then an errand-boy
passed along the road at the back of the house
(for the second or third time that day) singing
in a cracked voice the fragment of a popular
melody, of which I am sorry to say I know no
more —
' I Ve got a little cat,
And I 'm very fond of that ;
But daddy wouldn't buy me a bow, wow, wow ';
the wow-wows becoming fainter and further as
the youth strode down the hill. If I had been
^ myself,' as the poor folk say, this coincidence
would have made me laugh, for at that very
moment Stoffles, weary of patting flies and
spiders on the back, appeared gently purring
on the crest, so to speak, of the sofa.
It has often occurred to me since that if the
scale of things had been enlarged — if Stoffles,
for example, had been a Bengal tiger, and the
Dryad a boa - constrictor or crocodile, — the
tragedy which followed would have been
worthy of the pen of any sporting and
dramatic historian. I can only say that, being
78
The Blue Dryad
transacted in such objectionable proximity to
myself, the thing was as impressive as any
combat of mastodon and iguanodon could have
been to primitive man.
Stoffles, as I have said, was inordinately vain
and self-conscious. Stalking along the top of
the sofa-back and bearing erect the bushy
banner of her magnificent tail, she looked the
most ridiculous creature imaginable. She had
proceeded half-way on this pilgrimage to-
wards me when suddenly, with the rapidity
of lightning, as her ear caught the sound of the
hiss and her eyes fell upon the Blue Dryad,
her whole civilised ^ play-acting ' demeanour
vanished, and her body stiffened and contracted
to the form of a watchful wild beast with the
ferocious and instinctive antipathy to a natural
enemy blazing from its eyes. No change of a
shaken kaleidoscope could have been more
complete or more striking. In one light
bound she was on the floor in a compressed,
defensive attitude, with all four feet close to-
gether, near, but not too near, the unknown but
clearly hostile intruder ; and to my surprise,
the snake turned and made off towards the
window. Stoffles trotted lightly after, ob-
79
Animal Episodes
viously interested in its method of locomotion.
Then she made a long arm and playfully
dropped a paw upon its tail. The snake
wriggled free in a moment, and coiling its
whole length, some three and a half feet,
fronted this new and curious antagonist.
At the very first moment, I need hardly say,
I expected that one short stroke of that little
pointed head against the cat's delicate body
would quickly have settled everything. But
one is apt to forget that a snake (I suppose
because in romances snakes always * dart ') can
move but slowly and awkwardly over a smooth
surface, such as a tiled or wooden floor. The
long body, in spite of its wonderful con-
struction, and of the attitudes in which it is
frequently drawn, is no less subject to the laws
of gravitation than that of a hedgehog. A
snake that ^ darts ' when it has nothing secure
to hold on by, only overbalances itself. With
half or two-thirds of the body firmly coiled
against some rough object or surface, the head
— of a poisonous snake at least — is indeed a
deadly weapon of precision. This particular
reptile, perhaps by some instinct, had now
wriggled itself on to a large and thick fur rug
80
The Blue Dryad
about twelve feet square, upon which arena
took place the extraordinary contest that
followed.
The audacity of the cat astonished me from
the first. I have no reason to believe she had
ever seen a snake before, yet by a sort of
instinct she seemed to know exactly what she
was doing. As the Dryad raised its head,
with glittering eyes and forked tongue, Stoffles
crouched with both front paws in the air,
sparring as I had seen her do sometimes with a
large moth. The first round passed so swiftly
that mortal eye could hardly see with distinct-
ness what happened. The snake made a dart,
and the cat, all claws, two rapid blows at its
advancing head. The first missed, but the
second I could see came home, as the brute,
shaking its neck and head, withdrew further
into the jungle — I mean, of course, the rug.
But Stoffles, who had no idea of the match
ending in this manner, crept after it, with an
air of attractive carelessness which was instantly
rewarded. A full two feet of the Dryad's
body straightened like a black arrow, and
seemed to strike right into the furry side of its
antagonist — seemed, I say, to slowgoing human
F 81
Animal Episodes
eyes ; but the latter shrank, literally fell back,
collapsing with such suddenness that she
seemed to have turned herself inside out, and
become the mere skin of a cat. As the serpent
recovered itself, she pounced on it like light-
ning, driving at least half a dozen claws well
home, and then, apparently realising that she
had not a good enough hold, sprang lightly
into the air from off the body, alighting about
a yard off. There followed a minute of
sparring in the air ; the snake seemingly half
afraid to strike, the cat waiting on its every
movement.
Now the poisonous snake when provoked
is an irritable animal, and the next attack of the
Dryad, maddened by the scratchings of puss
and its own unsuccessful exertions, was so
furious, and so close to myself, that I shuddered
for the result. Before this stage I might
perhaps, with a little effort, have escaped, but
now panic fear glued me to the spot ; indeed,
I could not have left my position on the sofa
without almost treading upon Stoffles, whose
bristling back was not a yard from my feet.
At last, I thought — as the Blue Dryad, for
one second coiled close as a black silk cable,
82
The Blue Dryad
sprang out the next as straight and sharp as
the piston-rod of an engine, — this lump of
feline vanity and conceit is done for, and — I
could not help thinking — it will probably be
my turn next ! Little did I appreciate the
resources of Stoffles, who, without a change in
her vigilant pose, without a wink of her fierce
green eyes, sprang backwards and upwards on
to the top of me and there confronted the
enemy calmly as ever, sitting, if you please,
upon my feet ! I don't know that any gym-
nastic performance ever surprised me more
than this, though I have seen this very beast
drop twenty feet from a window-sill on to a
stone pavement without appearing to notice any
particular change of level. Cats with so much
plumage have probably their own reasons for
not flying.
Trembling all over with fright, I could not
but observe that she was trembling too — with
rage. Whether instinct inspired her with the
advantages of a situation so extremely un-
pleasant to me, I cannot say. The last act
of the drama rapidly approached, and no more
strategic catastrophe was ever seen.
For a snake, as everybody knows, naturally
83
Animal Episodes
rears its head when fighting. In that position,
though one may hit it with a stick, it is
extremely difficult, as this battle had shown, to
get hold of. Now, as the Dryad, curled to a
capital S, quivering and hissing advanced for
the last time to the charge, it was bound to
strike across the edge of the sofa on which I
lay, at the erect head of Stoffles, which vanished
with a juggling celerity that would have dislo-
cated the collar-bone of any other animal in
creation. From such an exertion the snake
recovered itself with an obvious effort, quick
beyond question, but not nearly quick enough.
Before I could well see that it had missed Its
aim, Stoffles had launched out like a spring
released, and, burying eight or ten claws in the
back of its enemy's head, pinned it down
against the stiff cushion of the sofa. The tail
of the agonised reptile flung wildly in the air
and flapped on the arched back of the imper-
turbable tigress. The whiskered muzzle of
Stoffles dropped quietly, and her teeth met
once, twice, thrice, like the needle and hook of a
sewing-machine, in the neck of the Blue Dryad;
and when, after much deliberation, she let it
go, the beast fell into a limp tangle on the floor.
84
The Blue Dryad
When I saw that the thing was really dead
I believe I must have fainted. Coming to
myself, I heard hurried steps and voices.
' Great heavens ! ' my husband was screaming,
* where has the brute got to ? * * It's all right,'
said the Engineer; 'just you come and look
here, old man. Commend me to the coolness
of that cat. After the murder of your price-
less specimen, here's Stoffles cleaning her fur in
one of her serenest Anglo-Saxon attitudes.'
So she was. My husband looked grave as I
described the scene. * Didn't I tell you so?'
said the Engineer, ' and this beast, I take it, is
worse than any cobra.'
I can easily believe he was right. From
the gland of the said beast, as I afterwards
learned, they extracted enough poison to be the
death of twenty full-grown human beings.
Tightly clasped between its minute teeth was
found (what interested me more) a few long
hairs, late the property of Stoffles.
Stoffles, however — she is still with us — has
a superfluity of long hair, and is constantly
leaving it about.
85
HOW THE FIEND FETCHED
SHARON FULKSAY
A STORY OF THE SUBURBS
Travellers who often go in and out of
London by the Great North Midland Railway
are familiar with the name — painted at full
length in large letters — of Harnsleigh Grove
Park.
It is one of those suburban stations which
strike one as hideous monuments erected in
memory of deceased ^ bits of country,' — alive
and green a few years ago, then beslobbered with
filth and smoke, and at last bodily devoured by
the dragon jaws of the advancing metropolis.
The nomenclature of such districts often
seems to represent a frantic struggle on the
part of commercial enterprise to make a living
* neighbourhood ' out of a mere mechanical
congeries of atoms, unwilling residents, bad
bricks, gas-lamps, and cheap iron railings.
In the particular case of Harnsleigh Grove
Park the^senseless conglomeration of substan-
86
A Story of the Suburbs
tives, vaguely suggestive of nightingales and
greenery, seemed a particularly ghastly irony
upon the actual nature of the place, which was a
desert of cottage-villas of the dreariest type that
ever made an artist weep.
The yellow of its brickwork was more sickly,
the meaningless patterns of its front walls more
irritating, and its wanton and soulless unifor-
mity more crushing, than those of any other
London suburb of similar size.
Within its vast area of gloomy little cells
were nightly stowed away, and from them
were daily brought forth, thousands upon
thousands of small clerks and commercial
employes — the trusted and responsible ser-
vants, many of them, of great firms and
millionaires living in the real ^ country,' or the
West End. Everybody you saw on the way
to or from the station — you could hardly see
them anywhere else — presented the same
' machine-turned ' type of honesty and industry.
Respectability positively ^ rampant,' on a
ground commonplace, might have stood as the
heraldic insignia of the locality. Philanthropic
missions and improving lectures flourished like
lotteries or variety entertainments elsewhere ;
87
Animal Episodes
till the rebellious soul of the scoffer could
almost have wished an epidemic of iniquity to
descend upon the place and confound its
wearisome propriety. The immaculate spires of
three or four brand-new churches dotted here
and there the level growth of villas — like
taller plants in a painfully trim garden :
churches where cashiers of unimpeachable
integrity held the plate, book-keepers of posi-
tively reverend respectability dropped in their
subscriptions, and industrious clerks of the
most regular habits sang in the choir; while
their respectable mothers, sisters, and aunts
settled, by almost imperceptible distinctions of
costume, the nice gradations of respectable
suburban society. Generally speaking, these
might be taken to comprehend the most
exciting questions and interests of the neigh-
bourhood. To the superficial and unprejudiced
eye all the inhabitants seemed as methodically
regular in character, and as like one another, as
their streets and houses.
All the vast army lived the same kind of
life, had the same sort of pictures on the walls,
the same sort of ornamented cottage piano in
the same niche (expressly left, alternately on
88
A Story of the Suburbs
the right or left of the cottage parlour, by the
ingenious wholesale architect), wore the same
cut of clothes, the same pattern of tall (or more
often round) hat, breakfasted, presumably, at
the same uncomfortable hour (the pot-hats,
however, preceding the toppers by forty minutes
or so), read the same kind of newspapers in the
train, and at the huge terminus of the Great
North Midland were similarly lost in the vast
ocean of ^ city traffic ' that poured in from a
dozen other commercial suburbs.
The brief journey, by the way, from Harns-
leigh Grove Park to the metropolis is perhaps
more depressing than any pilgrimage of a
hundred miles in any other direction.
The route is that one of all others by which
London should not be approached, after a six
weeks* holiday in the country, by any one not
anxious to raise its very creditable death-rate.
For, thus viewed, the city is apt to seem a
mere hideous and unbearable blot upon the
universe.
The line is one of those to which whole
streets of the vulgarest houses seem to have
turned their backs in disgust. Its perspec-
tives of slum-attics, dirty clothing, and sickly
89
Animal Episodes
thrushes in small wooden cages are pro-
bably unsurpassed in all the capitals of
Europe.
The blatant and glaring advertisements,
whose numbers and assurance exhibit a con-
viction that the human horde travelling this
defile is their helpless prey, hunt the flagging
eye, like wolves, up and down the dreary fore-
ground. But the full effect of the neighbour-
hood can only be caught when it is traversed
slowly on a foggy evening in winter, when
every paltry station stands out like a sort of
gaslit island or solitary mountain-top rising out
of a sea of gloom ; when camp-fires flare
along the murky embankment, and the heavy
banging, now here and now there, of the ex-
plosive signals on the line suggests the idea of
a trainful of hostile invaders received by drop-
ping fire from an ambuscade ; when the ruddy
clouds of drifting fog surge up round you, lit
by a fitful glare from the clamorous streets
below, like the smoke of a sacked and burning
city ; when, in fine, the Great North Mid-
land Railway presents to every wearied pas-
senger, over and above the legal value of his
fare, a very passable conception of the back
90
A Story of the Suburbs
entrance, if there be such, into the infernal
regions.
45- 4C- ^ ^ %
Travelling through the place by daytime,
I was always struck by the appearance of one
particular house, which seemed to have been
shaved off by the line like a piece of cheese.
The house itself would not have seemed par-
ticularly interesting if all of it had been there,
or at all remarkable if it had stood in a street
of detached villas. But the fact that it actually
abutted on — or rather seemed to have been cut
in two by — the railway, gave it a sort of char-
acter which none of the surroundings had, and
amid the spick-and-span villadom of the place
it wore the air of an antique and almost vener-
able * pile,' being in fact an insignificant speci-
men of the most debased Georgian architecture.
A few trees, including one ragged poplar, and
what looked like the gable of a decayed sum-
mer-house, were visible over the high wall that
skirted the permanent way ; and in the middle
of the said wall, where it obviously formed a part
of the house, was a small round window like a
port-hole. From the very first I had an instinc-
tive feeling against the house, a dreamy fancy of
91
Animal Episodes
some innocent victim imprisoned in the room
with the port-hole, or perhaps — this would be on
some foggy night — thrust out from it on to the
line in the way of an advancing express train.
But while vaguely wondering who lived there^
what they did in the dismal bit of garden be-
hind the wall, and how they slept at nights, one
had an underlying conviction that nothing of an
exciting nature could be connected with a build-
ing so essentially commonplace, embedded in
the centre of a modern London suburb.
* * ^ ^ -r?
Years afterwards, I paid two or three visits
to Harnsleigh Grove Park in connection with
the Sunday Suburban Concert Association ;
and thus, as it seemed, by the merest accident,
my curiosity about the place was satisfied.
The romantic imagination of the reader will
perhaps have conjured up a vision of stately
hall and flowing lawn, feudal splendour and
Arcadian loveliness, which had given place to
the stern reality of a middle-class building-
estate. As a matter of fact, I learned there had
been nothing particularly beautiful there for
near a century past.
The very core and centre of the place, so to
92
A Story of the Suburbs
speak, from which it drew its name, had been
an ugly staring manor-house standing in an
unkempt sort of warren surrounding a ragged
wilderness of garden, which sloped down to-
wards a stagnant pond, sheltered by a clump of
trees and usually half-full of dead leaves. And
the people who lived there were German Jews,
a shopkeeper of some sort, and his wife. The
warren and garden, one gathered vaguely, had
since surrendered themselves to the railway
engineer and the jerry-builder, and a new and
more piquant variety of ugliness had taken the
place of the old. That was all.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
But on one particular Sunday it happened
that, for some reason or other, our entertainment
was not concluded till later than usual ; and the
hall where it was held being on the side of the
suburb most remote from the station, it was
impossible to catch the only train that would
take one back to town in time for dinner. I
made this vexatious discovery while talking to
an intelligent-looking middle-aged man, whom
I had noticed sitting in the front seats, and
with whom I had once or twice before ex-
changed a few words, without mastering his
93
Animal Episodes
name or quality. There was a certain air
of distinction about him as if his interests
and experiences were rather wider and more
varied than those of the ordinary middle-class
Londoner.
On this occasion the rector of the place
had formally introduced us earlier in the after-
noon, and I had learned from him that my
acquaintance was Mr. Moultrie, a Queen^s
messenger, a man deservedly respected, and
one of the leading residents of the place.
With Mr. Moultrie, then, I found myself
walking away from the hall, with no very
definite object, in the direction of the railway.
It was a dull, cold November afternoon.
^ Your train/ said the Queen's messenger,
looking at a heavy gold repeater, * will be
leaving now. By the next, which goes in
half an hour, you would have to change.*
We walked on, talking of other matters —
music, the opera, foreign cities, and scenery —
and I was mentally deciding to go by the slow
train, when Mr. Moultrie intervened. ^ Could
he persuade me to dine quietly with him, and go
up by the nine fifteen .? ' I could not but accept
gratefully, with rather a feeling of relief that
94
A Story of the Suburbs
he had not used the ominous and banal expres-
sion, * pot luck.' I should be most happy ; but
I had to think of the time, I explained.
* Do you live near the station ? '
* Two minutes' walk from it/ he answered,
^ and on the line. I daresay you noticed '
I stopped him at once with a question that
anticipated his information. He lived, of
course, at the house cut in two by the railway,
and that house, now known as the Grove Park,
was, it appeared, the remains of the manor-
house of which I had heard a little, and
imagined a good deal more.
All the ' Park ' had been covered with rec-
tangular streets of the kind already described.
Three-quarters of the garden and a corner of
the house had been cut off by the North Mid-
land line ; and Mr. Moultrie, the Queen's
messenger, had leased the rest of the property
at a cheap rental, partly from a curious fancy,
partly because it was near the station.
My anxiety to make the intimate acquaint-
ance of a Queen's messenger — a person whom
I had always pictured to myself as booted and
spurred in quasi-military fashion, and carrying
a small valise, ready to post off in any direction
95
Animal Episodes
at a word from his sovereign — was enhanced by
this curious coincidence. And there was a cer-
tain independent confidence and cheery smart-
ness about Mr. Moultrie that seemed to me to
be quite a professional characteristic. He was
in fact, as he told me, perfectly prepared to
start for St. Petersburg, Cairo, or Berlin with a
couple of hours' notice, though he would pro-
bably be given more by telegraph. He had
been there and, it seemed, to most other places
of interest, and seen everything in them that
was worth seeing. Over and above this, he
was obviously a man of some taste and cul-
ture, well read, in a practical sense, though he
assured me he did most of his reading in the
train, and never travelled without a select
pocket library.
His house was a veritable museum of curi-
osities, mostly collected during his innumerable
peregrinations. Well-selected pictures, mostly
of scenes abroad, rare maps, and specimens of
foreign art, metal- work, etc., covered the walls
that were not hidden by closely packed book-
cases, in which again works of travel figured
largely.
Quite incidentally he had been present, he
96
A Story of the Suburbs
told me, at the assassination of the Czar of
Russia. He had also witnessed the making of
Germany in the great hall of Versailles, where
his ' bowler/ which lay on the floor, had, he told
me, been inadvertently kicked by the Crown
Prince, the dint of whose august toe had never
been obliterated. ... * There was the hat,* he
said, laughing, ^ in a glass case.' He talked
on, rehearsing miscellaneous experiences, digress-
ing, at a word or question, to this topic or that,
always with a certain racy originality and the
ease and charm of a man not anxious to talk
but confident of entertaining.
A cheerful fire blazed in the grate, and was
reflected by the scores of knick-knacks scattered
about the walls and the shelves and side-tables.
Mr. Moultrie's quiet early dinner was excellent,
and washed down with good wine, but it was
nothing to the repast provided by his inexhaust-
ible memory.
It was only after a grand tour of the habit-
able globe that we reverted to the subject of his
present dwelling-place, and its singular situa-
tion.
Did the trains keep him awake at night ?
Oh dear, no ; not now. He had long since be-
G 97
Animal Episodes
come accustomed to them. Besides, they regu-
lated his daily existence for him when he was
at home. He got up by the 7.50 goods, break-
fasted by the Yorkshire express, and knew that
the down mail ought always to come by before
he got through his soup at dinner. It sometimes
made the glasses clink ; and, yes, on second
thoughts, he had once been waked by a train in
the early morning. That was when the 6.35
ran into a coal train, telescoped three carriages,
and killed fifteen people, just under the window.
He had run out in his pyjamas and fetched the
first doctor to the spot. Lying on the crowded
mantelpiece was a large splinter of wood, painted
on the smooth side. ' That was thrown on to my
roof,' he said. * In the carriage that it belonged
to every soul was killed.' The window ? Yes ;
it was at the end of a passage leading to the part
of the house which had been removed to make
way for the line. Opening a door at one end
of the dining-room, he showed me into what
seemed a long, narrow closet, hung with many
and various overcoats and waterproofs on pegs.
At the end was my port-hole ; and underneath
it, on a small table, a compass and a species of
seismograph, which registered the vibrations — a
98
A Story of the Suburbs
fancy of his own. You could look through the
glass and have a restricted view of the line, but
it would not open. The company would not
allow him to have a window that opened on to
the line ; and the wall was very thick, a double
wall in fact ; and the sleeping rooms were all
on the other side of the house.
Mr. Moultrie's knowledge of the neighbour-
hood was as exact in detail as his knowledge
of everything else he had occasion to know.
Besides, he was, he boasted, * the oldest
inhabitant,' or nearly so, having been settled in
the place just twenty-five years. It was an
awful place — yes. But, he added rather illogic-
ally, with an accent of kindly reproach, some
one must live in the awful places, or it would
be worse for those who had to.
For himself, he was not afraid of a dull
neighbourhood. Possibly any one else, he
admitted, might scarcely care to live in that
house.
* Because of the trains ? ' I suggested. Oh,
no ; there had been no trains when he first
came to the district — at least, the nearest
station was two miles away. There was
then a stretch of garden and park, if you
99
Animal Episodes
called it a park, beyond the railway. But out-
side the park, which was fenced in almost all
round by a high wall, half ruined and tumbling
down in places, there were already a good
many rows of houses and half-made streets, and
outside that again the real country.
* Was the old manor-house haunted ? '
' Well, no,' said Mr. Moultrie, ' not exactly '
— though there were stories when he first came
and lived at a house down the road, of a
strange beast that walked about the Grove Park
shrubbery and shrieked, they said, like a fiend
in torment, which was not altogether untrue.
But, in fact, the place had been the scene of a
dismal tragedy, more dismal than anything in
the surroundings past or present. In fact, it
was the great legend, the literary tradition, of
the place — ancient already by virtue of the
modernity of all the cottage-villas in which it
was still talked of with bated breath, and over-
powering by its sensational horror the respect-
able, commonplace dulness of their associations.
* There is time to tell you the story from the
beginning,' said Mr. Moultrie, looking at his
watch. ^ I have often thought of writing it
down.'
lOO
A Story of the Suburbs
He rose and shut the heavy felt-covered
door upon the passage, excluding a good deal
of the rattle of a luggage train that banged and
blundered by; poked the fire, poured out a
couple of glasses of port, pointed me to a long
and deep armchair, and drew his own towards
the grate.
^ Before I came here,' he said, * a Mr. and
Mrs. Sharon Fulksay used to live in this house.
That was when it stood in its own grounds, as
I told you, in comparative seclusion from the
suburb growing up about it.
' The Fulksay s — his father was alive then —
were, I believe, Hungarian Jews, not Germans,
for a wonder. The name should properly be
spelt Fulcsai. The old man always represented
to my mind that most odious type of low,
greedy, and rather prosperous *' foreigner in
England" who reminds you rather of a pig
that 's got into a garden. The son was a little
more polished and presentable.
^ But it was his wife, a good deal younger than
he was, who attracted attention and for a few
months made such a stir in the place as nothing
else ever did or will. At that time it was
always, " Have you met young Mrs. Fulk-
lOI
Animal Episodes
say ? " — " Did you see Sharon Fulksay's wife ? "
For the Fulksays kept a good deal to them-
selves, but people would turn round and stare
at her in the street ; and no wonder.
* She was a rare beauty — a Creole, I believe,
with some Spanish blood in her — a gypsy,
you 'd have said ; just a little of the panther
style of beauty : dark red cheeks, and a mane
of rough, wavy hair almost the colour of indigo,
and worth a mint of money ; lips scarlet as a
geranium against her brown mouth, and eyes
that flashed at you like lightning out of a cloud.
Oh yes ; I knew the Fulksays — to speak to ;
and dined with them once, in this very room.
They didn't seem to get on very well together
then ; and I shouldn't have cared to go there
often.'
^ An instinctive aversion } ' I asked.
'Not altogether that,' said Mr. Moultrie
with a curious expression. . . . *She was
a bit too lively for him, I thought. It was
worth golden guineas to see her when she
was angry or amused, and to hear her talk
quick in Portuguese and broken English ; and
she spoke it not like an ordinary foreigner-
there was something in her accent that made
I02
A Story of the Suburbs
you want to encore frantically the simplest
words she tried to say. To see the girl laugh,
you'd want to kneel down and pray to live
with her for evermore ; but in one of her
tempers — not that it was her fault generally —
she was just like a hurt creature glaring round
for a spring. She had teeth as white as a
squirrel's, small brown hands, and a smart, well-
knit figure, like a boy masquerading, but that
her feet were too small and pointed. She was
active and wonderfully strong for a little
woman, and moved about a room, even in the
dresses he made her wear (having a Jewish taste
for display), like a rope-dancer in tights and
spangles, fidgetting to begin. Some said she
had been in a circus troupe when quite a child,
but I don't believe it. People living an active
life in hot countries, where little clothing is
worn, often have that air. Whatever they say
of her, I believe she was just as good a girl as
ever came out of a nunnery. . . . What did
they say of her ? Why, that he, Sharon Fulk-
say, bought her as a slave somewhere out in the
Brazils. . . . Slavery 's not abolished there ?
Well, it is in theory, not much more. And I
can tell you (what not everybody knows) that in
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Animal Episodes
1875 there were half a dozen respectable London
houses owning slaves — some of them hundreds
of slaves — in Minas and Bahia, and about there.
They might have put you off with some legal
quibble, but that 's the fact. Business is busi-
ness, and you can't always wait to reform a
country, least of all South America — though
there have been many reforms there, especially
on paper — before making money out of it.
' As to that, do you know how the Pygraves
of Streatham Lacy made their money ? ' He
mentioned the family name of an eminent
millionaire philanthropist — a staunch supporter
of Church missions, temperance reform, and
other pious causes.
* You don't ^ and as you wouldn't guess till
this time next Sunday, I'll tell you. But I
wouldn't repeat it anywhere in public. It was
the grandfather of the present Lord Pygrave ;
a Scotch gardener he was, and he had a partner
who was an Irish groom, and they had a small
property with a sort of hostel or large shanty
upon it, by a port somewhere in the South
Seas, where all the slavers — that was in the
palmy days of the trade — used to put in for
water. And after a bit — I don't know which of
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A Story of the Suburbs
them had the idea — but the gospel truth is, that
they took to buying up the damaged bits of
cargo — the sickly ones, you '11 understand —
nursing them up till they were well, and selling
them at a large profit — for of course it was a
speculative business — to the next comers.
Well, the two worked a plantation afterwards ;
but that 's how they made their money to begin
with, and plenty of it, I know. You may say,
considering what was often done with sick
slaves, that it was a philanthropic business.
PV'aps it was, in a way. I don't go in much for
philanthropy myself, though I try to be true
and just in all my dealings. But I can quite
fancy that a man who thought his money had
been come by in that fashion wouldn't sleep
very easy till a good deal of it had been given
away. . . .
^ But we were speaking of Mrs. Sharon Fulk-
say. As to the particular province she came
from, San Paulo, I believe, the Belgian Consul
wrote a book about it only last year — I have
the work on one of those shelves somewhere, —
a country stuffed full of poisonous beasts and
freaks of nature, you know — serpents, chegoes,
talking-birds, pliable stones, plants that cat
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Animal Episodes
insects, and insects that turn into plants.
Slavery he found in full swing, enforced, as he
wrote, " by a whole arsenal of punishments,"
handcuffs, cat-o'-nine-tails, /r^«r^ depes^ etc. On
the fazendas there he more than once saw a
veritable *' man in an iron mask." ... It was
to prevent them eating earth, a favourite form
of suicide ! so he says. As to the instruments,
and other curiosities of the country, Fulksay,
who had been out there once or twice, kept a
small collection in a corner of the hall here,
where the railway now is. Not in the very
best taste, you might think, after his singular
marriage ; but he wasn't a man of any parti-
cular taste, wasn't Sharon Fulksay. And that 's
not exactly the truth, either ; for I always fancied
him a fellow who might have had a private
penchant for slave-driving, if he had had any
opportunity for exercising it. There was
cruelty, if I'm not much mistaken, and
cowardice in the fellow's shifty green eyes and
hooked nose — something like Mephistopheles
in the opera. But, not to speak of one's own
impressions — prejudices, perhaps — and merely
to give you the facts of the case, it is a certain
fact that before they had been here for three
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A Story of the Suburbs
months incredible stories leaked out through
the servants of how Mr. Fulksay treated his
young and beautiful wife. If the worst of
them had been proved home, a bench of
bishops might have lynched him with an easy
conscience. . . . I 'm not boring you with
these local traditions ? ' said the Queen's
messenger, while for the fifth or sixth time the
floor vibrated steadily to the piston of a pass-
ing train. He shifted the lamp-shade, and
then poured me out another glass of wine, say-
ing, * I '11 keep an eye on the enemy. . . .
* Well, to go back a bit : their first meeting
was by all accounts a curious one. Fulksay him-
self used to talk about it in early days. He
was out there, you see, once a year or so upon
some business of his father's firm. They did
fairly well once on a time, some sort of
produce-brokers in the city ; but failed after-
wards, and never had a very high character.
Then the son set up in a line by himself, some-
thing rather shady, if not actual '^ receiving."
High-class R.S.G., as some people whispered.
" Dealer in curios and works of art," he called
it. Brought in a good deal of money in a
quiet way, though for that matter they had a
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Animal Episodes
narrow squeak in the law-courts once or twice.
But that was later.
^And the last time he was out there, as I
was saying, on business, and stayed at some
planter's house. In the country it was, and
not far from the sea.
* Sharon Fulksay, I should tell you, was a
smartish fellow to look at, in his Mephisto-
phelian way — tall and thin, with a rather wolfish
smile, prominent teeth, and rather too diminu-
tive hands and feet for a man, suggestive of a
certain type of bookmaker or pickpocket. He
set up for being quite a lady-killer, however,
after his fashion. There 's no accounting for
tastes, even in experienced women. No man
who ever looked him between the eyes would
ever have trusted him out of sight with twenty
pounds, least of all with a girl they cared for.
However, as I say, he was presentable and had
money, and so passed for something in those
parts, being an Englishman — save the mark ! —
and the only son, it was said, of a rich London
merchant.
'And there he met this girl, so they say, neatly
dressed, and stepping quietly about the place.
And they fell into conversation — just a few
io8
A Story of the Suburbs
words, nothing more. But he thought her
wonderfully affable for such a beauty, and
she seemed very pleased to talk to him.
And the next day or so they met again —
that was before he had been there a week —
and he asked her how she liked the country,
and how long she meant to stay in those
parts.
' And she looked at him just like a servant,
you know, waiting for orders, with her little
brown hands folded on a white sort of apron
she had on over her dress. And while he
asked her what she thought of the country and
how long she meant to stay, her eyes just
opened and sort of flashed at him, and she
gave a little surprised laugh ; and then she
pursed up her lips, and looked at him as it
were with a sort of melancholy, but answered
quite respectfully, and as if it was no affair of
his : *^ I, senhor ? but I am a slave, born on the
property." And if ever there was a man
" knocked silly," as they say at the music-halls,
that man was Sharon Fulksay.
* However, the short and long of it was that
he was madly in love — such love as a man like
that could know — with the girl. That is to
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Animal Episodes
say, he was carried away by her beauty and
colour, her eyes and her laugh. And he
begged the girl — Santolina was her name, a
pretty one, I think — to marry him. And
she, it seems, consented as far, she gave him
to understand, as her consent could be effective,
she being by the law of the place some one
else*s property.
^ And this person, as it chanced — the fazen-
deiruy to whom the plantation, or great part
of it, belonged — they have large estates out
there — was a good and pious old lady who had
brought the girl up, and given her a superior
education, for a lady's-maid, or sort of com-
panion, which was pretty much her position in
the household. Among other things she had
to look after the old lady's pets, parrots of
every imaginable size and colour, and other
birds kept in a great aviary out of doors, as is
common in that country.
' Although in the newspapers out there you
may see black and white slaves advertised for
sale every week — the lighter complexions of
course fetch the higher prices — the institution is
in practice more domestic and patriarchal than
you'd ever believe. But in a case like this
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A Story of the Suburbs
the senhora, being advanced in years, felt some
anxiety as to what might happen to the girl, San-
tolina, at her death, when the household with the
land would pass, it seemed, to a relative who
managed her property and an adjoining estate of
his own — a man, however, for whom she had little
regard. So the good old lady, being anxious
about the girl's future, preferred Fulksay to her
heir. If she was right, you will be able to
conjecture what sort of a man the latter must
have been. He had, however, to be " squared "
in some way — a family compromise, I suppose,
though he could not actually prevent the
diminution of the estate by so valuable an
asset. So the upshot of the matter was that
Fulksay got the girl (who may have shared her
mistress's anxiety as to the future, and certainly
felt grateful to him, if nothing more) with her
own consent and in part-payment of a com-
mission or some debt which the planter was
not quite ready to liquidate in cash. And the
two were m.arried, and came home together by
the next mail.
*Mrs. Fulksay, IVe heard, always had a
certain spirit and independence of her own — a
bright creature that would have kept many men
III
Animal Episodes
happy as kings to humour her every fancy, and
about as much like Sharon Fulksay (if they
could only have seen it) as a humming-bird is
like a toad.
* Not but that she did her duty by him, and
bore his ill-usage when many a one of her
blood would have wanted to knife a man. But
they had differences from the first, and even
on board the liner that brought them home.
And, oddly enough, one of the first trifles
they quarrelled about — though they soon
found other matter — was a pet bird, a young
hawk, that she had brought with her from the
plantation. They called it a hawk, but it was
more like an eagle in size when I saw it, and
a fine-grown bird, well able to fly, but they
kept it usually in a strong iron cage. Later,
its wings were clipped, and then she sometimes
let it out in hot weather for the run of the
garden, where it would flutter from tree to tree
and come to be fed when she rang a little bell,
or called it by name. Fulksay didn't like that
bird. He was not a man to care much for
animals, even of his own species. And I must
own that I never thought it a very attractive
pet. Anyhow, he was always saying (which
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A Story of the Suburbs
angered his wife) that he would have the beast
killed or sent to the menageries at Amsterdam,
where, by the way, they would have been glad
to have it at a good price ; and I think he
meant to send it there. For the bird was a
fine specimen of the Tapu-taray or Brazilian
Fish-Hawk, of which full-grown males have
been known to measure five feet across from
wing to wing. They call it a fish-hawk, but it
is practically omnivorous. In a wild state it
kills swans, ducks, rabbits, and other animals.
In natural history books you can find it described
as a bird of the most singular habits, with a
" scream not unlike the laugh of a maniac."
'One of the most peculiar tastes of these
uncanny creatures is for catching rabbits by
waiting for them at the mouth of the holes.
This bird had been known to do that once
or twice, for there were rabbit-burrows still left
in the park then, on that rise by the fir-trees
about a hundred and fifty yards from the
house ; and they watched it from the windows
or the verandah. If it missed the rabbit the
thing would dance in the air and peck up the turf
— that 's a way they have — and throw it about,
screaming all the time, so you 'd swear it was
H 113
Animal Episodes
bewitched by some evil spirit. And one very-
curious instinct about these birds is that they
can't stand the colour of red. Some say that it
is because the sailors and fishermen on the
coast where they live, who climb up after their
nests, usually wear red caps and jerseys ; others
because red is the colour of raw meat and
blood, which naturally excites them. Anyhow,
if you wanted to irritate the bird and make it
scream, as Fulksay did every other day — his
greatest pleasure was to be tormenting some-
thing — you had only to wave a bit of red rag
outside its cage. And once when the servants
left out a red cushion on the lawn, they found
it in the morning torn to shreds, and a large
strip hanging like a flag on the poplar. And
it made such a ghastly noise, no wonder that
some people were afraid to go by the place at
night, or swore that Fulksay had a familiar
spirit on the premises. It was a common joke
among his city friends that he was so like a
certain personage, which was flattery, if " the
Prince of Darkness is a gentleman."
^ But that bird's " laugh " — you see, people
could hear it from outside, passing along the
road, and there was only one place where you
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A Story of the Suburbs
could see into the garden at all, to make out
what the noise came from. And the beast
would be mostly out of sight in its cage.
Nobody who had heard the noise could forget
it. It was just like the clatter of a light stick
drawn across railings, but with a ghastly sort
of creak at the end. At a quarter of a mile
off it would have made you jump out of your
chair and run to the window. But the beast
only laughed when in the greatest excitement.
At other times it simply screamed like a rat in
a trap — quite a homely and comfortable sound,
by comparison — or ** barked " (that was the be-
ginning of the laugh) like an asthmatic terrier.
' In colour it was a dirty grey, with a black
crest, and white under the wings ; and when it
was let out it used to flutter up on to the
broken bough of the poplar that still stands on
the lawn, and sit there preening its feathers and
barking now and then at the passers-by on the
road, which was some little way off.'
A wave of thunder seemed to roll quickly
by the house, and the red coals shook down in
the grate. ^ The night mail,' said the Queen's
messenger, nodding his head in its direction.
* She 's three minutes behind time. Let me
Animal Episodes
give you a cup of coffee. You needn't leave
here till ten minutes past nine. . . .
' Well, to go on about the Fulksays. As I
said, they kept very much to themselves. Not
that there were very many in the place who
would naturally have visited with them. Besides,
she was too beautiful for the women, and he, it
was soon found — in spite of his living in one of
the largest houses of the place, — was not quite
respectable enough for the men. So after the
first stories concerning her got about, they
were left pretty much alone. And Fulksay,
who was never troubled with any weakness of
the heart, soon began to weary of her. At
best, it rather seemed she had been a sort of
toy to him, a piquant luxury you wouldn't find
in England. But whatever he may have once
felt, in a few weeks he was running after
another girl — a white one this time, with silky
flaxen hair. Then she suspected him, and grew
jealous — it is bad when such women grow
jealous, — and she frightened him once or twice,
and that brought out the brute in him. And
he swore he would send her back to the
Brazils ; and she, I dare say, half-believed he
could and would do it. For that matter, she
ii6
A Story of the Suburbs
might of course have had a separation, but
there was no one to tell her that, even if it
would have been any use. So she lived on, the
life of a prisoner in gaol in a foreign country,
without a friend to help her, and fearful, as she
said afterwards, that he would kill her some
day — unless she killed him first, as she was
often tempted to do.
* Not but that, in spite of her saying so, she
would, I know, have borne more — far more — on
the chance of their living in peace and quiet-
ness again, being hot-tempered but not of the
revengeful, designing kind. And in spite of
what some slanderous tongues hinted about
her — you know what a place like this is ; such
a story would feed them fat for years, — there
never was a shred of evidence to show she had
a hand, one way or another, in his — his end,
which came soon enough. It was more like
the finger, not to say the fist, of an indignant
Providence ; or, as some frankly said, the Evil
One come by his own again. Upon my life,
it 's hard for a Christian to say what else could
be meant by such a scaly horror polluting the
quiet respectability of a place for evermore.
117
Animal Episodes
' It had been a sweltering day in July 187-.
* The weather was so hot that here in Grove
Park the bird I told you about had roosted in
the garden the night before. Usually it hopped
into its cage in a corner of the verandah at
sunset, but with the thermometer over eighty it
seemed to prefer the fresh air ; and in the after-
noon it had not appeared for its food, and no
one knew what had become of it.
^ Mrs. Fulksay suspected her husband might
have given his long-threatened order for its
execution. And Sharon, when he came back
from the city and had walked from the station,
was in one of his lurid moods. Something
large and risky in his " business '* had gone
wrong, and it was on his nerves.
^ He came into the house as usual, wearing a
frock-coat buttoned up, and had just put down
his silk hat in the hall, when a telegram arrived
which did not improve his temper ; and he
crumpled it up and threw it on the floor, which
was a good thing, for it turned out very useful
afterwards at a certain criminal trial. Then he
went into the room where his wife was, and
they had words almost directly about something
trivial. Fulksay cursed because he couldn't
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A Story of the Suburbs
find a straw hat, and then he cursed the hat,
and then he cursed her for not finding it. And
next it seemed — all this came out in the evi-
dence of the servants — they got upon some
more serious altercation : some scheme of his,
connected with his money difficulties, that he
wanted her to play a part in by cajoling some
third party — begging for him, in fact ! — and she
declined.
' But the only shred of a suggestion of evidence
against Mrs. Fulksay was, that when he called
out to her, in his savage way, from the next
room where he was looking for his hat, " JVill
you find me something to put on } " she ex-
claimed something in her foreign tongue, and
then said in a rather curious voice, as if to
herself, " I will.'* Probably she merely spoke to
her husband in a tone that showed the temper
she was trying to keep under, for just then a
servant appeared, in answer to his tug at the
bell, which might have been heard all over the
garden ! . . . I can't imagine any one doubting it.
But when he came in again, there was a large
red smoking-cap lying on one of the tables
which it seemed he hadn't noticed, though he
had bought it only a few days before. And
no
Animal Episodes
when he had picked it up and put it on, he
swore at the cap and swore at her again for not
telling him it was there. Then, either because
he was bent on quarrelling or desperately
anxious for her help, they got back to the other,
the serious difference. And he tried to frighten
her into submission ; and she spoke out angrily.
Then he tried to explain away something he
had let slip — it was about some business or
money affair — that had roused her innocent
indignation. But she wouldn't listen. And
the servants outside heard her voice rise higher,
but couldn't tell what she said in her broken
English ; but from his angry answers, they
thought that she, in her turn, threatened to do
something, take some step she thought right,
unless he gave up his point ; and then that he
swore she should not have the chance " //// he
was out of harnCs way,'* And from this and
something he let fall about the time, it was
inferred that he meant to make a bolt of it that
night. But they, the servants, couldn't hear
more just then, for the voice came nearer, and
in a minute Fulksay went out into the hall, and
back into the room again, banging the door
behind him. Then there was a violent scene —
i:;o
A Story of the Suburbs
worse than any they had known before — and
they heard Mrs. Fulksay cry out once. And
then Fulksay went out on to the tiled verandah,
and the girl inside was very quiet, and at first
they half-thought he must have killed her.
^ * -jt * *
' The only witness to what followed was the
telegraph-boy who was going back by the path
through the shrubbery. And when he heard
voices and high words he stopped and hid
behind the bushes to see what was the matter,
and the first words he heard were Mrs. Fulksay
saying, with her foreign accent, " No go out like
that, Sharon. Let me ... me promise not . . ."
He couldn't make out more, being about forty
yards away, and he didn't dare go nearer, for
boys were mortally afraid of Fulksay, the " tall,
black man." But she spoke, he said, in an
earnest, pleading voice, as if " with the fear of
death upon her," as it may have been, per-
haps, yet not of her own. From inside the
room, which had one French window open
and one blind down, you could see the garden
and the ragged poplar that shows still over the
wall of the railway. But the man walked out
on to the grass and towards the tree, not look-
121
Animal Episodes
ing in the boy*s direction (which he was glad
of), but turning round to snarl at the girl that
he didn't want her promises, and (much what
he had said before) that she might write or say
what she — pleased, or go where she pleased,
when he was out of the way (then he laughed
and showed his long teeth), if she could.
**'He wasn't going off himself?" Oh,
no ; not directly, — if he meant to go at all. It
may have been merely his pleasure in torment-
ing her ; one can't say. At the far end of the
lawn was a summer-house — I Ve had it moved
nearer the house now — where he used to sit and
smoke and take his papers. In fact, they after-
wards found a tin box full of them — rather com-
promising ones— buried under the floor there.
He would have destroyed those before leaving,
if he meant to leave. Anyhow, he went out
of the house smoking and looking more like
Mephistopheles than ever.
^ I wish I could tell you the whole story as
that boy gave it in evidence. I have the printed
report somewhere, but can't put my hand on it
just now. He was an odd sharp-witted lad, of a
degraded literary turn, brought up, like so many
of our juvenile criminals in the metropolis,
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A Story of the Suburbs
upon revolting " penny dreadfuls," — which was
why some thought at first he had been lying.
But it was only the sensational style of his
language, which couldn't often find scope for
employment in the telegraph business. What
he saw in those five minutes of that bright
summer afternoon sickened him, I dare say, of
all the moonlit monstrosities he'd ever read,
and gave him the real horrors for a month
afterwards.
^ It happened that Hereford Buckmore, our
young superintendent of police that was, and a
friend of mine, who had just come from a great
temperance /<?/^ at Nutberry Hill, where there
was a biggish crowd, was walking home up the
new road outside the Grove Park, when the
boy, white and scared-looking, ran into his
arms. The police have a natural predisposition
to stop all persons running anywhere in an
agitated manner, so he arrested the boy in a
paternal manner by the shoulders.
' '^ What 's up ? " said Buckmore.
''*IVe seen " bursts out the boy, and
stops for breath.
'"What have you seen ? " says the superinten-
dent, sure that something serious was up.
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Animal Episodes
^^^ Fve seen the d — / flying away with Mr.
Fulksayr
* " Nonsense," said Hereford Buckmore ; but
he whipped out his tablets. It 's not often a
policeman gets a chance of noting down such
'information received." And then he made
the boy tell him his story from the beginning,
which didn't take long.
* It seemed that, after delivering a telegram at
the Grove Park, he was coming back through the
Fulksays' garden — though he knew that wasn't
allowed — because it was shorter, and he wanted
to be off to his play ; and he had been right
into the bushes, where he had no earthly busi-
ness, after something of the sort boys are always
after. And there he had been scared half out
of his wits by an enormous owl which glared
at him out of a holly-bush and flew away, as if
disturbed, towards the house. Then, when he
got opposite the windows, came this other
excitement — a scene between Mr. and Mrs.
Sharon Fulksay. Then, Mr. Fulksay crossed
the lawn, and the boy moved a bit to watch him,
and he stopped, calling out something to his
wife just under the poplar. And just then,
before you could wink, there was an unearthly
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A Story of the Suburbs
sort of rattle and shriek, and what looked like
a great sheaf of thatch fell on his head, right
down from the top of the stunted poplar, and
" spread all about him^' and the cigar fell out of
his mouth.
*"What do you mean?" Buckmore asked
the boy. " What did it look like ? "
' And what do you think he said ?
* " Like a tree — a 'palm-tree in a hurricane.'^
' The boy had probably never seen a palm-
tree in his life except in some cheap illustration,
but he stuck to his account. Then he saw that
the sheaf of thatch on Fulksay's head was
something alive — an eagle, or, as he thought,
the foul fiend that had got him at last. . . .
The wretched man's body, he swore, rocked to
and fro : and the long pointed wings of the hawk
flapped up and down, to right and left, like a
windmill. Then he shook it off once, and it
rose and struck him again and again till he
seemed dizzy and wild with pain. And then
it fastened on his neck, and the man cursed
and screamed and cried, and flung his arms
about, and the great bird beat its wings on his
head and shoulders with the noise of a stick
beating a carpet, and laughed and barked all
125
Animal Episodes
the time like a whole pack of demons in full
cry. You see, Fulksay had bullied and teased the
beast as he did his wife, and besides he had the
red thing on his head which it couldn't bear.
Well, he suffered for all his sins — if he didn't
repent of them — in that minute ; and he gave
one wild cry (the boy said it made him feel
faint and sick) just as the bird got hold of him.
" Help me, Lina ! " and she — you see, she had
once cared about the man — answered him, so
the boy swore, seeming to struggle hard with
something behind her — ^' Shary, I can't ! " and
screamed for help. But the only servant who
heard was in hysterics in the back passage,
what with the howling of the man and the
laughing and barking of the bird. She had her
apron stuffed in her ears, and screamed louder
than all the rest. And then the two things,
that looked like one monster, such as no
drunkard ever saw in delirium tremens^ tottered
and struggled along down the rank, weedy
lawn — the tall, thin man in his frock-coat still
buttoned tight, and the huge bird flapping
about (as if it were fastened to a perch it
couldn't get away from), and beating his face
and eyes so he couldn't see where he was going.
126
A Story of the Suburbs
And they stumbled through the rushes and fell
into the pond under the trees at the bottom.
And there the man clutched hold of the beast,
and strangled and drowned it. But it had done
for him, you 11 guess. No woman — no man for
that matter — would ever look at him again, not
if they could help it. And he was mad, stark,
staring mad, too — and that was a mercy — by
the time he got on his feet and stamped on the
bird in the mud. It was a devil, there's no
doubt — and it wouldn't die, but pecked and
tore at his feet till the last. And the man, he
knelt on its head ; and its tail and pinion
feathers sort of spurted up in the shallow water
like rushes, and that made him madder, and he
stamped it all down, and stamped the mud
upon it. And then he turned and staggered
up the hill, talking to himself very loud and
fast, all in his frock-coat still buttoned, and
covered all over with blood and the black
slime of the pond.
* By the time the boy had seen and heard all
that, he wasn't sure whether it was night or
day ; and the green trees and the blue sky
seemed to him somehow to be all the wrong
colour, and he turned and ran as I told you,
127
Animal Episodes
half-believing the bird was alive again and
coming after him.
^ Now Hereford Buckmore was a smart and
handsome young officer who had made a name
already by the capture of a desperate gang of
coiners — not the man to shirk any unpleasant
emergency. So when he had listened to what
the boy could tell him, he started off at the
double and was at the house in two minutes.
He heard loud cries, rang the door-bell, which
none answered, and made his way in at the
back, without ceremony, just feeling in the tail
of his coat for a life-preserver he always
carried there. On the floor of the passage he
noticed a crumpled piece of pink paper,
which he instinctively picked up and put in his
pocket.
'And when he opened the door the first
thing that met his eyes was the most beautiful
woman he had ever seen, standing in the corner
of the room in a sort of agonised stupor, with
her hands behind her. Her brown cheeks were
a pale olive, and her black eyes deeply ringed
and full of tears. And she kept her face
turned to him with a sort of terrified appeal,
looking, he afterwards said, like an Oriental
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A Story of the Suburbs
princess in some famous picture, unjustly con-
demned to death.
* And in that moment, being young and
romantic, though a police-officer, he fell madly
in love with the girl, once and for ever more.
She stood before him so lovely and so miserable
that he could have believed her to be a Greek
statue, or some warning vision in a dream, not
a mere woman of flesh and blood. But before
he had time to speak she gave a quick move-
ment, seemed to spring forward with a violent
effort, and threw from her something that
glittered and fell with a clink on the carpeted
floor out of sight.
' The room was in a half-light, with the
blinds, all but one, undrawn since noonday.
But stepping nearer, he could see a scar on her
wrist and a bruise, as from some beast's clutch,
on her neck. And he flared up with rage,
quite forgetful that he was talking to another
man's wife, and cried out, " Who did that ? "
And she, seeing what he was, and not sure how
much he had seen, but inspired by Fulksay
with a vague terror of all " minions of the
law," answered, quick as thought, *' A bad thief,
burgleman, ladron. He will have steal my
I 129
Animal Episodes
money and go kill my husband in the garden."
Her hands were tightly clasped together before
her when she spoke then, and her black eyes
fixed on Buckmore with a sort of forced and
childish suspicion that, even at such a moment,
almost made him laugh. But she kept it up
so well that, but for the gold chain hanging at
her waist, Buckmore would have been puzzled,
if he had not been primed by the telegraph-
messenger. This, he said to himself — for he
had never seen her before — was the beautiful
Mrs. Fulksay ; and it flashed across him all at
once what such a creature must have suffered
living in the power of such a man.'
My host's voice was shaking with the poetic
energy of his narrative, and I looked at him
askance in the firelight and wondered what that
might mean ; but he half-caught my eye, and
went on in a steadier voice :
' You see, he hadn't the pleasure of Sharon
Fulksay 's acquaintance. And though, as I say,
a superintendent of police with some experience
of murder and outrage in the East End, of
women and children kicked to death de gaiete
de cceur by drunken husbands, he was suddenly
overpowered by his own innocent ignorance of
130
A Story of the Suburbs
evil. So he told me afterwards. At the same
time he felt such a novel passion for homicide
coming over him as he 'd never dreamt of before.
'All this had passed in the time it would
take you to walk across a room, when a long
shadow fell on the verandah outside, and the
girl, forgetting everything else in abject terror,
fell with her hands on his feet, crying, " Quick,
quick ; keep him out, he kill me ! " and went off
in a faint. Buckmore caught her as she fell, and
had barely time to throw her on the sofa before
Fulksay stood at the window.
' And he wasn't blinded — no, though you 'd
have thought so — nor hurt, not to die of there
and then ; but just mad, raving mad, with bits
of weed and rushes hanging about his collar,
and such a sight as you might never see in a
long campaign.
' And when he caught sight of Hereford
Buckmore's uniform and cap, he broke out into
all kinds of dreadful mad chatter about his
business that might have been heard in the
roadway outside.
* " If that 's a blue with a warrant," he
said, pointing at Buckmore with his long,
muddy arm, " get out the back way, and take
Animal Episodes
a cab to the Docks. IVe got cabins. . . .
Who the d — 1 let him in, I should like to
know ? . . . Where 's the small heavy bag ?
Bernstein's have got all the plate. . . . Not that
one. Drop it in as you cross the bridge . . .
and don't wait to try the notes. They 're all
stopped. ... I'll strangle Hiram Cohen for
this. . . . Not guilty ! No, my lord ; not
accomplices before the fact. I swear it. Father
a respectable merchant . . . with a wife, dressed
in red. You '11 find her at the bottom of the
pond : with feathers sticking up. . . . Take
away those things. Tou killed her y you know it!''
and with a howl like a wolf he rushed upon
Buckmore, who was, as I said, only just ready
for him.
*It was something outside the common routine
of police business, and under ordinary circum-
stances might not have seemed a romantic or
attractive adventure. But there's not the
smallest doubt Hereford Buckmore would at
that moment have cheerfully faced a whole
detachment of criminal lunatics in defence of
the woman whose face he had never seen be-
fore, and, for all he knew, would never see
again. . . .
13^
A Story of the Suburbs
' Fulksay in his right mind would scarcely
have made a fight of it. As it was, the struggle,
though brief, was violent, and Buckmore found
himself under the table holding the madman
down, but considerably out of breath. Then
he noticed lying close to hand a pair of spring
handcuffs of foreign make. With some diffi-
culty he opened and applied them to the pur-
pose for which they seemed to have been sent
by Providence, and thus what remained of the
husband's mind and body was secured and re-
moved before his wife came to.
* Fulksay never did. He died in the asylum
a fortnight later. But for that he would pro-
bably have died in gaol, where his precious
partner in rascality and one of their employes
were sent. That, or the gallows, would have
seemed the most suitable end for Sharon
Fulksay, but that the — the bird — '^ bird or
devil," as Poe says — willed otherwise.'
•5^ -55- -5^ -x- 4t
Mr. Moultrie stopped, and slid out his
watch. ' In another ten minutes,' he said, * you
ought to be starting, if you don't want '
' Want ! ' I interjected loudly enough to
drown the roar and rattle of three trains pass-
^33
Animal Episodes
ing at once. ' I want to know what became of
her — the girl, Santolina, Mrs. Fulksay.'
* Ah/ grunted the Queen's messenger, getting
up out of his chair and somewhat petulantly
stirring the fire. * She married — the year after —
Hereford Buckmorc, as good a fellow as ever
breathed. There was some excitement about
it, you can imagine — the couple being so young
and handsome — and a great crowd at the wed-
ding, though they didn t intend that, — only it
got about, and secretly the people would have
liked to fete him as a sort of hero, and her as
the princess he had rescued — so to speak — out
of the ogre's castle, which wasn't so very far
wrong, though I suppose any man would have
done the same. He has a post in Gloucester-
shire, and she,' said Mr. Moultrie, half to him-
self and in a tone of inappropriate melancholy —
* I believe she 's the happiest woman alive. I
saw them there only last year. Three fine
boys she has, brown-haired like Hereford, but
with her foreign colour — I 'm godfather, I be-
lieve, to one of them, the young Tartar, — and a
little gypsy of a girl. Yes ; Buckmore married
her — as good a fellow, I tell you, as ever
breathed. If I hadn't been sure of that,' said
134
A Story of the Suburbs
the little man, with a rather forced laugh, * I
could have married her myself/
He busied himself in opening the passage
door, and taking down a hat ; but I would not
let him come further than the front door.
* Yes/ the kindly old bachelor went on ;
' three fine boys and a little gypsy of a girl. I
saw them. But he wouldn't come here, not
to be Chief Commissioner. You can see your
way out y , . .
I plunged alone into the foggy November
night. The light of a straggling gas-lamp or
two showed me the lie of the curving gravelled
path. Avoiding the damp lawn, I could identify
at a little distance the ragged poplar, the re-
mains of the shrubbery, the old garden-wall.
I felt somehow as if I had lived in the place
a dozen years, and was impatient to leave it
for ever.
The long lines of lighted parlour windows
in each endless ' row * or * avenue ' of cottage-
villas seemed to gleam with quite a cheerful
homeliness. Above the murky distance towered
the railway station, with the attraction of a
gaudily illuminated lighthouse. Passing a tract
of waste land, as yet unbuilt on and roughly
^35
Animal Episodes
fenced in, I heard the sound of a boy idly-
drawing a stick across the rails, and restrained
an incipient shudder. The Queen^s messenger
had left me little time to spare.
As I clambered up to the tableland of the
platform, the 9. 1 5 thundered in, and a crowd of
home-coming passengers covered the small plat-
form. ' Harnsleigh Grove Park^ * Harsly Grove
Parky ^ Hams' Gro' Par\' bellowed a trio of
porters, like newsboys crying the latest murder ;
while one solitary passenger got in, wondering
how they could proclaim the familiar words
with such indecent publicity.
36
^LET OFF WITH A CAUTION'
* There have been joys too great to be
described in words, there have been griefs
upon which I have not dared to dwell ; and
with these in mind I say, climb if you will,
but remember that courage and strength
are nought without prudence ; that a momen-
tary negligence may destroy the happiness of
a lifetime. Do nothing in haste ; look well
to each step ; and from the beginning think
what may be the end/
So writes Mr. Edward Whymper, in his
immortal classic recording the great tragedy of
the Matterhorn.
If it is ever easy to forget the latter of his
maxims, it is particularly so in the course of a
difficult rock climb. There is this remarkable
difference — one may remind the reader —
between snow and rock : that progress over
the former is more or less continuous, while
over the latter it is broken, detached, composed
Animal Episodes
(so to speak) of very difFerent, if small, stages.
It is this peculiar interest, lucidity, and variety
that makes rock-climbing such a delirious joy.
Ascending or passing over snow, even when
the process is so dangerous that your guide
forbids you to speak — and speaking is most
often an unprofitable waste of the climber*s
breath, — is not quite like this. The difference
between the first step and the last is, perhaps,
only marked by a greater or less degree of
excitement and exhaustion.
On the rock, at the first step, you may be in
a position which you could hold against two or
three men, and from which you could pull up
half a dozen if they wanted help. In the next,
four or five feet upwards or round a corner,
you may very likely be just able to preserve
your equilibrium, while the slightest touch —
so you feel — would certainly send you over.
It is curious how on these occasions that dull
dogma, the law of gravitation, seems to take a
sort of spirit form and walk beside you. * One
mistake,' whispers this true Spirit of the Alps,
^one undecided or foolish step, and you are
mine ; no longer a defiant, self-confident human
animal — a mere helpless atom, obeying the laws
■38
' Let off with a caution '
of that dull, dead matter into which it is the
next moment to be resolved ! '
Imagination and metaphor apart, however,
the fact is that when the ground is so difficult
that no one of your party is likely to have,
so to speak, any superfluous safety to distribute
among his friends, there is not much use in
being roped.
That is why Leonard Galveston, his friend
Currell, and the guide who accompanied them,
Hans Weirother, from Samaden, had already
discarded the rope by the time they had done
about three-quarters of the ascent of Piz Col-
tella in the Engadine.
The Piz Coltella — a singular curve and
pointed spur give the peak this suggestive name
— is a rock mountain, one on which scarce a
patch of snow lies in summer-time, something
under 12,000 feet in height; ^an interesting
peak,* connoisseurs confide to you carelessly
over the large-scale map and a glass of port,
*if you go up the right way.' Currell
and Galveston — Leo, his friends called him —
were going up the right way. The friends
of the latter (Currell was an older hand), and
certain of his female relatives, would probably
'39
Animal Episodes
have thought otherwise. Galveston — a fresh-
coloufed, keen, athletic young Briton as ever
demanded a cold bath in a foreign hotel — was
only filled with a wild and pure delight as he
and his companions, after a comfortable break-
fast, strolled up the winding zigzags of the
great Surlej pass. The road is a triumph of
Swiss engineering, down which, every evening,
the Diligence is to be seen apparently precipi-
tating itself — the collars dancing about the
horses* ears — upon the expectant village below.
One of the charms of rock-climbing is that
— there being nothing to melt but the adipose
tissues of the climber himself — it can usually
be done by daylight, without the necessity of
poking one*s way out of inhabited regions by
the aid of a primitive dark lantern.
And the particular peaks to which we here
refer have been so constructed by a thoughtful
Providence as to give the competent pedestrian
a good day ^ on the top of the rocks,' and yet
enable him to be back in comfortable time to
recount his adventures at early dinner.
Which, by the way, is no small part of the
attraction attending the many climbs which it
is more pure pleasure to have done than to do.
140
* Let off with a caution '
Climbers, however, professedly seek the
romantic something which from the days of
Livy to those of Mr. Whymper has mysteri-
ously united pain and pleasure.
Thus Galveston*s companions were sedately
ready, and he himself was frantically eager for
the fray.
There was, as has been said, no cause for
hurry. They had the whole day before them,
and the sun was not yet oppressively hot.
The Piz Coltella is, speaking generally, a
four hours* * expedition.' That is to say, that
if you know the way, or have an eye for rocks
and no one else to think about, you can race up
it satisfactorily in three and an odd twenty
minutes or so.
^ We shall be on the top,' said Galveston to him-
self, looking at his watch, * by about one o'clock.'
The red spur of the Coltella, visible from
the lower curves of the highroad, passed out of
sight as the party rounded the last turn and
reached the level top of the pass.
There they left the smooth and dusty road,
stepped briskly across the green *Alps,*
stumbling over one or two rude stone walls,
and were on the steeper grass slopes.
141
Animal Episodes
Here the mountain, withdrawing all view of its
higher beauties of rocky spine and jagged arite^
presented a bare, uninviting shoulder of that
brown, sun-baked grass which is to the novice,
from the treacherous familiarity of its appear-
ance, more dangerous than many a snow-slope.
But half an hour of that vigorous ' scrabbUng,*
for which one hesitates as yet to substitute the
actual comfortable infantine crawl, brings one on
to the longed-for rock which, after streaking
the turf here and there, as the incline becomes
more perpendicular, finally shakes off the
scanty clothing and assumes its proper form.
Then you begin to see where you are.
Galveston saw, and warmed at the sight.
Before them stretched upward a long and
dreary gorge, filled and choked to overflowing
with a chaotic avalanche of dark-red boulders,
'confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world ' —
each about the size of a grand pianoforte.
That was the way up.
Let not the reader suppose the unit of size
— a ' grand,' not a * cottage ' piano — arbitrarily
selected.
142
^ Let off with a caution *
He who has travelled the road will know
how important are the exact proportions of the
said boulders; how infinitely the difficulty of
striding, stretching, or jumping from one to
the other^ and the corresponding facility of
straining your ankle and barking your shins,
would be diminished were the obstacles a
cubic yard or two larger or smaller.
It is one of those places which abundantly
demonstrate the use of a light, stiff alpenstock ;
something between the * painted walking-stick *
which rouses the contempt and loathing of the
superior-minded Alpist, and that variety of
punt-pole on the middle of which, as some
guide-books say, you should be able to sit.
But a climber spends little of his time sitting
on an alpenstock, and a great deal, more
especially upon rock, in stretching tentatively
after the unsurveyed and unknown.
And as to supports, people who need them
do wisely to keep off mountains ; the chief use
of Alpine * clubs ' being to keep the player
in easy contact with nature and geology, and in
particular to tell him how far he is out of ' the
perpendicular.*
To traverse the wilderness just described is,
H3
Animal Episodes
of course, merely heating. You may break
your head, your knees, or even your neck with
little trouble at every other step, but you
cannot climb.
After forty minutes of this, Leo Galveston
looked rather ruefully at his new boots. They
were excellent boots, but their novelty had
been scarified away for ever. No matter.
He shook himself together with a deep delight,
and prepared for action by buckling the belt
of his jacket another hole tighter.
His whole body was glowing with the deep
internal heat wrought only by that violent
exercise in which every smallest muscle has
enough to occupy it.
Then the party paused for a moment to
breathe and look about. Above them towered
a great arm of the mountain, like the ruined
wall of some Titan's castle built to defy the
gods of heaven. The sun glared roundly
down upon them as they prepared to scale the
silent celestial fastness, lit up the glowing red
surface of the rock, and traced with clearly
pencilled purple shadows every irregular ledge,
crevice, and crack that lined it like courses in its
ancient masonry.
144
' Let ofF with a caution '
Galveston, to whom this kind of prospect
was rapture, mutely wondered at the stolidity
of the guide, who seemed absolutely unaffected
either by the familiar scenery or the coming
ascent.
'The rope here, Herr Currell,' was all he
said, and proceeded to uncoil it.
And up they went, duly roped ; Hans
Weirother first, Leo in the middle, and Currell
last, stealing carefully along the zigzagged
cracks, ledges, and narrow terraces here and
there lined with strips of thin grass, and lightly
feeling their way against the towering wall of
rock on the left or on the right.
It was all clean, sound going, perfectly
straightforward if you were only careful.
After all, a ledge or bracket on which you
could not safely stand an inkpot or a drawing-
room candlestick is quite enough, and more
than enough, for the human foot if put down
in a workmanlike manner. And the way here
was often as wide as an ordinary country foot-
path or plank-bridge, though, of course, there
were corners where two out of the three en-
sconced themselves tightly, and held the third
close to the angle of the wall.
K 145
Animal Episodes
Hans Weirother looked round once or twice
at the young man behind him, and seemed
reassured.
All Galveston's faculties were engrossed by the
exercise, but he was going steadily, quite steadily.
There was a moment of embarrassment a
little later as they wound their way to a point
which gave the first clear view of the higher
curves of the arete above them, a sweeping
fringe of spearlike jags and fantastic pinnacles
which is itself, when you get on to it, the high-
way up to the summit of the Piz.
Both turned to gaze up the sharp, serrated
spine or hog's-back which hid from them the
three peaks that mark the top of the mountain.
* This way, Herren,' grunted the guide.
Currell admits that he thought at first Weir-
other had made a mistake. That way ?
The man was asking them to walk across a
face of bare rock some thirty feet wide, falling
sheer down almost to a picturesque little water-
shoot floored with smooth pebbles that was visible
far below them — it was the wilderness of huge
boulders they had taken near an hour to cross
— and Weirother himself seemed to hesitate a
moment.
146
^ Let oft with a caution '
But Currell promptly realised that he was
only engaged in untying the rope. The others
followed his example.
Whilst he coiled it on his back, Galveston
looked at the place somewhat askance.
But what a wondrous thing is faith, more
especially in respect of mountains ! A peasant
or a rustic sportsman tells you with nonchalant
gravity to do something that looks — only
looks — very like flying, and you proceed to
do it, and feel the better and wiser for having
done it.
The mauvais pas in this case was not so bad
as many, and perfectly safe for the able-bodied
who believe it to be so — a mere afternoon
lounge of the chamois, whose spoor Weirother
noted here and there. It is a respectable axiom
that wherever a chamois can stand a man can,
though it must never be forgotten in applying
this theory that the former animal can jump
with a freedom and precision quite unknown to
the latter.
Of course there was plenty of foothold, if
not quite of the horizontal order — a few inches,
that is, now and then. You may have to feel
for it, but there is no hurry, and a ledge above
H7
Animal Episodes
affords a substantial support from which to
swing, if you like, during the process.
* Follow me,' said the guide ; * grip the rock
tight and plant the feet firmly. There is no
danger.'
^ Danger ' in the mouth of a Swiss guide is
a mathematically ascertained quantity, of which
he admits no loose definitions.
' As a matter of fact,' thought Galveston to
himself, after they had passed, * if it were only
six feet from the ground — if there were not that
lucid and impressive view of the valley below
— nobody would think anything of it,' which
perhaps only showed that the excitement and
the altitude were beginning to tell upon him.
Time being still well in hand, and the haven
of the arete only a quarter of an hour or so
distant, the three subsided for a moment's rest,
each at his own anchorage — a hand or a foot
tight against the rock, the eye surveying the
geography of the Engadine valley. The small-
est loose stone dislodged by a touch fled lightly
down to the abyss, skipping hundreds of feet at
a time. There was an exhilarating, intoxicating
sensation of being in the sky ; as the remains of
solid earth dwindled to this narrow, pinnacled
148
' Let off with a caution '
rampart about which they crawled and clung.
An hour more and that would be below their
feet. Not very high above them a lammer-
geyer floated — a black patch against the pure
sky — its shadow, a fainter patch, spotting the
rock below. The sunlight bathed them like a
flood. The heat was intense, but it was the
heat of that dry and vivifying air to which our
foggy climate is as a green duck-pond to a
rapid salmon-river.
« ^ « « «
Progress becoming easier for a moment, one
of the party turned a little one way and one
the other.
A halt was only allowable long enough to
admit of these indescribable sensations sinking
into the system. Then they pursued their cat-
like clamber.
It was still, of course, hard climbing, but
trusting to a natural agility which had served
him well enough so far, and seemed indeed to
be all that was wanting, Galveston, under the
impression that he had detected a * short cut,'
and unobserved for the moment by the two
others, had turned in a slightly different direc-
tion. They thought that he was just over-
149
Animal Episodes
taking them. He thought to catch them up
by a way of his own, and then pass to the
right along a ledge some thirty feet above him.
That was all.
He had slung his alpenstock on to the belt
of his Norfolk jacket, and was working his
way, every muscle strained to clutch now the
roots of a grass tuft and now a small ridge of
rock. Another ten seconds passed — in this
sort of progress it is easy to get hurried — and
then a cold fear seized him, like the clutch of
some wild beast.
He could not keep foot or hand -hold a
moment longer. Could he have gone back?
Impossible, or so it seemed. He made a
furious effort forward, upward. The wall of
rock seemed to project right over him, to force
him outwards. Through the only hollow before
him he struggled frantically. A tuft of grass
gave way, but as it fell he had grasped another.
The rock edge at his left seemed to be coming
through his hand. One more struggle upward,
and yet another. A large splinter of rock,
his last foothold, fell rattling down ; and he
stood erect, breathless and streaming with
perspiration.
150
^ Let off with a caution ^
For one half-second, as his exhausted lungs
filled and his strained half- cramped muscles
relaxed, did Galveston smile the smile of the
victor over a physical obstacle ; the next he
turned deadly pale, for he and those watching
him saw that his last energetic movement had
been a false step, and that he was caught in
a trap.
All had passed in little more than a minute.
Hans Weirother, carefully placing his heavy
ironshod alpenstock in a crack in the rocks, and
shifting the bag of provisions from his back,
merely observed (but Currell felt that no ex-
pression of horror could have been more
significant), * Wait. The young gentleman has
gone too much to the left.*
Galveston looked up again, to be sure that
his first glance had not deceived him.
No ! The place might have been a niche
for a statue — was so in fact — and he, the statue,
standing with his face to the wall, with just
room to stand, unable to stir three inches to
right or left. What was above, around him, he
knew well enough, though he could not see now
— a blank unscaleable rampart. No one could
help him. In front was a ledge — a sort of
151
Animal Episodes
incision — inside the niche, on to which he held
with one hand.
There was no danger of falling ; not yet.
He could rest his hand upon the rough face of
rock immediately before him, almost touching
his body in fact, but that the projecting roof
of the alcove made it necessary for Leo, who
was a tall well-grown youth, to stoop slightly.
The position was uncomfortable, and might be
exhausting in time.
Above his head the broken strata of rock shot
abruptly outwards in sharp chisel-like ledges.
Stretching one hand back he could feel their hard
and uncompromising outlines, could thrust his
hand into dusky cracks between their splintered
edges. No more could he do without over-
balancing, and the mere feel of the rock, which
he could not see, assured him that, without wings,
no mortal could rise from his present position.
The view below, on the other hand, though
uninviting, was perfectly unobstructed.
Looking between his legs he saw, some
thousand feet below him, the dreary chaos of
boulders which strewed the mountain's foot.
A stone, displaced by his feet, bounded down the
precipice. He could hear it, for more than a
152
^ Let off with a caution '
quarter of a minute, striking the rocks as it
fell. . . . Then, as he fidgeted again, a heavier
fragment rushed down with, as it seemed, a
frantic rapidity ; and the noise, Leo fancied,
roused him from a sort of stupor which eclipsed
the hurried events of his ascent. He appeared
to have been standing where he was, dozing for
hours in a sort of feverish dream. Then he
awoke, with a cry, to a sense of time and
imminent danger, and heard the familiar voices
of his companions answering him in the strained
tones of suppressed alarm. . . .
Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed ; yet the
voices, beyond vague suggestions of endurance,
preserved a maddening silence. Galveston could
not avoid seeing what that meant. There was
absolutely no hope ; and yet ;'/, the obvious
alternative, remained incredible. How should
he be doomed to death, to physical destruction,
for nothing .? What had he done in any way
proportional to this awful and astounding result ?
The great prima facie feeling of its outrageous
improbability rushed upon his mind — all the
faculties of which seemed working like a mill-
race. People did not, nowadays, generally die
in this way.
153
Animal Episodes
Of course such dreadful things were possible ;
he had read of them — of the sort of Minos
tribute of youth paid season after season to * the
strong terrible mountains.' But no relatives or
friends whom he could think of had ever been
killed — any more than he was going to be killed
— by a headlong fall from a precipice. Surely
some warning, some unusual phenomenon, must
accompany an occurrence so contrary to all
calculation. Its very rarity seemed to constitute
a sort of insurance. . . .
And then all the unconscious joy of youth
came upon him like a flood, in full photo-
graphic detail ; his own life with its ever more
fascinating struggles and increasing pleasures —
the more satisfying conception of it he had some-
how arrived at lately ; the way certain people,
whose favour meant success, were beginning to
appreciate what he felt to be his best work —
his home, his sisters, his . . .
The idea of giving up the sweets of this
existence now, and for what ^
The tragical absurdity of being there struck
him like a blow. He could have laughed at it.
due Diable allait-il faire dans cette galere ?
Why did he come ? Why was he not in an
^ Let off with a caution '
armchair in his own room at home ? . . . And
then he prayed with furious energy to be saved
from the natural consequences of his own act.
Yet he remembered dimly having had a dis-
cussion with Currell, the Sunday before, on the
grass in front of the hotel, about the theory of
prayer, and having thought the latter's views
rather antiquated. Views — the most advanced
views — were at a hopeless discount now. In
fact he was praying as hard — if that can be
said — as he had ever rowed in a boat.
Such is the consistency of human nature.
Looking down again he saw the valley quietly
reposing.
The distant tinkle of cow-bells caught his ear.
Everything else — the whole world — was all
right. How idle to suppose its vast serenity
would be broken through by any providential
interference in his favour. Such miracles
belonged but to the region of romance. And
yet, and yet. . . .
A voice interrupts his reverie. * Move not,
move not ; all will be well, dear sir, wait only.*
It is Weirother who speaks, in German, the
tongue which Galveston has come naturally to
associate with all the joys and excitements of
155
Animal Episodes
mountaineering. There is a note of confidence
in the gruff guttural accents of the guide which
his actual state of mind hardly justifies. For
twenty mortal minutes has he been struggling
with a frantic, albeit deliberate, energy of hand,
foot and eye, to get near, from one side or the
other, or most of all to get above the fatal
niche.
It is, as he sees clearly, has indeed seen
from the first, absolutely out of the question.
The proper route up this side of the Coltella
— the track that brings you on to the arete —
lies straight away to the right. All to the left,
except in so far as Galveston's present
position proved the contrary, was absolutely
inaccessible.
Yet Weirother continues to stare fixedly,
it would seem, at the boy*s head. * What do
I see ^ * he exclaimed at last. ' Have a care,
dear sir ; but look. In front, above you,
it gives there a ledge and a crevice ? '
Galveston reaches back with a trembling
effort.
^ Ach! thou dear God! do not try to climb.
It is worse above. I have it tried. Steady
then, dearest sir. Feel only — with one hand.
156
' Let off with a caution '
Is it deep ? Can you put your hands, your stick,
into it ? '
Galveston shifts his alpenstock out of the
way, and tries with one hand.
* Yes — for about a foot — a deepish crack/
' So ; good. Your knife, Herr Currell, and
find me a small stone, I beg. So ; good again.
Tie it to the rope.'
Hans Weirother is not only the most reliable
of guides in the Engadiner Thai, but also the
* Hirt ' of the district, most cunning of chamois
hunters, and man of strange and various ex-
periences. Currell, therefore, quietly attaches
a suitable slip of rock to the white manilla
rope.
* Good ; throw it over his shoulder.*
From where they are standing, some thirty
feet below and a little to one side, this was a
matter requiring some skill and care. Currell
had bowled for his county, but he declares that
he never gave so much thought to the delivery
of any missile in his life as when, having carefully
cleared the rope, he endeavoured to pitch that
rock into Galveston's niche.
The first time it struck too high by about
two inches, and rebounded clear of the boy's
157
Animal Episodes
head, the second it passed in straight as a
die, and the trembHng Galveston clutched it
against his shoulder. As it was, the exciting
effort almost overbalanced him, and Curreirs
emphatic admonition, * Easy does it, old man,'
seemed to fall with an unusual accent upon an
unheeding ear.
The most robust animal courage is not proof
against every novel and startling variety of
terror, or — what is sometimes more trying — the
reaction from it. To Currell's eye the boy
was clearly losing his nerve. The mere moral
effort of self-control necessary to resist the last
inviting advances of destruction in such a crisis
seem to engross all the consciousness of the
victim. * Stand steady, Leo,' he repeated.
* What will they say of me ? — (and in a lower
tone). Think of Helen.'
Now Helen was Currell's youngest sister,
and her name had not been mentioned in the
whole course of the expedition. Nevertheless
Galveston seems to recover himself, and takes
the end of the rope in one hand. There is a
momentary pause. . . . ' Pull it up, dear sir,'
mutters the German, * without hurry ' ; and
Galveston pulls, mutely wondering what will
158
^ Let off 'with a caution '
come. At the end is a piece of stout wood
shod with iron, some two feet of Weirother's
alpenstock, which he has just cut oiF. * Can
you fix it in the ledge ? Firmly — have a care.
It is done. Thanks be to merciful God ! It
will not slip — no ? Try it for one eye-wink.
Ah ! lift only one foot. Excellent.*
Galveston now sees in a flash what is meant,
but calmly obeys the orders which follow,
passes the rope round his own body, knotting
it securely, and then round the wooden pivot ;
then holding the other end tight, with two
turns round his wrist, proceeds to let himself
down, slowly down.
*****
' I have done it once before, Herren,'
explains Weirother, apologetically, *with a
heavy buck chamois, when I could not have
carried him myself. See, sirs, it happened
upon this wise. I take good aim. I fire.
The beast makes an immense leap, and he fell
upon a place of that same nature, and lay dead.
I climb ten minutes, dear sir, for to reach him.
But, mein Gotty we must descend separately.
Ah ! it is bad there to the left. This way.
Have a care, sir. It was lucky, very lucky.*
159
Animal Episodes
* * * * *
The guide's emotion, or whatever he had
shown, vanished even before Galveston had
attempted to express his ; and the three
descended by the other side of the shoulder
and reached their hotel almost in silence. As
they separated outside the house — Weirother
on his way to the kitchen, they to their rooms
— the former merely remarked * To-morrow,
Herren, at the same time ? ' To minds
engaged in bottling-up a good deal of strong
and varied feeling, the apathy of the remark
was almost comic.
' To-morrow.' Galveston could not help
reflecting that but a short while ago 'to-
morrow " had seemed centuries distant — round
a corner, so to speak, of Fate and Time.
Perhaps at the instant neither of them felt that
they had got quite a secure enough grasp of
the present to begin tempting Providence by
stretching into futurity.
But after all it was not verbose sympathy
that had brought them back to the living,
chattering group of tourists and friends in the
Salon de lecture.
So they contrived to master their emotion,
1 60
^ Let off with a caution '
like heroines of romance, with an effort, while
dressing for dinner.
■3r ■Jr ■Jlfr ■Jp •Jr
* Galveston was in a nasty place this after-
noon ; it was half an hour before we could get
him out,* says Currell at table d'hote^ strug-
gling to persuade himself that this is a natural
and practical introduction to his account of the
exploit.
There follows a chorus of the praises of
Weirother.
'Whatever induces people to go into such
places I never could imagine ! ' exclaims an
interested lady auditor. But one young lady
sat with downcast and almost tearful eyes.
Leo explains to her meekly that he has no
intention of going there again.
'All's well that ends well,' observes the
Reverend Hatchleigh Coolwore, M.A., a
former President of the Alpine Club, who,
during a fortnight or so in August, rules our
table at the Schwingli-Horn with a rod of iron,
and whose little dog has been up half the
peaks in the Oberland. ' But these young fellows'
— the veteran drops his voice to whisper in
the ear of his next neighbour, an elderly Q.C. ;
L i6i
Animal Episodes
we only catch the words — ' The old story —
you remember young , rejoicing in his
might — , that day on the " Nonne " ? —
started glissading on the lower slopes —
stumbled once, twice — laughed — no danger —
head first — all over in two minutes — before
their eyes — could do nothing,
' Or Jimmie Farlow on the Schlacht-Horn ? '
The divine answered with an expressive
convulsion of head and shoulders. * That was
a black year for us.' For the Club, he means,
and that larger worshipful corporation of
climbers within and without it, whose interests
and sympathies are one. 'The fact is,' and
the seeming platitude is announced just loud
enough to reach the general ear, ' in the Alps
you have to think about everything the minute
before it happens, and not the minute after.
That's all. By the way, do you play whist ^ '
162
FROM THE DARK PAST
There is a pastime or pursuit which to many
a Londoner, leading by compulsion a sedentary
life, comes to take the place of the sports of
the field.
It is, one need hardly say, the sport of
book-hunting, which, though usually devoid of
danger, provides a good deal of the excitement
roused by the pursuit of animated game. It
was this common interest which brought me
into contact with the vicar (as he has since
become) of St. Alboin's, East Kensington,
an ardent and mystic ritualist, but a really
well-meaning little man, who would, you felt,
do anything he thought was right, whatever
absurdity it might involve.
Certainly one would never have suspected
him of a sensational experience, and when I got
upon the spoor of it, I think it did give him a
carnal pleasure to satisfy my curiosity.
I collect books, he began. As curate of a
163
Animal Episodes
parish in Bloomsbury, with the remains of what
was at the University a taste for reading, this
naturally became a great interest in my life.
My collection, I need hardly say, is chiefly
theological. The Bishop once called in his
carriage on purpose to see my copy of Wyclif *s
Little Gate (the English Nuremberg edition,
8vo., 1546), and I have other rarities.
John Lavering (he is a barrister and my
cousin, with whom I share our set of rooms)
is also something of a bibliophile, but in a
different way. He sometimes complains of the
amount of space on our shelves taken up by
Reuchlin's grand collection of the Early
Fathers. But we contrive to live and let live ;
I even keep an eye open for his pagan interests.
North London, as a rule, is a dull hunting-
ground. But one Saturday evening, in the
course of a flying round between 6 and
7 P.M., I happened, in a dark shelf of a dirty
little shop in a dirty little street off the Euston
Road, upon what I instantly saw to be a book
of some rarity and character. It was a quarto,
bound in the toughest of oak and pigskin, on
the sides of which were coloured arms and a
coronet.
164
From the Dark Past
The bookseller remarked, as I fumbled at the
stiff clasps, that the volume had hardly ever
been opened, and had only recently been sold
out of the library of some French or Italian
monastery, where it had lain for some three
and a half centuries ; all of which seemed very
possible. It was entitled in a style not
unfamiliar to my eyes, Elixir Vita^ sive de arte
plusquam divind nunquam moriendi Opus
Aureumy etc., etc., and the preface contained an
extraordinary collection of passages out of the
Old Testament, supposed to bear upon the
possibility of prolonging the human existence
for an indefinite time. The book was printed,
I thought, in Venice, and though it bore no
date, was clearly not much later than the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
The interest belonging to an old book, I
need not tell you, is an interest quite by itself,
something which is not in the date, the shape,
the size, the printing, the subject, nor even in
the accidental memorials of other possessors
long dead, but is somehow compounded of all
these, though independent of any one of
them }
You would know that sort of animal attrac-
165
Animal Episodes
tion like the appearance of a likely cover to
a keen foxhunter, or the look of a secluded
untried pool to an expert fisherman ; the feeling
of having one's hand upon some mysterious,
perhaps long-lost thread of humanity, going
back to the dark depths of the past ?
Such feelings are sometimes delusive ; in this
case they were not. The memory of the book,
which I have long since destroyed, is a very
monument of horror. But this is to anticipate
an experience far remote from my imagination
at the time.
I confess to a lurking interest in what biblio-
graphers call occult literature, in . which one
sometimes stumbles on strange forecasts of
modern thought and research, half-learning,
half- charlatanry.
What puzzled me about this book was the
colour of the paper, a curious pale green.
Paper indeed fades to all kinds of colour, but
not paper of this date, nor paper which has
hardly ever been exposed to the outer air, as
was obviously the case with this. For that
matter, early specimens of the printing of the
fifteenth century are often found in a similar
condition. Perhaps, it suddenly struck me,
i66
From the Dark Past
this might be a copy printed on specially
coloured paper for the use of some distinguished
personage. This, in so early a volume, would
render it a historical curiosity. Could I have
made a mistake as to the date.^* A second
glance at the title-page reassured me. Between
the lines of print an early and picturesque
hand had added, in Italian, after the first words,
a line of manuscript signifying that the volume
(or something contained in it.?) was returned
with very many thanks to her most illustrious^
pious, and learned ladyship the Duchess of
Ferrara by her most sincere, humble and devoted
slave Cola of Sinibaldo. The first words,
ri tomato con moltissime grazie, were clearly
enough written ; the rest of the inscription was
faint ; the date at the end very clear, a 22 di
Maggio, 1506, di Ferrara.
The whole seemed to have been indited in a
hurry. There were light scratches of the pen
visible under the words ' most pious and learned
{dottissimd) ' and across the printed word vit^
Clearly, then, the book had been printed
before the end of May 1506 ; so, having paid
first the sum of seven and sixpence, I deter-
mined to take it home and let Lavering, who
167
Animal Episodes
was something of an Italian scholar, revel in
the deciphering of the mysterious inscription.
I may mention that more than one interesting
discovery has fallen to my lot from the study
of the early manuscript one finds in or about
old books.
Once, indeed, we unearthed the better half
of a letter, reflecting severely on the motives of
Martin Luther, in the back of a Hebrew Testa-
ment printed by Bomberg in 1529. Lavering
has a wonderful nose for scenting out these
things. For all which reasons, having carefully
tucked in a loose fly-leaf, I was in the act of
putting the volume under my arm, the sniffing
middle-aged shopman having retired to his
innermost apartment to procure me change for
half a sovereign ; when a voice from the darkest
corner of the shop suddenly addressed me
by my name. The voice, and its tone of
mysterious earnestness, recalled me abruptly to
the outer nineteenth-century world.
Not knowing that there was any living being
in the room but myself and a disreputable-
looking cat, which lay asleep on a pile of dingy
folios, I started and dropped the book, which
fell open again, upon the counter.
168
From the Dark Past
The voice was that of a girl whose appear-
ance, now that I observed her leaning forward
with her head in her hands on the far end of
the counter, which was almost hidden from me
by a huge edifice of dusty calf and vellum, was
quite familiar to me. Looking at her now, it
struck me at once that she must be the
daughter of the proprietor, who, as she made
out the bills of the establishment, would natur-
ally be acquainted with the name of so frequent
a customer as myself.
There was then nothing so odd in that as
there was in her hurried accent of suppressed
anxiety. When I turned she quickly advanced,
slunk towards me, I should say, until we stood
opposite one another with only the barrier of
worn and blackened mahogany between us,
beneath the flaring gas-jet. I could see she
was a handsome girl, but untidily dressed,
almost dishevelled in appearance, and very pale,
not an uncommon feature in London girls of
the working class. Before I could say a word
she went on in the same tone : 'You '11 see
Mr. Rainsleigh, sir, won't you, to-night or
to-morrow ? '
Rainsleigh, I should tell you, was a medical
169
Animal Episodes
student with whom I had recently had occasion
to come in contact, but not the slightest wish
to be further connected. Young, not bad-
looking, brought up in vulgar opulence by a
self-made and misguided father, I could never
make out why the fellow had ever been put to
the medical, or indeed to any particular pro-
fession. The only result so far had been that,
before he had been a couple of years in town,
he had attained the reputation of a decidedly
* fast ' man among his associates at * Bart's.' I
confess frankly to have no prejudice in favour
of medical students. It may be that they repre-
sent a sacrifice demanded from humanity to
their noble profession. Its very studies, per-
haps directly on account of their tremendous
actuality, seem to have on the whole a rather
crushing and coarsening effect upon all those
not endowed with unusual strength of character
and diversity of intellectual interests. Rains-
leigh, however, had, as the common saying goes,
never had a chance ; and I inclined to regard
him, if one can so speak of a mere boy, as a
hopeless young reprobate, in whom a vulgar
badness bred in the bone had duly manifested
itself in the flesh.
170
From the Dark Past
I now remembered that I had observed him
in the shop once or twice with some surprise at
his presence amid such surroundings, and that
we had exchanged words there only a day or
two before. Not wishing for a moment to be
regarded as Mr. Rainsleigh's friend, yet anxious
to help the girl if I could, I answered some-
what vaguely, * Well, I don't know that — you
see — I might perhaps, but '
*Then you tell him,' she interrupted with
fierce energy, but speaking low and putting her
face close to mine, * on your faith as a clergy-
man, that if he doesn't — hush ! — I'll write it.
Father won't let me get out, and you '11 take it
to him ? ' The beauty of her anxious pleading
face moved me, so that before she withdrew it
I had half unconsciously let slip the promise
she asked for.
Our singular colloquy, broken oiF by the
reappearance of my bookseller with two shillings
and sixpence, had not lasted more than a
minute. The girl quickly and silently snatched
up from the counter before me a square sheet
of paper (I did not notice at the time how it
came to be there) and rustled back to her
former place in the half-lighted corner, while
171
Animal Episodes
the old gentleman apologised for his trifling
delay. As another customer, entering the next
moment, distracted his attention by one of
those enigmas which occupy so much of the
attention of second-hand dealers, and I turned
to leave, not forgetting my precious volume, I
felt that the girl slipped into my unoccu-
pied hand a note, and also that it was written
on something rougher than ordinary note-
paper.
The next moment I was in the street, wonder-
ing, in some vexation, of what sort of an ulti-
matum (for of its desperate character I could
not doubt) I had suddenly become the bearer.
A little more presence of mind would doubtless
have enabled me to reject the singular com-
mission altogether.
I am not sure. It is, of course, not for us to
assume that we are in any seemingly trivial
conjunction made instruments of Providence,
still less of Divine Judgment. Yet, when I
consider how the mere accident of my visiting
that particular shop on that particular evening
of all the year involved me personally in a sort
of responsibility for the most dreadful event
known to my experience, I confess I can with
172
From the Dark Past
difficulty shake off the idea of an all-pervading
design, in the execution of which we poor
human agents drop unconsciously into our
places, but of the actual working of which it
is only allowed us here and there to catch a
dim mysterious glimpse.
The night was cold and foggy, and coming
out of that stuffy gas-lit room, after the ten or
fifteen minutes spent in the examination and
purchase of my latest ' find,' I pulled my over-
coat about me and stepped out along the greasy
pavement, streaked with its thousand dreary
reflections, in the direction of home. Rainsleigh's
lodgings, it was true, lay almost directly upon
my way, but I was as yet undecided whether to
take the note there myself or to send it by a ser-
vant. Circumstances settled the matter for me.
The bachelor home of this gilded youth was
in Great Buildford Street, and as I paused in
hesitation at the corner of that old-fashioned
thoroughfare my ear caught the sound, not
altogether unusual in those parts, of voices
(one of which I seemed to recognise) engaged
in noisy and trivial altercation as of gentlemen
who ' have been dining.'
I was right enough. It was Rainsleigh
173
Animal Episodes
and his fellow-lodger, one Flackstow, whose
association with him I had never been quite able
to understand, even on the ground that the pos-
session of money covers a multitude of failings.
On the other hand, in return for what-
ever indirect benefits Flackstow may have
derived, he had, I knew, done his best in a
hopeless endeavour to reclaim the young
prodigal, as indeed his present conduct tended
to show. Neither he nor Rainsleigh had, as
a fact, dined, but the latter had been playing
billiards and incidentally drinking a good deal.
Not drunk, but flushed and excited to a degree
which exhibited his natural self with a painful
publicity, he was at this moment enlarging to
Flackstow upon the beauties of a certain music-
hall dancer, upon whom apparently one of his
recent companions had been casting reflections.
Flackstow's part in the discussion dealt not
so much with the disputed qualities of the
young lady as with the question how far it
was necessary to proclaim them to all the
passers by. In other words, he was evidently
anxious to get Rainsleigh quietly home and
prevent his making an exhibition of himself,
and the two had hardly reached their door
^74
From the Dark Past
when I overtook them. * Can I come in ? ' I
said to Flackstow, feeling that the moment
was not one I should have chosen for the
visit. *Come in.^ — oh yes/ responded Rains-
leigh with noisy familiarity. *The more the
merrier, and' (reverting to the subject of
discussion) * I '11 show you her photograph —
and see what he thinks, eh } * and he turned to
Flackstow with a grin which was not recipro-
cated.
We passed up the carved staircase of one of
these fine old panelled houses which recall the
departed glories of dingy Bloomsbury.
Rainsleigh's long sitting-room was furnished
v/ith that sort of sumptuous barbarism which
moves despair as much of civilisation as of
morals. The art of inferior sport and the
demi-monde^ with the most worthless literature,
encumbered an apartment which looked all the
dirtier for the richness of its ill-kept furniture.
The chimney-piece was garnished with coloured
photographs of eminent actresses ; a pack of
cards lay scattered over the table and the floor
beneath it. In one corner of the room stood
an open piano littered with the most worthless
and revolting types of music-hall song ; and
Animal Episodes
on the large mahogany sideboard stood a bottle
of champagne and several tumblers. The
atmosphere had a dull permanent flavour of
stale tobacco.
Among these uncongenial surroundings I
endured a minute or two of hesitation and
embarrassment, wondering to myself why I
had come into the house, why I had not de-
livered my commission in the street and gone
straight home.
I have said I knew nothing of the fellow,
beyond what was involved in meeting him on
one or two inevitable occasions. And though
I judge no one, and should not, I trust, shrink
from contact with any human being for a
good end, perhaps I might wisely have avoided
it in the present case. To decide exactly how
far by not doing so I made myself responsible
for the dreadful event which followed is a
matter beyond human judgment, though it
cost me many a sleepless night.
I am aware that I had a strong prejudice
against Rainsleigh. In fact my sympathies
were already so far enlisted on the side of the
girl, with whose affections I now conceived him
to be playing in a characteristically heartless
176
From the Dark Past
manner, that I had determined to give him the
note myself. If he asked me any question
about her, I would then answer it in a manner
which could leave him in no doubt as to what
an impartial person must think of his conduct.
It may be said I was jumping to conclusions,
and that his supposed conduct did not concern
me, unless from an accidental ambassador I
chose to become a partisan. As to that, I
must confess that I was partly moved by
curiosity as to what he would say.
Flackstow, as if with an inkling that I had
paid my unusual visit for some purpose pos-
sibly more or less connected with the * cure of
souls,' had meanwhile turned up the gas, and
merely observing to both of us, * I 'm off — due
at the hospital,' flung out of the room and
left me to execute my embarrassing mission.
* Oh, Rainsleigh,' I said gravely, * I was
asked to give you this.'
With a quick glance of surprise he took the
note from me, unfolded and read it through.
The document was not, as indeed I knew it
could hardly be, one of many words. What
those words were I never knew, but of their
effect there could be no doubt. His whole
M 177
Animal Episodes
face flushed with a violent emotion, com-
pounded, it seemed, of wrath and shame not
unmingled with a certain fear. It was this
excitement (I can only suppose) which prompted
him to address me in language which, com-
bining an uneasy and impertinent air of suspicion
with one of still more unpalatable confidence,
gradually drew me into a conversation of the
most undesired and unexpected kind.
I had not retreated at the very instant of
fulfilling my mission, simply to avoid the
appearance of timidly evading a natural in-
quiry ; and having become so far involved I
hardly know what enabled me to go through
the trying scene that followed. But the con-
viction grew upon me that, putting aside all
conventional relations between man and man,
here was an opportunity offered me, at the
cost doubtless of some personal suffering, for
arousing in this objectionable, if not abandoned,
youth some glimmerings of a latent moral
sense.
It was a mistaken impulse.
To my surprise I found him, encased in his
glassy conceit, descanting to me glibly, and as
he thought persuasively, upon what he con-
178
From the Dark Past
sidered his own superior merits in regard to
the female sex, and to the one victim of his
charms in particular. It was the strangest
experience.
Dropping into a chair opposite him and
laying my book on the table I watched his face,
which indeed to the believer in physiognomy
offered little encouragement. The shallow
forehead and coarse animal lips did little to
redeem the babyish, if once handsome counten-
ance, in which a stupid affectation of sneering
self-confidence strove to displace its native
inanity. Taking my amazed silence for an
evidence of sympathy, perhaps admiration, this
swaggering Don Juan of the Students' Quarter
continued for my benefit his volatile discourse.
I had better have left the room before hear-
ing these confessions, since they provoked an
inevitable altercation which soon became a
passionate diatribe on my part.
I do not know what I said to Rainsleigh.
At such moments, even with the best motives,
one says and does many things which sound
grotesque enough when recounted afterwards
in cold blood. That 1 abused him roundly
and fiercely, and that this at first caused him
179
Animal Episodes
some surprise, I remember well enough. I
strode about the room ; I stood over the fellow
— with no fear of his anger, for I could see
that he was a coward ; I sat down again. I
tried to talk to him gravely and quietly,
watching his face all the time, and praying that
I might detect there some trace of compunction,
or at least of embarrassment. Turning round
once in the middle of the room I noticed
him fidgeting uneasily with the letter I had
brought. Again I wondered what sort of
desperate message it contained, and whether a
coincidence between its language and my own
might not be working in him some change of
spirit. Then an insufferable reflection of his
upon * Life ' — in the * Tom and Jerry ' sense of
the word — set me off again. * Life,' I cried,
' what do you and such as you know of Life ?
Are you fit to live?' . . . Did some such question
momentarily cross his own mind ? With an
absent air of awkward distraction he slowly
tore the paper of the girl's note into strips, as
if the mechanical exercise relieved his feelings.
I strove to reason with him. 'A helpless
human being,' I urged, * might forgive him.
She might be incapable of revenge ; but there
i8o
From the Dark Past
was, after all, a judge to be reckoned with.
The mills of God grind slowly, but ' Was
he listening ? He seemed at that moment to
hear only the sound of my words, and sat there
crumpling the scraps of paper into pellets, which
he half unconsciously (or animated, as I fancied,
with a desire to destroy all traces of the letter)
thrust into his mouth and chewed viciously as
if chewing the cud of bitter and remorseful
thoughts.
So I imagined, and it is possible the young
reprobate passed through a momentary struggle
(the whole scene lasted but a few minutes)
with himself, or what remained of conscience
in him. But when I ventured in my ignorant
misappreciation of his feelings to touch his
shoulder, he shook me off with a rude and
angry gesture, and all the coarse violence
which stood the youth in place of manhood
came back to him. . . .
I am glad that it has not often been my lot to
listen to such language, which, however, fell upon
my ears, as I beat a dignified retreat, with no
more effect than, I fear, my exhortations had pro-
duced upon his spiritual sense. I remember
his calling down the staircase, in hoarse accents
i8i
Animal Episodes
of condensed irony, a pressing invitation to
have a drink, ' as I must be [to translate his
execrative adverbs] extremely thirsty/
Vastly relieved at the conclusion of an
acutely painful experience, in forcing myself
to undergo which I could only hope against
hope that I had acted for the best, I hurried
homewards. Having forgotten that it was one of
my night-school evenings, on which my fellow-
lodger and I share an early nondescript meal,
I found awaiting me a half-cold repast and
many reproaches for my abominable unpunctu-
ality. The latter emanated, of course, from
Lavering, as he lay, fed, slippered and velveteen-
coated, at full length on the sofa, with a pipe
in his mouth and an auction catalogue in his
hand. He was silenced, however, by the short
account I gave him, between mouthfuls, of the
scene with Rainsleigh. I finished my dinner,
and had been peacefully smoking with my feet
on the fender for some twenty minutes, when
my companion, having reached that stage in
the evening when he walks about the room
like a restless polar bear, picked up the Elixir
Vita from a table by the door. * Hullo!
what's this ? ' he ejaculated, subsiding at once
182
From the Dark Past
into a deep arm-chair with the volume in his
hands and his back to the lamp.
* Oh/ I said, * I want to ask you about that
manuscript note on the title-page. Who was
Cola Sinibaldo ? '
He looked up from a careful examination
of the binding. * Cola Sinibaldo ! * was his
reply ; * then you 've been reading my Bembo's
letters.'
'No, I haven't,' said I, taking up off the
sofa a heavily gilt and beautifully printed little
book, the Lettere del Cardinal Bembo^ published
by Comin da Trino in 1564. As I laid it
down, taking care not to remove Lavering's
marker, I noticed that it was the third volume
of four, and contained letters addressed to
Princesses and Ladies. * No, I haven't ;
you'll find his name written on the fly-leaf.'
'The fly-leaf's gone,' interpolated Lavering
quickly. I then remembered where and how
it must have slipped out of the book. ' No, —
I 'm going to sleep,' I added ; * I mean on the
title-page, of course.'
There was a pause, and then an exclamation
from the arm-chair, ' Great Scot ! if that isn't
extraordinary ! '
183
Animal Episodes
' Well, tell us all about it,' I said. ' Who was
Sinibaldo, and who was the Duchess of Ferrara ? '
* Cola Sinibaldo ? Why, I was reading a
letter to him only an hour ago, a letter from
that immaculate divine at your elbow. I say,
I should have thought that this book had
never been opened since it was bound,
except by him — Sinibaldo I mean, not the
Cardinal — when he wrote this ; and I wonder
why he crossed out the word Vit^e^ and why
he underlined those complimentary adjectives
piissima and dottissima ; some very obscure
joke there, eh } '
' One thing at a time,' I expostulated. 'You
were quite right ; it has hardly ever been
opened.'
'Wrong,' he pursued, with the tone of an
expert ; ' I think you '11 find you 're wrong.
It's been messed about, scribbled upon, and
some rascally bookseller has tried to clean it
with beastly acid that comes out of the pages
now — bah ! I must go and wash my hands,'
and he rose to leave the room, shortly reappear-
ing with a towel.
' Who were they } ' I persisted.
' It 's astonishing ! ' he replied irrelevantly.
184
From the Dark Past
To get anything out of John Layering when
he is interested you have always to proceed by
indirect inquiry. 'Was he a friend of the
Duchess's ? '
He laughed aloud with startling vehemence.
' Not much,' he rejoined, sobering down at once.
' The fact is he knew rather too much about
her antecedents and her family relations, which
were not exactly suited for publication. You
can make it all out from two or three of these
precious letters. You see, she '
* Who was she } ' I repeated.
' — She made three or four unsuccessful
attempts to get him out of the way. He had
got hold of two or three very dark secrets,
and began to find the air of Ferrara rather
unhealthy.'
' Yes ; but my good fellow '
* Oh, I 'm coming to that in a minute. It
was a very near thing once or twice, but he
was a smart man, and something of a chemist
too, so whenever '
At that moment the man from the ground
floor lounged in and distracted Lavering's
attention for a minute or two. Before he was
gone, the night-school in Blue Lion Square
185
Animal Episodes
demanded my attention, and I did not get there
till late.
It had not struck ten the next morning,
and Layering, who had been breakfasting with
his friend downstairs, had not yet come up,
when Flackstow with a pale face slid into
our room, and shutting the door behind
him, leaned towards me, keeping hold still
of the handle, with the breathless exclama-
tion, * Will you come round ? Rainsleigh
is dead I *
* Dead ? Impossible ! What do you mean ?
How did he die ? '
' Poison of some sort. And that *s the
strange thing. Browser, our analyst, doesn't
know what it is. The girl Sankey, daughter of
that little bookseller you know, is suspected.
They have arrested her. It looks bad ; she
seems to have sent it him in a note. They
think she must have had it by her a long time.'
Here he let go the handle and came towards
me holding out something. ' It seems to have
been wrapped up in this paper. He had a
piece of it crumpled up in his hand when —
when we found him.'
i86
From the Dark Past
I spread out the scrap of paper on the table,
but as I did so my hands trembled and I shrank
back with horror.
* Be careful/ he stuttered, * there is poison on
it still. I must keep it for the inquest.'
* On this paper ? ' I said. * Do you know
it is four hundred years old ^ '
Flackstow stared glassily, as at a madman.
* How do you know ^ *
* Know ! ' I answered. ^ It is part of a
blank leaf out of this old book,' and I held up
the Elixir Vita,
At that moment I heard the voice of John
Layering as he came up the stairs, whistling in
a leisurely manner an air I had often heard
him whistle before, though I don't fancy he has
ever whistled it since — II segreto per esser felice.
He swung into the room, and stopped dead at
the sight of our two horror-stricken faces.
* Lavering,' I cried, and caught him by the
arm, mine trembling the while with a ghastly
excitement. * Lavering, about that book ! '
' I looked at it again,' he said, * and I believe
you and your bookseller are right after all. It
has hardly ever been opened, and never read, or
cleaned, or anything. Yes, I have looked it
187
Animal Episodes
out in Gamba. He says it was probably
printed at Ferrara early in 1506 ; and this
must be very rare, as only a few copies were
produced in quarto for the Ducal Court. That
explains everything. The pages stick together ;
the old mediaeval trick, you know. I dare
say it was lucky I washed my hands ; and, by the
way, I advise you to put it in the fire before it
does any mischief She put that mixture on
for the benefit of Sinibaldo. The inscription is
his answer to her present, the Elixir of — don't
you see — Death, But what's the matter with
you?'
' One word more,' I said, still holding him.
' You have not explained yet — what I asked
you last night — who was Duchess of Ferrara
in May 1506 ?'
' Who was she } ' he blurted out, — * the
Duchess of Ferrara } Why, man, didn't I tell
you } — Lucrezia Borgia,''
188
MY FIRST ^KILL'
It was in Switzerland, and at the above men-
tioned Schwingli-Horn Hotel that I first met
old Ffalby Ollyatt of Ollyatt Shaws. Though
an athletic-looking man and sunburnt — every
one is sunburnt in Switzerland — one would never
have taken him for a country gentleman.
There was a flavour of old-fashioned leisurely
culture and * letters * about his conversation at
dinner ; and he set Hatchleigh Coolwore right
about a quotation from Persius. In fact we
all took him to be that commonest of educated
impostors, the disguised college -don. That
was, however, before he got into the smoking-
room, where over a wood-fire, as the conversa-
tion passed from mountaineering to other sports,
he told us this veracious legend of his youth.
*****
We shall never know in this world what it
was that frightened that mare.
Who shall explain the doings of the equine
race ^ Their sensibilities are an unmapped area ;
189
Animal Episodes
their foolishness an unfathomable abyss. I my-
self, moi qui vous park, have known a horse of
several years* unblemished character fall asleep
in the sun, slip a foreleg on cobble-stones, and
recovering the same, bolt hysterically, as if over-
powered by the mere discovery that it possessed
the usual complement of limbs.
The very mare I speak of, ay, and a first-
class made hunter she was, with the shoulder
of Behemoth, as you might have said had you
seen her storming up one of our heavy ploughs
of a stiff, sloppy, autumn afternoon with fourteen
stone on her back — my dear old father never
rode less, and he was in the saddle only a fort-
night before he died. That very mare, I say,
has stood with me, times out of mind, with her
head over the parapet of the smaller railway
bridge, and snuffed the smoke of an engine that
passed panting and shrieking underneath her,
as if she thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps she
did. Perhaps she had reason in the other case
too. Having all the love of a Pheidippides for
her and her kind, equini nihil a me alienum
puto.
But to get back to the beginnings — of my-
self, as it must be in this case — and of this
190
My First 'Kill'
Story. Though come of a riding stock on the
male side, and with an inherited passion for the
saddle, I was by nature a delicate and nervous
child, one result of which — that I was educated
at home by a private tutor, without spending
the best years of my life in laboriously learning
not to learn at a public school, as did, by their
own confession, so many of my contemporaries
— I have never altogether regretted.
As eldest son of the house, I was the subject
of a good deal of anxiety. * It is his heart,
doctor,' my poor dear mother used to say,
' that gives us so much uneasiness. I could
never bear to '
'The heart,* broke in our wiry old pro-
vincial Galen — I can see him sitting there in
his old, brown, strapped riding-trousers — 'the
heart, madam — I beg your ladyship's pardon a
thousand times — the heart wants exercise as
much as any other part of the body.'
To this original but not abstrusely scientific
argument (which struck my mother a good
deal) I owed, I believe, my first pony. From
this to an occasional mount on one or other of
my father's hunters was a natural promotion.
It is a singular fact, which some will verify
191
Animal Episodes
from their individual experience, that I de-
liberately underwent quite indescribable tor-
ments — spiritual, not bodily — in the process.
In truth I was keen enough. A passion for
the stables, for horseflesh, for the kind of
glamour that pervades the dullest country when
viewed from the heaving back of the animal
which the old Greeks thought 'the glory of
proud luxurious wealth,' possessed me from
childhood. At fourteen I am sure I had all
the literature of sport's golden age, Surtees,
and ' Nimrod,' at my fingers' ends. Assheton
Smith and Dick Christian had no secrets from
me. All the theory of seat, hands, and venery
that could be learnt from books I knew.
Nothing, in fact, interfered with my learning
to ride but an unfortunate want of * nerve,'
which kindly coachmen and respectfully reticent
grooms hinted behind my back to at least one
disappointed parent.
Well, some of us are born brave, some
achieve bravery, and some have it thrust upon
them. This latter case, or something like it,
was mine on the eventfiil day when Boadicea
bolted with me down the High Street of
Fryers -Ashby, and created an incident in
192
My First 'Kill
county history which is still a precious tradi-
tion among the shop-door gossips of the place,
and will in another century of conservative
iteration develop belike into as splendid a myth
as any enshrined in Homer.
Before that time let me record the * historic
germ ' of an episode which, however it may tell
or read now, was a five-act tragedy condensed
at the time.
To those acquainted with our old-fashioned
market-town of Fryers-Ashby, the expression
* High Street ' will present no idea of super-
abundant stateliness or space. These were only
exhibited, if at all, in the market-square before
the old Guildhall, with its stained Jacobean
windows, finely carved gable-ends, and pilastered
basement, which resounded on every wet Tues-
day to the lowing of many flocks and herds.
The town itself, respectable for its historic
flavour and well-preserved * stocks,' was a
picturesque congeries of narrow and crooked
streets rudely floored with cobble-stones, and
darkened by the beetling brows of many a
homely old black and white dwelling-house.
And on its outskirts, here and there interspersed
with tracts of high, well-coped, and moss-grown
N 193
Animal Episodes
wall, showed some half-dozen of those long
comfortable fronts of the type every Englishman
loves, the genuine ' well-gardened,' * country-
town' homestead.
I saw little of these beauties that dismal
November morning when our oldest stableman
drove me into Fryers-Ashby by an unusually
circuitous route — for the ' High Street ' was
*up,' and in fact all over the place, the result
of a recent sanitary scare — on an early visit —
of all cheerful destinations ! — to the local
dentist.
It was, in truth, for all the mild drizzle, fine
enough for hunting purposes — one of those
dull, undelusive forenoons that ripen into a
good * working * day ; but the Fletchley, then
our nearest pack, was not out ; in fact, my
father, on some municipal business intent, was
to ride over on Boadicea about twelve, and
drive home, to give me the pleasure of an hour
on the mare's back before luncheon, a meal
which for a variety of reasons never took place
at all.
This — the ride that is — was, even as a reward
for the martyrdom of dentistry, more than I
deserved, having but two days before, in the
194
My First 'Kill'
presence of my father, who was trying a new
hack, disgraced myself and annoyed both him
and the mare by openly * pulHng ' the latter at
a small fence which she could have cleared
standing.
Nevertheless, it was a moment of deep and
unalloyed delight when, followed by the elderly
' Zeb,' whose deep mistrust of my riding capa-
cities induced him to follow me, with the
horse-rug on his arm, out of the stable-yard of
the old * Falcon ' Inn, where so many a blown
hunter has been refreshed by a pail of * half and
half,' I rode out into the aforesaid market-place,
booted and spurred, and, truth to tell, with a
lurking sense of not being * the real thing,* but
a fraudulent imitation thereof.
The jingling bell in the Guildhall turret was
clanging out the hour of noon as I turned the
mare's head homewards.
It was at that very instant, when I had
scarcely had time to settle myself in the saddle,
sort the reins according to my methodic fashion,
and pull down the curb, that // happened.
The place was full of groups of farmers and
market-women, loafing rustics, and street boys.
A flock of sheep were passing close by. Some
195
Animal Episodes
say it was the sheep-dog (an ill-bred lurching
brute, I remember) ; some, a stick thrown at
him by his owner ; some, with more probability,
a stone missile aimed by one boy at another,
that bounded from the roadway, and struck
Boadicea sharply on the withers, or a foreleg.
So much for conjecture. The fact is that she
threw up her head, spun round like a teetotum,
and before I knew anything had disturbed her
mind, was off in a wild scared gallop across the
open space before us, with the said sheep-dog
and two or three other curs shrieking at her
heels as if to complete the rout.
The ancient Zebulon was the first to see
what had happened. The old man tore along
the pavement, but for a few yards, as he never
ran before or since. Then, catching his feet
in the horse-rug, he fell, with a sprained ankle,
in the gutter, yelling to me, 'Sit down and
ride 'er or you're ' A frantic chorus of
alarmed and excited bystanders drowned the
rest of his admonition.
That all this happened in the market-square
was a drawback in one way, since it allowed the
mare to get up steam, for at the first shout and
the sound of horse -hoofs on the stones, the
196
My First 'Kill'
scattered groups parted to right and left,
leaving us a practicable * corso,* but for a few
misguided sheep which went down before us,
the contact with their 'awkward bodies driving
Boadicea yet wilder with fright. On the other
hand, it gave me something like a hold of her
before reaching our first fence. I have said
that she bolted in the direction of the High
Street, and that the High Street was * up.'
Citizens of any properly managed English
municipality will know what that means. It
was a chaos of obstructions. Locomotion of
the slowest was barely possible to a careful
individual. Locomotion at a rapid rate to
man and horse was obvious death and destruc-
tion in something less than a minute. That
the whole scene could not last much longer
than that — nor so long as the reader will take
to peruse this page — was tolerably certain.
Nor did it.
The ' first fence ' was more than a fence ; it
was, at least to my terrified glance, a substantial
barricade ; in fact, a good-sized beam erected
on crossed posts, and covered with sacking, was
stretched across the roadway, flanked with a
few loose paving-stones, odd baulks of timber,
197
Animal Episodes
and workmen's tools and clothes. Nothing
very formidable, you may say, but for the chaos
and night beyond it. ... I had never yet
gone at the simplest jump without ' craning.'
But the sudden intensity of this real danger so
far drove into my senses the recumbent groom's
advice that I believe I rode all that I knew.
As to holding the mare, I had no time even
to think of trying it. Had the obstacle been
a brick wall, or a plate-glass shop front, she
would, in her insensate panic, have gone head-
long into it. As it was merely a low piece
of timber, she simply flew it, from instinct,
grazing the cross-posts and scattering minor
objects to left and right. As we landed in the
watery clay of the roadway I saw what was
before me.
In bad dreams I sometimes see the place still.
Immediately in front of us was a deep drain
cut across the street, with a stack of four-inch
pipes ready to be laid ; on the farther side, ten
yards beyond, was the open waggon that had
brought them, drawn up as if to barricade the
passage, and flanked with more paving-stones,
and beyond that I knew there was bound to be
another barrier like that we had just got over.
198
My First 'Kill'
That was all one had time to see, as the scared
navvies fled like Russian gunners before the
Light Brigade. Two, however, were at work
in the drain, and a score of bystanders, with
the fatuity usually exhibited on such occasions,
shrieked at them to * get out.' A more sensible
ganger on the spot simply bade them ^ lie low
and look alive,' which they accordingly did,
making the best defence possible with pickaxes
against the shower of pipes sent crashing down
on them from the heels of Boadicea. It was as
awkward a leap as possible, just at a curve of
the street, and as she landed, all anyhow, in
deep mud, among the rubbish beyond, and
close to the narrow pavement, I made sure the
end was come. But it wasn't, and though you
could just feel her head, there was no stopping
her. The obstacles she touched flew this way or
that like things bewitched and of no weight ;
and just when I made sure of her rolling on me
with a broken back, she came round a point
or two with a fearfiil efibrt, sent a shower of
cobble-stones into the nearest windows, reared
up and tore wildly ahead, straight for — that at
which few of us have ever found it necessary to
ride — a long waggon some five feet high and
199
Animal Episodes
half- full of iron piping. In the couple of
strides allowed us her gallop had steadied. It
was no longer a mere blind rush. I was well
down in the saddle, and had some hold of her.
By the most frantic of efforts I might perhaps
have pulled her to one side enough to risk the
passage between the ends of this formidable
barricade, the slippery pavement, and the wall.
But — great heavens ! — at what a risk, even
if there had been no danger beyond. Men
conversant with riding accidents know what
self-preservative virtue lies in keeping straight,
and how much the simpler forms of destruction
(where safety seems past praying for) are to be
preferred to the more complicated.
But of the whole frenzied escapade this
was the most blankly terrifying moment. In-
action, vacillation, would simply be death quick
as the fall of a guillotine.
I need hardly say that by this time the
whole street was alive, every door and window
flew wide, and every tongue clamoured excited
suggestions and interested expressions of alarm.
The * assistance ' of so large and noisy an
audience, while it did nothing to allay the
terrors of Boadicea, may perhaps, so powerful
200
My First 'Kill'
IS the sympathy of humanity, have done some-
thing for her rider.
I jammed my heels into the mare and drove
her at the barricade in front of us with a wild
confidence that she would go through or over
that or anything.
One vastly exaggerates the effort involved
in a horse's jump. A friend of mine was in
Piccadilly Circus the other day when a four-in-
hand bolted. One of the leaders (a well-bred
hunter) jumped, without encouragement or
hesitation, at a four-wheeled cab, and fell, in
fact, right across the driver's knees. But for
the harness and an unsympathetic companion,
it would undoubtedly have cleared the whole
vehicle.
There is nothing, therefore, very surprising
in the fact that Boadicea, dropping her haunches
like a deer, rose straight at that waggon and
alighted inside it. It was the first pause in her
wild career, and though it lasted no more
than twenty seconds, can only be described as
agonising. A horse, one knows, can stand
quite comfortably with all four feet on the top
of a beer-barrel ; but one unexercised in that
kind of gymnastics will find it difficult to
201
Animal Episodes
balance itself on a pile of pipes rolling back-
wards and forwards in a cart. It was at this
moment that an elderly sporting butcher, who
had known both myself and the mare from
infancy, called out emphatically from his shop-
door to a man on the other side of the street,
' Now stop her, you ' (the imprecation,
though personal in form, merely expressed the
trying seriousness of the situation) ; but the
individual addressed, reflecting probably that it
was one thing to stop a horse, and another thing
to escalade one dancing in a cart and threaten-
ing every moment to jump upon him, did
nothing. The butcher threw in a second barrel
of counsel. ' Throw a sack over that far rail
and she '11 jump it too.' A prompt individual on
the spot at once carried out this timely sugges-
tion. The * rail ' referred to was a bit of rope
or iron wire stretched from iron rods erected
in the roadway and shutting off the traffic on
this farther side, a nasty obstacle which many
a horse would fail to see. I knew nothing of
this, I need hardly say, till afterwards — * Could
I get the mare to stand for one second,' was
my only thought, * in this maddening situation,
or to jump down ? '
202
My First 'Kill'
But Boadicea, feeling her foothold going
among foreign bodies of an embarrassing nature,
did what every animal of spirit would under
the circumstances ; she * let out ' in one wild
explosion, kicking half of the side of the cart
through several plate-glass windows. Breath-
less from this frantic effort, she had barely time
to fall on all fours and find her balance before
we were touching the last barrier sideways on
(I tried to pull her straight, but there was
no time). Sideways on she took it, off all feet
at once, and I heard the ring of one of the
iron stanchions as a hind hoof sent it spinning
on to the pavement ; and then, and then all
was over, but for a fearful corner to turn — a
thing that might well have been fatal alone at
the pace we were still going. Lord ! how I
hauled at her reins, for opposite us was a blank
eight-foot stone wall, and the cobble-stones had
a deadly slime on them from the morning's
drizzle.
Twice she bowed her head and shoulders,
and the flame flashed from under her feet to
right and left as they ' scrabbled,' like a terrier
at a fresh-run rabbit-hole, on the slippery
kennel. Twice the crowd yelled out, * She's
203
Animal Episodes
down ! ' and the second time a hand almost
reached her bridle. But by that instant we
had turned the angle, and Boadicea, recovering
herself, more terrified than ever by the experi-
ences condensed into the past minute, and by
the efforts of the crowd, sprang forward again
with the bit between her teeth, and shook off
the precincts of Fryers-Ashby at racing speed.
The dangers of being run away with in open
country are not very appalling to the experi-
enced horseman. It would have seemed in-
credible to me at that moment that but a few
months before I had fallen off my pony from
sheer fright (coupled with a slight uncertainty
as to stirrups) at the pace he was going.
Boadicea was bolting now at a far more
alarming rate, but my only feeling was one of
triumphant excitement. Yet it was no small
relief, as the sound country road gave under her
flying feet, that the scared flight — after some
mile and a quarter of fair going — subsided to
a strenuous and determined gallop, and that as
we breasted a sharp rise I felt her straining
head answer to the helm.
It was at this point, just before the turn
down under the trees by Copleston Spinney,
204
My First 'Kill'
that the mare pricked up her ears, and mine
caught a new sound, that which no shire-bred
man, woman, or child has heard for a century
gone without some stirring of the blood. At
first the soft intermittent tinkle as of cups or
glasses on a board, then the broken chain and
ringing cadence of distinct metallic notes, last
the full volleying chorus of two score of fox-
hounds, howling in full cry.
With no more thought of following the
road, I steadied Boadicea at the gate facing us,
and with a snort of impatience she sailed over
into the deep plough beyond. The hill was
steep, and we cantered and slithered down it,
holding her hard by the head, and both in the
very crisis of suspended excitement, for from
the crest of it, as we rounded the spinney, both
of us saw and heard the pack — a waving streak
of white — heading straight away up the grass
vale.
By the time we were down on the level, and
after one breathing canter, the whole field were
far ahead. One could see the black and red
dots of a trailing second flight as they rose and
fell automatically, like the dampers in a piano,
over the farthest line of fences.
205
Animal Episodes
Then came our hour of triumph.
Who shall rush in, where so many masters
have trod, to describe the transports of a * good
run ' ?
But to have that run, a ' run of the season,*
nay, of many seasons, for one's first ! To be
well mounted, and a feather-weight ; to feel
the world, or the finest grass country therein,
before one ; to choose one's own line, with the
supreme new-born rapture of feeling that one
can ride it ! Oh, respected critics and readers,
in this ever more sedentary world, is not that
something ?
To be fast as wax in the saddle, warm set to
a reeking, untired steed, whose neck is still
' clothed with thunder ' ; to have melted off, as
it were, in the very fever of motion all feeling
of * mounted ' humanity, and attained the in-
toxicating, bird-like, boat-like sense of floating
and tossing * across country ' ; to catch the
light, petulant 'worry' of the snaffle -bar as
you draw in the long neck, as one draws a
strong bow, in time for each straight, arrow-
like stride of a mighty hunter going fresh and
strong under you !
Thoroughly distracted from her late alarms,
206
My First 'Kill'
Boadicea snufFed the battle from afar, and shook
herself together, as she danced over the first
low hedges and rattled her heels in mere
skittishness on the stiff top of a clean white
railing, for the familiar race. There was no
hurry.
Field by field and fence by fence did we
overhaul those flying forms of red and black.
For full five minutes I remember (and there
is a wild joy in this kind of companionship)
going flank by flank to a farmer-looking fellow
on a tall, lashing young chestnut. It must
have been for a mile, even by mortal measure-
ment, that our two horses strode like clockwork
together. Together they quickened, reared,
rose, fell, and steadied again, as brown quick-
set or yellow timber straightened across our
course. And when, lolling back in the saddle,
we dropped at a more leisurely pace into the
long pasture below Yappingham Manor, it was
the mere joy of * going * that inspired me to
call out, * Whose hounds are these ^ '
* Lard Sudbery*s,' ejaculated my friend, with-
out turning his head. And then, having made
his line for the silver streak rapidly broadening
into view — the sort of brook at which you can
207
Animal Episodes
hardly go too fast — jerked out with a stiff
shake of the snaffle : ' Rin to airth by Ashby
. . . secon' fox.*
Now Fryers-Ashby was on the very outside
of Lord Sudborough's country. It was clear
they had found their second fox about mid-day,
and were running home — home, that is, from
their point of view ; but from mine, and the
precious mare's, the very opposite. I finished
that reflection as Boadicea, swallowing all the
rein I could give her, spun headlong at the
sixteen feet of water, and landed a yard on the
other side without dropping a step. An ejacu-
lation of approval was jerked out of the man
on the chestnut as he slipped across lower down
with such precision as to send half a hundred-
weight of turf into the water, and, stroking
down the excitement of his inexperienced
mount, drew a little to the rear.
It is a fact that the bliss of that long after-
noon was once or twice clouded — for a second
or two, shall we say? — by the reflection that
we, for the mare could not be blameless in the
matter, ought to have gone home. The difli-
culty — if I recollect rightly my subsequent
explanation of it — lay in determining the pre-
208
My First 'Kill'
cise point at which it became an imperative
moral duty to pull up.
For, as the news spread of our astonishing
adventures in the streets, it need hardly be
observed that my father, informed that we had
last been seen performing circus tricks in a
railway van, had at once taken the nearest
horse, and with other equestrians who volun-
teered the pursuit, ridden, as he hoped, to my
assistance. On getting out into the country,
they were much surprised to see nothing
of us.
I, on the contrary, should have been ex-
tremely surprised to see them, or any other
living thing of which the mare, in her then
frame of mind, had had three-quarters of a mile
start. And she fairly astonished me. That
'second fox' had kept us going, with scarce
time to draw breath or tighten a girth, for
over twenty minutes (during most of which
time I had been racing for a place), yet this
was but the overture of his performance.
The hounds were now half a mile ahead, and
the * ruck ' of the field, most of whom had
had some good exercise in the morning, had
almost tailed off as we splashed through the
o 209
Animal Episodes
stiff water-meadows of Little Yappingham, and
toiled across the tiring * ridge and furrow ' above
the mill.
In the country we were here skirting, this
eternal feature of its conformation, so desper-
ately trying even if you take it diagonally, is
repeated in large by a regular and killing
succession of long, small, but steep hills and
deep valleys calculated to break the back of
most mortal steeds. Five or six of these
tiring climbs, garnished with a moderate
amount of fencing, five or six of these descents,
cantering and slithering over the grass slopes —
I holding the mare's head hard till we sighted
the small ditch or bush-covered streamlet that
regular as clockwork divided the fall from the rise
— and the wildly superfluous energy of Boadicea
seemed for the moment to have evaporated.
She was still going strong under me, but
steady, except for an occasional rush at the
ditches, at that pace which is the crowning
virtue of a made hunter, when ' the going is
all done for you,' and the rider need only think
of his or her line, and the hand of a girl
dropping * light as a snowflake ' on the snaffle
is enough to condense the quickening gallop
2IO
My First 'Kill'
into the steadiest of leaps. Thus Boadicea.
A glance to right and left showed her an object
of envy to heavier weights than myself.
Many of our select company had sought a
smoother, if more circuitous, route on the high-
way, where the sound of fast trotting, and the
sight of more than one pink coat and velvet
cap bobbing above the hedge marked the line
they were taking. The military-looking man on
the black, whom we had been half-consciousJy
following for the last two miles, subsided for
the moment, seemingly * all to pieces,' into a
particularly soft corner at the bottom of the last
hill ; a regular customer, in a brass-buttoned
vestment stained to Tyrian purple, rolled over,
just clearing his horse, at the next slippery rise.
I remember opening a gate at the top for a
little lady on a grey thorough-bred, half-stewed
but game as ever.
From the brow of the long ridge of pasture
we saw against the dull and misty November
sky a grey-blue line of gables, topped by a tall
and pointed spire, fringing the horizon.
' Thanks. Do you know where we are, by
any chance ? ' said she of the Arab (a countess
of the bluest blood, — but all bloods, human
211
Animal Episodes
and animal, are heated to a like temper on
such occasions as these), leaning down to pat
her favourite's reeking flank.
I could not inform her ladyship ; but the
customer in purple had followed us through
the gate at the far corner, leading his mount, a
sturdy -looking chestnut that snorted like a
grampus. The rider's coat was more draggled
than before, and his breeches and the very ribs
of his hunter were plaistered with yellow mud.
Looking up from his occupation of mopping
the miry animal with a handful of rough grass, to
doiF a battered hat in our direction, he panted —
' How do, Lady Cranstoun. Grand run,
eh ^ This ain't one of our foxes.'
He swung himself into the saddle again, and
stood up in the stirrups.
* One of the Archdeacon's bagmen, p'raps ;
... and, by Jove, he 's headin' straight for
"Kirby Churchyard.'
So he was. Over the brow of the hill before
us could be seen a whitish patch streaming up
in the direction of the old stone church. I
clapped spurs to Boadicea, and had only just
time to overhear the remark, * That's Jack
Ollyatt's mare . . . going like a top all day
212
My First * Kill'
. . . wasn't at the meet, though ... by Jove,
she 's worth all three hundred,' before it seemed
we were toiling up the next valley.
All things considered, I fancy few were
sorry for our first (and only) check.
It was about twenty past one by Kirby
clock as a scanty dozen of us pounded up the
deep muddy road, bounded on one side by the
high wall skirting the garden of the Arch-
deacon, an eminent divine and squarson^ albeit
of somewhat fly-blown repute in the fox-hunt-
ing world. Along the other side was the
churchyard, a long plateau of ground covering
the crest of the hill, below which lay in
parallel terraces the few streets of the homely
little town of Kirby, where Cromwell lodged
and fought, as more than one of its old stone
walls and oak doors can still testify.
The scene it presented at that moment was
such as could only be witnessed in the shires.
One pack or another ran by the place
or through its outskirts once a week, very
likely, throughout the season. Nevertheless, the
twanging of a horn in the streets, the sound
and the spectacle of scattered hounds careering
about the churchyard, of dismounted huntsman
213
Animal Episodes
and whip running this way and that in top
boots, the hurried tramp of a score of horses'
feet across the little market-place (where, by
the way, there is a * meet ' every Christmas
week, an assemblage vaguely suggestive of
some local or Jacobite ' rising ' of the 1 7 th
or 1 8th century, but better attended), brought
all the inhabitants into the streets in five
minutes. Rustics left their work. Maid-
servants in caps and aprons ran out of the
parsonage and the larger houses and villas to
gain a point of vantage in the garden from
which to view the excitement. The idler
population crowded along the streets, and
scattered across the fields and gardens and
trim allotments that lay below the old town,
wildly gesticulating and yelling. One already
famous individual had seen the fox. ' He had
actually crossed the churchyard, jumping (would
it be believed of Reynard in a hurry.?) over old
Parson Wylie's grave ! ' — ' He was in the
vicarage garden.' — ^ He was in Farmer Ayston's
spinney just below.' — ^ No ; a labourer digging
potatoes had seen him slink out at the far
corner.' — ' He had run up the ditch below the
Cottage Hospital.' — ' He had gone to ground
214
My First 'Kill'
in the big drain. Dan'l Ingram's terrier
would have him out in no time.'
Forthwith the irregular chorus of the hounds
hustling about in the little firwood beyond the
parsonage (at the corner of which a groom was
holding the whips' horses) was swelled by the
baying and yapping of every mongrel in the
place, and our small group of horsemen was
soon surrounded by a crowd of aproned shop-
men, loafers, and school-children, which seemed
likely to obstruct further progress.
Being as impatient to get clear of this
admiring mob as Louis XVI. to escape from
the inhabitants of Varennes, I took the hint of
a brown-gaitered bucolic, and, trotted after him
down a narrow lane, with a blank wall, half of
the native rock, on one side, and commanding
a view of numerous backyards and pigsties on
the other. * They '11 work out below the
Union,' he said ; * you follow me, master,'
and I followed him. I have never been down
that lane since, but ' in my mind's eye,
Horatio,' I can see it now ! We had not
trotted a couple of hundred yards, and a few
riders and a large part of the crowd seemed to be
coming after us. The virtue of our short cut had
215
Animal Episodes
not yet been disclosed, and meanwhile the town
shut out, but for an occasional glimpse, all view
of what might be going on in the fields below.
It was at this point that I heard a sound that
sent a cold shudder down my back, nothing
less than a lusty ' view-holloa ' from within, as
it seemed, fifty yards' distance. It was followed
by a deafening outburst from the pack, the
irregular baying, snarling, and shrieking of
foxhounds that have found, are finding, or
mean to find, a temporarily lost scent. The
thought of hounds getting clear away while one
pottered about cooped up in a little back street,
was maddening. Our trot became a scurrying
canter over rough ground, where the bed-rock
(we were just below the old castle) shows up
here and there in slippery patches. The crowd
behind pressed after us cheering and jabbering.
Then there opened to the left a small lane
with a gate at the end of it — * locked,' said one
local authority, * and it don't lead nowhere,'
added another. As to that one could judge for
one's self.
We could not only hear but, between the
houses on each side, see the hounds. Three or
four old stagers in line bellowing with muzzles
216
My First ^ Kill'
deep^ in the grass, the rest scattered over the
whole surface of a wide water-meadow, and
screaming out impossible hopes and suggestions
before subscribing to the wisdom of the aged.
I trotted Boadicea carefully down that lane, and
checked her with a view to exploiting a way
out. She seemed to stumble ; but it has often
been said that there is no secret so close as that
between a horse and his rider. Boadicea did
not disclose hers till I was clinging helplessly
about her ears in the middle of one of the small
plots of garden into which the gate had led us,
but no one else, amid the quenchless laughter
of the enthusiastic citizens of Kirby. They
were certainly well provided with allotments,
though this was before the days of Councils ;
so I should have said from the number of small
fences, we ' rocking-horsed ' over in the next
two minutes. At the second I hung round the
neck of the beloved mare ; at the third she
threw me gracefully back into the saddle, and I
recovered a stirrup or two, amid fainter cheers.
Fortunately my light weight seemed to have no
effect on her equilibrium ; while, as to steering,
she could see the hounds (a fact I might have
realised sooner), and without being in any
217
Animal Episodes
particular hurry, had no notion of spending the
afternoon looking over a three-foot fence into a
cabbage garden.
Soon clear of the outskirts of Kirby, and
comfortably settled in the saddle, I pulled her
into a gentle canter. In fact there was no
hurry now. As we scrambled through a
broken hedge in the fallow on the crest of that
last hill, a belated puppy, squealing with new
delight, disappeared through the opposite fence
like a bolting rabbit.
And here it began to be apparent for the
first time exactly what kind of run we were in
for — no mere brilliant * twenty * or * thirty-
five ' minutes, no chronic run of this or that
'season,' but one transcending the two and a
half hours of Billesden Coplow, and the finest
traditions of Meynell or Tom Smith — a day^ in
fact, of red letter and white chalk, to be talked
of in smoking-rooms, and over market dinners
forty years after, and even celebrated afterwards
in execrable verses by country gentlemen,
whose seats were a good deal more certain than
their scansion. For we had now worked up
to the heights overlooking a new vast and open
' country ' — a new world that lay unrolled
218
My First 'Kill'
before us like an old-fashioned map, with every
field of its endless pastures, and every tree, it
almost seemed, distinctly marked as far as eye
could see (which is, in honest truth, over the
borders of ten counties) — that ' vale,' famous
in story, the first view of which is enough to
convince any well-mounted lover of * sport * that
Eternal Providence in laying out this fair island
had one great purpose in view, that men might
ride hard and straight, and foxes die glorious
deaths for the benefit of the lords of creation.
Of the few of us who that afternoon looked
down that valley, none had much reason to
regret our first and only check. Not that there
was any stopping to admire the view. The pack,
now drawing together, were forging ahead of
us every minute, and it was impossible to lose
them in a country where a single hound might
almost (as they say of lights in the Channel)
be * visible at Ryq miles in fine weather,' and
only one large cover was within the horizon.
The string of customers among whom I
found myself were, I fancy, mostly second
horsemen, but of this we recked nothing, only
that whenever we landed within ten yards of
one of them, I could have told it blindfolded
219
Animal Episodes
from Boadicea*s wilful snatches at the bridle.
The ' second wind ' of a hunter — a phenomenon
once much discussed by specialists — became to
my young experience a positive and reassuring
fact. It is also a fact that I was pulling her
when, a couple of miles later on, she pounced
with such admired deliberation in and out of the
railed embankment of the great wood above West
Felton. But, if I may quote the poem above
mentioned (from an ancient number of the
Sporting Magazine^ in its faded blue cover) —
' 'Twere long to tell the steeds that fail
As sweeps the chase through Wayland vale ;
How fiercely mute the pack pursued,
O'er field and fallow, rail and road ;
What fagged ones saw with sad surprise
These endless lines of fences rise ;
What reins were tightened at the view,
Of Wayland's current broad and blue.'
I doubt if there were eight of us ever reached
this last obstacle, but whether there were six or
ten, one and all felt, and sat and rode, as if the
laurels of a fame, like that of the survivors of
the Light Brigade, were already encircling his
furry topper or draggled velvet cap.
It was ungrateful of me to regret that
Boadicea jumped so far into the river (forty
220
My First 'Kill'
feet of water that no mortal steed ever yet
cleared), but the vociferous and unintelligible
directions of an Irish whip, who complained,
while swimming with one hand on his saddle,
that I should * drown him intoirely ' (there was no
bridge near, and the pace was too good to look
for a ford), seemed to excite her, and I had slipped
the rein for a second. For, as it happened, we
landed, with a crash like that of a hippopotamus
at play, in a muddy shallow which saved me
the complete ducking I expected.
Wet as a rat, of course, and at fever heat, I
can't think she was ever really blown that day.
At the last moment I showed my gratitude
* for all that we had received,' by asking, and
not in vain, for a leetle more. It was all easy
going, I said to myself, I only wanted in the
intoxication of boyish vanity to be by the side
of the master. There was no one in front of
him, and then
Not more than four or ^\q lived through the
delirium of that final ten or twelve minutes.
For the finish came all too soon on the far
side of Dewberry Park. We must have come
in by the corner just below the big pheasant
cover — but one had lost all count of topo-
221
Animal Episodes
graphy — as I remember that a purple be-
draggled whip, with raised arm and half-shut
eyes, came tearing down out of the ragged
copse on my left, and gripping his jaded horse
with hand and heel, flung through a rough
bull-finch, expressing an intensely profane hope
that it was the last.
It might have been had we killed in the park,
for as we brushed over that fence I saw the
hounds, a diminished stream, like one torn,
waving, speckled hide, mute but for an occa-
sional breathless shriek, scudding not fifty yards
before us, and fast by some magic thread to the
straining wisp of dark red that sped so arrow-
like across the greensward.
*****
* Does one want to kill the fox ^ ' humane
people sometimes ask. Well, it is a strange
thing, but on such occasions one feels very
much at one with the hounds, and there is no
room for doubt as to what ^hey want.
Personally, of that, my first experience, I can
avow at this date that I believe I felt that I
could have killed and eaten that particular fox.
Man is a venatory, but not a logical animal.
Having undergone an unusual amount of
222
My First 'Kill'
acutely mixed sensations since first mounting
Boadicea on that eventful morning, I had a
vague feeling that the luckless, mischievous
brute was somehow at the bottom of it all, and
that his destruction would be a satisfying
revenge for the now half-forgotten pangs of a
compulsory education in * straight riding,'
compressed, as it had been, into a fiercer ^vq
minutes than I have ever known since.
The long row of old gables peeped higher
and higher over the hill-side as the splendid
chase — two miles of the most perfect turf in
Great Britain, cut up by one or two dykes, at
which no man or beast even looked — rolled out
before us.
Fox and hounds, one streaming rag of colour,
seemed to shoot away from us on the smoother
slope.
It was but a last ' spurt ' ; and as the low
railing and ha-ha, down which they vanished
like water, drew near us, the master, with an
anxious glance round at the rest of us, was
already reining in.
Three of us abreast dropped over the fence
on to a strip of roadway skirting the village
green, pulled up haunch to haunch, and an
223
Animal Episodes
elderly huntsman slid expeditiously from the
saddle while the last scene of all was enacted
under the nose of the snorting and steaming
Boadicea. One last slip in landing had done
for that gamest of quarries. A shriek, a flash
of white teeth, a jangle of snarls, a tangle of
red, black, and tan, and my first ' run,* except
for those trophies presented by his lordship,
and still venerated, was already a thing of the
past.
i^ # « 4t «
The Squire of Dewberry, who, knowing the
mare, kindly introduced himself to her rider,
gave us of the good brown sherry and the oat-
meal wash, both fully appreciated. A brief
examination of the ordnance map, with mile-
circles expanding from the large and verdant
oblong representing his patriarchal domain,
caused my youthful hair well nigh to stand on
end. We were, it appeared, near thirty miles
from home as the crow flies, and the faithful
Boadicea, even when refreshed and rubbed
down, could not imitate the flight of that
intelligent bird. At doubtful points in the
route I once or twice trusted to these * instincts '
of which one reads so much in works of fiction.
224
My First 'Kill'
At that distance from her stable they failed to
do more than involve us in a mile or so of
extra v^alk ; an hour or so later in gathering
darkness they served us better, and she broke
into a home-going trot.
All excitement but a passion for repose had
long vanished from her breast, but not from
mine, as the familiar curve of woodland showed
against the last yellow streaks in the cloudy
sky, and the long row of lights winked in and
out as we rounded the corners of the lime
avenue. Arriving at what stay-at-home people
loosely call * the middle of the night,' the sound
of heavy horse-hoofs on the gravel drive brought
out a whole agonised household, and brought
home to me the widely different emotions in which
they and I had passed that eventful afternoon.
The glare of a couple of lanterns returning
from one last fruitless search on the wrong
highway had already illustrated the cardinal
fact of our identity through the halo of mist
from the steaming Boadicea. But great as was
my delight to gratify these faithful searchers,
what is the glare of a lantern to the glare of
oaken logs ablaze on a good hall fire when the
doors of home are flung wide to welcome a
p 225
Animal Episodes
belated guest ! Explanations — soon as I had
dropped from the saddle and given a parting
embrace to Boadicea — were, I fear, not even
demanded.
Dinner, a late and anxious feast till interrupted
by my arrival, seemed, after the necessary wash
and change, an unusually bright and welcome
reality, and perhaps the crowning satisfaction
of the whole day was the brief apologue of our
old family coachman who delayed the retiring
procession of domestics after family prayers by
stepping forward to observe laconically —
* The mare, Sir John, is hall right'
^ '3|f 'v •Jr '3r
The mare — she sleeps these twenty years back
in the lower paddock (the bridle she carried
that day hangs in the hall by his mask and
brush) ; you can read her name on the little
tombstone ; but I never can without a sigh for
the shortness of life allotted to certain friends
of man, who carry so much of our affection to
their early graves.
Well, well, there are other phenomena besides
* things of beauty ' (not that Boadicea failed to
answer that description) that never quite * pass
into nothingness.'
226
THE RERESBY MOTE GHOST
* You little silly ^ said Alicia, the tall yellow-
haired sister, with the petulance of despair ;
' how often have I told you ! You haven't
the slightest idea how to fish properly. Oh,
Philip, do come and look at Geoffrey. Just
fancy^ thinking he could catch a pike with a
great rope like that ! '
Master Geoffi-ey, a sturdy infant of eight
and a half, upon whom this torrent of ironical
reproaches fell like hail upon a sound roof,
continued engrossed in the preparation of his
fishing tackle for full half a minute before
looking up with a smile on his fat rubicund
cheeks.
* Fse tach one,' he said, in a tone partly apolo-
getic, partly explanatory , * of a nunnerdyear old! '
' Fiddlesticks ! ' said Alicia, tossing her hair.
She liked to get all the lines ready herself.
* You may catch one that's blind and deaf,'
added the erect and scornful Philip, with silvery
distinctness.
227
Animal Episodes
* Oo-oof! ' retorted Master Geoffrey (the
monosyllable was his usual expression of
indignation). * Fisses can't ^^^r / oo-oof! you
stoopid ! '
Perhaps it was well they couldn't.
The deep bay-window of the large oak-
panelled room in which the children played
— and * messed/ as nursemaids phrase it —
directly overlooked a slaty-grey tract of water
surrounding the old four-square 'fortified
house.'
On the one side it seemed a dreary mere, on
the other a sluggish stream some forty feet
wide, the ancient moat which in days of looser
orthography had given the place a name
famous in story.
On its surface you might often see the pike
lie basking of a sunny afternoon, one, two,
three black streaks, each easily mistakable for
a rotten stick.
Could any fish of discretion have looked in
at the low open window he might have seen
a terrifying sight — something which would
have sent him darting off round the corner
of the ivy-clad walls, and shaking up their
rich reflected green with undulations like those
228
The Reresby Mote Ghost
of a painted stage-curtain, into the depths of
the lake beyond — so awful and complicated
was the apparatus which Master Geoffrey was
putting together under such serious difficulties.
The only bit of eight-plait silk line with
which they had ever entrusted him he had
lost —
' Of course/ said Alicia and Philip together,
' and we shan't ever give you another bit.'
Their ingenious little brother had apparently
foreseen this when he provided himself with
a hank of some material rather stouter than
blind-cord. To this he had, with a vague
sense of proportion, attached a large salmon-
hook, which, being devoid of plumage, he had
some time since been allowed to add to the
store of his infantine treasures. There re-
mained only the question of bait.
^ You can have that whopping great dace in
the can, if you like^ said Alicia scornfully.
* It's much too big, of course, but it won't
live till to-morrow anyhow.' And being
supplicated with a little flattery she con-
descended to crown the absurdity of the whole
process by fastening it on by means of two
threads passed round the wretched creature's
229
Animal Episodes
body, according to the precepts of Izaak
Walton diluted through the illustrated Angler s
Guide that lay open on the sofa.
* Let me frow it in/ said the expectant
Geoffirey ; but as Alicia and Philip agreed that
if this were allowed there would be no chance
of catching a pike even of one year old, the
request was urged no further. The elder
sister leant out of the bay-window and made
a long arm, and the whole 'contraption,' as
Philip called it, subsided into the water with a
dull splash.
' Oh ! ' sharply exclaimed Alicia, at the same
moment, * if that ninny hasn't been and left
another bare hook tied on to the line.'
The two elders were almost too scornful for
words. ' A jolly fat lot,' said Alicia, ' you 're
likely to catch ! '
Geoffrey quailed before her withering glance.
* I tieded it on,' he said modestly, ' and for-
getted all about it.' He did not dare to
avow the secret hope he cherished (had there
been another bait left) of catching two monster
fish ; though what he would do with them
when once firmly hooked, or they with one
another, was a matter which he had not
230
The Reresby Mote Ghost
seriously considered. . . . The infant's idea of
a centenarian pike was not entirely fanciful.
He had heard his elders talk of a fish taken
scarce a generation ago in this very water, and
believed, on the curious evidence of a piece
of antique tackle still hanging from its gills,
to be at least more than half a century old.
Dead and wasted, a bony monster with hideous
lantern jaws — still to be seen in the county
museum at Chapswich — it had scaled over
forty pounds. Was it a unique specimen ?
No one could say. Some of the anglers
privileged to experiment were confident they
had seen, and some that they had even hooked
and lost fish of larger size. In so large a
tract of carefully -preserved and sequestered
' cover,' in the dark pool beneath the turret,
in the dense bed of water-lilies that ran the
whole length of the west side of the house, no
one could say what might lie hid, beyond those
things which no observant spectator or sports-
man could fail to notice. On quite a recent
occasion a gardener, struck by the persistence
with which one of the swans (a full-grown
bird of years of discretion) kept its head under
water, had paddled out in the rude punt usually
231
Animal Episodes
moored at the corner steps, and discovered the
bird's head wedged tight into the mouth of
another Rne specimen of the Esox Lucius.
Both were dead.
Then there was the pretty little toy-terrier
belonging to a lady who called on the Reresby
family one lovely summer afternoon. Having
been left behind at the lodge, the excitable
little animal essayed, on an imperious call from
its mistress, who showed herself at the drawing-
room window (all the living rooms look over
the water), to cut off two corners by swim-
ming.
In fact it had nearly done so, when, to the
creeping horror of the few spectators, the
pointed form of an ugly tarred gatepost was
seen to float quickly up into the wake of that
little dog. Not till they heard it shriek — not
till the wretched little beast cried to its agonised
and helpless mistress not four yards distant
(like White of Selborne's beloved bunny, carried
off shrieking under its owner's very eyes) — did
anybody realise what had happened. What-
ever the reader in his arm-chair may think, it
was a grisly scene.
There was no splash to speak of, only a long
232
The Reresby Mote Ghost
black shadow, a hollow swirl in the water, and
a wave that broke stiffly against the wall just
below the window-sill. After that no one
seemed to have any appetite for tea, or admira-
tion for the view, though the farther shore was
ablaze with bright flowers ; and the lady-caller
drove home soon afterwards in bitter tears.
Beyond the fringed edge of the water-lily
bank, whose broad overlapping leaves, seldom
ruffled and flapped by any intruding wind,
seemed to spread a smooth and solid carpet
over the water, and whose long tangled stalks
made a dark forest below, there was a tract of
clear deep water. Nevertheless, many had said
they would rather fish than bathe there, doubtless
because the bottom was muddy. But the
curious incidents above mentioned, and the
seclusion and mysterious quiet, not to say
gloom of the surroundings, enforced by certain
local traditions, had somehow given the place
an uncanny air. The last life-tenant of this
ancient estate, a distant relative of the Sir
Cuthbert Reresby who occupied it at the date
of these events, passed the life of an eccentric
anchorite, and the few who knew him report
that the old man had strange habits and
Animal Episodes
interests, that he spent long lonely hours on
the old wooden seat let into the camp-shedding
of the bank, feeding the fish and studying their
habits, that he even purchased strange varieties
and monstrous specimens, and that some died,
and others became tame with a tameness rather
alarming to the uninitiated.
They would eat live or dead fish dropped
from your hand, and your hand itself, or any
other part of you, if they got the chance. So
some persons alleged, comparing the brutes to
the lampreys of Vedius Pollio's villa which were
fed, one reads, * on the flesh of disobedient
slaves.'
Years ago a school-boy — so ran one legend —
overpowered by the novel interest of the
situation, had clambered out of his bedroom
window one breathless summer night, and sat
in his night-dress, as boys will do, dangling his
bare feet above or in the water. A few
moments later sleepers on the first floor were
wakened by a loud splash and a yell, sounds
eternally associated with water in the minds of
anxious parents. The boy, however, was found
to have run back to bed, and woke the next
morning in a raging fever.
234
The Reresby Mote Ghost
He is said to have said — perhaps in a state of
delirium — that some one threw a pavingstone
at him ! — a pavingstone which * grazed his
foot ' ! The fever might have been caused by
the damp situation of the Mote — though the
house, by the way, stood on gravel.
Moreover, being like most dwellings of its
class, few of which have survived in so perfect
a state, a hollow square with a courtyard and
trim grass plot in the middle, it was a trouble-
some place to live in, or perhaps one should
say, to live up to.
The perpetual labour of having to walk
twice the necessary geographic distance, with
the alternative of tripping across wet grass and
a muddy drive, in order to get anywhere, was
scarcely balanced by a crowd of historical
associations, and the unusual excitement of
being able to fish out of your bedroom window
— though, of course, it was impossible from
that position to land anything of greater weight
than half a pound. On the delight afforded to
children — for example, to the spoilt but enter-
taining nephews and nieces of Sir Cuthbert — by
such a pastime it is needless to enlarge.
Geoffery Adalbert, before following the others
235
Animal Episodes
to tea in the nursery on the first floor, looked
round for some secure object to which to belay
the line of his complicated * angle/ He had
passed it round the table leg, when the brilliant
idea occurred to him — why not make a mooring
of the bell handle, and thus secure an early
announcement of the arrival of the * nunnerd-
pound ' pike ? A smaller quarry would
indeed scarcely have been able to make itself
heard. To think — at least to think of anything
original, and therefore probably illicit — is with
such a child to act, unless restrained by inter-
fering elders. In another minute Master
Geoffrey, secretly exultant, vaguely apprehen-
sive, and cautiously reticent, was upstairs
grazing on a large sheet of bread and jam.
Reresby Mote, the reader may have inferred,
was one of those strange old-world homesteads
which make the romantic secrets of ' the
provinces,' those regions whose diverse indivi-
duality seems so inexhaustible, that dreamland
where the distance of a few leagues from the
* Sturm und Drang ' of modern life seems often
to equal that of as many centuries.
Curious tourists, visiting the well-known
236
The Reresby Mote Ghost
manufacturing town of Helmingham, after driv-
ing out a dozen miles into the country, often
experienced considerable difficulty in finding this
relic of mediaevalism to which they had been
vaguely directed. They were usually told it was
three, or four, or five miles farther on. At a later
stage they sometimes inquired for Reresby
Hall, and were shown — to their infinite disgust
— a large brand-new red brick edifice erected
by a retired merchant on a part of the once
vast Reresby domains, which had since passed
into other hands. For antiquarians indeed the
correct name of the place was ' dog's-eared,' by a
special knowledge of the mysterious and almost
unknown distinction attaching to it — that, to
wit, of a local title^ ancient and now disused.
Such persons would accordingly inquire at the
little village of Reresby-Manton, for the road
to the ancient family seat of the * Lords
Manton of Reresby Mote.' A two-mile drive
from this, the nearest hamlet, over dreary and
barren moor, and past long tracts of unkempt
woodland, at last repaid the observer. From
the crest of the nearest hillside you looked
down over the intervening fringe of dark
fir-wood on what seemed at first sight a
237
Animal Episodes
rectangular island of grey stone in the middle ot
a vast and dreary lake. The mere, with its
mysterious solitudes * undisturbed/ said the
county guide-book, * since Anglo-Saxon times/
did, in truth, cover but two sides of the house,
narrowing gradually to the width of what
might otherwise have been itself regarded rather
as a lagoon than a moat.
Not the least curious of its antique features
was a genuine drawbridge which, it was said,
had been up and down every night and morning
for six hundred years. A melancholy but
venerable butler would interpret the family
motto Aqua et ArmiSy and hint of the strange
vicissitudes which the forbidding old mansion
had passed through during the long years since
those words were graven in the stone above the
gateway, and point you, with scarce a quaver in
his voice, to a damp and slimy stone staircase
leading ' into the moat, sir.' The dismal solitude
of the house seemed to require a protection, the
efficacy of which had been singularly illustrated
by an uncanny modern incident. Being
practically unapproachable at night, it was
unprovided with the common defence of
shutters, and even indifferent as to the
238
The Reresby Mote Ghost
closing of plate -glass windows and postern
door.
But the nineteenth-century housebreaker, to
whom nothing is sacred, and old silver the more
attractive in proportion to its distance from
a police-station, had essayed one frosty night to
walk across the intervening strip of water at its
narrowest point. By reason, however, of his
ignorance of the ancestral family practice of
breaking their ice at the edges (as others would
bar their doors before retiring for rest), he had
disappeared, and his body — pursued with one
does not quite know what degree of enthusiasm
— had never been seen again. For the rest,
visitors, it will have been surmised, were few ;
and during the past generation had been
unadmitted, if not unknown. Not for many
a long year had the panelled walls and long oak
passages resounded to the voices of children ;
and now again, after what has been that house's
crowning experience in mysterious horrors,
those voices are silent, and the house deserted.
*****
The clanking of the old rusty chain on its
wheel duly followed the last stroke of eight
from the clock in the turret ; and if it were true
239
Animal Episodes
that the sound had re-echoed through the court-
yard some hundred thousand times before, it
might have seemed strange that any denizen of
the place should on this particular evening
appear surprised by it. But Mr. Jabez Benslee,
B.A., who at the moment was stooping over
the drawer of a mahogany writing-table in Sir
Cuthbert's study, rose from that attitude with a
guilty start.
For the tones, familiar enough in past years,
suddenly proclaimed to him his present position
as that of a thief and a burglar. Burglary, as
Mr. Benslee knew, for he had acquired a smatter-
ing of law as an attorney's clerk before he first
undertook the post of private secretary to the
baronet, comprises not merely breaking into
but breaking out of a house after entry with a
certain animus^ and an animus of some quasi-
criminal kind glared out of the ex -private
secretary's eyes as it flashed upon him that, by a
ridiculous piece of negligence, he had allowed
his retreat to be cut oiF.
He was a small, mean, insignificant man,
whose commonplace vulgarity was overlaid by
an uncongenial coating of education.
Sir Cuthbert's naturally charitable disposition
240
The Reresby Mote Ghost
had made the most of this latter characteristic
as an excuse for admitting Mr. Benslee — a poor
and struggling relative — to a position of con-
fidence in his household.
The connection had never been a very satis-
factory one, and had a few days before terminated
abruptly. The difference had arisen from an
excessive taste exhibited by Mr. Benslee, who
was really a very competent secretary, for the
study of genealogy. Having for a year or
more had the run of the house and library,
with free access (freer than was ever intended)
to the family papers, this ingenious gentleman,
whose antiquarian enthusiasm was actualised by
a keen regard to the main chance, had made
an important discovery. It amounted to no less
than the strongest possible evidence against
the legitimacy of his employer's birth and con-
sequent title, as a genuine Reresby, to the
Mote estate.
This was obviously a serious matter, and the
documents revealing it he had safely bestowed
for the time — until the occasion should arise for
its safe and effective employment — in a disused
drawer, where the rightful owner would not be
likely to find them. Further researches would,
Q 241
Animal Episodes
he hoped, establish his own title as a person
possessed of valuable information to a reason-
able but satisfying amount of hush-money, or
blackmail. But events had been precipitated,
chiefly, it may be said, owing to a particular
species of list slipper worn by Sir Cuthbert on
the evening in question.
Mr. Benslee's sense of hearing, as befitted a
confidential employee, was tolerably acute. But,
standing in close proximity to a private drawer
recently opened by force or fraud, with the
exasperated baronet's hand upon his collar, his
first feeling was — that a gentleman should not
wear list slippers. The irascible old gentleman
was perhaps not guiltless of design in the matter.
He lived, indeed, remote from all worldly
experience, shrinking from publicity, perhaps,
as some men half-consciously do upon whose
birth rests something of a cloud ; for though,
as it happened, the rightful owner of the
Mote property, he was no true Reresby, and
in fact bore a title — this being the only act
that lay on his conscience — which the law
would have regarded as extinct.
Thus, or partly thus, it came about that his
secluded home was but enlivened during part
242
The Reresby Mote Ghost
of the year by the presence of a young widowed
sister, to whose children the reader has been
introduced, or by occasional visits from bachelor
friends of his own generation.
Sir Cuthbert passed the time not occupied
with the duties of a landlord in the compilation
of one of these harmless, if not very valuable,
literary monographs which so often amuse the
evening of a country gentleman's life.
Hence the private secretary.
The researches of the latter had gone so far
that upon their discovery certain elementary
confidences had become necessary. Upon their
conclusion, when his employer found — as the
climax of his suspicions of base ingratitude and
low-prying curiosity — that he was confronted,
as he phrased it, by a cold-blooded and scheming
thief, temper got the better of prudence, and
Mr. Benslee was actually and with threats and
execrations kicked out of the house.
Stinging shame of the conscience -made
cowardice with which the secretary had sub-
mitted to this, curdled all the conventional good-
ness in him to sour and sophistical malevolence.
One of the two, he or his employer, must be a
downright villain. The conclusion, if accom-
243
Animal Episodes
plished with a painful wrench of the moral
system, was inevitable ; and then the exposure
of whatever could be exposed now became a
positive duty, the past kindness of the injured
party a gratuitous personal wrong.
Such was the * animus ' that sent Mr. Benslee
back, on the evening of the events here related,
desperate in his determination by one skilful
manoeuvre to secure the damaging document
which he had bestowed as already mentioned,
and then to exhibit himself, from a safe distance,
as despot of an unpleasant situation.
The violence of that temper that rides a weak
man like a scriptural devil made up for his
lack of personal bravery. Hatred of the
injured party who had revealed to him his own
criminality filled him to the full with that malice
aforethought which needs but the overt act to
startle the world as — murder. He would not
be defeated — spurned — again by that old dotard
— his stifled anger added an epithet decrying
his charitable old patron^s birth. In fact, a
slight social distinction or two — inevitable, had
he the tact to see it — had been a constantly
grating irritation. This flamed to natural fury
after his ' counter-jumping ' body had felt the
244
The Reresby Mote Ghost
superiority of that aristocratic old man's athletic
training, as exhibited in the easy expulsion of
his sneaking employe. Under all which cir-
cumstances it may be concluded that the hard
implement concealed under the defiant Mr.
Benslee's coat was something of a levelling
nature calculated to assist him in his enterprise.
To return, indeed, after taking up his quarters
at the little hostel in the distant village, to wait
concealed in the near belt of woodland for a
quiet occasion, and then slink in the dusk across
the drawbridge and round the courtyard to the
spot where he now stood, was a matter of little
serious difficulty. The walk had perhaps been
longer than he calculated, and the lateness of
the hour had somehow momentarily escaped
him. He would have sworn that it was the
half-hour and not the three-quarters that he
had last heard clang from the turret. Even
now that two quick strokes of the bell had
gone there would possibly have been time for
an active young man to have scuttled across
the stone-paved square and, braving the chance
of arrest, made his way out before the clumsy
and ancient causeway had left the farther bank.
But the private secretary lacked nerve, and the
245
Animal Episodes
reverberation of the sing-song notes, re-echoing
from the surrounding walls, seemed to fill the
courtyard with a sort of publicity, which he
shrank from facing, like that of a crowd of
people.
While he hesitated, the clanking bridge
swung up and darkened the archway, shutting
out the last fading rays from the cloudy autumn
sky.
Mr. Benslee, with his hand still upon the
study-door, stood looking through the passage
window into the vacant courtyard. The object
of his visit having been secured, the question of
escape — serious, but as yet scarcely terrifying —
engrossed his faculties. A soft misty rain had
been falling for an hour or so. In the west wing,
almost at the farthest corner of the mansion,
he could see through the red blinds the blurred
lights in the council-room (not the dining-hall,
which was only used on state occasions), where
the family, a party of not more than three
or four, were, as he well knew, at their early
dinner. But for his own owlish and abandoned
stupidity — so did this unrepentant thief exe-
crate himself — he might have been a respect-
able sharer in that repast. He stepped softly
246
The Reresby Mote Ghost
towards the end of the passage — his tennis-
shoed feet clinging close to the creaky oak floor-
ing. The men-servants, he reflected, would be
occupied for an hour to come ; but a house-
maid, if she were not already tidying the long
drawing-room, might pass and observe him.
In any case a hiding-place, desirable at the
instant, would in a short while be essential.
Just before him opened a large dark panelled
room with a bow-window formed by the north-
eastern turret of the Mote, a room carelessly
furnished and in apparent disorder. The ex-
secretary, who knew its appearance well, remem-
bered that it contained one or two large and
deep cupboards which he thought were seldom
opened. There were others farther down the
corridor itself.
At such a moment, halting in poignant
anxiety and a half-light, imprisoned in the
familiar but now hostile ancient house, it was
perhaps not unnatural that he should think of
' the ghost.' There are one or two tolerably
well-authenticated examples of the supernatural
in almost every English county, but the Reresby
ghost difi^ered from these not merely in the un-
familiar rarity of its visits — which might have
247
Animal Episodes
left it a mere legend — but in their epoch-
making nature, when they did occur.
The Royalist captain in armour, whose proper
place was (or, at least, whose external habili-
ments hung) in the old hall to which you
enter to the right of the porch, could scarcely
be said to * haunt ' the Mote. But on certain
indeterminate occasions, once or twice in a
century, he solemnly ' went the rounds,' as of
yore in life, when an inadequate Roundhead
force had battered with their culverins the
patches still visible in the eastern wall. The
occasions of his visits — rare enough by the
testimony of mortal eyes — seemed, unless this
were preposterous coincidence, not ill-chosen.
Once, it was told, a fraudulent steward in the
act of absconding with ill-gotten gains had been
arrested (the story is locally well known) and
terrified into confession by the appearance —
real or fancied — of this grim warrior, and the
gleam of the moonlight upon his breastplate
and portentous halberd. At a later date, not a
hundred years ago, a would-be murderer of a
higher class — the variants of the grisly tradi-
tion cannot here be rehearsed — had been found
in a dying condition at this very spot, where
248
The Reresby Mote Ghost
the floor still showed, in strong sunlight, what
might be the stains of blood. He had only,
so ran one legend, had time to whisper the
words * I have seen him.' Others told that at
least one surviving witness had at the same
moment seen and heard a figure, in armour
that rattled^ disappear under the carved arch-
way at the far end.
These, however, were but trivialities to the
fact certified on oath by the military surgeon
and the priest. The latter had been called
in, too late, to the help of a profligate and
desperate scion of the house, against whose
revengeful villainy that house had in such a
mysterious fashion protected itself. There was
no public inquest or inquiry ; but the surgeon,
who knew nothing either of the identity of the
criminal or of the family tradition, was profes-
sionally nonplussed by the nature of a wound
inflicted, he averred, by no implement known
to his science. The old Sir Philip, Lord
Manton, had subsequently, and with very mixed
feelings, conducted the fellow (whose curiosity
it was advisable to satisfy as far as possible)
through the armoury, and thence, in a stupor
of suspense, into the entrance-hall above men-
249
Animal Episodes
tioned. There hung a dozen suits of armour,
and, above one in particular, a hideous weapon,
headed like some fanciful variety of plough-
share. * Holy Boney ! * said the surgeon, ' it
was something just like that ' ; and he mounted
a chair to examine the weapon.
' It 's been there a hundred and fifty years,*
stammered the old baron. ' It 's fastened to the
wall, man.*
So it was, with heavy nails and thick, rusted
iron wire. The dust lay thickly upon the long
shaft of the halberd, but there was something
on the point that sent the surgeon quaking to
the floor, whiter than he had ever been at his
first operation. Then, so runs the exact tradi-
tion, they told him the story. His secrecy was
secured by a handsome fee; and though it
would be idle to say that his suspicions were
allayed, they were believed to have been
diverted from the world of flesh and blood.
A faint flavour of these legends, and their
possible bearing on his own position, coloured
the anxious imagination of Mr. Benslee, as a
passing scent recalls to us a distant country
scene. A vague fear of being seen in the
dark passage by something which he could not
250
The Reresby Mote Ghost
see was just what caused him at that instant
to beat a retreat from the ghost's corridor.
Cautiously stepping inside the panelled room,
he turned the handles of two large cupboards,
each capable of holding two or three men, in
succession, and noted that both contained a
good many of those miscellaneous articles,
familiar yet undefinable in the darkness, which
usually accumulate in a country house. Under
the circumstances this simple fact was madden-
ing, for it was difficult to feel sure that such a
retreat might not be invaded.
He moved down the room towards the large
window, whose semi-circular arc gave a copious
view, by daytime, in two directions.
To the right, close below the house which
shut out from it all the waning light left in
the western sky, lay the moat, black as ink and
smooth as polished ebony, save where a scarcely
distinguishable fringe of water-lily leaves lay
like some curious carving that overlaps a dark
framed print. To the left it broadened out
into the mere, over whose grey surface, faintly
streaked with silver, a soft fleecy mist was
beginning to creep, obscuring with its white
folds the dusky outlines of the distance. From
251
Animal Episodes
round the angle of the building the silence was
now and again broken by a deep sound as of
water poured from a large bottle, echoed by
fainter splashes from beyond the rolls of mist.
Out there, reflected the only spectator of the
mysterious scene, there was secrecy and safety
enough — if only
What was he dreaming of? Why, at the
steps in front of the southern wing lay the old
punt, a crazy and leaky vessel, in truth, but at
such a crisis more precious than the richest
argosy to the boldest buccaneer. Immediately
under the windows ran a narrow ledge of stone
(supplemented here and there by a strip of
muddy bank) on which it was surely possible
to climb or creep in silence round to the library
steps before the family dinner (carried on, it
was to be remembered, in the next room) would
be over.
With this somewhat desperate project Mr.
Benslee opened the last window on his right
hand. One on the left stood open, but he
wished to save himself the circuit of the turret.
Then with a second thought he drew back into
the room and sat down on a chair to take his
shoes off. The rubber, he said to himself,
252
The Reresby Mote Ghost
would slip on the wet stone ; and if he had to
swim for it, why What was that ?
A rustling sound as of a rat or mouse running
over the wainscot of the farther wall checked at
once the current of his thoughts and of his blood
with apoplectic suddenness. Was it possible
that the large and dusky room held some-
one besides himself — a child ? — a dog ? Hastily
tearing off and pocketing the other shoe, he
rose, and stepped, listening intently, in the direc-
tion from which the sound had seemed to come.
A dead silence followed, save that through the
open windows came a dull deep plash, as of an
oar lightly turned in the water. Mr. Benslee
looked out in alarm. Could some one be
moving the punt ? No ; it was his nervous
fancy — everything was quiet. Then again
after a second's pause came the same rat-like
twitching, scraping rustle, but quicker and louder,
till it was drowned by a more ominously un-
intelligible noise. He started back, stumbling
against the chair, and execrating — to himself —
a rent in the carpet. And then, just after (or
just before .f^) his movement, something snapped
like a trap shutting in the middle of the wall ;
and a third time, to his fevered imagination, it
253
Animal Episodes
seemed that some small light animal trailed or
scurried by him, this time in the direction of
the bow-window, and there vanished.
There was no time to think what it was, for
on the instant a flirious peal from a bell some-
where in the offices resounded through the
house. Long before its reverberations had
ceased, the door at the north end of the passage
was flung briskly open, and a maidservant, after
pausing for a moment at the door of the room
in which Mr. Benslee stood, fled down the
corridor, with loud exclamations of surprise
and alarm.
In a moment the house seemed to be alive with
' feet that ran and doors that clapped,' and it
became apparent to the ex-secretary that his
presence was no longer a secret, and would
shortly be the object of general attention.
With longing eyes did he gaze at the dusky
belt of firwood that covered the slope on the
opposite bank of the moat. The water was too
deep, even if the bottom were sound, for wading :
but the distance after all was nothing to the
most ordinary swimmer. Consequently, as the
sound of heavily-booted feet was now audible
coming down the corridor, Mr. Benslee with
254
The Reresby Mote Ghost
reluctant expedition scrambled over the window-
sill and slid down into the dark oily water.
He had not swum half a dozen yards before
lights flashed into the room he had just left,
and their reflections danced about the disturbed
surface of the moat. He could hear the buzz
of excited voices from the house behind him,
and though spurred to frenzy by the mere
fancied contact of a single trailing lily-stalk —
there was usually a clear passage at this point —
he spread his arms for another stroke as quietly
as possible. But at that moment an agonising
stab of pain, so acute that it seemed to pene-
trate the whole body at once, arrested his course
and seemed — by what paralysis or compulsion
he could not tell — to be dragging him under
the water.
Sir Cuthbert and his half-brother, the Colonel,
surrounded by a medley of chattering servants
and two ladies in a state of almost hysterical
alarm, stood in the turret-room, hastily ex-
amining the walls, the cupboards, the furniture,
by the light of guttering hand-candles, which,
however, revealed nothing unfamiliar.
' Letty, be sensible,' said the baronet, grasp-
255
Animal Episodes
ing his second housemaid by the elbow. * You
say you Ve absolutely certain — Edith, darling,
there's nothing in the world to be alarmed
about — that this was the bell that rang. Ronald,
just take the light a minute, I don't see '
* Pardon me, sir ' — it was the valet, a spare,
quiet young man in black, who pushed forward
to speak — *that handle's been pulled out of
place — a sharp blow, sir. Something must 'ave
fell on it.' On a closer scrutiny this seemed
a probable enough suggestion, but that there
was neither anything to fall nor anything which
appeared to have fallen.
* You say you saw a man — Edith, dear, go
up and see after the children ; they may be
frightened — standing in the middle of the
room ? '
* That 's what she said, sir,' chimed in butler
and footman, dissatisfied with their secondary
share in the sensation.
*Then — I wish you wouldn't all talk at
once — he must have got out — Parkins, take
all those girls to the servants' hall — by the
window — and bring a bull's-eye lantern.'
The two men advanced to the bay of the
turret and looked out, Sir Cuthbert holding a
256
The Reresby Mote Ghost
light over the water. In the still air the candle
burned steadily, but its feeble flame served but
to make the darkness of the water and the sur-
roundings more impressive.
In a moment, however, the figure of a
man, swimming with difficulty, was indistinctly
visible.
' I see,' said the master of the house, the
hostile instinct of the chase waking within him,
' he is trying to get across that way. Roberts,
run for the punt and head him off.'
The able-bodied young footman had already
scampered down the passage, and was soon
heard frantically paddling the leaky oblong
vessel round the corner of the house. Mean-
while the three other men, in strangely
excited suspense, waited and watched the
escaping quarry. It was obvious, though
distances could not be exactly discerned, that
the punt would not intercept him.
' Have the drawbridge down and Til run
round,' said the Colonel, * and take 'em in the
rear.'
But further speculation was stayed and the
suspense of the watchers and the pursuer
brought to a head of overpowering horror
R 257
Animal Episodes
by a shriek from without. It was a shriek
long, almost articulate, but that something
stifled its close, while what seemed the ghosts
of words were still re-echoing along the walls
of the Mote.
Sir Cuthbert Reresby staggered back blanched
and trembling. The old butler, stumbling
into the room, shook at him a large glowing
lantern. The Colonel set his teeth and grasped
the handles, turning the light steadily over the
water. For a few seconds, no more — and that
indeed was too long — it lit up the white staring
face of a man standing, or striving to stand,
breast-deep in the muddy shallows at about
twenty-five yards from them. It is certain that
the shriek from the figure's wide-opened mouth
took the form of an articulated word, and
the word, confounded by the reverberating
echo from the walls, may possibly have been,
as some averred, a cry for ' mercy ' — the
instinctive appeal of a human animal believing
itself in weird and ghastly fashion trapped by
indignant enemies, and crazed with the fear of
something worse than death.
What it meant, — to whom the word could
under the circumstances be reasonably addressed,
258
The Reresby Mote Ghost
no one could divine. Nor was colloquy possible.
In a second the figure, just as Sir Cuthbert had
identified it, was seen to stumble, subside, and
reappear swimming in a strangely disordered
fashion on the surface.
With the gathering night, and this sudden
cropping up of the hideously unintelligible, the
whole scene passed, dragging the reluctant
dramatis persona with it, from the sphere of a
domestic or police tragedy into the region of
raving nightmare.
The Colonel was a man not unfamiliar with
danger and death, yet, after forcing the lantern
into Sir Cuthbert's limp grasp, he flung out of
the room, and across the courtyard, feeling the
absolute necessity of action, however useless.
Perhaps only a Greek poet could have done
justice to the scene — a tableau vivant of half-
supernatural horrors clustering inevitably about
a mere chain of acts and accidents only to be
unified under the title of — Fate.
But a few seconds before. Sir Cuthbert had
been an indignant landlord engrossed in the
pursuit of a probable thief or housebreaker —
a figure swimming across his moat, and possibly
carrying away some of his property.
259
Animal Episodes
The figure was now moving or floating
uneasily towards him ; but instead of deriving
any satisfaction from this phenomenon he
would have run away shrieking, but that his
tongue seemed glued to his mouth and his
feet to the floor —
For Mr. Bens lee was swimming in the
opposite direction ! and the movements of the
distraught figure, its jerks and dives — for once
or twice it disappeared under the water — had
the ghastly uncanniness — in a live or half-live
creature — of a marionette moved by wires.
For every yard it advanced towards him
through the dark, lit by the shaking lantern
still grasped convulsively in his hand, as if it
were a weapon of defence, a fresh rain of
perspiration poured down the old baronet's
face.
The plash of the nearing punt came like
rescue to the besieged. The athletic footman
and his paddle must, it seems, meet and derange
this awful object momentarily converging on to
the same point in front of the window. And
he or some one else would, of course, jump in
and rescue the body — or the corpse. So it
seemed. But precisely then, before any one
260
The Reresby Mote Ghost
could speak or think, supervened a crisis of
horror which, till the very curtain fell on this
incomprehensible tragedy, crushed out all
power of thought from the spectators.
Immediately before them the water swirled
audibly as from a mill-wheel, and from the
dark trench made in it suddenly rose a things
vast, black but for two gleaming rows of long
white tusks, slimy to the light, and flapping
plaques of water to right and left, and then
descended in a mist of spray. One said it
was a mad pig, another that it was headed like
a hay-rake, but as to what it did all agreed.
The formless monster shot up with a noisy
* warp ' out of the moat, stopped suddenly in
the air, and fell with a crash. Before that,
Mr. Benslee*s ghost — or whatever it was —
attempted, with a hideous appearance of
frivolity, to kick the flying thing whilst it
was in the air, a feat involving the submersion
of the human head. Failing in this, the
ex-private secretary disappeared again, perhaps
from fear, obviously with a frantic effort, when
the black pig-like thing, tusks and all, sub-
sided almost upon him. And it crazed the
helpless beholders to see, as the monster made
261
Animal Episodes
off, leading a long V-like hillock along the
surface, and occasionally showing a black fin
or flapper above the water, towards the lake,
that Mr. Benslee, still swimming in the peculiar
fashion he seemed to have invented, followed
its course.
The footman did not pursue the procession.
He did not stay to look at it ; but had
clambered in at the window leaving the leaky
punt unsecured, and now sat in the deepest
of arm-chairs, his white face buried in his hands
as if to shut out all further spectacles.
For the first instant the Colonel, who had
returned to the room, and Sir Cuthbert, who
had come back to himself, turned their eyes
upon one another. Neither of them had any-
thing to say — nothing perhaps even to express
but the mute hope that the succession of
phenomena, known as * Time,* would not select
this particular moment for any considerable
halt. 'Nature* might then have a chance of
reasserting herself.
*****
When they looked again over the water
there was nothing to be clearly seen, even with
the lantern. Mr. Benslee had swum under the
262
The Reresby Mote Ghost
water-lily leaves. Mr. Benslee had concealed
himself in the lake.
Under the circumstances, further pursuit
seemed useless and unnecessary, though the
water continued heavily to heave and roll as if
something were still stirring somewhere. Over-
head could be heard the wailing * whoops ' of a
lusty-lunged child in strong hysterics. Night
had enveloped the Mote.
*****
But with the gradual re-awakening from
nightmare to the more ordinary fever of
mundane excitement and alarm the necessities
of law and civilisation reappeared.
In the course of a few hours messengers had
brought police, labourers from the village.
Some one, it was told them, had fallen into
the water and, it was feared, had been drowned.
Thus instructed they brought a boat borne
upon a cart, and even an elementary grappling-
iron, with which a party of strangers explored
for the first time the moat and lake. But
though the lake was, as has been said, vast, the
moat wide, the weeds many, the water deep and
the mud deeper, it was matter of surprise to
many of the searchers that no body was found.
^63
Animal Episodes
Sir Cuthbert, in fact, made the only discovery,
that of a small piece of paper soaked with wet,
and lying on a water-lily leaf half-hidden by
another. This he hastily thrust unobserved
into his pocket.
But although the ex-private secretary escaped
detection, it is not quite certain that he was
never seen again.
For as the grey of dawn was beginning to
spread over the lake. Sir Cuthbert sat in the
Colonel's bedroom on the first floor in the
north corridor. Neither had thought of try-
ing to sleep, until at this moment drowsiness
had invaded the former, whose pipe, most
faithful of consolers, fell to the floor and
broke. Sir Cuthbert swore nervously, which
woke the dozing Colonel, who cast a glance
out of the window before retiring to his own
room.
In a second the awakened eyes of both were
riveted on a persistent disturbance going on
at the distance of about two hundred yards
from the walls of the Mote.
Have you seen a score or so of coarse fish —
roach or bleak — fighting for a floating crust of
bread ^ or a dozen eels and perch struggling in
264
The Reresby Mote Ghost
close proximity on a tangled night-line ? Mix
and multiply, and you have the scene, indis-
tinctly visible, in the dull grey dawn.
'What's the water there?* stuttered the
Colonel.
The baronet's face was like a sheet. ' Shal-
lows,' he murmured. Indeed a small dark
streak in the middle might have been mistaken
for a patch of mud but that it seemed to move
now and then. About it the speckled water
seethed and stirred. Then there was a splash
audible to the lookers-on, and a large body rose
and fell. Then the patch disappeared into the
deeps, and there was silence.
Tf tF -Jr * *
It was a year later that two middle-aged
ladies — Mrs. Gravelegh Hall and her sister —
rented the Mote. The former in her capacity
of artist had been vastly attracted by a descrip-
tion that promised interesting studies of reflec-
tions, * moated-grange ' eiFects — she was then
engaged on her celebrated picture — and
mediaeval architecture.
All these she found, and more than could
well be put into an estate -agent's catalogue.
But being a strong-minded woman she stayed
265
Animal Episodes
on ; nevertheless the gloom of the place was such
that it was found necessary to muster a few
cheerful friends, a * forlorn hope/ though they
knew it not.
Thus it came about that on one evening in
autumn, five persons — the two sisters, a cousin
from Ireland, and Mr. and Mrs. Albert Sinclair —
sat in the room overlooking the water, the
room that had been Sir Cuthbert's study.
* I have had these two comfortably refurnished,'
said the hostess, with perhaps a slight accent of
defiance. It was almost dark, and a servant had
just brought in after-dinner tea, an institution
in the household.
In the mere fact that a bell at that particular
instant pealed sharply there would be nothing
curious, if it had not been that the bell belonged
to the next room, which was presumably un-
occupied at the moment. The servant re-
appeared, looking slightly uneasy.
'Some more hot water,' said her mistress,
rather as if she had just learnt the phrase by
heart ; and then, pursing up her lips, sat down
resolutely at the tea-table, like a patient at the
dentist's awaiting an inevitable period of suffering.
Mrs. Sinclair, a young and pretty woman,
266
The Reresby Mote Ghost
rose and walked to the window, which was
slightly open, and leant out, excitedly calling
from that position to her husband — * Bertie,
come here and look. There must be a big fish
feeding out there/
By that time every one in the room had
heard //.
From the far side of the dusky water came
the sound of a thick struggling splash, and the
broken surface caught for an instant a gleam of
the fading light.
' Good gracious ! I wish it was lighter and
one could see. Why, that must have been '
A husky voice sounded a single eerie dis-
syllable into the room. It might easily have
been another female note of admiration, a sequel
to the ' good gracious ! ' — so the lady at the
tea-table said to herself, regretting for the
moment, not that it was difficult to see, but
that it was not impossible to hear.
But the wife turned sharply to her husband.
* Did you speak, Bertie .? No ? ... I thought
some one said '
' Do you take sugar } ' interjected Mrs. Hall,
whispering to herself * the third time.'
* Aman calling on the road beyond the fir-trees.'
267
Animal Episodes
* Is there an echo ? '
* Come and have tea,' said the hostess firmly,
' or it will be black. Perhaps you 'd shut that
window. It gets rather chilly. Yes, and
draw the curtain. Alice, will you play some-
thing, — something loud^ she added hurriedly
aside to her sister. The latter, as the others
sat down, moved towards the grand piano
with an uncertain step, and before reaching it
subsided limply into a chair, with her hands to
her ears.
Then the sound of a heavy footfall in the
passage was drowned by the horrid and ominous
crash of a smooth bulky body falling heavily
on the water.
Two women and the man sprang to their
feet at once in alarm ; one crying —
* Some one fallen in, Bertie ; run and help.'
Mrs. Hall called faintly from her chair —
' It 's no use, Mr. Sinclair, and — and — you 'd
better not open the door. We sometimes '
But Mr. Sinclair was already in the corridor.
In a moment the door slammed and he was back
again in the room (like a hurried traveller who
has forgotten something of vital importance)
and stood by the tea-table, the others watching
268
The Reresby Mote Ghost
him statue-like in a stupor of surprise. Mrs.
Hall touched his arm lightly.
* There was some one there ? ' she said steadily,
as if to reassure the young wife and her other
guest. Mr. Sinclair pulled himself together.
* Yes/ he answered, pouring a jug of milk
into the tea-urn — 'there was some one there.*
THE END
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