rlilJlililili!l1 ! I ll fl Bones and I " Contemplating my companion." Page 65.; Boiifs and I.] [Frontispiece Bones and I or The Skeleton at Home By G. J. Whyte-Melville Author of •« Market Harborough," " Katerfelto," •' Cerise," "Sataiulla," etc. Illustrated by A. Forestier London Ward, Lock &c Co., Limited New York and Melbourne ,«, .-• • c • • • • . , ■ . • • • . • ' ■ • » * » I •: -.'i ::, >' '-' • • • • • • > •'. • • • • I > « • ■ • • • • • • • CONTENTS CHAP. IiitrrMluction . • • • rAO« 7 I. "{)u \Va«te" . . . 1.') II. Through the Mill . . :« III. (fOunU • • • . 48 IV. A Vttiupiro . 65 V. (Inl.l for Silver • • • . lOJ VI. A Day that is Dcul . . Vl'l VII. Th« Four-leaved Shamrock . 1-W VIII. Rus in Urbe . 162 IX. Haunted . 184 X. Weight Carrici-s . 2«J1 XI. Shallows . -J-JO XII. Guiiievere . 237 ii8059J2 M^.ONES AND r OR, THE SKELETON AT HOME INTUODIUTION Long ago, visiting tli»' monastery of La Trappe, I was struck with tlie very discon- tented appearance of its inmates. In some of their faces, indeed, I detected no expression whatever, but on none could I perceive the sliirhtest jrlcam of satisfaction with their lot. No wonder : few men are of the stuff that makes a good recluse. The human animal is naturally gregarious, like the solan goose, the buffalo, the monkey, or the mackerel. Put him by himself, he pines for lack of mental aliment, just as a tlower fades for want of 8 'BONES AND V daylight in the dark. A multitude of fools forms an inspiriting spectacle, a solitary speci- men becomes a sad and solemn warning. If the Trappists. who are not entirely isolated from their kind, thus wither under the rigour of those repressive rules enjoined hy the Order, what must hav(3 heen the condition of such hermits and anchorites as passed whole months, and even years together, in the wilderness, unvisited by anything more human than tlie distempered jduvntoms of their dreams ? No shave, no wash, no morn- ing greeting, and no evening wine. How many, I wondur, preserved their sanity in the ordeal ? how many, returnini,' dazed and bewildered to the haunts of men, tottered about in helpless, wandering, maundering imbecility ? Were there not some hard, boisterous natures who plunged wildly into the excesses of a world so long forsworn, with all the appetite of abstinence, all the reckless self-aban(h^nment of the paid-off man-of-war's man on a spree ? No ; few people are quali- lyrnnDUCTiox 9 ficd for recluses. 1 uin proud to be amongst the number. I live in a desert, but my desert is in the very heart of London. Tlif waste is all round me though ; I have taken good care of that. Once, indeed, it blossomed like the rose, for a thou.sand fertilising streams trickled through its bright e.xpanse. Do not you as I did. 1 turned all the streams iuto one channel, " in the sweet summer-time long ago," and " sat by the river," like those poor fools in the sonir, and said, " llo to I Now I shall never thii-st again ! " But in the night there came a landslip from the upper level, and choked the rivi-r, turning its course through my neighbour's i)astures, so that the meadows, once so green and fresh, are bare and barren now for evermore. I speak in parables, of course ; and the value of ** this here obscrwation," like tho.se of Captain Bunsby, "lies in the application of it." I need not observe, the street in which I hide myself is a cnl de sac. A man who sells 10 'BONES AND /' chickweed, perhaps I should say, who would sell chickweed if he could, is the only passenger. Of the houses on each side of me, one is unfinished, the other untenanted. Over the way, I confront the dead wall at the back of an hospital. Towards dusk in the late autumn, when the weather is breaking, I must admit the situation is little calculated to generate over-exuljerance of animal spirits. Sequestered, no doubt, shady too, particularly in the short days, and as remote from the noise or traffic of the town as John o' Groat's house, but enlivening — No. On first beginning to reside here, I confess I felt at times a little lonely and depressed. Therefore I brought home " Bones " to come and live with me. And who is " Bones " ? Ah ! that is exactly what I have never been able to find out. Contemplative, aff'able, easily pleased, and an admirable listener, he is yet on some points reserved to a degree that might almost be termed morose; while in his personal appearance there is a dignity INTRODUCTION 11 of bearing, an imposing presence, which forbids the most intimate associate to attempt a liberty. I will describe him as I see him at this moment, reclining in an easy attitude on the cushions of my favourite arm-chair, benevo- lently interested, it would seem, in my lightest Brfovements, while I sit smoking silently by the fire. Neither of us are great talkers quite 80 early in the evening. He is a well- formed nnd very complete skeleton of midiUe height — perfect in every respect, and in all his articulations, with the exception of two double teeth absent from the upper jaw. The arch of his lower ribs is peculiarly symmetrical, and his vertebrae are put in with a singular combination of flexibility and strength. As I look at him now leaning back in a graceful attitude, with one thigh-bone thrown carelessly over the other, he I'eminds me of so many people I knew when I lived in the world, that I seem to fancy myself once more a denizen of that revolving purgatory which goes by the name 12 'BOXES AND V of general society. Poor A was almost as fleshless, P» much more taciturn, and C decidedly not so good-looking. "Bones," however, possesses a quality that I have never found in any other ct^mpanioii. His tact is beyond praise. Under no circumstances does he become a bore — that is why we get on so admirably together. Like a ghost, he speaks only wlion spoken to. Unlike a wifi;, refrains from monopolising the la.st wonl. If he didn't rattle so on the slightest movement — a fault of anatomy, indeed, rather tliau temper — as a companion he would l)e — perfection. It is a dull, close evening. Were it not so near winter one might predict a thunderstorm. The smoke from my meerschaum winds up- wards in thin blue wreaths, uninfluenced by a breath of outward air, though the windows are open to the deserted street, black and silent as the grave. ^ly lamp is not yet lit (we both afiect a congenial gloom), the fire is burning out, but there is a dull red glow like a fever-spot lowering under a volcanic arch of IXTRODUCTION i:3 cinders ; and looking into it with unwinking eyes, I see the lung-drawn, weary, beaten road that leads luiekward througli a life. 1 sec a child set down t<> run alone, lialf-friglitened, laughing, trusting, almost happy, and alto- gether gay. i sec a youth Ixild, healtliful, courageous, full of an iuijiubsible chivalry, a roniantie genero.->iLy liial delights to lavish no matter what — money, hne, hope, happiness, cuinintr heart and intellect into gold that he may squander it on the passers-hy. 1 see a strong man crushed — a proud head grovelling in the dust, a high sj)irit broken, a cowering wretch imploring that his punishment may be liiditened ever such a little, trembling and wincing like a slave beneath the scourge. At this moment the fire falls in with a crash, while a }»ale yellow Hame leaps flickering out of the midst, and starting from my seat to light our lamp for the rest of the evening, I demand aloud, " What then is the purpose of Creation ? From a quenched rushlight to an extinct volcano, from the squeak of a mouse 14 'BONES AND /' to yesterday's leading article, from a mite smothered in a cheese to an Emi)eror mur- dered in Mexico, is the march of 'i'imc l)iit the destructive progress of a l)ull in a cliina- shop? Are the recurring centuries but so many ciphers added to the sum of a thrift- less, objectless expenditure ? Is the so-called economy of tlie universe but an unbridled, haphazard course of boundless and incalculable waste ? " His backlx)ne creaks uncomfortably while he moves in his chair. " Waste ? " he repeats in the hushed, placid tones that make him so invaluable as a companion — " Wa^te ? The subject is by no means limited. I have some experience in it of my own. Would you favour me with your ideas ? " — and 1 go off at score \Ndth — CHAPTER I "on waste" ""Why arc these things so?" I exclaim, plumping down again into my seat. " Why have the times been out of joint 'ever since Hamlet's first appearance on the stage, with black tights and rosettes in his shoes ? ^^ hy is the whole world still at sixes and sevens ? What is the object of it all? Cui bono? cui 1)0710 ? cui bono f Is there the slightest appearance of a result ? any tendency towards a goal ? Shall we ever get anywhere, or are we travelling perpetually in a circle, like squirrels in a cage, convicted pickpockets on the treadmill ? By the way, who convicted the pickpockets, and sentenced them ? The sitting magistrate, of course ; and do the 15 16 'BONES AXT) /' awards of that worthy functionary produce any definite result in the direction of good order and morality, or must his daily incuba- tion, t(JO, be wiusted uj>ou addled eggs ? Do you remember the story of the man who cut his throat because he was so tired of dressing and undressing every day ? Don't shake your head — 1 beg pardon, your skull — you told it me yourself. 1 can a}>prcciate his prejudices, but how did he know there might not be buttons and buttonholes where he was sroine: ? That is, supposing he went anywlierc — if he didn't, he was wjustcd altoirether. Tf he did, perhaps he was of no use when he got there. Wasted again — only a human life after all. Not much when you think of it amongst the millions that cling about this old globe of ours, rising, swarming, disappearing like the mag- gots on a dead horse, but of no light import- ance to the bearer when you remember its weight of sorrows, anxieties, disappointments, and responsibilities, not to mention the Black Care sitting heavily at the top to keep the 'ON WASTE' 17 whole burden in its place. Life is a bubble, they say. Very well — but is it blown from a soap-dish by a school-boy, rising heavenward, tinted with rainbow hues, to burst only when at its most beautiful and its best ? or is it not rather a bul)]»lc gurgling to the surface from the agonised lungs of some struggling wretch dixjwning far below in the dark, pitiless water, 'UiikneU'J, uDcoflin'd, and unknown'] — Wasted, too, unless the fish eat him, and then who knows ? none of us perhaps may ever eat the fish. " Listen to me. I won't make your flesh creep, for unanswerable reasons. I don't even think I shall freeze the marrow in your bones. I could tell you some strange stories, but I dare say your own experiences are more remarkable than mine. I will only ask you to reflect on the amount of suftering that came under our daily notice when we lived in the world, and say whether every pang of mind or body, every tear shed or swallowed down, B 18 * BONES AND V ev^ry groan indulged or repressed, were any- thing but sheer wasto ? Can you not recall a hundred instances of strength sapped by drink, of intellect warped by madness, of beauty fading under neglect, or withered by disappointment? Here a pair of lives are wasted because they must needs run out their course in dilferent grooves — there two more are utterly thrown away, because, encompassed in a golden link, they can by no means shake themselves free. The fairest of all, it may be, and the most promising, never blooms into perfection f(^r want of its congenial comrade (wasted too, perhaps, at the antipodes), and failing thus to reach maturity, dwindles, dwarfed and unmatcd, to the grave. Tliink of Beauty wasted on the Beast — the Beast, too, utterly out of his element, that he must roll on the garden sward rather than labour in the teeminsc furrow. Look at Hercules spell-bound in the lap of Omphale, broad- fronted Antony enervated by black-browed Cleopatra. Consider the many Messrs. Caudle 'ON WASTE' 19 who lavisli as miicli good-humour as would set up u dozen houseliolds on their legal nightmares, aud do not forget poor Miss Prettjman ])ining in lonely spinsterhood over the way. See the mother training u[) her child, impressing on him, far mure forcibly than she feels them for herself, lessons of honour, truth, probity, and the unspeakable blessing of faith — praying her heart out for that wilful little urehin, niufht and morninjx on her knees. A good Christian with humble hopes of heaven, docs she know that, far more lavishlv than those heathen ternKu^uits in hell, she is pouring water in a sieve ? Docs she know she may live to see that smooth, soft, wondering brow scored deep with sorrow, or lowering black with sin — that round rosy cheek hollowed by depravity, or bloated with excess ? Worst of all, the merry, guileless heart embittered by falsehood, and hardened with ill-usas:e till it has ceased to feel for others, even for itself ! Great Heaven ! have we not seen them — these simple, honest, 20 * BONES AND I' manly hearts, taken by some soft-eyed demon with loving ways, and sweet angelic smile, to be kept carefully, to be watched jealously, till their fabric has been thoroughly studied, then broken deftly and delicately, yet with such nice art that they can never mend again, and so, politely 'Returned, with thanks'? " Forgive me : on such anatomical outrages I have no right to expect you should feel so warmly as ni}'8elf. " Millions of creatures, beautiful exceedingly, scour over the desert plains of explored Africa ; in its unknown regions, millions more may bo supposed to feed, and gambol, and die. What is the use of them ? If you come to that, what was the use of the Emperor Theodore, or the King of the Cannibal Islands, or any other potentate who remains utterly un- impressed when wc threaten ' to break off diplomatic relations ' ? " Myriads of insects wheel about us in the sun's declining rays every summer's evening. Again, what is the use of them ? What is the 'ON WASTE' 21 use of the dragon-fly, tlic bumble-bee, the speckled toad, the blue-nosed monkey, the unicorn, the wild elephant, — or, indeed, the Ojibbeway Indians?" Here, contrary to his custom, "Bones" interrupted me in full career. "One moment," said he, with his courteous grin. " Allow me to point out that yours is inadmissible, as being simply an aryumentuni ad absurdmn. It would hold equally good with Leotard, Mr. Hcales, or any other public exhibitor — nay, you might advance it for suppression of the Lord Mayor or the Arch- bishop of Canterbury." Tie bowed reverent ially while he mentioned the last-named dignitary ; and I confess I was inclined to admit the truth of his remark. "Then I waive the question," I replied, " as regards the brute creation, thuuc^h I think I could find something to say, too, aljout the weasel sucking rabbits, the heron gobbling fish, the hawk striking its quarry, or the hounds running into their fox. But we will 22 'BONES AND P suppose tliat the whole animal world, from the ander's lob-worm to the costermou fiber's donkey, is enjoying its paradise here, and return to our own kind, their sorrows, their sufiferings, and, natural consequence of sorrow and suffering, their sins." He shook his skull gently, and muttered something in his spinal vertehne about "a cart" and "a horse," but I took no notice, and proceeded with dignity — " I have learnt my Latin Grammar, and almost the only one of its precepts I have not forgotten impresses on me that — ' Spades turn up wealth, the stimulant of crime.' I suppose you will not dispute that the root of all evil is money ? " "Most emphatically," he exclaimed, and his articulations rattled with startling vehem- ence. "Most emphatically I deny the posi- tion. A man may roll in wealth and be none the worse for it. On the contrary, poverty, but for the unremitting labour it demands, 'ON WASTE' 23 would be far more conducive to crime than a sufficiency, or even a superfluity of means. No ; the real enemy with whom every man has to contend confronts him in the morning at his glass, and sticks persistently to him throughout the day. The source of most unhappiness, the cause of all ill- doing, the univei*sal origin of evil, is not money, hut self " "You mean selfishness," I retorted; "and I am surprised to hear a man of the world — I mean of the other world, or, indeed, of any world whatever — assert so obvious a fallacy. Just as the liver, and not the heart, is the seat of our real well-being, so I main- tain that self-indulgence, and not self-sacrifice, is the origin, the mainspring, the motive power of all eff'ort, progress, improvement, moral, social, and physical Researches of science, triumphs of art, masterpieces of genius, — what are these but results of the same instinct that directs the bee to the flower-garden, the vulture to the carcase? To eat is the first 24 'BOXES AX I) I' necessity of man. He labours that he may live. Grant this, as you cannot but con- cede the position to ])c uiiiussiiilablo, and you talk to me in vain of sentiment, philanthropy, benevolence, all the loathsome affectations of sympathy with which the earth-wonn tries to impose u]>on its kind. A man begins by being honest. Why I Because without honesty, down the particular groove in which lie spins, he cannot earn his daily bread. When he has enough of this and to spare, he turns his atten- tion to decent apjiarel, a commodious house, a general appearance of respectability; that is, he aims at being respectable — in other words, at imjiosing on those who have been less success- ful in the universal scramble than himself. Soon he buys a warming-pan, a Dutch oven, china ornaments for his chimney-piece, and the History of the Prodigal to hang about his walls. By degrees, iis wealth increases, he moves into a larger residence, he rolls upon wheels, he replaces the china ornaments with a French clock ; the Prodigal Son with modern 'ON WASTE' 26 oil-paintings, and hides the warming-pan in the housemaid's closet up-stairs. Alxmt this period he l)efrins to subscribe to charitable institu- tions, to give away what he does not want, to throw little pellets of bread at the monster who is always famishe*! and always roaring out of doors, lest it siiould come in, and snatch the roast beef off his t^able. Som«' day a team of black horses with nodding phnnes, and a red-nos(>d driver, come to take him away, * very much respected,' and, forgive the personality, there is an end of him, as far as %ce are concerned. Will you tell me that man's life has not been a continual concession to self ? — waste, waste, utter waste, from the pap-boat that preserved his infancy, to the bniss-nailed cottin that protects his putridity from contact with tlie earth to which he returns ? Why his very virtues, as he called them, were but payments, so to speak, keeping up the insurance for his own benefit, which he persuaded himself he had effected on the other world. 26 'BON EH AND /' " Now, supposing the pai)-l)oat had been withheld, or the nurse had tucked liim into his cradle upside down, or — thus saving some harmless woman a deal of inconvenience and trouble — sujiposing he had never been born at all, would he have been missed, or wanted ? "Would not the world have gone on just as well without him ? Has not his whole exist- ence been a mistake ? The food. he ate, the clothes he wore, the house he lived in — were not these sim}>ly wasted ? His efforts were waste, his wcar-and-tear of body and mind were waste, above all, his sorrows and his sufferings were sheer, unpardonalde waste. Yes ; here I take my stand. I leave you every enjoyment to be found in creation, physical, moral, and intellectual. I make you a present of the elephant wallowing in his mud-bath, and the midge wheeling in the sun ; I give you Juliet at her window, and Archimedes in his study ; but I reserve the whale in her death-tiurry, and the worm on its hook. 1 appeal to Jephthah sorrowing 'ON WASTE* 27 for liis tlarling, and Racliel weeping for lier childron. I repeat, if that self-care, which indeed constitutes our very identity, be the object of exi.itence, then all those tearful eyes that blur the light of every rising sun — ;iJl those aching hearts tliat long only for night to ])e eternal — arc but so many wit- nesses to the predominance in creation of a hivish and unaccountable waste." Like many thoughtful and deliberate natures, I am persuadt-d that in early life " Bones " must liave been a snulT-taker. He affects a trick of holding his tieshless finger and thumb pressed together and suspended in air, before ho delivers himself of an opinion, that can only have originated in a practice he has since been compelled, for obvious reasons, to forego. Pausing during several seconds in this favourite attitude, he sank gravely back in his chair, and replied — " False logic, my good friend. False premises, and a false conclusion. I deny them all ; but the weather, even in ray 28 'BONES AND /' light attire, feels .somewhat too close for wordy warfaro. Besides, I hold with von, that an ounec of illustration is worth a j)ound of art^uinent. 1 will jtsk you, there- fore, as 1 know you have hccn in Cheshire, High Leicestershire, and other cattle-feeding countries, whether you ever wat4.^hed a dairy- maid making a cheese ? If so, you must have observed how strong and pitiless a pressure ia require«l to wring the moisture out of its very core. My frienain. Therefore it is, that wt- so often sec the parable of the jxjor man's ewe lamb enacted in tlaily life. One, having every- thing the world axn bestow, is nevertheless further endowed with that which his needy brotlior would give all the rest of the world to possess. For the first, the pressure has not yet been put on, though his time, too, may come by-and-by. For the second, that one 'ON WASTE 29 darling hope, it may be, represents the little black drop left, and so it must be wrung out, though the heart be erusheil into agony in the process. You talk of sutVering being pure waste ; I tell you it is all pure gain. You talk uf self {US the motive to exertion ; 1 tell you it is the abnegation of self which has wrought out all that is noble, all that is good, all that is useful, ix-arly all that is (trnamcntal in the world. Shut the house-door on him, and the man nmst needs go forth to work in the fields. It is not the dreamer wrapped in his fancied bliss, from whom you are to expect heroic effort**, either of mind or body. You must dig your goad into the ox to make him use his latent strength ; you must drive your spurs into the horse to get out of him his utmost speed. Wake the dreamer roughly — drive spurs and goad into his heart, lie will wince and writhe, and roll and gna.sh his teeth, but I defy him to lie still. He must up and be doing, from sheer torture, Hying to one remedy after another till he 50 'BONES AND F gets to work, and so finds distraction, solace, presently comfort, and, after a while, Io(jkiug yet higher, hope, happiness, and reward, " Self, indeed ! lie is fain to forf^et self, because that therewith is hound up so much, it wouM drivi' him mad to remember; and thus sorrow-taught, be merges his own identity in the community of which he is but an atom, taking his first step, though at a huml)le and immea.surable distance, in the sacred track of self-sacrifice, r)n which, after more than eighteen hundred years, the foot- prints are still fresh, still inetTaceable. Waste, forsooth ! Let him weep his heart out if he will ! I tell you that the deeper the furrows are scored, the heavier shall be the harvest, the richer the garnered grain. 1 tell you, not a tear fidls but it fertilises some barren spot, from which hereafter shall come up the fresh verdure of an eternal spring in that region * Where there's fruit in the gardens of heaven, from the hope that on earth was betrayed ; *0X WASTE' 31 Where there's rest for the soul, life-wearied, that hath striven, iind suffered, and prayed.' " I'm rather tired. I won't discuss the question any further. I'll c^o back into my cupboard, if you please. Good-night ! " CHATTER II THROUGH THE MILL Most people are ashamed of their skeletons, hilling them np in their respective cupboards as though the very ownership were a degradation — alluding to them, perhaps, occasionally in the domestic circle, but ignoring them utterly before the world — a world that knows all about them the while, — that has weifjhed their skulls, counted their ribs, and can tell the very recesses in which they are kept. Now, in my opinion, to take your skeleton out and air him on occasion, is very good for both of you. It brings him to his proper dimensions, which are apt to become gigantic if he is hidden too scrupulously in the dark, and it affords oppor- tunities for comparison with other specimens 32 THROUGn THE MILL 33 of the same nature entertained by rival pro- prietors in the line. If I kept mine, as some do, in close confinement, I should be in a continual fidget about his safety ; above all, 1 should dread his breaking out at untoward seasons, when he wjis Iciist expected, and least desired. But " Bones and I " liavc no cause to be ashamed of each other. There is no disgrace nor discomfort attiiched to either of us in our cheerful companionship. He is good enough to express satisfaction with his present lodging, and even affirms that he finds it airy and commodious, as compared with his last ; while it is a real pleasure to me, living as I do so much alone, to have a quiet, intelligent companion, witli whom I can discuss the diflerent phases of existence, speculative and real, — the sower who never reaps — the fools who are full of bread, roses for one, thorns for another ; here over-ripe fruit, there grapes sour, though by no means out of reach ; successful bows drawn at a venture, well-aimed shafts that never attain the mark, impossible G 34) 'BONES AND /' hopes, unavailing regrets — the baseless mirage of the Future, and the barren reality of the Past. It was colder last night. The wind wjis getting up in those litful howls which denote the commencement of a two-days' gale ; veer- ing besides from east by north to eaat north- east. So we made fast the shutters, stirred the fire, and drew our chairs in for a comfortable chat. Something in the sound of that waking blusterer out of doors recalled to me, 1 know not why, the image of a good ship, many long years ago, beating on the wide Atlantic against a head-wind, that seemed to l)aillc her the more for every })lunge she made. No steam had she to hel)> h(T struggle against the elements; tough hemp, patched canvas, and spars as yet unsprung, were all her reliance ; and these strained, flapped, and creaked to some puqjose while she battled foot by foot to lie her course. Again I seemed to watch the dark wave race by our quarter, with its leaping crest of foam, the trickling deck, the battened hold, the diving bowsprit, the dripping spars, the soaking i'HROUGH THE MILL S5 canvas, with its row of reef-points like the notes on a music-score. And the grey, sullen curtain of mist and rain, walking on the waters, nearer, nearer, till it dashed its needle-poiated drops into my face. Again T looked admir- ingly on the men at the wheel, with their pea-jackets, glazed hats, sea-going mits, keen, war^' glances, and minute wrinkles about the eyes. Again I hoard the pleasant voice of the bravest, cheeriest skipper that ever stood five feet two, and weighed fifteen stone, while he accosted me with his " Dirty weather, sir, and looks sulky to windward still. Makes her drive piles, as we say, and speak Spanish about the bows ; but she behaves beautifully ! Dless you, she likes it I Yes, I expect we shall have it hott('^/7/77i." So surely as it comes up in a night, so surely must it wither in a day. You have been in a hot climate ? I don't intend any disagreeable allusion, I mean the tropics, I give you my honour ! Do you not remember the delight of getting out of your tent, or " booth " as we still call them at our village merry- makings, to sit under anything like a tree 48 GOUIWS 49 or shrub, where, shaded from the sun, you could catch the welcome breath of e very- breeze that blew ? The French officers in the Crimea used to build for themselves trellised out-houses of branches interlaced, swearing volubly the while, and appearing to derive from these bowers no small comfort and refreshment. 1 can ima2:ine the astonish- ment of " nion lieutenant " when, on waking in his tent, he should have discovered, like "Jack and the Bean-stalk," that one of these had sprung u}) fur him, unsolicited, in a night. How he would have stared, and shrugged, and gesticulated, and cursed his star with less asperity, and been " exceeding glad of the Gourd ! " They are of many kinds, these excrescences that grow up with such marvellous celerity to afford us an intense and illusive delight ; but they all resemble their prototype at Nineveh, in so far that, ere the seed has yet germinated, the worm is already prepared which shall smite the gourd, and cause it to wither away. 60 'BONES AND P There were hundreds of them shot to gigantic dimensions and exploded with the South Sea bubl:>le of the last century. Thousands owed their birth and disappearance to the railway fever of five-and-twenty years ago. Not a few were called into existence by a blockade of the Southern ports, during the late war of opinion in the United States, and destroyed by its suspension at the peace. It seems to l)e a law in the moral as in the physical world that the endurance of things must be in proportion to the length of time required to bring them to maturity. The oak is said to be three hundred years in arriving at its prime, and that its vigour is still unimpaired after a thousand chang-es of folias^e we have ocular demonstration in many parts of England ; while the mustard-and-cress, which can be raised in twenty minutes on a square of flannel dipped in hot water, wastes and withers away in an hour. The same in the animal creation. Like IMinerva from the brain of Jove, the butter- GOURDS 51 fly springs into its sunny existence, winged, armed, cand clothed in gorgeous apparel, all at once ; but when the night-breeze shakes the perfume from your garden-flowers, and the evening bank of clouds is coming up from the west, you look for that ephemeral masterpiece in vain. Now the elephant only attains his majority, so to speak, when between forty and fifty years of age ; therefore he has hardly become an " old rogue " at two hundred, and the identical proboscis that saluted Clyde, or curled round the crushed remains of Tippoo Sahib's victims, is to-dny lowered in honour of our own jeunesse doree, with whom a run through British India is considered little more of an expedition than a jaunt into Welsh Wales. Cornaro, if I remember right, fixes the normal duration of life, in the Mammalia, at a term of five times the number of years required to reach their prime. Thus a dog, he says, comes to maturity at two, and lives till ten ; a horse at five, and lives tiU five- 52 'BONES AND /' and-twenty ; and, arguing by analogy, a man, who only attains his full strength at twenty- three or four, should not, therefore, if he led a natural and rational life, succumb till he had arrived at a hundred and fifteen or twenty years. Forbid it, Atropos ! for their sakes a^ well as ours. Think of the old fogies, now suthcienlly numerous, who would overflow the clubs ! Think, when it came to our own turn, of the numbers of Gourds we should have raised, outlived, buried, but, alas! not forgotten. " A fine old man, sir ! " said one of the best judges of human nature that ever fathered a proverb. " There's no such thing. If his head or his heart had been worth anything, they would have worn him out years ago!" "You have got off the subject as usual," objected Bones, " and are trenching on a topic of which you are far less qualified to speak than myself. What do you know about the GOURDS 53 duration of life, the ceaseless wear-and-tcar, the graduiU decay, the hist flickers of the candle, leaping up, time after time, with delusive strength, until it goes out once for all ? You can tell where Noah was, but do you know where the candle went to when it left the great sea-captain in the dark ? Not you ! Never mind, don't fret, you will find out some day sure enough, and be as wise as 'Tullus, Ancus, good Eneas, \aud the rest of us ! Ill the meantime stick to your text. The morbid spirit possesses you, and well I know it will only come out of the man with much talking. If it does you any good, never mind me — fire away ! Tell us some- thing more about the Gourd, and the worm that smote it. That is what you are driving at, I feel sure." "'Morbid!'" I repeated, somewhat indig- nantly. " And why morhicl, I should like to know ? A man takes his stand, as you and I do, outside of, and apart from, the circling, shifting mass of his fellow-creatures, and 54 'BONES AND I' makes his own observations, uninfluenced by their chimour, their customs, their ridiculous prejudices and opinions, confiding those ob- servations unreservedly to one who should, ex officio indeed, be entirely free from the earthly trammels that cumi)er liberal dis- cussion in general society, and he is to be called morhid, forsooth ! It was only one of your ghastly jests, was it ? Enbugh ! 1 am satisfied. There can be no bone of contention — I mean uo subject of dispute — between you and me — we have not the 2:host of a reason — I mean the shadow of a cause — for disagree- ment. I confess my weakness : 1 own to a fatal tendency to digression. One thought leads to another, and they follow in a string, like wild geese, or heirs of entail, ' vcbu unda supevvcnit undam' By the way, this very subject, the association of ideas, opens up a boundless field for speculation. But I refrain — I return to my Gourd — I am back in Nineveh with the prophet once more. Nineveh, in its imperial splendour, gorgeous GOURDE 55 in Eastern colouring, suMime with Eastern magnificence, glittering with Eastern decora- tions — solemn, gloomy, and gigantic ; grand in the massive dignity of size, winged bulls hewn from the solid rock cjuard the Ions: perspective of a thousand avenues, leading to palaces that rise, tier upon tier, into the glowing sky. Lavish profusion — marble, and bronze, and gold — gleams and dazzles and flashes in the streets. The i)alm-tree bends her graceful head earthward ; the aloe aims her angry spikes at heaven ; the camel, with meek ajjpealing eyes, seems to protest against the bales of costly merchandise with which its back is piled ; the white elephant in scarlet trappings, stolid and sagacious, stands patient, waiting for its lord ; throngs of dusky, half- naked Asiatics pass to and fro along the baking causeways ; loud bleatings of sheep, lowings of oxen, cries of parched, thirsty animals resound in the suburbs ; while over all a Southern sun blazes down ^^th scorching fury, and an east wind off the Desert comes 56 'BOXES AXn /' blustering in, hot and stifling, like a blast from hell. " So the prophet is * exceeding glad of his Gourd.' Ho will rest in its shade; he will look pitifully on the broiling passers-by ; he will hue: himself in tliat sense of comfort which human nature, alas I is too apt to experience from the very fact that others are in a worse condition than its own ; but even while he thus rejoices, the worm has done its work — the Gourd is withered up, the sirocco suffocates his lungs, the sun beats on his head, and, like the rest of us when we lose that which we choose to consider the one thincr essential to our happiness, he shows the white feather on the spot, and says, * It is better for me to die than to live.' " Death never seems to come for those who wish it — though perhaps if the Great Liberator felt bound to appear every time he was invoked, the cry might not be raised quite so often. Who is there that has not bowed his head in misery, and wondered GOURDS 57 whether he coulfl l)c so wretched anywhere else as here, in the mocking sunlight, with his Gourd withered before his face ? It is gone — gone. See I There is the very spot on which it stood but yesterday, so green, so fresh, so full -of life, so rich in jtromise ! And to-day — a blank ! It seems impossible ! Ay, that is perha[)s the worst of the suftering — tliat numbed, stupefied state, which refuses for a time to grasp the extent of its affliction — that perverse and cowardly instinct which clings to a thread that it yet knows is wholly severed — which turns even Hope to a curse, because it makes her a bar to resiijnation. Few of us can boast more courage than Jonah when the Gourd is fairly withered away. " For one it has been riches, perhaps, comprising luxury, position, variety — all the advantages that spring from an abundance of worldly goods. Some fine morning. Fortune, * ludem insolentem hidere pertinax,' gives her wrings a shake, spreads them, and flits away ; leaving in her place haggard Want, 58 'BONES AND I' gaunt Ruin, bailiffs in the drawing-room, furniture ticketed for sale up-stairs. The children's rocking-horse, the wife's pianoforte, all the well-known trifles of daily use and ornament, must be cast into the chasm, as the Romans threw their effects into that awkward rent in the Forum. And the master of the household is fortunate if he be not compelled, like Curtius, to leap in after his' goods. His friends are astonished, and bless themselves. His relations had prodictod the catastrophe long ago. Tliese, of course, turn their backs on him, incontinently, from motives of self- respect, no doubt, but a few of the former, such as had professed to love him least, lend a helping hand. Nevertheless, the Gourd is withered, and the man, faint and sick unto death, only wishes his hour was come and he might lie down to be at rest. "Or it has been a child — God forbid it should have been an only one ! Some golden- headed darling that used to patter down-stairs with you every morning to breakfast, and GOUFiBS B9 stand at your ell tow every night after dinner. Whose dancing eyes never met your own but with the merry, saucy, confiding glances that seldom outlast a fifth birthday, and to whom you could no more have said an unkind word than you could cut off" your right hand. Yesterday it was chasing butter- flies across the lawn, and you carried it yourself with laughing triumph, rosy, happy, and hungry, in to tea. Ihit the worm had begun its work, even then. This morning you missed the glad little voice at breakfast, and, looking at the jam on the table, a sad misgiving, stifled as soon as born, shot through you like a knife. It was pitifid to watch all day, in the nursery, by the little bed, — to sec the golden head lying so listless, the chubby hands so waxen and still, the heavy lids drooping so wearily over the blue eyes that yet shone with a light you never saw in them before. There rose a mist to dim your own when the patient little voice asked gently, * Is that papa ? ' — and noticing 60 'BONES AND I' two or three neglected playthings on the counterpane, you walked to the window and wept. "So the afternoon wore on, and the doctor came, and there was cruel hope and torturing suspense, and a wrench that so stupefied you, it is difficult to remember anything clearly afterwards, though you have a dim perception of a pair of scissors severing' some golden curls, while nurse went down on her knees to pray. "And at sundown you walk out into your garden along the very path that brought you both home yesterday, but you walk like a man in a dream, for ringing in your ears is the wail that was heard of old in Ramah, and you know your darling is with the angels, wondering feebly why that knowledge cannot console you more. " Or perhaps your Gourd was ' only a woman's love ! ' — not a growth, certainly, how- ever exuberant, on which a wise man should place so much dependence as on lignum vitse. GOURDS 61 for instcance, or heart-of-oak. But, so far as I can see, either wise men do not fall in love, or they allow wisdom to slip out of their grasp in the very act of making that fatal stumble. So, in defiance of all theory, warning, and practical experience, you may have congratu- lated yourself with insane vehemence on the upspringing of this delicate exotic, and looked forward to the passing of many happy hours under its shade. You shut your eyes wilfully, of course, to the ol)vious fact that you never are happy, even when in full accomplishment of your wishes you stretch your lazy length at the feet of your Gourd. There is sure to be an insect that stings, or a sunbeam that dazzles, or a cold wind in the nape of your neck. Nevertheless, the ves^etable, so lonof as it exists, is not only the delight of your heart, but the very sustenance of your brain. That is the fatal part of the disease. Your Gourd connects itself with everything you think, or do, or say, spreading her roots, as it were, over every foot of land you possess, shutting 62 'BONES AND /' out earth's horizon with her slender stem, and, worse than all, poking her dainty head between you and heaven. " Then, when she withers up — a disappoint- ment which, to do her justice, she is capable of inHicting in the loveliest weather and at the shortest notice — you find to your dismay that, with her, all the lair side of creation lias withered too. There is no more freshness in the meadows, no more promise in the smile of spring. The scent is gone from the garden- flowers, the music from the song of birds. Summer's vivid glow has faded, and the russet of autumn is no longer edged with gold. Hope's rosy hues have cciised to tinge the morning, and the glory has departed from noonday. "Like Jonah, you 'do well to be angry I' and it is well for you if you can be very angry indeed. That stimulant will do more to heal youi' wound over than any other remedy I can think of, except the planting of a fresh seedling to await another failure ; GOURDS 63 but God help you if yours is a nature less susceptible of wrath than of sorrow ! If you are brave, generous, forgiving, confiding, 'Je vous en fiiis mon compliment 1 ' There is no more to be said. Where your Gourd grew, nothing green will ever spriug up again 1 What say you. Bones ? I thiuk you and I are well out of the whole thinf^^ !" He waved his fieshless hand gently, with the gesture of one who puts from him some dim and distant recollection. " There is a bitter flavour," said he, " about that remark which I should hardly have ex- pected, and which is by no means to my taste. You and I can surely aflord to look at these things from a comprehensive, philoso- phical, and indulgent point of view. No more Gourds are likely to grow for either of us; and although your style of figure is, perhaps, less entitled to defy the worm than mine, yet I think you have but little to fear from the kind which caused such an outbreak of temper in the disgusted prophet. The whole 64 'BOXES AND /' story of the Gourd, I need not point out to you, is a lesson. It ^vas intended as a lesson for Jonah, it is intended as a lesson for our- selves. Forgive me for observing that you seem to have entirely lost the point of it, and, as usual in our discussions, you have sacrificed argument to declamation. It is weak, of course, to l>e too much delighted with the Gourd, it is cowardly to be too much afraid of the worm, hut " *' There is one kind of worm I am horribly afraid of," I interrupted, for I admit 1 was a little nettled and out of temper. ** And that ? " he asked, with the courtesy which distinguishes his manner under all circumstances. " Is the borer-worm ! " I replied, brutally enough ; and I am afraid he was a little hurt, for he rose at once and went into his cupboard, while I walked off moodily to bed. CHAPTER IV A VAMPIRE Leaning klly against the cliimncy-piece the other night, contomphiting my companion in his usual attitude, my elbow happened to brush off the slab a Turkish coin of small value and utterly illegible inscription. How stranirelv things come back to one ! I fancied myself once more on the yellow wave of the broad Danube ; once more threacling those interminable green hills that fringe its banks; once more wondering whether the forest of Beliirade had been vouchsafed to Eastern Europe as a type of Infinity, while its massive fortress, with frowning rampart and lethargic Turkish sentries, was intended to represent the combination of courage and sloth, of 65 E GG 'BONES AND /' recklessness and imperturbability, of apparent strength and real inefticiency, which dis- tinguishes most arrangements of the Ottoman Empire. "Bakaloum" and *' Bismillah ! " ''Take your chance ! " and " Don't care a d — n," seem to be the watchwords of tliis improvident Government. It lets the ship steer herself; and she makes, I believe, as bad weather of it as might be expected under such seaman- ship. Engrossed far less, I admit, with political considerations than with the picturesque ap- pearance of a Servian population attending their market, I rather startled my friend with the abruptness of the following question : "Do you believe there is such a thing as a Vampire ? " He rattled a little and almost rose to his feet, but re-seating himself, only rejoined, " Why do you ask r' " I was thinking," I replied, " of that romantic-looking peasantry I used to see A VAMPIRE 67 thronging the mnrket-place of Belgrade. Of those tall, hauJsome men, with the scowl never off their brows, their hands never straying far from the bellyful of weapons they carried in their shawls. Of those swarthy wild-eyed women, with their shrill, rapid voices, their graceful, impatient gestures, carrving each of them the available capital of herself and family strung in coins a])out her raven hair, while on every tenth face at least, of both sexes, could not fail to be observed the wan traces of that wasting disease which seems to sap strength and vitality, gradually, and almost surely, as consumption itself. Yes, I think for every score of peasants I could have counted two of these ' fever-faces,' as the people themselves call their ague-ridden companions, though I ascertained after a while, when I came to know them better, that they attributed this decimation of their numbers, and faded ap- pearance of the victims, rather to supernatural visitation than epidemic disease. They believe 68 'BOXES AND I' that in certain cases, where life has been unusually irregular, or the rites of religion reprc'hensiljly neglected, the soul returns after death to its original tenement, and the corpse becomes revivified under certain gluistly con- ditions of a periodical return to the tomb and a continual warfare against its kind. An intermittent existence is only to be preserved at the expense of others, for- the compact, while it permits reanimation, withholds the blood, * which is the life thereof.' The stream must therefore be drained from friends, neigh- bours, early companions, nay, is most nourish- ing and efficacious when abstracted from the veins of those heretofore best beloved. So the Vampire, as this weird being is called, must steal from its grave in the dead of nifjht, to sit by some familiar bedside till the sleeper shall be steeped in the unconsciousness of complete repose, and then puncturing a minute orifice in the throat, will suck its fill till driven back to its resting-place by the crimson streaks of day. Night after night the visits A VAMPIRE 69 must be repeated ; and so, week by week, the victim piues and droops and withers gradually away. There is no apparent illness, no ostensible injury, but the frame dwindles, the muscles fiill, the limbs fail, the cheek fades, and the death-look, never to be mistaken, comes into the ajreat hafrofard, hollow, wistful eyes. I have repeatedly a.sked the peasants whether they had ever met any of these supernatural visitants, for they spoke of them so confidently, one might have supposed the famished ghouls were tlittinir about the villages nightly ; Init though presumptive evidence was forthcoming in volumes, I was never fortunate enough to find an actual eye- witness. The sister of one had been frightened by them repeatedly ; the cousin of another he had himself carried to her tomb, drained of her last life-di'ops by a relative buried some weeks before ; and the grandmother of a third had not only met and talked with this in- convenient connection, expostulating with it on its depraved appetites, and generally 70 'BOXES AND V arguing the point on moral as well as sani- tary grounds, but luul induced it by her per- suasions, and the power of a certain amulet she wore, to a])stain from persecuting a damsel in the neighbouring village for the same ghastly purpose, or, at least, to put off its visits till the horrid craving should be no lonpin,L( at tbeir box-door like a man who fult pretty sure of being let in. " The foreiQ:n('r introduced me to her friend, and as the second act of the opera was already iu prQgress, told me to sit down and liuld my tongue. We were four in the ])ox. Another gentleman was placed close behind the lady who first attracted my attention. 1 had only eyes just tlien, however, for the wild, un- earthly beauty of my new acquaintance. " I have seen hundreds of pretty women, and even in youth my heart, from tempera- ment, perhaps, rather than reflection, was as hard as my ribs ; but this face fascinated me — I can use no other word. My sensations were so strangely compounded of admiration, horror, interest, curiosity, attraction, and dislike. The eyes were deep and dark, yet with the glitter in them of a hawk's, the cheek deadly pale, the lips bright red. She w^as different from anything I had ever seen, and yet so wonderfully beautiful ! I longed to hear her V4 'BONES AND V speak. Presently she whispered a few words to the man behind her, and I felt my Hesh creej:). Low as they were modulated, there was in every syllable a tone of such utter hopelessness, such abiding sorrow, regret, even remorse, always present, always kept down, that I could have imagined her one of those lost spirits for whom is fixed the punishment of all most cruel, most intolerable, that they can never forget they are formed for better things. Her gestures, too, were in accordance with the sad, suf]:o:estive music of her voice — quiet, graceful, and somewhat listless in the repose, as it seemed, rather of unhappiness than of indolence. I tell you I was not sus- ceptible ; I don't think boys generally are. In love, more than in any other extravagance, ' there is no fool like an old one.' " I was as little given to romance as a ladies* doctor ; and yet, sitting in that box watching the turn of her beautiful head as she looked towards the stage, I said to myself, ' I'll take good care she never gets the upper hand of * A VAMPIRE 75 nic. If a man once allowed himself to like her at all, she is just the sort of woman who would blight his whole life for him, and hunt the poor devil down to his grave ! ' Somebody- else seemed to have no such misjrivinsjs, or to have arrived at a stacje of infatuation when all personal considerations had gone by the board. If ever I saw a calf led to the slauLrhter it was o Count V , a calf, too, whose throat few women could have cut without compunction. Handsome, manly, rich, alfectionate, and sincere, worshipping his deity with all the reckless devotion, all the unscrupulous gene- rosity of his brave Hungarian heart, I saw his very lip quiver under its heavy moustache when she turned her glittering eyes on him with some allusion called up by the business of the stage, and the proud, manly face that had never quailed before an enemy grew white in the intensity of its emotion. What made me think of a stag I once found lying dead in a Styrian pass, and a golden eagle feasting on him with her talons buried in his heart ? 76 * BONES AND 7* "The Griifiiin, to whom the box belonged, noticed my abstraction. ' Don't fall in love with her,' she whispered ; ' I can't spare you just yet. Isn't she beautiful ? ' " * You introduced me,' was my answer, * but you never t(»ld me lier name.' '"How stupid!' said the Griifinn. 'At present she is a Madame de St. Croix, an Englishwoman, nevertheless, and a widow, l>ut not likely to remain so long.' And with a mischievous laugh she gave me her hand as I left the box, bowing to Madame dc St. Croix and also to the Hungarian, who in his happy pre-occupation was perfectly unconscious of my politeness. " I saw them again in the crush-room. The Griifinn had picked up an attache to some legation, who put her dutifully into her carriage. The Hungarian was still completely engrossed with Madame de St. Croix. I have not yet forgotten the look on his handsome face when she drove off with her friend. 'He's a fool,' I said to myself; 'and yet a A VAMPIRE 77 woman miglit well be proud to make a fool of such a man as that.' " I left Loudon in the middle of the season and thought no more of Madame de St. Croix. I had seen a pretty picture, I had heard a strain of sweet music, 1 had turned over the page of an amusing romance — there was an end of it. " The following winter I happened to spend in Vienna. Of course I went to one of the masked balls of Tlie Rcdouten-Saal. I had not been ten minutes in the room when my ears thrilled to the low, seductive accents of that well-remembered voice. There she was again, masked, of course, but it was impossible to mistake the slim, pliant figure, the graceful gestures, the turn of the beautiful head, and the quiet energy that betrayed itself, even in the small, grloved hand. She was talkino; to a well-known Russian magnate less remarkable for purity of morals than diplomatic celebrity, boundless extravagance, and devotion to the other sex. To be on terms of common friend- 78 'BONES AND V ship with sucli a man was at least com- promising to any lady under sixty years of age ; and it is needless to say that his society was courted and appreciated accordingly. " Madame de St. Croix seemed well satisfied with her neighbour ; and thousjh in her out- ward manner the least demonstrative of women, I could detect through her mask the same cruel glitter in her dark eyes that had so fascinated me, six months before, in the Griifinn's opera-box. The Russian talked volubly, and she leaned towards him, as those do who are willincj to hear more. CluUeau qui parlc furls its banner, fimme qui ecoute droops her head. Directly opposite, looking very tall and fierce as he reared himself against the doorway, stood Count Y . The Hun- garian was pale as death. On his face, so worn and haggard, so cruelly altered since I saw it last, was set the stamp of physical pain, and he gnawed the corner of his brown moustache with that tension of the muscles about the mouth which denotes a paroxysm « 4 A VAMPIRE 79 bravely kept down. As friends accosted Mm in passing, lie bowed liis lioad kindly and courteously while his whole face softened, but it was sad to see how soon the gleam passed away and the cloud came back, darker and heavi(5r than before. The man's heart, you see, was generous, kindly, and full of trust — such a heart as women like Madame dt St. Croix find it an interesting amusement to break. " r think he must have made her some kind of appeal ; for later in the evening I observed them tocjether, and he was talkinf^ earnestly in German, with a low pleading murmur, to which I thought few women could have listened unmoved. She answered in French ; and I was sorry for him when she broke up the colloquy with a little scornful shrug of her shoulders, observing in a hard, unfeeling tone not like her usual voice, ' Que voulez-vous ? Enfin, c'est plus fort que moi ! ' " The Russian put her into her sledge, for there was a foot of snow in the streets, and 80 'BOXES AND /' Count V NViilked home through it, witli a smile on his face and his head up, hiuking strangely elated, I thought, for u man, the last strand of whose moorings had lately parted and left him aSliing clieateil as to cheat," we learn from Sutler's quaint and philo- 8tiou : — " What I spent I had — what I saved I lost — what I gave I have." Surely this sentiment will bear analysing. " What I spent I Jiad." I enjoyed it, wasted it, got rid of it : derive from it now as much enjoyment as can ever be extracted from past pleasures of which self-indulgence was the motive — that is to say, none at all ! " What I saved I lost." Undoubtedly, JMortgages, Consols, building-leases, railway scrip — it was locked up in securities that I could by no means brinsf with me here. It has been an o error of judgment, a bad speculation, a foolish GOLD FOR SILVER 117 venture, a dead loss. " But what I gave I have." Ah! There I did good business: took the turn of the market ; invested my capital in a bank that pays me cent, per cent, even now ; and this, not only for the dross we call money, but for the real treasures of the heart — affection, kindliness, charity, help to the needy, sympathy with the sorrowful, protection to the weak, and encouragement to the forlorn. The silver I had in return has been left long ago on earth : perhaps there was barely enough to make a plate for my coffin ; but the gold I gave is in my own possession still, and has been beaten into a crown for me in heaven. Yes. "It is better to give than to receive." With few exceptions the great benefactors of mankind have been in this world defrauded of their wages. Columbus died perhaps the poorest man in the whole kingdom he had spent his lifetime to enrich. Socrates sold the treasures of his intellect — the deductions of the greatest mind in antiquity — for a 118 'BONES AND P draught of hemlock on a prison floor. The fable of Prometheus has been enacted over and over ajxain. Those who scale the heavens that they may bring down fire to enlighten and comfort their fellow-men, must not hope to escape the vulture and the rock. I have always thought that wondrous story the deepest and the most suggestive in the whole heathen mythology. Its hero was the first discoverer, the first free-thinker, the first reformer. He was even proof against the seductions of woman, and detected in Pan- dora's box the multiplicity of evils that secured the presence of Hope within its compass, and prevented her flying liack to the heaven whence she came. The only Olympian deity he would condescend to worship was the Goddess of Wisdom ; and she it was who taught her votary to outwit Jupiter, the great principle of what may be termed physical nature. By science man bafiles the elements, or renders them sub- servient to his purpose. He was a herbalist, GOLD FOR SILVER 119 a doctor, a meteorologist, and universal referee for gods and men. He taught the latter all the arts necessary to extort a livelihood from the earth ; showed them how to yoke their oxen and bridle their steeds. He was wise, laborious, provident, and paternal — the first philosopher, the great benefactor of his time, and — his reward was to lie in chains on Mount iEtna with a vulture sheathing her beak in his heart. Can we not see in this heathen parable some glimmering of the Great Hope which was never entirely obscured to the ancient world "? — some faint foresight of, some vague longing after, the great Example which has since taught its holy lesson of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice ? It is not for me to enlarge on a topic so sacred and so sublime. Enough for us and such as we are, if by lavishing gold for silver freely on our brother, we can cast but one humble mite into the treasury of our God. There is much talk in the world about 120 'BONES AND /' ingratitude. People who do good to others at cost or inconvenience to themselves are apt to expect a great How of thanks, a great gush of sentiment in return. They are generally disappointed. Tho.se natures which feel bene- fits the most deeply are often the least capable of expressing their feelings, and a speechless tongue is with them the result of a full heart. Besides, you are sure to be repaid for a good action at some time or another. Like seed sown in the Nile, "the bread cast upon the waters," it may not come back to you for many days, but come back at last it most certainly will. Would you like your change in silver or in gold ? Will you have it in a few graceful, well-chosen expressions, or in the sterling coin of silent love with its daily thoughts and nightly prayers ; or, better still even than these, will you waive your claim to it down here, and have it carried to your account above ? I am supposing yours is not one of those natures which have arrived at the highest, the noblest type of benevolence, ^GOLD FOR SILVER 121 and ofive their fjold ncitlier for silver nor for copper, but freely without return at all. To these I can offer no encouragement, no advice. Their grapes are ripened, their harvest is yellow, the light is already shining on them from the golden hills of heaven. CnAPTER YI A DAY THAT IS DEAD I HAVE been burning old letters to-night; their ashes are fluttering in the chimney even now ; and, alas ! while they consume, fleeting and perishable like the moments they record, " each dying ember " seems to have " wrought its ghost " upon my heart. Oh ! that we could either completely remember or completely forget. Oh ! that the image of Mnemosyne would remain close enough for us to detect the flaws in her imperishable marble, or that she would remove herself so far as to be altogether out of sight. It is the golden haze of " middle distance " that sheds on her this warm and tender light. She is all the more attractive that we see her through a double 122 A BAY THAT IS DEAD 123 veil of retrospection and regret, none the less lovely because her beauty is dimmed and softened in a mist of tears. Letter after letter they have flared, and blackened, and shrivelled up. There is an end- of them — they are gone. Not a line of those different handwritings shall I ever see again. The bold, familiar scrawl of the tried friend and more than brother ; ^vhy does he come back to me so vividly to-niglit ? The stout heart, the strong arm, the brave, kind face, the frank and manly voice. We shall never tread the stubble nor the heather side by side again ; never more pull her up against the stream, nor float idly down in the hot summer noons to catch the light air off the water on our heated faces ; to discourse, like David and Jonathan, of all and everything nearest our hearts. Old friend ! old friend ! wherever you are, if you have consciousness you must surely sometimes think of me; I have not forgotten yoit. I cannot believe you have forgotten me even there. 124 'BONES AND I' And the pains-taking, up-and-down-hill characters of the little child — the little child for whona the angels came so soon, yet found it ready to depart, whose fever-wasted lips formed none but words of confidence and affection, whose l)lue eyes turned their last dim, dying looks so fondly on the face it loved. And there were letters harder to part with than these. Never mind, they are burnt and done with ; letters of which even the super- scription once made a kind heart leap with pleasure so intense it was almost pain ; letters crossed and re- crossed in delicate, orderly lines, bearing the well-known cipher, breathing the well-known perfume, telling the old, false tale in the old, false phrases, so trite and worn-out, yet seeming always so fresh and new. The hand that formed them has other tasks to occupy it now ; the heart from which they came is mute and cold. Hope withers, love dies — times are altered. What would you A BAY THAT IS DEAD 125 have "? It is a world of chano-e. Ncverthe- less this has been a disheartening job ; it has put me in low spirits ; I must call "Bones" out of his cup])oard to come and sit with me. "What is this charm," I ask him, "that seems to belong so exclusively to the past ? — this' ' tender grace of a day that is dead ' ? and must I look after it down the uulf into which it has dropped with such irrepressible longing only because it will never come back to me ? Is a man the greater or wiser that he lived a hundred years ago or a thousand ? Are reputations, like wine, the mellower and the more precious for mere age, even though they have been hid away in a cellar all the time ? Is a thinsj actually fairer and better because I have almost forgotten how it looked when present, and shall never set eyes on it again ? I entertain the greatest aversion to Horace's laudator temporis acti, shall always set my face against the superstition that ' there were giants in those days * ; and yet wherever I went in the world previous to my retirement 126 'BONES AND I' here tliat I might live with you, I found the strange maxim predominate, that everything was very much better before it had been improved ! *' If I entered a club and expressed my intention of going to the Opera, for instance, whatever small spark of enthusiasm I could kindle was submitted to a wet blanket on the spot. * Good heavens 1 ' would exclaim some venerable philosopher of the Cynic and Epicurean schools, ' there is no opera now, nor ballet neither. My good sir, the thing is done ; it's over. We haven't an artist left. Ah ! you should Lave seen Taglioni dance ; you should have heard Grisi sing ; you should have lived when Plancus was consul. In short, you should be as old as I am, and as disgusted, and as gouty, and as disagreeable ! ' "Or I walked into the smoking-room of that same resort, full of some athletic gather- ing at Holland Park, some 'Varsity hurdle- race, some trial of strength or skill amongst those lively boys, the subalterns of the A DAY THAT IS DEAD 127 Household Brigade ; and ere I could articu- late * brandy and soda ' I had Captain Barclay- thrown body and bones in my face. * Walk, sir ! You talk of walking 1 ' (I didn't, for there had been barely time to get a word in edgeways, or my parable would have exhausted itself concerning a running high leap.) 'But there is nothing like a real pedestrian left ; they don't breed 'em, sir, in these days : can't grow them, and don't know how to train them if they could ! Sliow mc a fellow who would make a match with Barclay to-day. Barclay, sir, if he were alive, would walk all your best men down after he came in from shooting. Ask your young friends which of 'em would like to drive the mail from London to Edinburgh without a greatcoat ! I don't know what's come to the present generation. It must be the smoking, or the light claret, perhaps. They're done, they're used up, they're washed out. Why, they go to covert by railway, and have their grouse driven to them on a hill ! What would old Sir Tatton 128 'BONES AND J' or Osbaldeston say to such doings as these ? I was at Newmarket, I tell you, when tbe Squire rode his famous match — two hundred miles in less than nine hours ! I saw him get off old Tranby, and I give you my honour the man looked fresher than the horse ! Don't tell me. He was rubbed down by a couple of prize-fighters (there were real ])ruiscrs in those days, and the l)est man used to win), dressed, and came to dinner just as you would after a five-mile walk. Pocket Hercules, you call him — one in a thousand ? There were hundreds of such men in my day. Why, I recollect in Tom Smith's time that I myself ' " But at tliis point I used to make my escape, because there are two subjects on which nobody is so brilliant as not to be prolix, so dull as not to be enthusiastic — his doinsrs in the saddle and his adventures with the fair. To honour either of these triumphs he blows a trumpet-note loud and long in proportion to the antiquity of the annals it records. Why must you never again become A DAY THAT IS DEAD 129 possessed of such a liunter as Tally-Ho ? Did that abnormal animal really carry you as well as you think, neither failing when the ground was deep nor wavering when the fences were strong ? Is it strictly true that no day was ever too long for him ? that he was always in the same field with the hounds ? And have not the rails he rose at, the ditches he covered so gallantly, increased annually in height and depth and general impossibility ever since that fatal morning when he broke his back, under the Coplow in a two-foot drain ? " You can't find such horses now ? Perhaps you do not give them so liberal a chance of proving their courage, speed, and endurance. " On the other topic it is natural enough, I dare say, for you to * yarn ' with all the more freedom that there is no one left to contradict. People used enormous coloured silk handkerchiefs in that remote period, when you threw yours with such Oriental com- placency, and the odalisques who picked it up are probably to-day so old and stiff they could 130 'BONES AND I' not bend tlieir backs to save their lives. But were they really as fond, and fair, and faithful as they seem to you now ? Had they no caprices to chill, no whims to worry, no rivals on hand, to drive you mad ? Like the sea, those eyes that look so deep and blue at a distance, are green and turbid and full of specks when you come quite close. AVas it all sunshine with Mary, all roses with Margaret, all summer with Jane ? What figures the modern women make of themselves, you say. How they oflend your eye, those bare cheek- bones, those clinging skirts, those hateful chignons! Ah! the checks no louger hang out a danger-signal when you approach ; the skirts are no more lifted, ever such a little, to make room for you in the corner of the sofa next the fire ; and though you might have had locks of hair enouo-h once to have woven a parti-coloured cAzV/^on of your own, it would be hopeless now to beg as much as would make a finger-ring for Queen Mab. AVliat is it, I say, that causes us to look with such A DAY THAT IS DEAD 131 deluded eyes on the past? Is it sorrow or malice, disappointment or regret ? Are our teeth still on edge with the sour grapes we have eaten or forborne ? Do we glower through the jaundiced eyes of malevolence, or is our sight failing with the shades of a cominnr nidit ? " Bones seldom delivers himself of his opinion in a hurry. ** I think," he says very deliber- ately, ** that this, like many other absurdities of human nature, originates in that desire for the unattainable which is, after all, the main- spring of effort, improvement, and 'approach towards perfection. Man longs for the im- possible, and what is so impossible as the past ? That which hath vanished becomes therefore valuable, that which is hidden at- tractive, that which is distant desirable. There is a strange lay still existing by an old Proven9al troubadour, no small favourite with iron-handed, lion-hearted King Richard, of which the refrain, ^ so far away* expresses very touchingly the longing for the absent. 132 'BONES AND I' perhaps only because absent, that is so painful, so human, and so unwise. The whole story is wild and absurd to a degree, yet not without a saddened interest, owing to the mournful refrain quoted above. It is thus told in the notes to Warton's History of English Poetry : — " ' Jeffrey Rudell, a famous troubadour of Provence, who is also celebrated by Petrarch, had heard from the adventurers in the Crusades the beauty of a Countess of Tripoli highly extolled. He became enamoured from imagin- ation, embarked for Tripoli, fell sick on the voyage through the fever of expectation, and was brought on shore at Tripoli, half-expiring. The countess, having received the news of the arrival of this gallant stranger, hastened to the shore and took him by the hand. He opened his eyes, and at once overpowered by his disease and her kindness, had just time to say inarticulately that having seen her he died satisfied. The countess made him a most splendid funeral, and erected to liis memory A BAY THAT IS DEAD 133 a tomb of porphyry inscribed with an epitaph in Arabian verse. She commanded his sonnets to be richly copied and illuminated with letters of gold, was seized with a profound melancholy, and turned nun. I will endeavour to translate one of the sonnets he made on his voyage, "Yret et dolent m'en partray," etc. It has some pathos and sentiment. " I should depart pensive but for this love of mine so far away^ for I know not what difficulties I may have to encounter, my native land being so far away. Thou who hast made all things and who formed this love of mine so far away, give me strength of body, and then I may- hope to see this love of mine so far away. Surely my love must be founded on true merit, as I love one so far away. If I am easy for a moment, yet I feel a thousand pains for her who is so far away. No other love ever touched my heart than this for her so far away. A fairer than she never touched any heart, either so near or so far away'.' ' " It is utter nonsense, I grant you, and the 134 'BONES AND I* doinojs of this love-sick idiot seem to have been in character with his stanzas, yet is there a mournful pathos about that wailing so far away which, well-worded, well-set, and well- performed, would make the success of a drawing-room sonsr. " If the Countess of Ti-ipoli, who seems also to have owned a susceptible temperament, had been his cousin and lived next door, he would probably not have admired her the least, would certainly never have wooed her in such wild and pathetic verse ; but he gave her credit for all the charms that constituted his own ideal of perfection, and sickened even to death for thd possession of his distant treasure, simply and solely because it was so far aivay ! *' What people all really love is a dream. The stronger the imagination the more vivid the phantom that fills it ; but on the other hand, the waking is more sudden and more complete. If I were a woman instead of a — a — specimen, I should beware how I set my heart upon a man of imagination, a quality A DAY THAT IS DEAD 135 wliich tlie world is apt to call genius, with as much good sense as there would be in con- founding the sparks from a blacksmith's anvil with the blacksmith himself. Such a man takes the first doll that flatters him, dresses her out in the fabrications of bis own fancy, falls down and worships, gets bored, and gets up, pulls the tinsel off as quick as he put it on ; being his own he thinks he may do what he likes with it, and finds any other doll looks just as well in the same light and decked with the same trappings. Narcissus is not the only person who has fallen in love with the reflec- tion, or what he believed to be the reflection, of himself. Some get ofi" with a ducking, some are drowned in sad earnest for their pains. " Nevertheless, as the French philosopher says, ' There is notliing so real as illusion.' The day that is dead has for men a more actual, a more tangible, a more vivid identity than the day that exists, nay, than the day as yet unborn. One of the most characteristic and inconvenient delusions of humanity is its 136 'BONES AND I' incapacity for enjo3^ment of the present. Life is a journey in which people are either looking forward or looking back. Nobody has the wisdom to sit down for half-an-hour in the shade listening to the birds overhead, exam- ining the flowers underfoot. It is always * How pleasant it was yesterday ! What fun we shall have to-morrow ! ' Never ' How happy we are to-day ! ' And yet^ what is the past, when we think of it, but a dream vanished into darkness — the future but an uncertain glimmer that may never brighten into dawn ? *' It is strange how much stronger in old age than in youth is the tendency to live in the hereafter. Not the real hereafter of another world, but the delusive hereafter of this. Tell a lad of eighteen that he must wait a year or two for anytliing he desires very eagerly, and he becomes utterly despondent of attaining his wish ; but an old man of seventy is perfectly ready to make arrange- ments or submit to sacrifices for his personal A DAY THAT IS DEAD 137 benefit to be rewarded in ten years' time or so, when he persuades himself he will still be quite capable of enjoying life. The people who purchase annuities, who plant trees, who breed horses for their own riding are all past middle age. Perhaps they have seen so many things brought about by waiting, more par- ticularly when the deferred hope had caused the sick heart's desire to pass away, that they have resolved for them also must be ' a good time coming,' if only they will have patience and * wait a little longer.' Perhaps they look forward because they cannot bear to look back. Perhaps in such vague anticipations they try to delude their own consciousness, and fancy that by ignoring and refusing to see it they can escape the inevitable change. After all, this is the healthiest and most invio-oratins: practice of 'the two. Something of courage seems wanting in man or beast when either is continually looking back. To the philosopher ' a day that is dead ' has no value but for the lesson it afibrds ; to the rest of mankind it is 138 * BONES AND 7' inestimably precious for the unaccountable reason that it can never come again," "Be it so," I answered ; " let me vote in the majority. I think witli the fools, I honestly confess, but I have also a theory of my own on this subject, which I am quite prepared to hear ridiculed and despised. My supposition is that ideas, feelings, delusions, name them how you will, regur in cycles, althoutjli events and tansrible bodies, such as we term realities, must pass away. I cannot remember in my life any experience that could properly be called a new sensation. AVhen in a position of which I had certainly no former knowledge I have always felt a vague, dreamy consciousness that something of the same kind must have happened to me before. Can it be that my soul has existed previously, long ere it came to tenant this body that it is so soon about to quit ? Can it be that its immortality stretches both ways, as into the future so into the past ? May I not hope that in the infinity so fitly represented by a circle. A DAY THAT IS DEAD 1S9 the past may become the future as the future most certainly must become the past, and the day that is dead, to which I now look back so mournfully, may rise again newer, fresher, brighter than ever in the land of the mornins: beyond that narrow paltry gutter which we call the grave ? " I waited anxiously for his answer. There are some thinsjs we would give anything to know, things on which certainty would so completely alter all our ideas, our arrangements, our hopes, and our regrets. Ignorant of the coast to which we are bound, its distance, its climate, and its necessities, how can we tell what to pack up and what to leave behind 1 To be sure, reo^ardinor thinsrs material, we are spared all trouble of selection ; but there is yet room for much anxiety con- cerning the outfit of the soul. For the space of a minute he seemed to ponder, and when he did speak, all he said was this — " I know, but I must not tell," preserving thereafter an inflexible silence till it was time to go to bed. CHAPTER VII THE FOUR- LEAVED SHAMROCK We are all looking for it ; shall we ever find it ? Can it be cultivated in hothouses by Scotch head-gardeners with high wages and Doric accent? or shall we come upon it accidentally, peeping through green bulrushes, lurking in tangled woodlands, or perched high on the mountain's crest, far above the region of grouse and heather, where the ptarmigan folds her wings amonorst the silt and shinorle in the clefts of the bare grey rock ? AVe climb for it, we dive for it, we creep for it on our belly, like the serpent, eating dust to any amount in the process ; but do we ever succeed in plucking such a specimen as, according to our natures, we can joyfully place in our hats 140 THE FOUE-LEAVED SHAMROCK 141 for ostentation or hide under our waistcoats for true love ? Do you remember Sir Walter Scott's humorous poem called the " Search after Happiness " ? Do you remember how that Eastern monarch who strove to appropriate the shirt of a contented man visited every nation in turn till he came to Ireland, the native soil indeed of all the shamrock tribe ; how his myrmidons incontinently assaulted one of the " bhoys "whose mirthful demeanour raised their highest hopes, and how *' Shelelagh, their plans was well-nigh after baulking, Much less provocation will set it a-walking ; But the odds that foiled Hercules foiled Paddywhack. They floored him, they seized him, they stripped him, alack ! Up, bubboo ! He had at a shirt to his back ! " Mankind has been hunting the four-leaved shamrock from the very earliest times on record. I believe half the legends of myth- ology, half the exploits of history, half the discoveries of science, originate in the universal search. Jason was looking for it with his 142 'BONES ANT) P Argonauts when he stumbled on tlie Golden Fleece ; Columbus sailed after it in the track of the setting sun, scanning that bare horizon of an endless ocean, day after day, witli sinking heart yet never-failing courage, till the land- weeds drifting round his prow, the land-birds perching on his spars, l)rought him their joyous welcome from the undiscovered shore ; Alexander traversed Asia in liis desire for it ; Ciesar dashed through the Rul)icon in its pursuit ; Napoleon well-nigh grasped it after Austerlitz, but the frosts and fires of Moscow shrivelled it into nothing ere his hand could close upon the prize. To find it, sages have ransacked their libraries, adepts exhausted their alembics, misers hoarded up their gold. It is not twined with the poet's bay-leaves, nor is it concealed in the madman's hellebore. People have been for it to the Great Desert, the Blue ^lountains, the Chinese capital, the interior of Africa, and returned empty-handed as they went. It abhors courts, camps, and cities ; it strikes no root in palace nor in THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 143 castle ; and if more likely to turn up in a cottage-garden, who has yet discovered the humble plot of ground on which it grows ? Nevertheless, undeterred by warning, ex- ample, and the experience of repeated failures, human nature relaxes nothing of its persevering quest. I have seen a dog persist in chasing swallows as they skimmed along the lawn ; but then the dog had once caught a wounded bird, and was therefore acting on an assured and tried experience of its own. If you or I had ever found one four-leaved shamrock, we should be justified in cherishing a vague hope that we might some day light upon another. The Knights of the Round Table beheld with their own eyes that vision of the Holy Vessel, descending in their midst, which scattered those steel-clad heroes in all directions on the adventure of the Sangreal; but perhaps the very vows of chivalry they had registered, the very exploits they performed, originated with that restless longing they could not but 144 'BONES AND J* acknowledge in common with all mankind for possession of the four-leaved shamrock. " And better he loved, that monarch bold, On venturous quest to ride In mail and plate, by wood and wold, Than with ermine trapped and cloth of gold In princely bower to bide. The bursting crash of a foeman's spear As it shivered against his mail, Was merrier music to his ear Than courtier's whispered tale. And the clash of Galiburn more dear,' When ou hostile casque it rung, Than all the lays to theii* monarch's praise The harpers of Keged sung. He loved better to bide by wood and river, Than in bower of his dame Queen Guenevere ; For he left that lady, so lovely of cheer, To follow adventures of danger and fear, And little the frank-hearted monarch did wot That she smiled in his absence on brave Launcelot." Oh ! those lilting stanzas of Sir Walter's, how merrily they ring on one's ear, like the clash of steel, the jingling of bridles, or the measured cadence of a ^oodi. steed's stride ! We can fancy ourselves spurring through the melee after the "selfless stainless" kinof, or galloping with him down the grassy glades of THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 145 Lyonesse on one of his adventurous quests for danger, honour, renown — and — the four-leaved shamrock. Obviously it did not grow in the tilt-yards at Caerleon or the palace gardens of Camelot ; nay, he had failed to find it in the posy lovely Guenevere wore on her bosom. Alas ! that even Launcelot, the flower of chivalry, the brave, the courteous, the gentle, the sorrowing and the sinful, must have sought for it there in vain. Everybody begins life with a four-leaved shamrock in view, an ideal of his own, that he follows up with considerable wrong-headedness to the end. Such fiction has a great deal to answer for in the way of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disgust. Many natures find themselves completely soured and deteriorated before middle age, and why ? Because, forsooth, they have been through the garden with no better luck than their neigh- bours. I started in business, we will say, wdth good connections, sufficient capital, and an 14(1 'BONES AND I' ardent desire to make a fortune. Must I be a saddened, morose, world-wearied man because, missing that unaccountable rise in muletwist, and taking the subsequent fall in grey shirtings too late, I have only realised a competency, while Bullion, who didn't want it, made at least twenty thou. ? Or I wooed Fortune as a soldier, fond of the profession, careless of climate, prodigal of my person, ramming my head wherever there was a chance of havinir it knocked off, ** sticking to it like a leech, sir ; never missing a day's tluty, by Jove ! while other fellows were getting on the staff, shooting up the country, or going home on sick leave." So I remain nothing but an overworked field- officer, grim and grey, with an enlarged liver, and more red in my nose than my cheeks, while Dawdle is a major-general commanding in a healthy district, followed about by two aides- de-camp, enjoying a lucrative appointment with a fair chance of military distinction. Shall I therefore devote to the lowest pit of Acheron the Horse Guards, the War Office, THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 147 II.R.H. the Commauder-in-Chief, and the ser- vice of Her Majesty the Queen ? How many briefless barristers must you multiply to obtain a Lord Chancellor, or even a Chief Baron ? How many curates go to a bishop ? How many village practitioners to a fashionable doctor in a London-built brouMiam ? Success in every line, while it waits, to a certain extent, on perseverance and capacity, partakes thus much in the nature of a lottery, that for one prize there must be an incalculable number of blanks. I will not go so far as to say that you should abstain from the liberal professions of arts or arms, that you should refrain from taking your ticket in the lottery, or in any way rest idly in mid-stream, glad to " Loose the sail, shift the oar, let her float down, Fleeting and gliding by tower and town ;" but I ask you to remember that the marshal's baton can only be in one conscript's knapsack out of half a million ; that wigs and mitres, and fees every iBve minutes, fall only to one in 148 'BOXES AND V ten thousand ; that although everybody lias an equal chance in the lottery, that chance may be described as but half a degree better than the cipher which represents zero. There is an aphorism in everybody's mouth about the man who goes to look for a straight stick in the wood. Hollies, elms, oaks, ashes, and alders he inspects, sapling after sapling, in vain. This one has a twist at the handle, that bends a little towards the point ; some are too thick for pliancy, some too thin for strength. Several would do very well but for the abun- dant variety that affords a chance of finding something better. Presently he emerges at the farther fence, having traversed the covert from end to end, but his hands are still empty, and he shakes his head, thinking he may have been over-fastidious in his choice. A straicrht stick is no easier to find than would be a four-leaved shamrock. The man who goes to buy a town house or rent a place in the country experiences the same difficulty. Up-stairs and down-stairs he THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 149 travels, inspecting kitchen-ranges, sinks and sculleries, attics, bedrooms, Ijoudoirs, and housemaids' closets, till his legs ache, his brain swims, and his temper entirely gives way. In London, if the situation is perfect, there is sure to be no servants' hall, or the accommodation below-stairs leaves nothing to be desired, but he cannot undertake to reside so far from his club. These difficulties over- come, he discovers the butler's pantry is so dark no servant of that fastidious order will consent to stay with him a week. In the country, if the place is pretty the neigh- bourhood may be o1)jectiouable : the rent is perhaps delightfully moderate, but he must keep up the grounds and pay the wages of four gardeners. Suitable in every other respect, he cannot get the shooting ; or if no such drawbacks are to be alleged, there is surely a railway through the park, and no station within five miles. Plenty of sham- rocks grow, you see, of the trefoil order, green, graceful, and perfectly symmetrical. 150 'BONES AND V It is that fourth leaf he looks for, which creates all his difficulties. The same with tlie gentleman in search of a horse, the same with Coelebs in search of a wife. If the former cannot be persuaded to put up with some little drawback of action, beauty, or temper, he will never know that most delightful of all partnerships, the sym- pathy existing between a good horseman and his steed. If the latter expects to find a perfection really exist, which he thinks he has discovered while dazzled by the glamour surrounding a man in love, he deserves to be disappointed, and he generally is. Rare, rare indeed are the four-leaved shamrocks in either sex ; thrice happy those whom Fate permits to win and wear them even for a day! What is it we expect to find ? In this matter of marriage more than in any other our anticipations are so exorbitant that we cannot be surprised if our " come-dow^n " is disheartening in proportion. THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 151 ** Where is the maiJen of mortal strain That may match with the Baron of Triermain 1 She must be lovely, constant, and kind, Holy and pure, and humble of mind," etc. (How Sir Walter runs in my head to-nii^lit.) Yes, she must be all this, and possess a thoijsand other good qualities, many more than are enumerated by lago, so as never to descend for a moment from the pedestal on which her baron has set her up. Is this indulirent ? is it even reasonable ? Can he expect any human creature to be always dancing on the tight-rope ? Why is Lady Triermain not to have her whims, her temper, her lits of ill-humour, like her lord ? She must not indeed follow his example and relieve her mind by swearing '* a good, round, mouth-fiUinsr oath," therefore she has the more excuse for feeling at times a little captious, a little irritable, what she herself calls a little cross. Did he expect she w^as an angel ? Well, he often called her one, nay, she looks like it even now in that pretty dress, says my lord, and she smiles through her tears, putting 152 'BONES AND P her white arms round his neck so fondly that he really believes he has found what he wanted till they fall out again next time. Men are very hard in the way of exaction on those they love. All *' take " seems their motto, and as little " give " as possible. If they would but remember the golden rule and expect no more than should be expected from themselves, it might be a bett^er world for everybody. I have sometimes wondered in my own mind whether women do not rather enjoy being coerced and kept dowTi. I have seen them so false to a kind heart, and so fond of a cruel one. Are they slaves by nature, do you conceive, or only hypocrites by education 1 I suppose no wise man puzzles his head much on that subject. They are all incomprehensible and all alike ! " How unjust ! " exclaims Bones, interrupt- mg me vdth. more vivacity than usual. " How unsupported an assertion, how sweeping an accusation, how unfair, how unreasonable, and how like a man ! Yes, that is the way with THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 153 every one of you ; disappointed in a single instance, you take refuge from your own want of judgment, your own mismanagement, your own headlong stupidity, in the condemnation of half the world ! You open a dozen oysters, and turn away disgusted because you have not found a pearl. You fall an easy prey to the first woman who flatters you, and plume yourself on having gained a victory without fighting a battle. The fortress so easily won is probably but weakly garrisoned, and capitulates ere long to a fresh assailant. When this has happened two or three times, you veil your discomfiture under an afi*ectation of philosophy and vow that w^omen are all alike, quoting perhaps a consolatory scrap from Catullus — ' Qiiid levius plumji 1 pulvis. Quid pulvere ? ventus. Quid vento ? mulier. Quid muliere ? nihil ? ' But Roman proverbs and Roman philosophy are unworthy and delusive. There is a straight stick in the wood if you will be 154 'BONES AND /' satisfied witli it when found ; there is a four- leaved shamrock amongst the herbage if you will only seek for it honestly on your knees. Should there be but one in a hundred women, nay, one in a thousand, on whom an honest heart is not thrown away, it is worth while to try and find her. At worst, better be deceived over and over asjain than sink into that deepest slough of depravity in which those struggle who, because their own trust has been outraged, declare there is no faith to be kept with others ; because their own day has been darkened, deny the existence of light." " You speak feelingly," I observe, conscious that such unusual earnestness denotes a con- viction he will get the worst of the debate. "You have perhaps been more fortunate than the rest. Have you found her, then, this hundredth woman, this prize, this pearl, this black swan, glorious as the phoenix and rare as the dodo ? Forgive my argicmentwn ad hominem, if I may use the expression, and forgive my urging that such good fortune THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 155 only furnishes one of those exceptions which, illogical people assert, prove the rule." There is a vibration of his teeth wanting only lips to become a sneer, while he replies — " In my own case I was not so lucky, but I kept ^ my heart up and went on with my search to the end." " Exactly," I retort in triumph ; " you, too, spent a lifetime looking for the four-leaved shamrock, and never found it after all. But I think women are far more unreasonable than ourselves in this desire for the unattainable, this disappointment when illusion fades into reality. Not only in their husbands do they expect perfection, and that, too, in defiance of daily experience, of obvious incompetency, but in their servants, their tradespeople, their carriages, their horses, their rooms, their houses, the dinners they eat, and the dresses they wear. With them an avowal of inca- pacity to reconcile impossibilities stands for wilful obstinacy, or sheer stupidity at best. They believe themselves the victims of peculiar 156 'BONES AND /' ill-fortune if their coachman gets diunk, or their horses go lame ; if milliners are careless or ribbons unbecoming ; if chimneys smoke, parties fall through, or it rains when they want to put on a new bonnet. They never seem to understand that every 'if has its 'but,' every j^ro its con. My old friend, Mr. Bishop, of Bund Street, the Democritus of his day (and may he live as long !), observed to me many years ago, when young people went mad aljout the polka, that the new measure was a type of everything else in life, ' What you gain in dancing you lose in turning round.' Is it not so with all our efforts, all our undertakings, all our noblest endeavours after triumph and success? In dynamics we must be content to resign the maximum of one property that we may preserve the indis- pensable minimum of another, must allow for friction in velocity, must calculate the windage of a shot. In ethics we must accept fanaticism with sincerity, exaggeration with enthusiasm, over-caution with unusual foresight, and a THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 157 giddy brain with a warm, impulsive heart. What we take here we must give yonder ; what we gain in dancing we must lose in turning round ! " But no woman can be brought to see this obvioHS necessity. For the feminine mind nothing is impracticable. Not a young lady eating bread and butter in the school-room but cherishes her own vision of the prince already riding through enchanted forests in her pursuit. The prince may turn out to be a curate, a cornet, or a count, a duke or a dairy-farmer, a baronet or a blacking-maker, that has nothing to do with it. Relying on her limit- less heritage of the possible, she feels she has a prescriptive right to the title, the ten thousand a year, the matrimonial prize, the four-leaved shamrock. Whatever else turns up, she considers herself an ill-used woman for life, unless all the qualities desirable in man are found united in the person and fortunes of her husband ; nay, he must even possess virtues that can scarce possibly co-exist. 158 'BONES AND /' He must be handsome and impenetrable, generous and economical, gay and domestic, manly but never from her side, wise yet deferring to her opinion in all things, quick- sighted, though blind to any drawbacks or shortcomings in herself. Above all, must he be superlatively content with his lot, and unable to discover that by any means in his matrimonial venture, ' what he gained in dancinsf he has lost in turuiiifif round.' "I declare to you I think if Ursidius* insists on marrying at all, that he had better select a widow ; at least he runs at even weights against his predecessor, who, being a man, must needs have suffered from human weakness and human infirmities. The chances are that the dear departed went to sleep after dinner, hated an open carriage, made night hideous with his snores under the connubial counterpane, and all the rest of it. A suc- cessor can be no worse, may possibly appear * ^' Cogitat Ursidius, sibi dote jugare puellam, Ut placeat domino, cogitat Ursidius." THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 159 better ; but if he weds a maiden, he has to contend with the female ideal of what a man should be ! and from such a contest what can accrue but unmitigated discomfiture and disgrace ? "Moreover, should he prove pre-eminent in those manly qualities women most appre- ciate, he will find that even in those they prefer to accept the shadow for the substance, consistently mistaking assertion for argument, volubility for eloquence, obstinacy for resolu- tion, bluster for courage, fuss for energy, and haste for speed. " On one of our greatest generals, remark- able for his gentle, winning manner in the drawing-room as for his cool daring in the field, before he had earned his well-merited honours, I myself heard this verdict pro- nounced by a jury of maids and matrons : ' Dear ! he's such a quiet creature, I'm sure he wouldn't be much use in a battle ! ' No ; give them Parolles going to recover his drum, and they have a champion and a hero exactly 160 'BONES AND /' to their minds, but they would scarcely believe in Richard of the Lion-Heart if he; held his peace and only set his teeth hard when he laid lance in rest. "Therefore it is they tug so unmercifully at the slender thread that holds a captive, imagining it is by sheer strength the quiet creature must be coerced. Some day the pull is harder than usual, the thread breaks, and the wild bird soars away, free as the wind down which it sails, heedless of lure and whistle, never to return to bondage any more. Then who so aghast as the pretty, thoughtless fowler, lonfrinc: and remorseful, with the broken strinij in her hand ? " She fancied, no doubt, her prisoner was an abnormal creature, rejoicing in ill-usage ; that because it was docile and generous it must therefore be poor in spirit, slavish in obedience, and possessing no will of its own. She thousfht she had found a four-leaved shamrock, and this is the result ! " But I may talk for ever and end where I THE FOUR-LEAVED SHAMROCK 161 began. Men you 'may convince by force of argument, if your logic is very clear and your examples or illustrations brought fairly under their noses ; but with tlie other sex, born to be admired and not instructed, you might as well pour water into a sieve. Can you re- member a single instance in which with these, while a word of entreaty gained your point forthwith, you might not have exhausted a folio of argument in vain ? " He thinks for a minute, and then answers deliberately, as if he had made up his mind — *' I never knew but one woman who could understand reason, and she tvouhhit listen to it ! " CHAPTER VIII RUS IN URBE RoM^ Tihur Amem, vcnfosus. Tihure Romam ! quoth the Latin satirist, ridiculing hiij own foibles, like his neighbour's, with the lauijliinnr half-inclulfient banter that makes him the pleasautest, the chattiest, and the most companionable of classic writers. How he loved the cool retirement of his Sabine home, its grassy glades, its hanging woodlands, its fragrant breezes wandering and wdiispering through those summer slopes, rich in the countless allurements of a landscape that — " Like Albunea's echoing fountain, All my inmost heart hath ta'en j Give me Anio's headlong torrent, And Tiburnus' grove and hills, And its orchards sparkling dewy, With a thousand wimpling rills," 162 I BUS IN URBE 168 as Theodore Martin translates his Horace, or thus, according to Lord Ravensworth — " Like fair Albunea's sybil-haunted liall, By rocky Anio's echoing waterfall, And Tibur's orchards and high-hanging wood, Reflected graceful in the whirling flood." His lordship, you observe, who 'can himself write Latin lyrics as though he had drunk with Augustus, and capped verses with Ovid, makes the second syllable of Albunea long, and a very diffuse argument might be lield on this disputed quantity. Compare these with the original, and say which you like best — " Quam domus Albuneje resonantis, Et praeceps Anio ac Tiburni lucus et uda Mobilibus pomaria rivis." By the way, nobody who has not en- deavoured to render L atin poetry into English can appreciate the vigour and terseness of the older language. Here are six lines in the one version and four in the other, required to translate three of the original, perhaps without producing after all so full a meaning or so complete a picture. 164 'BOXES AND 7' Nevertheless, and notwithstanding his poetical predilections for the country, Horace, like many other people, seems of his two homes to have always preferred the one at which he was not. An unhappy prejudice little calculated to enhance the comfort and content of daily life. Had he settled anywhere in the ueighbour- liond of our hermitiifre here, he need not have accused himself of this fickle lono:infT, which he denounces by the somewhat ludicrous epithet of " ventose." He might have com- bined the advantages of town and country, alternating the solitude of the desert with the society of his fellow-men, blowing the smoke out of his lungs while inhaling the fresh breezes off the Serpentine, stretching his own limbs and his horses' by walks and rides round Battersea, Victoria, and Hyde Parks. If you look for rus in urbe, where will you find it in such perfection as within a mile of the Wellington statue in almost any direction you please to take ? If you choose to saunter BUS TN URBE 165 on a liot June day towards the Ranger's Lodge or the powder-magazine, I could show you a spot from which I defy you to see houses, spires, gas-towers, or chimneys, any- thing, indeed, but green grass and blue sky, and towering elms motionless, in black mas- sive shade, or quivering in golden gleams of light. A spot where you might lie and dream of nymph and faun, wood -god and satyr. Daphne pursued by Phoebus, Actaeon flying before Diana, of Pan and Syrinx and Echo, and all the rustic joys of peaceful Arcady — or of elves and brownies, fair princesses and cruel monsters, Launcelot, I\lordred, and Carodac, Sir Gawain the courteous with his " lothely ladye," the compromising cup, the misfitting mantle, all the bright pageantry, quaint device, and deep, tender romance that groups itself round good King Arthur and the Knights of his Round Table — or of Thomas the Rhymer as he lav at lensjth under the " linden tree," and espied, riding towards him on a milk- white palfrey, a dame so beautiful, that he IGG * BOXES AND /' could not but believe she was the mother of his lord, till undeceived by her own confession, he won from her the fatal gift of an unearthly love. And here, perhaps, you branch off into some more recent vision, some dream of an elfin queen of your own, who also showed you the path to heaven, and gave you an insight into the ways of purgatory, ere she beckoned you down the road to Fairyland, that leads — ah ! who knows where *? From this seques- tered nook you need not walk a bowshot to arrive at the seaboard of the Serpentine ; and here, should there be a breath of air, if you have any taste for yachting, you may indulge it to your heart's content. The glittering water is dotted with craft of every rig and, under a certain standard, of almost every size. Yawls, cutters, schooners, barques, brigs, with here and there a three-maated ship. On a wind and off a wind, close-hauled and free, rolling, pitching, going about, occasionally missing stays, and only to be extricated from the " doldrums " by a blundering, over-eager • BUS IN URBE 167 water-dog, the mimic fleet, on its mimic ocean, carries out its illusion so completely that you can almost fancy the air off the water feels damp to your forehead, and tastes salt upon your lips. An ancient mariner who frequents the beach below' the boat-house feels, I am convinced, thoroughly persuaded that his occupation ia strictly professional, that he is himself a necessity, not of amusement, but business. He will tell you that when the wind veers round like that, *' suddenways, off Kensington Gai'dens, you may look out for squalls ; " that " last Toosday was an awful wild night, and some on 'em broke from their mooriiifjs afore he could turn out. The Bcllcrophon, bless ye, was as nigh lost as could be, and that there Water Lily, the sweetest thing as ever swam — she sprang her boom, damaged her bowsprit, and broke her nose. He was re- fitting all Wens'day, he was, up to two o'clock, and a precious job he had ! " Every one who constantly " takes his walks 168 'BOXEf^ AND /• abroad " in the Great City, becomes a philo- sopher in spite of himself, of the Peripatetic School, no doubt, but still a philosopher; so you sympathise mildly with the mariner's troubles; for to you no human interests arc either great or small, nor does one pursuit or person bore you more than another. You hazard uu opinion, therefore, that the Water Lily is somewhat too delicate and fragile a craft to encounter boisterous weather, even on such an inland sea as this, and find, to your dismay, that so innocent an observation stamps you in his opinion as not only ignorant, but presumptuous. He considers her both " whole- some," as he calls it, and " weatherly," urging on you many considerations of sea-worthiness, such as her false keel, her bulwarks, her breadth of beam, and general calibre. " Why, she's seven-and-twenty," says he, rolling a peppermint lozenge round his tongue, just as a real seaman turns a quid ; " now look at the Sea-Sarpent lying away to the eastward yonder, just beyond the point where the BUS IN URBE 169 gravel's been washed adrift. She's fifty-two, she is, but I wouldn't trust her, not in lumpy water, you know, like the schooner. No. If I was a-building of one now, what I call, for all work and all weathers, thirty would be my mark, or from that to thirty-five at the outside ! " "Thirty-five what? Tons?" you ask, a little abashed, and feeling you have committed yourself. " Tons ! " he ropoat?<, in a tone of intense disoust — "tons bo blowed ! h'inchcs ! I should have thought any landsman might ha' knowed that — h'inches ! " and lurching sulkily into his cabin under the willow-tree, disappears to be seen no more. Later, when September has begun to tinge the topmost twigs with gold, and autumn, like a beautiful woman, then indeed at her loveliest, who is just upon the wane, dresses in her deepest colours, and her richest gar- ments, go roaming about in Kensington Gardens, and say whether you might not 170 'BONES AND F fancy yourself a hundred miles from any such evidences of civilisation as a pillar-post or a cab-stand. It was but the other day I sauntered throu<^h the grove that stands nearest the Uxbridge Road, and, while an afternoon mist limited my range of vision and deadened the sounds of traffic on my ears, I could hardly persuade myself that in less than five minutes I miMit if I liked make the thirteenth in an omnibus. Alone ? you jisk — of course I was. Yet, stay, not quite alone, for with me walked the shadow that, when we have learned to prefer solitude to society, accompanies us in all our wanderings, teaching us, I humbly hope, the inevitable lesson, permanent and precious in proportion to the pain with which the poor scholar gets his task by heart. Well, I give you my word, the endless stems, the noiseless solitude, the circumscribed horizon, reminded me of those forest ranges in North America that stretch interminable BUS IN URBE 171 from the waters of the St. Ann's and the Batsicon to the wild ^vavcs breaking dark and sullen on the desert seaboard of Labrador. I am not joking. I declare to you I was once more in moccasins, blanket-coat, and honnetrrouge, with an axe in my belt, a pack on my shoulders, and a riilc in my hand, following the track of the trehorgons ^ on snow-shoes, in company with Thomas, the French Canadian, and Fran9ois, the half-breed, and the Huron chief with a name I could never pronounce, that neither I nor any man alive can spell. Ah ! it was a merry life we led on those moose-hunting expeditions, in spite of hard work, hard fare, and, on occasion, more than a sufficiency of the discomfort our retainers called expressively misere. There was a stranire charm in the marches throuorh those silent forests, across those frozen lakes, all clothed alike in their winter robe of white and 1 A narrow board, on which provisions, etc. are packed, to be dragged through the woods on these ezpeditions in the snow. 172 'BONES AND I' diamonds. There was a bold, free, joyous comfort in the hole we dug through a yard and a half of snow, wherein to build our fire, boil our kettle, fry our pork (it is no use talking of such things to you, but I was going to say, never forget a frying-pan on these ex- peditions ; it is worth all the kitchen-ranges in Belgravia), to smoke our tobacco, ay, and to take our rest. There was something of sweet adventurous romance in waking at midnischt to see the stars flash like brilliants througrh the snow-en- crusted branches overhead, wondering vaguely where and why and what were all those count- less worlds of flame. Perhaps to turn round again and dream of starry eyes in the settle- ments, then closed in sleep, or winking drowsily at a night-light, while the pretty watcher pondered, not unmindful of ourselves, pitying us, it may be, couching here in the bush, and thinking in her ignorance how cold we were ! Then when we reached our hunting-ground BUS IN URBE 173 and came up with our game at last, though, truth to tell, the sport as sjDort was poor enough, there was yet a wild delightful triumph in overtaking and slaying a gigantic animal that had never seen the face of man. The chase was exciting, invigorating, bracing ; the idea grand, heroic, Scandinavian. " An elk came out of the pine-forest ; He snuffed up east, he snuffed up west, Stealthy and still ; His mane and his horns were shaggy with snow, I laid my arrow across my bow, Stealthily and still ; The bowstring rattled — the arrow flew, And it pierced his blade-bone through and through, Hurrah ! I sprang at his throat like a wolf of the wood, And I dipped my hands in the smoking blood, Hurrah ! " Kingsley had not written Ilyijatia then. Kingsley never w^ent moose-hunting in his life. How could he so vividly describe the gait and bearing of a forest elk stalking warily, doubt- fully, yet with a kingly pride through his wintry haunts ? Probably from the instinctive sense of fitness, the intuition peculiar to poets, 174 'BONES AND I* that enabled him to feel alike with a fierce Goth sheltering in his snow-trench, and a soft, seductive southern beauty, languishing, lovely and beloved, in spite of dangerous impulses and tarnished fame, in spite of wilful heart, reckless self-abandonment, woman weakness, and the fatal saffron shawl. I tell you that I could not have been more completely alone in Eobinson Crusoe's island than I found myself here within a rifle- shot of Kensington Palace, during a twenty minutes' walk, to and fro, up and down, threading the stems of those tall, metropolitan trees ; nor when my solitude was at last dis- turbed could I find it in me to grudge the intruders their share of my retreat. More | especially as they were themselves thoroughly unconscious of everything but their own com- panionship, sauntering on, side by side, with murmured words, and loving looks, and steps that dwelt and lingered on the path, because impossible roses seemed springing into bloom beneath their very feet, and that for them * BUS IN URBE 175 Kensington Gardens were indeed as the gardens of Paradise. I knew right well for me the mist was gathering round, ghostly and damp and chill. It struck through my garments, it crept about my heart, but for these, thank God ! the sky was Wight as a midsummer noon. They were basking in the warmth and light of those gleams that come once or twice in a lifetime to remind us of what we might be, to reproach us, perhaps, gently for what we are. They did not speak much, they laughed not at all. Their conversation seemed a little dull, trite, and commonplace, yet I doubt if either of them has forgotten a word of it yet. It was pleasant to observe how happy they were, and I am sure they thought it was to last for ever. Indeed I wish it may I But the reflections of a man on foot are to those of a man on horseback as the tortoise to the hare, the mouse to the lion, tobacco to opium, chalk to cheese, prose to poetry. ** As moonsliine is to sunshine, and as water is to wine." 176 'BONES AND I' Get into the saddle, leap on a thoroughbred horse, if you have got one. Never mind his spoiling you for every other animal of meaner race, and come for a " spin " up the Ride from Ilyde Park Corner to Kensington Gate, care- ful only to steady liim sufficiently for the safety of Her Majesty's subjects, and the inquisition, not very rigorous, of the police- men on duty. For seven months in the year, at least, this is perhaps the only mile and a half in England over which you may gallop without remorse for batterincj leors and feet to pieces on the hard ground. Away you go, the breeze lifting your whiskers from the very roots (I forgot, you have no whiskers, nor indeed would such superfluities be in character with the severe style of your immortal beauty). Never mind, the faster you gallop the keener and cooler comes the air. Sit well down, just feel him on the curb, let him shake his pretty head and play with his bridle, sailing away with his hind-legs under your stuTup-irons, free, yet collected, so that you EUS IN URBE 177 could let him out at speed, or have him back ill a canter within half-a-dozen strides ; pat him lovingly just where the hair turns on his glossy neck like a knot in polished wood- work, and while he bends to meet the caress, and liuuuds to acknowledge it, tell me that dancing is the poetry of motion if you dare ! Should it not be the London season — and I am of opinion that the rus in urhe is more enjoyalde to both of us at the "dead time of year" than during the three fashionable months — do not, therefore, feel alarmed that you will have the ride to yourself, or that if you come to ^rief there will be nobody to pick you up ! Here you will meet some Life- Guardsman " takincr the nonsense " out of a charger he hates ; there some fair girl, trim of waist, blue of habit, and golden of chignon^ giving her favourite " a breather," ready and willing to acknowledge that she is happier thus, speeding along in her side-saddle, than floating round a ball-room to Coote and H 178 'BONES AND V Tinncy's softest strains with the best waltzer in London for a partner. But your horse has got liis hlood up, and you yourself feel that rising within, which reminds you of tlie merry youthful days, when everything in life w\as done, so to speak, at a gallop. You long to have a lark — you cannot settle down without a jump or two at least. You look wistfully at the single iron rail that guards the footway, but refrain : and herein you are wise. Nevertheless, you shall not be disappointed ; you have but to jog quietly out of the Park, through Queen's Gate, turning thereafter to your right, and within a quarter of a mile you shall find what you require. Yes, in good truth, our rus in urhe, to be the more complete, is not with- out a little huntin2;-U'round of its own. Mr. Blackman has laid out a snug enclosure, walled in on all sides and remote from observation, where man and horse may disport themselves with no more fear of being crow^ded and jostled than in Launde AYoods or Hockingham MUS IN URBE l?i) Forest during the autumnal montlis. Here you will find every description of fence in miniature, neat and new and complete, like the furniture in a doll's baby-house — a little hedge, a little ditch, a little double, and a very little gate, cunningly constructed on mechanical principles so as to let you off easily should you tamper with its top bar, the whole admirably adapted to encourage a timid horse or steady a bold one. All this is child's-play, no doubt — the merest child's-play, compared with the real thinsf. Yet there is much in the association of ideas ; and a round or two over this mimic country cannot but bring back to you the memory of the merriest, ay, and the happiest^ if not the sweetest, moments of your life. Mounted, with a good start, in a grass country, after a pack of foxhounds, there is no discord in the melody, no bitter in the cup — your keenest anxiety the soundness of the level water-meadow, your worst misgiving the strength of the farther rail, the width of 180 * BONES AND /' the second ditcli. The goddess of your worship bids your pulses leap and your blood thrill, but never makes your heart ache, and the thorns that hedge the roses of Diana can only pierce skin-deep. Wasn't it glorious, though you rode much heavier then than you do now, — wasn't it glorious, I say, to view a gallant fox going straight away from Lilburne, Loatlaud Wood, Shankton Holt, John-o'-Oaunt, or any covert you please to name that lies in the heart of a good-scenting, fair-fenced, galloping country 1 Yourself, sheltered and unseen, what keen excitement to mark his stealing, easy action, Cflidino- across the middle of the fields, nose, back, and brush carried in what geometricians call a "right" line, to lead you over whnt many people would call a " serious " one ! A chorus ringing from some twenty couple of tongues becomes suddenly mute, and the good horse beneath you trembles with delight while the hounds pour over the fence that bounds the covert, scattering like a conjuror's pack of BUS IN UUBE 181 cards, ere they converge in the form of an arrow, heads and sterns down, racing each other for a lead, and lengthening out from the sheer pace at which a burning scent enables them to drive along ! They have settled to it now. You may set to and ride without compunction or remorse. A dozen fields, as many fences, a friendly gate, and they have thrown their heads up in a lane. Half-a-score of sportsmen, one plas- tered with mud, and the huntsman now come up ; you feel conscious, though you know you are innocent, that Ac thinks you have been drivinof them ! You remark, also, that there is more red than common in the men's faces and the horses' nostrils ; both seem to be much excited and a little blown. The check, however, is not of long duration. Fortunately, the hounds have taken the matter in hand for themselves, ere the only person qualified to do so has had time, to interfere. Ravpsodij, as he calls her, puts her nose down and goes off again at score. You scramble 182 'BONUS AND I' out of the lane, post-haste, narrowly escaping a fall. Your horse has caught his wind with that timely pull. He is going as hold as a lion, as easy as a bird, as steady as a rock. You seem to have grown together, and move like one creature to that lonf^ swinirinc: stride, untirins and recrular as clock-work. A line of grass is before you, a light cast wind in your face, two years* condition 'and the best blood of Newmarket in his veins render you confident of your steed's enduring powers, while every field as he swoops over it, every fence as he throws it lightly ])ehind him, convinces you more and more of his speed, mettle, and activity. What \y\\\ you have ? The pleasures of imagination, at least, are unlimited. Shall it be two - and - twenty minutes up wind and to ground as hard as they can go ? Shall it be thirty-five without another check, crossing the best of the Vale, and indulging the good horse with never a pull till you land in the field where old Rhapsody, with flashing eyes and bristles all BUS IN URBE 183 on end, runs into her quarry, rolling bim over and herself with him, to be buried in the rush of her eager worrying followers ? Would you prefer twelve miles from point to point, accom- plished in an hour and a half, comprising ever^ variety of country, every vicissitude of the chase, and ending only when the crows are hovering and swooping over a staunch, courageous, travel-wearied fox, holding on with failing strength but all-undaunted sj^irit for the forest that another mile would reach but that he is never to see again ? You may take your choice. Holloa ! he has disappeared ! — he has taken refuge in his cupboard. Not even such a skeleton as mine can sustain the exorcism of so powerful a spell as fox-hunting ! So be it. Who-whoop ! Gone to ground ? I think we will leave him there for the present. It is better not to dio; him out ! CHAPTER TX HAUNTED A HUNDRED years ago there was scarce a deceut country house in England or Scotland that did not pride itself on two advantages — the inexhaustible resources of its cellar and the undoubted respectability of its ghost. Whether the generous contents of the one had not sometliing to do with the regular attendance of the other, I will not take upon me to decide ; but in those times hall, castle, manor- house, and even wayside inn were haunted every one. The phantoms used to be as various, too, as the figures in a pantomime. Strains of unaccountable music sometimes floated in the air. Invisible carriages rolled into courtyards at midnight, and door-bells 184 HAUNTED 185 rang loudly, pulled by unearthly visitors, who were heard but never seen. If you woke at twelve o'clock you were sure to find a noble- man in court-dress, or a lady in farthingale and high-heeled shoes, warming a pair of ringed and wasted hands at the embers of your wood -fire ; failing these, a favourite sample of the supernatural consisted of some pale woman in white garments, with her ])lack hair all over her shoulders and her throat cut from ear to ear. In one instance I remember a posting-house frequented by the spirit of an ostler with a wooden leg ; but perhaps the most blood -chilling tale of all is that which treats of an empty chamber having its floor sprinkled with flour to detect the traces of its mysterious visitant, and the dismay with which certain horror-stricken watchers saw footsteps printing themselves off, one by one, on the level spotless surface — footsteps plain and palpable, but of the Fearful Presence nothing more 1 As with houses in those, so is it with men 186 'BOXES AND I' ill these days. IMost of the people I have known in life were haunted ; so haunted, indeed, that for some tlie iniH