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Cornell University Library PR 4729.G17K9 Kriegspjel:the war game.By Francis Hinde 3 1924 013 475 870 KRIEGSPIEL Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013475870 DR. ROBERT WATSON, Primus. [From portrait painted at Rome in 1817, by Prof. Vogel von Vogelstein, and now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.] Kriegspiel : The War-Game BT FRANCIS HINDES GROOME AUTHOR OP 'two SDFrOLK FRIENDS,' 'JS OTPSY TENTS," ETC. "Bnt helpless Pieces of the Oame He plays Upon this Cheqner-board of Nights and Days; Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays. And one hy one back in the Cupboard lays." Omar EhattAu WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, LIMITED LONDON, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNIS 1896 lAU riffhts re3 139 140 KEIEGSPIEL petrated. Poachers or highway robbers it cannot have been ; and the true explanation seems to be that it was the work of a Bussian or of Russians — ^members, it may be, of a secret society. When next we meet— and I am very anxious to meet you — I will fully impart to you my reasons for this belief ; but I do not care to commit them to a letter. I may tell you, however, that I have been in close correspondence with the Eussian Embassy, and have had two personal interviews with Count Atsar koff, who was most courteous. The chief objection to this Eussian theory, which was and is still my own, was noticed, strangely enough, by myself — that the date on the coffin-plate follows the New (not the Old) style. Still that, I conceive, may have been deliberate, to throw us off the scent. " At present I am writing to you, I own it, half-selfisMy, although not on my own account. By his former mar- riage my brother-in-law has left a son and heir, Lionel, and I am his guardian. You saw him, I remember, last summer, when you stopped for a couple of days at Henningham, on your way North. He is a lad of sixteen, too old to be sent now to a public school (my advice on that point was not followed), and I am in considerable perplexity as to what will be best for him during the next two or three years before, in accordance with his father's wish, he goes up to Oxford. Until two years ago he was brought up in Germany, and it has been suggested that he should return to Gottingen. But the idea commends itself neither to me nor to him.^ To let him live on at the Priory with a couple of old servants and a very young Boman Catholic chaplain is, on the face of it, impossible, though that is his own de- sire ; and there are difficulties in the way of my having him to live with me at Henningham. I could not well ' harbour a mass-priest ' ; and above all — I may not disguise the fact — it might not be safe for the boy to remain so near his old home. So long as his father's ^N'ote hy the Author. — The idea was Discipline's, and was strongly opposed by Lionel, KEIEGSPIEL 141 murderer remains undetected, a like peril may menace the son. A private tutor's : well, there would be the ' same difficulty, if in a less degree, as to holidays. You will see the reasons then why I am proposing to let the Priory for a term of years. As the shootings are good, there will, I expect, be no difficulty. " Will you, then, give me your advice ? Or rather — to be perfectly frank — do you think it possible you could see your way to admitting Lionel into your own household at iNewark Peel ? I remember meeting a Dr. Somebody, the head-master of Eowick grammar school, when I stayed with you three years ago, and your telling me what a high repute the school has under him. And Howick, I suppose, will have its Homan Catholic chapel; for the boy is to be brought up in the ancient faith. Money, of course I know, would be no object with you ; else he will be rich, this ward of mine, 'beyond' the dreams of avarice,' as Dr. Johnson has it — that is to say, when he attains his majority, he should come into five to six thousand a year. ■ Perpend the matter, and let me know your decision. He and I have been stopping here for more than a month. I wished him away from Suffolk, and had hoped besides that the change might benefit him ; but the loss of his father, and of my dear Dorothy, has been a most grievous shock to him. How could it, indeed, be otherwise ? Still, his sorrow is almost morbid, and it is hard to get him to see one is acting for his good. With kindest regards to Mrs. Avenel and love to Marjory, I remain, looking for your answer, " Ever truly yours, '* Thomas Discipline." t " Newwrk Peel, Bowick, "Temotdtde, " June 25, 1870. "My deae Tom Discipline, " I will answer your letter at once, and briefly, for our early post goes out at twelve. Myself I would gladly accede to your request, and take in this poor little 142 KRIEGSPIEL baronet — I remember him well : what a bright, pleasant boy he seemed ! And Mrs. Avenel, I know, would be fully as glad as myself ; I shall not tell her of it, for it could only disappoint her. No, the thing were clean impossible sine permissu swperwnvm, and to obtain such permission were more impossible stilll You cannot have re3;lized my position towards the Church I left ; a Clapham household would be preferable to mine in the eyes of any good Catholic. I will write more fully to-morrow, and hope to see you when next we come south ; meanwhile, with heartfelt regret, I remain, " Most truly yours, " Mark Avenel. " P.S. — I had closed the envelope, and re-open it ten minutes later to suggest that you might, if you choose, write to Dr. Fullarton, the Catholic Bishop of Thetford, and ask his advice, tell him what you proposed, and even, if you care to, enclose this note. I know what his answer will be ; still, then I shall feel as if the refusal did not come from myself. And his advice will be sound advice. " Dr. Carson of the High School, Eowick, is one of the first scholars in Scotland ; and there is a Catholic chapel at Eowick, its priest Father Swinton. I know him by sight, and like the looks of him. "M..A." '•Julys, 1870. "Deae Sib, " I am in receipt of your letter of the 27th, and beg to thank you for your courtesy in consulting me. It is, indeed, a grave responsibility that is laid upon you, and I felt it a grave responsibility to be asked to advise you in this most diflSoult matter. But the re- sponsibility has been lifted from off my shoulders. I should myself, I confess, have strongly negatived your proposal ; but I met two days ago, at Sudbury, on the occasion of the consecration of a church, His Eminence, kRIEGSPIEti 143 Cardinal Weldon. I laid the question before him ; and he accedes, almost unreservedly, to the course you sug- gest. He wLll, however, write to you himself. I return the enclosure, and remain, " Yours faithfully, " (J* CuTHBEET, Bishop of Thetford. " The Eev. T. Discipline." CHAPTER II YOTJ change for Eowick at Eeekhopehyde, ' but " Riechwheuchheuch, Eiechwheuchheuch," as shout- ed by a Scotch porter, bears little resemblance in English ears to the written name, and Lionel moreover was drowsy after the long close journey. So it was only as the train was moving out of the little junction that he caught sight of the name on a board, and then it was too late to do anything but consult the guard at the next stoppage. There were, it appeared, two courses — one to go back to Berwick, in which case it would not be possible to arrive at Kowick that night; and the other to go on to Eavenswood, and thence make a circuit of thirty or forty miles, round by way of Ercildoun and Smailholm, to Bowick, which might thus be reached soon after ten. Lionel chose the latter course ; it was seven o'clock now, that would mean three more hours of travelling. He had had nearly twelve already, for he had come up to Town that morning from Brighton with Discipline, who had seen him into the Scotch express at King's Cross, and himself was returning to Henningham. They had both of them at heart been glad to part company ; it was something that Lionel should be glad of anything. It had been a dismal and hateful time to him, those two months at^ Brighton, with the noise, the glare, the gaiety, the crowds of indifferent strangers, the absence of the few friends still left to him, and above all, the presence of his guardian. The Eev, Thomas Discipline doubtless meant well, and he was 144 KEIEGSPIEL 145 certainly as sorry as he could be for the death of his sister ; still, his continued enjoyment of the good things of life, his posings as the " bereaved brother," his philo- sophic consolations and exhortations, and his manifest timidity (they had fairly run away from Suffolk), had irritated Lionel almost beyond all bearing. He told the boy nothing, but was for ever talking to him, inculcat- ing reticence, patience, discretion, and the certainty that, thanks to his. Discipline's, sagacity, Lionel might rest assured that his father's murderer would be brought to justice, and he himself, Lionel, would be safe thenceforth from certain darkly-suggested perils. Yet his efforts, such as they had been, had come to nought. Lionel never had looked for any better result ; nay, he could not be sorry that such should have been the case. How or when, he had no idea ; but he cherished the fixed belief that for himself was reserved the task of avenging his father. He was too young probably to undertake that task for some years yet. Still, he would not leave England (or Scotland, there was not much difference) ; it was on that account that he had com- bated the notion of his return to QiSttingen. Besides, how could he have resumed that humdrum German existence 1 He had known no better once, so it had not then seemed to him miserable ; but now, no, no ! and he really had always loathed Kalbsbraten. Herr Lichten- stein, the publisher and bookseller, he was a worthy old soul ; still, it was silly of him always to sit next Erau Lichtenstein at meals, and from time to time stroke her back, as though she were a cat, with the remark, " Ei, die gute, Hebe Mama ! " And those everlasting climbs up the Hainberg, where, the top gained, the old chap would always seat himself on the bench in front of the Gasthaus,, and spreading but both hands, exclaim : " Imposante Stadt, Herr Glemham ! " Fancy Gbttingen striking anybody as imposing I Even Professor Miiller, it would be hateful to see him again, and to think of the interval since he had seen him last. Yes, that was what it always came back to with Lionel. His childhood had not been a happy one, if it h 146 KEIEGSPIEL had not been positively unhappy. Since he could first remember, he had been brought up in that small Catholic household in that small Protestant town ; his existence had been cramped and circumscribed as that of few boys, not born princes. The Lichtensteins, good simple folk, had regarded him, indeed, as a species of princeling. They remembered his father, not many years before, what charges he had lived at, how he had kept his horses and a top-booted groom, and had quite outshone Ftirst Eduard von Kleiningen, his fellow-student at the University. So, although Lionel had got to know several German and two or three American boys at the gymnasium, he had always been rather discouraged from forming close intimacies with any of them; and this spirit of exclusiveness had been fostered by the periodical visits of old Adam, who was inclined to vapour of the greatness and splendour of the Glemhams. His inter- course, too, with Professor Miiller had not rendered the boy more boyish ; generalizations as to Lordship, Inequality, and Misanthropy have not a very human- izing influence. Then there had come that twelvemonth of unmixed happiness at Fressingham. Lionel thought now solely, or almost solely, of his father and of Dorothy; but Adam, Alison, Father Meagher, Llewellyn, and Yarrow had all contributed to his happiness. And three of these now were dead, and the three who ought to have stayed on at the Priory were, like himself, to be sent into banishment. He thought little, and troubled less, about his own immediate future; it did not matter greatly. Mr. Avenel — ^he rather liked the little he remembered of him, and he fancied also that Dorothy had liked him ; but then, again, he was his guardian's friend. That was against him ; stUl, there woald be plenty of time to determine whether he should like or should not like him. Anyhow, he must do his duty, must strive to be what his father and Dorothy would have wished him to be — an " English gentleman." Poor little baronet ! There were people in the carriage with him during most of the journey. One was a bright, pretty girl of KRIEGSPIEL 147 twenty, on her way to Edinburgh, whom he left when he changed out of the " Flying Scotsman " at Berwick. His opposite neighbour, she pointed out to him York Minster and Durham Cathedi-al, and tried her best to talk to himTT-about Scotland, about her brothers, about this, that, and the other. But the boy had a stiff, reserved manner, that had grown on him painfully during the past two months ; it was partly shyness, but more a desire to be left with his own thoughts. Those thoughts were a singular medley of rebellion and fortitude, religion and despair, regret and (no, not hope, but) desire for revenge. He was quite alone after leaving Ravenswood. It was growing dusk, and the brilliant sunshine of the early' morning had given place to a fine drizzle ; still it was light enough yet to make out the general features of the landscape. He was in Scotland now, the country he bad so often talked about with his father and with Adam. They, and Dorothy also of course, were to have come there some day, and visited Dunnottar and Inverugie, the ancient strongholds of the Keiths, and Traquair, the home of old Lady Glemham and Alison, and, perhaps too, Adam's birthplace, Eskadale. And here he found himself alone in Scotland, though Adam and Alison might be presently following him — what a sin to turn those two away from Fressingham, however "handsomely pensioned." Ah well, in six years' time he would be his own master ; and then he would alter that, if not too late. Scotland was not the least like what Lionel had expected. There were no mountains and no floods — only gentle, well-planted hills and little brooks, that were smaller, if more rapid, than the Ken or even the Leine. At heart, though he would not have owned to himself that he cared about anything so trivial, Lionel felt, disappointed. If he was to leave Fressingham, he would have wished to leave it for a scene that should be wholly new to him; and the Scotland of his fancy, though he might have known better, had been a region of deer-forests (real forests these were to him), whose 148 KEIEGSPIEL mountaineers should all speak Gaelic, and all wear kilts. But that big hill yonder in fronti the triple-peaked one, was better ; and this water beside the line now, this dim, broad river, why this must be surely — ^must be the — the and trying to think what, Lionel dropped off fast asleep, "Kowick, sir; we've landed you safe at last, any- how " it was the guard's voice woke him, and on the platform behind the guard was a civil, florid-looking station-master, who, as Lionel got out sleepily, explained to him that Mr. Avenel had been down to meet him by the 7.30, had taken his luggage, which had duly arrived by that train, and had sent again to meet the 9.10; that he would come by this route had not occurred to them. "But you'U take a machine, sir," he said, "it's under two miles to the New-Wark, though it seems a bit longer, being so uphill." Uphill, indeed, it is, for B,owick, which Lionel was to get to know so well, lies in a punch-bowl hollow beside the Allan ; and Newark Peel — or the New-Wark, as it is locally called — stands high above it on a hillside. An ancient place, that figures frequently in Border annals, Ilowick at the beginning of the century was little more than a village, its few thatched cottages clustered round the great ruined abbey. The abbey remains still, the glory of the place ; but the cottages have been swept away, to make room for huge cloth- mills, for brand-new lines of operatives' houses, and for ^ick-and-span churches of countless denominations; whilst the upper hillsides are dotted with villas of the well-to-do manufacturers. So the town has climbed, and is climbing still, out of its hollow; the highest houses stand two or three hundred feet above the river- bed. Up, up, the fly mounted slowly, until through the right-hand window Lionel could see the lights twinkling beneath him ; up, up, until the last gas-lamp was left behind, and the road, now fringed with dark fir-trees, emerged on the open upland. For nearly a mile they KEIEGSPIEL 149 had followed it, and then Btiuck into a side-road with a rather rapid descent, when suddenly the driver pulled up at a gateway, and getting down,^ opened the door. "I was thinkin'," he said, "ye, wouldna mind walking up the drive, seeing ye've got no hoxes, and it's awfu' dark under thae trees. And the fare '11 be four shillings. Thank ye, sir, and good-night to you. And ye canna miss it, if ye just keep straight on." But that was just what it was difficult to do, for the drive, though a short one, winds, and it was pitch dark beneath the trees, especially to eyes freshly dazzled by the carriage-lamps. So that Lionel, wholly ignorant of his bearings, first blundered into a bush on the left, and then against a tree-trunk on the right, and next, regaining the middle of the road, and groping along it with his arms outstretched on each side, collided violently with something, somebody, who was coming from the opposite direction. " I beg your par " " SlK^drava ! " and " Steady, Carson ! "-r-the three voices all spoke together; and Lionel, thinking he recognized the last, said — "Mr. Avenel?" "Yes," came the answer, "and who may you be that know me 1 " "I'm Glemham, Lionel Glemham; and I beg yow pardon — " this last to the third invisible interlocutor, whom he had all but knocked over. " Glemham, why, my boy, how ever did you get here ? We'd given you up for to-night. You have never walked all the way up from Eowick ? Carson, this is your new ahrnimis, whom you were to have met at dinner. You'll have to turn back with us now ; here, Lionel, take my arm." "Well, only for a minute," Dr. Carson replied very deliberately, "though even then I shall have to sit down again, to avert the ill-omen. But I will risk it. It's as well you came down to the gate with me, Avenel, else there might have been assault and battery. You'll be a big chap, I'm thinking," he added to Lionel, " I was very near down." 150 KRIEGSPIEL " Come in," said Avenel, opening the hall-door; "come in, both of you, out of the darkness, and then I can introduce you formally. Dr. Carson, your future head- master, Lionel ; and Sir Lionel Glemham, Carson, belike your future dux." Mark Avenel was a noticeable man, with a splendid presence, for he stood six feet two inches high, and with the face of a demigod, or, better, of a great tragedian. It could change as few faces, lighting up of a sudden from its statuesque calm, at some fancy of his own, or at some saying of another; occasioilally, too, it could darken, with sadness or scornful anger. There was a touch of indecision about his mouth and chin, which had been there always, and a look of doubt sometimes in his bright grey eyes, which should have been foreign to them ; else one would have recognized in him a born commander of men — as it is, there are few such commanders. But his chief charm was in his voice, melodious, resonant. One who once heard him nearly twenty years before this said: "I never realized until now what was meant by the vox huinana." Dr. Carson, on the other hand, was a little man, with big bushy eyebrows and a kindly, humorous, sorrowful face. Thirty years before, after a brilliant career at Glasgow and Oxford, he had been engaged to a cousin, who had gone out to India ; but she died on the home- ward voyage, and was buried at sea. Ever since he had been writing songs, Latin and English, to her memory, and setting them to music, for he was some- thing of a composer as well as a finished scholar. So he consoled himself, and also, said gossip, with a cup now and then of wine. To-night he had certainly tasted of Avenel's burgundy; hence the deliberation of his speech, and hence too his precipitancy to set forth again, as soon as, to ward off the "freit," he had sat down for an instant on one of the hall-chairs. "No, no," he insisted to Avenel, " you shall trust me this time to the gate; this time I will meet with no stumbling-block. Facilis descensus — the road down to Rowick is easy. Truly, I will not have it." KRlfiGSflfit l5l " And yet you e'en must," Avenel answered, " for, having seen Glemham in, I am bound now to see you off. That is, if go you will : I wanted you to stop the night, and I ofEered to send you home. But wait one second. Adelaide," he said, opening a door, " here is Lionel Glemham arrived, fairly famished, I expect. Come and see to his wants, while I walk down with Dr. Carson to the road." "Coming," cried a pleasant voice from within. "I was sure I heard talking, but I was fast asleep." And there ran into the hall a little woman, very pretty, and prettily dressed. The Hon. Mrs. Avenel was well over thirty, but seemed hardly half her age; she was so quick and bright and delicious. "Something very French about her," was said of her sometimes by women who knew little of Prance, and nothing whatever of Ireland, to which country her type, if a rare one, is wholly peculiar. " A deuced nice little woman " was a truer and commoner (male) verdict ; even it did scanty justice to her fascination. Fagged out though he was, Lionel straightway fell captive thereto; Mr. Avenel, returning presently, found him busy over an extemporized supper, and chatting and laughing with her as though they had been old comrades. CHAPTER III SIXTEEN years before, all London had been flocking to hear the young Scottish Jesuit, Father Avenel ; there had been no preacher like him since Edward Irving, was the common consensus of Protestants. You may still read his Sermons, ^ and they are well worth reading ; but it was his heart-stirring earnestness that won on his hearers quite as much as his exquisite oratory. " That man preaches as if his Master was at his elbow," said David Hume of a Presbyterian divine ; the words had been equally true of Father Avenel. One of his hearers was the Hon. Miss Boyne, an Irish girl of nineteen, an heiress in a small way, who was a recent arrival in the world of London. Her girlhood had all been passed in a lonely barrack of a Connaught castle, with her invalid mother, and without her ne'er- do-weel father. Lord Ballynahinch, who divided his time between Piccadilly and Homburg. Her parents were both dead now, the mother (rather irrationally) for ^ief at the loss of her husband ; and the daughter had come to live with a kinswoman, old Lady Mary Delacour. The Delacours have always been Catholics, and it was in her house that Adelaide Boyne met Father Avenel ; by one account he was invited thither expressly to work her conversion. Anyhow, there can be no doubt that she set herself to convert him, and, if she did not exactly succeed, still she proved the more successful of the two. She was a wonderfully accomplished little lady, with ' Six Lenten Discowrses, 1854 ; and Vox Clamamtia, 1855. 162 KRIEGSPIEL 153 a larger stock of miscellaneous knowledge and ignorance than goes (or, at least, went then) to the equipment of a whole dozen of ordinary school-girls. She was not musical, and did not sketch, neither was she addicted to embroidery, but she could read and enjoy Homer and the Greek dramatists, and Horace she knew by heart. She possessed a smattering of Hebrew, and more than a smattering of German and Italian, whilst she spoke French like a native, though with a curious mixture of a ton de gcimiscm, caught off M. Tuvache, the Eepublican soldier, who, expelled by the Coup d'Etat, earned his bread at Boscommon as a French teacher. With him, too, she went through a course of fortification and tactics, and she had devoured and more or less assimilated nearly every work in the large but obsolescent library of BaUynahinch Castle. Theology, metaphysics, history, biography, travels, belles leitres, even heraldry^ — ^nothing came amiss to her : her knowledge was prodigious, only somewhat behind the times. For instance, about this period, she surprised a reviewer, who had taken her down to dinner, by speaking of Macaviay's Histwy as a completed work, which had powerfully influenced the French Eevolution — she meant^ the History by Mrs. Catherine Macaulay. But if something of a blue-stocking, she was nothing of a bore, the chief reason being perhaps that one never thought of her quite as a human soul, but rather as a delightful marionette. Women liked her, however, very much less than did men. " She's such a puzzle," one of them remarked ; " how a fool can manage sometimes to seem so clever, or how a clever woman could so often make such a fool of herself." " Clever," said the lady to whom this remark was confided, "myself I confess I don't see it." And there were four or five " women of letters " who detested her ; her nose was ret/roussS, their noses were extra long, so more apt to be put out of joint. That well-known philanthropist and writer on political economy, Miss Lydia Middelson, even pitied her. They first met at a brilliant gathering, whose centre Miss Middelson had looked to be, with a bishop 154 KEIEGSPIEL and a cabinet-minister for her chief satellites, both of them to be won over to her scheme of " Depauperization." Alas! the bishop deserted her shamefully, and the minister never came near her ; there they were chatting and laughing with "that silly chit of an Irish girl. Only men could be so unmanly as to draw out a poor little simpleton." It spoke much for Miss Middelson's philanthropy that she " took up " Adelaide. Yes, and then Adelaide, as we have said, met Father Avenel, and became one of his most constant hearers. She rented a front-sitting at S. Aloysius', where he preached every Sunday evening at Benediction; he could not help but. notice her bright Irish face, as she sat taking notes of his sermon. For she came to criticize, and presently sent him her criticisms, twenty reasons and more against everything, and nothing in one of them. It would be easy, he thought, and delight- ful to vanquish such an assailant. It was not easy; no, it was clean impossible. They held set disputations at Delacour Lodge, with old Lady Mary for arbiter ; she was deafish and drowsy, but her award was always in Father Avenel's favour. And rightly so, for, subtle dialectician that he was, he rent Adelaide's poor little sophistries to shreds ; only, when he fancied he had her at his feet, she would laugh in his face, and retort with an unanswerable " Well, there it is. Padre mio." It was unwise in him, it was silly of her, to persist ; else the friendship between them was as innocent as was our first parents' estate in Eden. In Eden, forsooth; in Eden took place the Fall. But though " Society papers " were non-existent then, though Truth had not yet shifted her quarters from a well-bottom to quotation-marks, there was an Evangelical organ. The Testimony, in whose columns one Friday appeared a leader, " Celibacy 1 " clever, filthy, venomous. It mentioned no names : still, " every one " knew whom it aimed at, when it mooted the question whether an action for seduction could or should lie against a celi- bate priest. In Scotland it could, it maintained; but nowhere would the injured party dream of instituting KBIEGSPIEL 155 such an action, unless, indeed, she chanced to be a Protestant. And even then there might be considera- tions of rank, of family connections, of shame, perhaps, at seeming to have made unmaidenlj overtures. And so it went on — Faugh 1 it was a beastly article. Early the next forenoon the editor of The Testvmony was seated in his profanvm,, when an officerboy brought in a card to him. The editor was an Irishman, Hogan by name, a renegade priest — no, hardly indeed a rene- gade, for he had not had the chance, but had been kicked out by his superiors, unfrocked for execrable immoralities. Thenceforth he had lived mainly by exposing "Romanist villainies," some of which were genuine — he had committed them himself. He was an unwholesome-looking creature, gross, pasty-faced, hair- less; his age might be about fifty. The card was inscribed, " The Eev. Mark Avenel, S.J." "No, no," Mr. Hogan began, "say 'Not '" " But ' Yes,' " said a voice. The owner of the card had followed on it closely; Father Avenel stood in the doorway. " Yes," he went on, and his voice was deep and stern, " I was determined to see you, sir. You are, I believe, the editor of this newspaper." He drew from his pocket a copy of The Testimony. " Ye — es," faltered Mr. Hogan, doing his best to look dignified, "yes, Mr. — ah! urn! — Avenel, I am the editor. Gibson " he whispered something to the office-boy. "No," said Avenel, who had caught the import, though not the words, of the whisper, "no, nobody else comes in till I have done with you." And turning, he locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. "Now," he resumed, "in this thing yesterday there appeared an article that was intended to blast my career — I will speak of myself alone. A copy of it reached me by the morning's post, with the article marked, as you see, and this marginal note stating that other copies have been posted to Cardinal Eookwood, to the General of the Society of Jesus, to my own provincial, and to — my mother. You hound " he strode suddenly 156 KRIEGSPIEL forward, and caught Mr. Hogan by the throat. The office-boy looked on meekly : he was small, and besides he enjoyed it. "You hound," cried Avenel, "do you own to it?" "No, no," Mr. Hogan spluttered, "I— oh 1 " Avenel released him. "Tou did not write it!" he asked. "No, no, before Gawd, sir, my dear sir, I swear I never put pen to it." "Then tell me," Avenel spoke now very quietly, "who did?" " But, my dear sir, consider — an editor's responsibility — the code of newspaper honour — the — the confidenti- ality. You will recognize the term." Mark Avenel looked at Mr. Hogan with scorn. "Tell me," he said again, "who wrote that article! Else I shall pitch you, sir, out of the window into the street ; I will clear the area, so you will not have so far to fall." Mr. Hogan eyed him, and saw that he would do it, so caved in instantly. "It was a lady," he said, "who wrote it, a well-known literary lady, and a personal friend of the Hon. Miss " " Stop," cried Avenel, " here, write the woman's name on that sheet of paper, and sign it with your own." And Mr. Hogan submissively wrote : — MISS LYDIA MIDDELSON. Signed PATEICK J. HOGAN. The outcome of this hasty and most unwise action of Avenel's was his summons to a police court. The proceedings there were very brief, but, brief though they were, they were widely reported. There was practically no defence ; and the magistrate, having read the article in !I7ie Testimony, would not permit Mr. Hogan to refer to any side issues, but confined him KRIEGSPIEL 157 strictly to the assault itself. The only other witness was the office-boy, whose evidence was to the effect that, " He collared him, he did, and shook him, and Mr. 'Ogan blubbered and Sfdd, God strike him dead, but he never wrote no sich a haiticle ; and I thought he'd ha' chucked him through the winder, but he didn't. Oh my ! " Whereupon the office-boy laughed, and the whole court with him, all except Mr. Hogan. A fine of one shilling or an hour's imprisonment would, the magistrate said, amply satisfy justice ; and Mr. Hogan departed, and set to and wrote a leader on " Jesuitry in High Places." For by the side of that magistrate had been seated a great Churchman, a frail but stately old man, who had once been a soldier. As that old man drove home in his carriage, his fine, severe features relaxed into a smile. " God forgive me," he murmured, " I was half wishing Avenel had done it. — But, oh ! Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son, that we have lost thee ! " Mark Avenel was lost, indeed, to Catholicism ; within three months he was married to Adelaide. CHAPTER IV ONE knows the feeling of going to bed, tired out, in a strange house, and of waking up the next morning. As a rule, if only one sleeps well and soundly, there are pleasant surprises in store ; things have to be pretty bad for one not to feel relieved they are not worse. Lionel's new surroundings had seemed overnight by no means so bad to him ; he had liked Mr. Avenel's voice and Mrs. Avenel's chatter and laughter, and their welcome of him had certainly been most kind. But he had been so tired, too tired to notice much more than that his bedroom was big, and his bed comfortable, and that outside there was a gentle, ceaseless murmur, which was hardly the wind, but sounded more like the hum of distant traffic. It was twelve when he dropped off to sleep with that murmur in his ears, and eleven when he awoke ; he had slept almost all round the clock. He looked at his watch, and jumped quickly out of bed ; for months he had never felt so light at heart, the causes for heaviness all seemed left far behind. The room he found himself in is semi-circular ; and in the semi-circle are three windows, large and modern, but set in a very thick wall. Lionel ran to the middle window, which faces due south ; and drawing the blind, and flinging up the sash, he let in a flood of sunlight and soft air. He looked up a narrow, richly-wooded valley, which rises and rises gently towards a line of far blue hills, and in which he could here and there catch the glitter of a stream. Beneath him, too, a hundred feet below, he could see through the thick overhanging leafage a 158 KEIEQSPIEL 159 stream — the same stream, but brown and sunless here, as it forces its way through the steep rooky gorge, and makes that ceaseless murmur, which rises to a roar in time of spate. It was a new world to Lionel, a fresh — the third — beginning to his life. He dressed, and came down to the hall, where there was a door half -open, which should, he thought, be that of the dining-room. He looked in, and found he was wrong, for this was a much smaller room, a girl's sitting- room seemingly. There were many pictures on the walls, and many books, a cottage piano, and a French window opening on a lawn. The girl herself was sitting by the window in a low wicker chair. She had a book on her lap, but she was not reading it ; she was thinking, and gazing out absently into the garden. Lionel stood in the doorway, and looked at her, for a second, or a minute, or five minutes — he could not have told you which. He was wondering what she could be thinking of, that her face should keep changing thus, like a windy hillside, swept by alternate sunshine and cloud ; and himself, he was thinking that she was quite unlike any girl he ever had seen before. And yet, and yet, she surely was like somebody, and now somebody else too, only the two were not the least like one another. — Of course, how stupid of Viim ! she was like her father and mother : this could only be the Marjory Avenel he had heard speak of. As likely as not, Lionel did not really recognize that twofold likeness till afterwards ; anyhow, it was there, and was the key to Marjory Avenel's character. She was a child then of only fourteen, but older than her years in person aKke and mind. Already she was taller than her mother ; the two might well have, passed for school-fellows, if not sisters. Hardly for sisters, in spite of that subtle resemblance, which came and went, and presently reappeared, in a look, in a tone, or in some- thing very much deeper — an underflow of fun and hope- fulness and spontaneity. The last is a hard word, that demands a gloss ; it is meant to express that her every word and action seemed to spring from herself, as roses from their rose-bush. In plainer English, though still 160 KBIEGSPIEL not in Sazon English, she was natural, unconscious, un- artificial. A commonplace quality that, it may be said. Commonplace ! why, my dear Sir or Madam, it is the very rarest of all human qualities ; you and I and our neighbour — particularly our neighbour — are everlast- ingly striving to seem something other than what we exactly are. Marjory's mother, too, had that quality, but with a difference, the difference between silver and purest gold. Rippling, sun-shot brown hair, great, grave, grey eyes that could flash into unexpected merriment, little sensi- tive nostrils, and a firm yet most delicate mouth — there t I eschewed descriptions, and am essaying the one quite impossible. Enough, that in Opie's portrait of Mary WoHstonecraft one catches something of the look of Marjory. Children and dumb animals all loved her face ; it expressed the predominant quality of her nature — her exquisite sympathy. That, but in larger measure, she had got from her father, and with it a love of poetry and beauty, and a sense of hvunour, which were foreign to the mother. On the other hand, she had little of that mother's versatility : one so rarely endowed needed not to be vaguely acquisitive. So Lionel stood and looked at Marjory, and Marjory suddenly started and saw Lionel. She sprang up, and came to him, and shook hands with him. There are few things that differ more than the way in which people shake hands. One man of my acquaintance might be otherwise likeable ; but his hand, when he gives it you, feels just like a dead fish ; you pluck yours away for fear he should leave it there. But Marjory had a good, honest, kindly little grip ; it seemed to tell Lionel that she knew his story. " I'm Marjory," she said to him ; " and Mama's in the dining-room, writing. She said they were to let you sleep-in until lunch-time. But you must be hungry and wanting your breakfast, for I always am after a long joiu-ney. I hate travelling, don't you ? and one never does care much for supper. Come along. Mama," she went on, opening a door opposite, " here is Lionel KBIEGSPIEL 161 Glemham, and he's ever so hungry. And I'll go and let cook know he's down, and then tell Father." It was singular, Marjory's use of " Mama " and " Father," the more so as her mother very often spoke of " Papa." "One moment," murmured Mrs. Avenel, going on with her writing. « There ! " she said then, laying her pen down, and rising, " that's done. And how are you, Lionel ? Bested, I hope, and with an appetite — Marjory said you were hungry, didn't she ? " " Yes, she did," answered Lionel, " only I hadn't told her so. But I am, rather." "That's right. They'll bring your breakfast in a minute. I was waiting for you. That is, this is generally my room of a morning. Mr. Avenel has, the library, because then he can smoke there ; and Marjory has her room, with Fraiilein (she's away just now for the holidays). So I take this room to write in." " Do you write much ? " Lionel asked, glancing at a great litter of papers, part print, part manuscript, on the writing-table in the bow-window. " Pretty well ; that's my morning's work. Oh I I don't mean I've written all that myself since breakfast- time, but I've gone through the whole of it. It's the proofs for the September number of the British Jewry. J-e-w-r-y," she explained, seeing Lionel looked puzzled ; " it's the monthly organ of Anglo-Israelitism." "Of Anglo-what?" "Anglo-Israelitism, you'll very soon find out what that means. I bore Mr. Avenel so dreadfully with it, he says ; he'll be quite delighted to find a deputy. And the funny thing is, he has furnished lots of the most remarkable identifications. Why, it was he pointed out that the British soldier's red uniform had been obviously foretold by the Prophet l^ahum : ' The valiant men are in Scarlet.' I forget the chapter and verse, they always go out of my head. And then there was that great puzzle about the Lia Fail." " What did he fail in! " asked LioneL " No, no, the Stone of Destiny, I mean j that's the Gaelic for it, or Hebrew, it's all the same. But the u 162 KRIEGSPIEL pmzle was what on earth the Prophet Jeremiah came to Ireland with that big stone for ; it must have astonished the natives. And it was Mr. Avenel suggested it would just be a portable altar, like what every priest takes with him when he goes on a holiday. I had three articles about that in the British Jevrry. Oh ! it's a singularly fascinating subject ; and it brings one across such extraordinary people. You never met General Bunciman ? " " No, never," said Lionel. " Well, he's a dear old man, only you never know what he'll say next. It was he that at our May meeting three years since prayed about me as ' thy servant, this Ganaanitish woman ' (I'm Irish you know), ' that she may be even as Rahab the ahem ! er 1 no I would rather say, Lord, that, she may not be as that young person.' It was. such fun. That was the very same meeting where we had • the comic song. It wasn't exactly a comic song, but Oh! here's your breakfast. Jean, you might pour out Sir Lionel's coffee ; and it's trout, I think, under that cover. ^Let me see, what was I talking of 1 Oh ! yes, about that song. It was a children's rhyme in a game which I heard once at a Sunday-school treat at Elphin, and Ganon Dormer had just been speaking about the Prophet Jeremiah and Ireland, and it came into my head, it seemed to illustrate his theory. I'm no great singer, but it goes like this ; — ' Fin M'Conl went to school. Went to school, Went to school. Fin M'CouI, he went to school. With the Prophet Jeremiah. ' It's a catchy air, isn't it? something like 'The Three JoUy Postboys.' So I sang it, and the chairman. Lord Blatherby, joined in (I believe, out of pure politeness), and then some more, till at last the whole meeting were singing it until I burst out laughing ; I could not help it. And, you know, it really proves nothing." " No," observed Lionel. He had hardly the dimmest notion what Mrs. Avenel was running on abput, but she KEIEGSPIEL 163 had paused for an instant, and a remark seemed demanded from him. " No, nothing whatever, because Jeremiah can't really have gone to school in Ireland, for he was quite an old man when he got there. I wish he hadn't brought that woman with him — the woman, you know, with the ' Hoyal Prosperous smile ' (one knows the sort of creature). I suppose she had to be there for the sake of the Prophecies ; still, she must have been dreadful. Well, Marjory, and did you tell Papa?" For Marjory had just re-entered, with a dog, a black- and-white Iceland coUey, who was fat and elderly, and had a look of ineffable silliness. " No," answered Marjory. " I think he must be out ; but I went and told your horse " [this last to Lionel], "and I think he was pleased." " My horse ! " cried Lionel, " not Ladybird. Has Ladybird come yet!" " Yes, he came last Thursday. Andrew went down, and fetched him up from the station ; and he told me ' the beastie seemed sair f orf oughten wi' the brae.' I don't wonder, I should think it would seem like the Alps to him after Suffolk." " Oh ! I am glad, I knew she was coming, but never thought she'd have got here before me. Is she all right?" "Yes, he — she, I mean — seems pretty comfortable. And she's ever so fond of sugar — did you know that ? " " Of sugar 1 no," said Lionel. " And I don't fancy she knew it either until I tried her with a lump. She Ukes bread, too, but not so much ; and I hope she'll like apples, only there are not any ripe yet. Down, Fleet. Naughty ! " This was to the dog, who was sitting up, begging. " It's seeing you eating, and you being a stranger," explained Marjory, " else he knows he is never allowed anything out of his proper meal-times. But he is such a greedy dog. The other morning he begged off a poor old beggar-man, who was eating a hunch of dry bread. He was sitting in the sunshine with his back against a 164 KRIEGSPIEL stone dyke ; and how he did grin — he was rather a jolly old man. ' I ain't got no 'ome, missy, and I ain't got a 'alfpeuny,' that's what he said to me, and he seemed quite pleased about it (I think he was English, for he was so polite). I hadn't a halfpenny, but I gave him sixpence." " My dear Marjory," said Mrs.Avenel, "I do believe you'd talk to any one." " No, it was Fleet began it, Mama ; and he gave Fleet a bit of his bread, and Fleet wouldn't look at it. But I do like beggars ; that is, if they're nice ones." " They're not very often that," observed her mother. " There was that Jewish pedlar, who was hawking red and blue pictures of the ' Sacred Heart,' and the ' Seven Dolours,' and nonsense of that sort — I mean," she put in, apologetically, to Lionel, " it was nonsense wanting to sell them to Presbyterians — he was anything but a nice man. There were two or three points I hoped he could inform me about — ' kosher ' meat, and phylacteries, and sacrificing children ; but he thought I was going to make a purchase. I couldn't understand quite what he said at last, but I know it was something dreadful, something very uncomplimentary to me and to his pictures Are you sure you'll not have any more, Lionel]" " No, nothing more, thanks," said Lionel. " And, if you please, might I go and see Ladybird 1 " "Oh yes," cried Marjory, "I'll show you the way to the stables. Come along." CHAPTER V " VTEWARK PEEL " suggests an old Border fortalice, 1.11 but, viewed from in front, the house is as common- place as any almost in the whole kingdom. It is very white and very symmetrical, with a needlessly big portico, and on each side thereof a bow- window — obviously a build- ing of the beginning of this century. Only when you have turned a corner, do you discover that to the rear of the modem mansion there is an older house, itself a good deal modernized, yet still antique, with high-pitched roof, crow-stepped gables, and pepper-box turrets. And only when you come right round to the back, do you see the original " New-Wark," which, for all its name, is as old as the days of Bruce. It is not a peel-tower proper, but a massy fragment of a great Edwardian castle, founded about 1308 by the Englishman Bernard de Winton to overawe the Borderers, and held thereafter for more than four hundred years by the Umpherstons, whose heiress and last descendant brought it into the Avenel family. Its site is a strong one, on a high and rocky peninsula that is washed on three sides by the Carol Bum. "That's your room," said Marjory, pointing out a window to Lionel, "and mine is the one above it. "We must get Father to go with us up on the roof, and then he'll point out everything to you — the Cheviots, and the Eildons, and Penielheugh, and — oh! I forget all the rest. But isn't it lovely ? " " Yes, I never saw anything like it. And I was- 165 166 KRIEGSPIEL thinking when we came out first, it looked so plain. Are these the stables 1 " "Yes, and here's Ladybird. Ladybird, I didn't know your name before, and I haven't brought you any sugar this time, but I've brought you your master." Marjory knew that Lionel would like to go into the loose-boz by himself, so she withdrew to the door, and had a chat there with the black stable-cat, who was sunning himself on the mounting-block, and who was very friendly towards Fleet. Five minutes passed perhaps, and Lionel rejoined her. "I'm afraid — " he began, and broke off suddenly. There was a sort of catch in his voice, and a twitching about his mouth. Marjory saw, and divined. "I know," she said, very gently; iind then added cheerily, " What do you say, will we go to the Pavilion \ " She led the way thither. It is a quarter of a mile ofF, along a path that leads up one side of the glen. The Pavilion itself is a very ugly summer-house, a cross between a Chinese joss-house and a Grecian temple ; but the prospect from it is exquisite, of a Killiecrankie m petto. "Sot a word had passed between them as they came along, and they sat now still silent, Lionel looking at the view, and Marjory at Lionel. At last she asked him — " And you think you'll like it ? " "Like what?" " Scotland, our place here." " Yes, rather. It's beautiful. And it's funny ; in the train yesterday I was disappointed. I thought it would have been more like Switzerland." "Have you ever been there? That's where Fraiilein comes from." " No ; but I've seen pictures of it, and I've been in Thiiringen — two summers ago with Herr Lichtenstein. That's awfully pretty, but it isn't the least like this. The trees there are aU so dark. What a lot of different sorts you have here ! Are there any fish in the river ? " "In the burn; yes, plenty of trout. Father fishes it sometimes. Do you like fishing ? " KEIEGSPIEL 167 " Yes, but I've never tried fly-fishing — only pike and perch." " Father '11 show you ; he's a splendid fisherman — the best, Andrew says, on the water. And you're fond of riding, too 1" " There's nothing I'm fonder of. You know," added Lionel, a little shamefacedly, " I hadn't seen Ladybird since And she was my father's mare. I mn glad to have her here." "Yes, I know," said Marjory, and the tone of her voice said tenfold more than her words. " I've a pony of my own, too," she went on, "Rigdum. His full name is Rigdumfunnidos, only that's rather long. He's such a dear, but he's growing quite old and fat, like Fleet here." "And do you like riding?" asked Lionel. "I love it. Father and I go long rides sometimes, for a week or ten days together. Father takes what he wants in his saddle-bags, real old-fashioned sadde-bags. He thought he was the last man in Scotland who used them, but last summer in Ettrick we met a Dr. Some- body — I forget his right name, but he was a school inspector — and he had saddle-bags too. I think they were both disappointed, because each, you know, had believed that he was the Last of the Saddle-bagmen." '■'That must be jolly; and do you go far?" " Not so far now, because of Fleet. He can't do more than ten or twelve miles a day ; can you, old man 1 I'll tell you, only don't let him see we are laughing at him ; it hurts him. It was that time in Ettrick that a lamb mistook him for its mother. He is rather like a sheep, isn't he? And this Iamb (it must have been a very siily one) followed him quite a mile. If you'd seen how he'd kept turning on it, and snarling. ' Get away, get away, I'm not your beastly mother,' that's what Father said he kept saying. Oh ! it was such fun." "Does Mrs. Avenel never go, too?" "Mama, oh no; she never did ride much, and hardly ever even drives now, except into Eowick, since that time in Yorkshire." 168 KKIEGSPIEL " What was that ! " Lionel asked. " It was years ago, when I was qmte little. Father used to go driving-tours then with Mama and me and Andrew (Andrew's our coachman). I forget the name of the place, but I know it was somewhere in Yorkshire, a very hUly town, with the hotel at the top of the hill. Father had asked a man the way to the hotel, and he told him to cross the bridge, and then take the first turn to the left. Father did so, and for a bit it seemed all right, but then the road changed to short, slippery turf, and very, very steep. He knew he could never turn, and that if we stopped for an instant we should go rolling backwards, so he kept the horses at it, up and up and up, till at last we came out on the market-place. The landlord of the hotel wouldn't believe we had come up that way (we ought, it seems, to have taken the second turn), for no one, he said, had ever ridden up there, let alone drive it. But we did." "And weren't you frightened?" "Frightened, no, I was too young; I didn't know it was dangerous. Only I was sorry for Andrew; he looked so ' gash,' so white. I thought he was taken ill. But the curious thing was that Mama didn't know either. She was talking away to Father, and admiring the sunset, and laughing at the steepness of the Yorkshire roads. But when she found out afterwards, it made her quite ill; she came home by train, and that was the end of the driving-tours." So these two children talked to one another, and there grew up, or began to grow up, between them a spirit of comradeship. No wonder Lionel should like Marjory ; he could not have helped liking her. Nor, perhaps, was it wonderful that Marjory too should like Lionel, for, as her mother would have said, she took to any one. ^nyhow, looking back afterwards, Lionel seemed to have almost loved her from the first. Presently she said, gazing big-eyed into the sunshine^- "I'm glad you're not like most of them, though I knew you wouldn't be." KRIEGSPIEL 169 "Not like what?" "Not like most boys. I was afraid you might be, when Father first talked of your coming. But then he told me everything about you, and I knew you wouldn't be. I was so sorry for you, and one couldn't be sorry for any one who was really horrid." " Are most boys horrid 1 " "In books they are always, or else they're sillies ; and some are both, like Geoffrey George." " Who's he— in a book ! " "No; he's a cousin of mine — Geoffrey George Geraldine ; he was stopping with us last September." " And didn't you like him ? " " No, I did not at all. He's just a boy, not nearly as tail as you, though I think he's a little bit older; but he tries to seem quite grown up. Asked me about my ' guvnor,' and laughed at Fleet, and I believe it was he shot the cat, though Father said it couldn't be, because he could never hit anything. And the cat had kittens at the time, which made it worse. I brought up one of them by hand, but the rest had all to be drowned. And I'm certain he couldn't ride ; that was why he said he never cared 'for a mount on another man's gee-gee.' Gee-gee ! it sounded just like his own silly name. And he smoked a cigar once here in the FavUipn, and it made him sick, and I was glad of it;" " But they're not aU Uke him, are they ? " said Lionel. " Oh no, I like most of the boys I've ever met, only I haven't met very many. And there's Alec Eutherf urd ; he's beautiful, but then he's a cripple. ' I do hope you'll like him, and be kind to him. He's at the High School, so you'll be certain to get to know him. And there's Jock Henderson ; at least, he was a boy when he took the tobacco to Portland." " What did he take it there for 1 " "That's a story of Father's rightly, but it was some- how like this. His father, Jock's father, was an awful bad man, and at last he was sent to Portland, to the convict prison at Portland, for burglary. Jock was quite little at the time, I think he was only twelve ; and 170 KBIEGSPIEL he got asking his mother (she's living- at Rowick now) about his father. Eh ! he was in jail, was he ? father wouldn't like that. And he'd have to work, would he ? father wouldn't like that either. And would he get his ' mornin' ' ^ regular t what, no whisky, and not so much as a fill.2 That set Jock thinking, and a day or two after he disappeared from Rowick. The next thing known of him is that a good few weeks later he turned up at the gate of Portland jail. How he had got there he doesn't know rightly himself, only it must have been partly by sea, for he had been to Dublin. But he had brought a screw of 'baccy for his father." "That was good," cried Lionel. " Yes, wasn't it just, but they wouldn't let him give it to his father ; it does seem so hard that, but it's against the rules to give tobacco to prisoners. They let Jock see him though, and then they sent him back by train to Rowick. Dr. Carson told Father about it, and it was Father got Jock into the royal navy, and he's an able-bodied seaman now. He was home on leave last winter to see his mother, and he came up here, and got his dinner. And I shook hands with him." So those two children talked to one another. Their talk, at least Marjory's talk, came back in after years to Lionel. ^ The morning dram, * A fill of tobacco. CHAPTER VI "/^OME into the Library, Lionel, and we'll have a \J good ' crack ' together." Mr. Arenel was the speaker, and it was on the Saturday morning, two days after Lionel's coming to Ifewark PeeL The Library is in the older part of the building, a large but not lofty room ; its walls are, or rather then were, lined with books, except for three pictures. The largest of these was a portrait in oils of a beautiful old lady; the other two were engravings of Ary Scheffer's 'St. Augustine and Monica,' and Kaulbach's ' Tannhaiiser.' At the further end of the room there is a wide bay-window, and here Mr. Avenel and Lionel now seated themselves. They of course had met often already, and had ridden together on the Friday ; but this was their first talk alone. " There are two or three things," Mr. Avenel began, "I was wanting to speak about. One is about to- morrow. Cardinal Weldon will have written, I believe, to Father Swinton, so he will be looking out for you. I just know him by sight, and he is a pleasant, kindly- looking old man. You'll find his church, St. Cuthbert's, quite easily, for it's close to the Abbey. You can ride in or walk, as you please ; or, if you like better, Mrs. Avenel generally drives into Rowick with Madge to the English service, ^nd you could go with them. Father Swinton will want you into his house very likely, and you can stop to lunch with him if he asks you." , " All right," said Lionel. He was wondering a little, but he said "all right." 171 172 KRIEGSPIEL " Yes, that was one thing j and I really don't know that there is much besides. It will be time enough to talk about the High School, when the holidays are coming to an end. Your uncle at first proposed you shouldn't come to us till August or the beginning of September ; but I thought it would be so much pleasanter for you to come and learn our ways, and get to know us and the place, before it was time to trouble about lessons. You've seen Dr. Carson already,- and you often will see him, for he's a pretty frequent visitor ; or we'U go down some day next week, and look him up. I am certain you'll like him." "Yes," said Lionel, "I liked his face. Are there many boys at the school 1 " " A great number for the size of Eowick — close on three hundred, I think. Nearly all of them day-boys, as in most Scottish schools ; but a good many board in the town on purpose to attend the High School. "When Carson came first — ^it will be twenty years since now — the school was almost non-existent, but he has worked it up splendidly. He is a scholar to his finger-tips, and if a boy will only take pains, he is sure to get on with him ; else (I rather fancy that's a failing pf his) Carson lets him too much alone. So, you'll have to work, Lionel." " I don't think I'll mind working. Only I wonder if the Latin here is like what it is in England. Like Mr. Discipline's, I mean. I've heard him once or twice say something in Latin, and I never could make head or tail of it. It wasn't like Father Meagher's Latin, or the Latin they taught me at Gottingen." "Oh! the pronunciation, you mean. You'll be all right there, for the Scottish way is just the same as the Continental, and as that of the Catholic Church. No, I can't stand the English public-school pronunciation either." "But^I mean," said Lionel, "I was wondering'' — and he paused. " Wondering what ? " " Why, something about what you said just now. I KRIEGSPIEL 173 thought from what Mr. Discipline told me, that you were a Catholic, that you had been at school with my father. But I noticed last evening that you ate flesh- meat at dinner; and you don't seem to know Father Swinton at all; and Marjory and Mrs. Avenel aren't Catholics, I know. Only just now you spoke exactly as though you were one." "Do you mean to say, Lionel, your uncle hasn't told you?" "My uncle? oh! Mr. Discipline. He told me just what I told you." " He left you to believe I was a Catholic ! " "Well, he told me you'd been at Stonyhurst, and about Cardinal Weldon writing to you, and wishing me to come here. I don't remember what he did say exactly, but I never thought anything else." " Naturally not. And yet I wrote to Tom Discipline " (Mr. Avenel was speaking now more to himself than to Lionel), " and asked him to explain things to the boy : of course I left it to his discretion exactly how much he should tell him. But this I never did dream of. Lionel " (he went on), " that at least was true. I was at Stonyhurst with your father, though I don't remember him there, for I was much older than he. But I was a Catholic." « Was ? " echoed Lionel. "Yes; and, more, a Catholic priest. And now, as you see, I am a married man, with a daughter, my little Marjory. You are too young to realize fully what that means; but supposing some one had told you your father had betrayed his flag." " I'd have said he lied," answered Lionel. " Yes, and would rightly have said so. But supposing such treachery had been only in appearance, that he never for one instant had swerved in his loyalty to that old flag, that at any moment he would have given, and still would give, his life for it joyfully. No, Lionel, you cannot understand it ; no one else will ever understand it. But do you know the story of the two rebellions, of our two Jacobite risings ? " 174 KRIEGSPIEL "Yes," answered Lionel, "I was reading a book about them last summer ; it was by a Mr. Chalmers, I think." " Do you remember, then, how each of them had its Judas — the Eev. Robert Patten one of them, and the other Murray of Broughton ? Patten was the vilest of those two hounds, for he published a vindication of his treachery. God be thanked, I have never done that. But a traitor ; no, I was no willing one. No, indeed. Look here, till five minutes ago, I was not certain how much or how little you knew. I thought your uncle, my old friend, Tom Discipline " (Avenel's voice lingered a little, sadly, on these words), " might have thought it enough to tell you I had been a Catholic, and was one no longer — in profession, I mean ; by conviction I am one still. (' Dcemones credunf, et contremiscunt.') That he wouldn't have told you so much, I never dreamed. It was foolish in him, if nothing worse, not to have told you ; of course, you were bound to learn it from Father Swinton, or from a score of others. Don't think, then, it was by any desire of mine that it was kept from you. You won't do that." " No," answered Lionel, " indeed I won't." It seemed so strange to him to have this grave, middle-aged man, whom he had already begun to admire and venerate, appealing to him, a mere boy, thus passionately. " Far, far from that. Well, since it falls to me to tell you it myself, I will tell it, briefly ; if there is any- thing you want me to explain more fully, ask. My house, like your own, has been one of soldiers and Churchmen. My father, who died when I was quite a small boy, was in the army; and so was my elder brother. I from the first was destined for the priest- hood. It was all my wish, and it was all my mother's. That was my mother " (Mr. Avenel pointed to the por- trait) ; "and that engraving from Ary Scheffer was my mother's present to me on the day I received priest's orders. I tell you I was as proud of the banner of the Cross under which I had enlisted as ever was my brother Frank of his regimental colours. And he had cause to be proud of them, for he lost his life saving KRIEGSPIEL 175 them in the Mutiny. Dying, he sent by a trooper his clearest love to our mother, and a request to me to say Masses for his soul. / never said them ; when the news of Frank's death reached England, I too had died." Mr. Avenel had risen, and was pacing backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, across the bay- window, his head slightly bowed, his hands clasped behind his back. Now he sat down again, and went on, addressing himself more directly to Lionel. " I thought to have told , you everything, but I am not certain that would be desirable. You would hardly understand it. Some day, when you are capable of understanding it, you shall hear it all. That is, if you don't — I mean, if you stay with us, Lionel. But this shall suffice for the present. It was by my fault ; by my most grievous fault, I fell ; my fault was the sin of presumption. There was never in me a taint of dis- loyalty, never one shadow of doubt. I have known men who doubted — men, some of them, whom I esteemed. One man I knew, a doctor of divinity, who began with doubting the multiplication-table, and ended with seek- ing to propagate the cult of the 'Unknowable Mrs. Harris,' its symbol X ; poor fellow, I last heard of him in an asylum. But that was not my case. No ; I was full of dreams of the grandest possibilities. I was flushed with success (for I was successful), when I was suddenly cast down, and saw myself exposed to the most odious suspicion, and not myself only, but a lady. I had no choice left me. True, I might myself have gone oiit to China or India, but I thin^ had I done so, my end would have been, not martyrdom, but suicide. So I married that lady, Mrs. Avenel, the mother of my dear child Marjory. "And then the news came of my brother's death, and I by his death became the possessor of this our old home, Newark Peel. My mother was living here, as she always had lived here since our father's death. She did not intend to be cruel, for there was in her no cruelty, but she proposed to leave; I thank God she consented to stay. But I never again saw her living. 176 KEIEGSPIEL only when she was lying quiet in her cofiSn. And then I said the first prayer I had said since that March of 1857; said it, not for myself, but for her. And I came back to live at Newark, and am living here still, most comfortably, as you see, most happily, riding, and shoot- ing sometimes, and sometimes fishing, and reading much, and writing a little, and always thinking. Always thinking when it will come, and how it will come — God's vengeance on the apostate." Lionel sat, and listened, and said nothing. Because nothing occurred to him at that moment as the right thing for him to say. In after years he was glad of this. " And five weeks ago," Mr. Avenel resumed, " came that letter from your uncle — your guardian, if you prefer it. It moved me strangely ; I hardly now know why. Yet at first I put the notion from me as impos- sible. I wrote ofE at once to say so, and re-opened my letter at the last moment to scribble a postscript : I wonder if I shall be glad or sorry I did so. Glad, I think, always, for that postscript has brought me a letter from a man I loved, a man I love still, the noblest, most Christlike man I ever knew. I fancy there can be nothing in life more sweet than for one who has betrayed a trust to find himself trusted once more : in that letter (I will show it you some day, Lionel), Car- dinal Weldon proposed to trust me once more — with you. And now I seem as though I had obtained that trust on false pretences. Yet he knew everything." "Who?" Lionel asked, as again Mr. Avenel paused. " The Cardinal. I remember well our last interview, fourteen years ago ; he was just Dr. Weldon then. He did not for an instant justify my action, but, whilst pointing out the sole alternative, flight, he did not urge it. No, he said, I was like an officer who in the old duelling days should have provoked a challenge, and to whom, wicked as duelling is, he could not have coun- selled dishonour. Yes, and he blessed me, I mind it so well, with the blessing of the dying; and we parted, never again to meet in this life — or the next. But he KBIEGSPIEL 1V7 knew everything. And therefore it was I was amazed at that great confidence ; it seemed like the beginning of a new life. But now " "Mr. Avenel," said Lionel, hurriedly, "Cardinal Weldon wished that I should come to you." "Yes ; at least, he consented you should come." "And what's troubling you is that Mr. Discipline didn't tell me i" " I meant him to tell you ; I had no doubt but that he told you." " I know. Only perhaps if he had told me, it might have set me against you. But now — I mean, I am so sorry for you. Only I wonder " " You wonder what ? " " Why, it's about Marjory. I wonder, if you believe it all still, that you let her — I mean, that she isn't a Catholic. Slie might be, mightn't she ? " "She might, yes; everything is possible. Did you ever see that picture, Lionel?" (That picture meant the one of Tannhaiiser, where, bowed to the earth, he kneels before the supreme .pontiff.) " That man had sinned somewhat as 1 have sinned, and Pope Urban is telling him that forgiveness for him is no more possible than that the dry stafiE in his hand should put forth leaves. So Tannhaiiser went forth to his death, and, as he died, the staff did blossom. It might be so even here, though I may not move therein. But that were a token to me, the one infallible token, of possible redemption." CHAPTER VIII I WROTE in my fourth chapter that Lionel had trout to his first breakfast at Newark Peel ; I might also have said that the trout were uncommonly good. A thousand other things, as good or better, might be recorded of his life there during the next three years ; but those three years alone would then more than fill an orthodox three-volume novel. And a novel all happiness would be a most unhappy production, contrary to every literary canon, and contrary even to Biblical precedent. The patriarch Job must, in spite of his patience, have been as happy a man as this earth has often seen. His trials were of brief duration, and were handsomely recompensed. For he is left the possessor of just double the live stock with which he starts; and his second family, Jemima, Kezia, Keren-happuch, and the rest, were presumably much better children than the first nameless lot, of whose piety he appears to have enter- tained grave doubts. Yet Job's trials occupy a thousand • and odd verses; twelve are sufficient to sum up his felicity. So those three years will be passed over quickly here :' how quickly they passed to Lionel ! They seemed to him afterwards like some bright, pleasant dream. And it is not the pleasant dreams one best remembers, but the nightmares. He grew much during them in mind as well as in body; he could hardly have helped so doing, for mind and body were equally well nurtured. Five ^ Note by (he Author. — The whole of this chapter may be safely skipped. 178 KEIEGSPIEL 179 days in the week he went down to Kowick High School, sometitues riding, but of tener afoot. There may be some book or other that adequately describes Scottish school- life; there is none assuredly that could stand for a description of Lionel's school-days at Rowick. For the High School there was unlike every other school of its kind in Scotland, in that promotion in it went by merit, not by age. This was a notion of Dr. Carson's, which by no means met with universal acceptance. One irate mother, a new-comer to Kowick, once called upon him to remonstrate warmly against her younger boy's being put over the head of his elder brother : "It never was so, sir, at Kennaquhair Academy." "But, my dear madam," Dr. Carson answered her, " the fault seems to me to lie chiefly with yourself, that you kept the good wine to the last. Still, I don't know that you need so greatly regret that Cockburn Secundus has rather more parts than Cockburn Primus, who is indeed a most im- partial lad. Impartial, h'm ! a very fit epithet that for Cockburn Primus. He will make a right excellent farmer, whilst of his younger brother you may make, if you choose, a minister, perhaps (but very doubtfully) as excellent." Thus it was to Lionel's credit that at the end of two years he did find himself Sajux of the High School ; but it was also, beyond all question, to his loss. There was a popular song in great vogue a few years ago, the reh-ain of which ran, " And he has never done anything since ; " that refrain was like to have been applicable to Lionel. If he was not actually lazy during his last twelvemonth at Kowick, still he did not slave at his lessons as he had slaved at them so long as there were boys ahead of him whom by dint of hard woi;k he might beat. Also he was inclined to grow " cocky," and to sigh ostentatiously for more worlds to conquer. It was natural enough. Popes, kaisers, premiers, commanders- in-chief, and lord mayors are doubtless exposed to a similar temptation ; but then they have the wisdom of years which enables them to resist it. WTiereas Lionel was young : it was lucky for him he was living with the 180 KRIEGSPIEL Avenels. It should not be easy, except for a genius constituted like Wordsworth's, to be conceited in the presence of high mountains ; and it was not easy to be conceited in the presence of Mark Avenel, or, indeed, in that of his wife. Yes, although for a boy Lionel was a very fair classical scholar, Mrs. Avenel could give him points in the matter of nice translation. She it was who devised that rendering of Gui bono I which Dr. Carson declared deserved to be written up in golden letters. The doctor was fond of setting his class qmte short phrases in Greek and Latin, the more hackneyed the better, to put into the choicest possible English ; and one of these was Cui bono ? " What's the good of it 1 " Lionel answered promptly, well pleased with his promptitude ; he was a little dashed at Dr. Carson's dry " No, not exactly, Glemham. Try, and find out this evening, and tell us to-morrow morning." So Lionel set-to that evening after dinner, and learnt that Cui bono ?, as used by the old Koman Mr. Tulkinghorn, meant, not " What's the good of it ? " but " For whose benefit was it ? " the latter rendering he submitted to Mrs. Avenel. " No, no," she said, " ' Who's the gainer?' you give that to Dr. Carson with my compliments." "Yes," the doctor assented next day, " that's good, that's very good, better than I would have done it. It took a woman's wit to hit on that." A petty episode, but it may stand for much ; may serve to illustrate how Adelaide Avenel, with scarcely a touch of the creative faculty, was yet one of the brightest of women. Still, it was from Mark Avenel that Lionel learnt, or should have learnt, everything that was best worth learning. He was one who "knew what he knew," and, whilst he did not, like some men, rest content with his knowledge, he did not, like others, pretend to know- ledge that he did not possess. He was an excellent Latinist, but his Latinity was by no means Ciceronian, for the Fathers and the Schoolmen had been his principal authors. His acquaintance with English literature was strangely limited j he would have floundered hopelessly KEIEGSPIEL 181 in an examination paper over such a question as " State what you know of Mrs. Gummidge, th^ Blessed Damozel, Parson Adams, my Uncle Toby, "Vyvien, and Mrs. Poyser" — a question, by the by, in which Marjory would have scored heavily. Almost his only belles lettres, indeed, were Shakespeare's plays and Scott's novels ; but them he knew thoroughly. Of mathematics he was profoundly ignorant, as also of natural science. His favourite studies were philosophy, history (mediaeval and modern), and politics. The first he spared Lionel, but he talked much with him on the last two topics, as they walked, rode, or drove together. What his politics were would perhaps have puzzled himself, but they were in great measure negative. He had a radical hatred of Kadicalism. " ' I can improve everything,' that's what your Hadical says," he once remarked, " and ' I,' says your Conserva- tive, ' am incapable of improvement.' The one's just as false as the other — No, the second is often true, and, besides, it is infinitely the less dangerous conviction. But it is marvellous to me how seemingly sensible men can talk as if change were necessarily identical with progress; women's fashions might cure them of that delusion. If you can make sure that you are changing for the better, by all means change : only, make sure. "Which is what your modern statesman never does. The question for him is not. Is a measure good or bad in itself, but is it good or bad for his party ? Liberalism, I grant it, has done some good things in the past. But there's the danger. For Liberalism is always attempting to excel itself, so that the more it has done in the past, the greater the risk of its doing too much in the future. But why do I say 'Liberalism'! there is no such a thing in existence. There are men who dub themselves Liberals, as there are men who dub themselves Con- servatives ; and both, being men, occasionally do right, but very much oftener do wrong. They'd do just as much right and wrong if they called themselves Blues and Greens, or Guelphs and Ghibellines. You can't tell me, Lionel, what side the Guelphs were on 1 " 182 KEIEGSPIEL "The Guelphs," said Lionel, ruminating (he just knew the name, that was all), "the Guelphs, weren't they the Liberals, and the Ghibellines were the Con- servatives ] " " Fiddle-de-dee I those nicknames were not yet in- vented.. No; the Guelphs were on the side of the Guelphs, and the Ghibellines were on the side of the Ghibellines. And their end was that of the Kilkenny cats. There is nothing nobler in all English history than the way in which, at the coming of the Spanish Armada, the persecuted Catholics fought side by side with the Protestants. There was every motive then for the bitterest party-spirit, but party-spirit vanished in face of the common peril. Or, rather, party-spirit had hardly yet come into existence in England. It and E:adicalism had their birth, I confess it with shame, in Scotland here. Some day I should like to write a book on ' The Makers of Radicalism.' There would be George Buchanan first, the atheist who posed as a B.ef ormer, who toadied on Queen Mary while she was in power, and when she was fallen vilely slandered her. Then there was Father Parsons — a Jesuit, yes ; but the Exeter Hall incarnation of our — of the order. And there would be Shaftesbury, Dryden's Achitophel, and Benjamin Frank- lin, that pattern for our youth (I would restore to his Autobiography the expurgated passages), and Jean Jacques Kousseau, and the drunkard Paine, and Godwin, who turned a dishonest penny .by publishing his dead wife's letters to his predecessor. ' These are thy Gods, O Israel.' " Another time Mr. Avenel fell to discoursing on Noblesse oblige. " Is it nothing," he asked, " the pride of ancestry, of high descent ? ' No, nothing,' answers the Hadical, and will in the next breath extol the pedigree of his hunter or greyhound, although by his theory a cart-horse might win the Derby, a mongrel course better than the scion of 'Master Magrath.' Nothing ! and yet to the gentleman who receives and transmits his ancestral lands uninxpaired, we may surely concede the approval we accord to the grocer who KEIEGSPIEL 188 keeps up the business started by his grandfather. ' Established 1400' would look well indeed on a shop- front. But, more than this, gentle birth implies gentle breeding, a heritage thereof, according to Mr. Galton's new doctrine of heredity. We condemn the rich man who, himself well educated, denies a good education to his sons ; and therein we concede them that privilege of birth. Of course, it were well if every man Jack of our nation could enjoy the best education possible, if little Hodge could proceed from Eton to Christ Church, or from Eowick High School to Edinburgh University. But that, may not be, as this world is constituted. If all our Border hills could be levelled, the arable area certainly would be greater. Only the thing is impossible ; the hills and the valleys are for aye. And in some ways it is just as well, for the dweller in the flat plain has no grand prospects ; there are no heights for him to scale. StUl," Ke went on, "if there is a just pride of ancestry, there oftentimes should be a shame. ' FacUis desceiisus Averni' — the smooth slope that leads to perdition — is not seldom suggested by vaunts about high descent. Why, I heard a man once brag that his grandfather or great-grandfather had, as a nobleman, been hanged for murder with a silken cord." "There was one of the Glemhams," said Lionel, "a Sir Charles Glemham, who drowned his wife. But he wasn't hanged for it, and it was two hundred years ago." " I am glad of that — not, I mean, that he escaped the gallows, but that it was so long ago. In five or six generations the taint may well have died out. Was not that noble patriot, Lord William Kussell, the grandson of a poisoness t Perhaps, if a son knows that his father was a brave and honourable man, it is safer for him to rest satisfied with that knowledge, and not trouble about his grandfather. You have that knowledge, Lionel, and so, thank God, have Ij nay, I even believe we both might go further back — you'd have to stop short, though, of that murderer. But when I find a man running down pride of birth — ^just pride of birth, I mean— -I either 184 KRIEGSPIEL conclude that his parents were a bad lot, or else I admire his tenderness for his own offspring's susceptibilities. I remember Carson's telling me of a poor little heathen of an Edinburgh street-arab, who, on first hearing the story of the Crucifixion, and learning that it had happened eighteen hundred years before, remarked : ' It's an awfu' shame raking up an auld story sae lang after.' His own grandfather, it came out, had been hanged for house-breaking." This chapter set out with strivings after brevity; and, lo! it has done little more than record two fragments of the thousand and one discourses that Mr. Avenel held with Lionel. The space, if it was to be wasted, might at least have been devoted to descriptions of scenery, fiora, meteorology, etc., of the Borderland, to unquoted quotations from E.edpath and Black, and to a hotchpotch of Jamieson and Sir Walter. Tor what is the use of laying one's scene in Scotland, if one is going to ignore things Scotch? Yet, ^.fter all, , those two discourses were not without their influence on Lionel. CHAPTER VIII AND what meanwhile of Marjory? Well, during these three years she grew from a child to a maid, and became a convert to Catholicism. The conversion was nobody's doing, but came, as it were, of itself. Her mother, the second winter of Lionel's residence at Newark Peel, was kept to the house for three or four months by illness ; so Marjory and Lionel used to drive by themselves every Sunday into Rowick, she to attend the EngUsh church there, and he St. Cuthbert's. St. Cuthbert's is quite near the Abbey Hotel, where the carriage always put up; but St. Aidan's, the English church, is almost a mile away. One Sunday; then, a wet, windy day of thaw, Marjory suggested to Lionel that she might accompany him. She had long had a curiosity to do so, and here seemed a fair excuse. " No," said Lionel, " I'm not sure they'd like it." "Who?" Marjory asked, "Mama? oh! I don't think she'd really mind much ; and Father, you know, is quite irreligious." " He's not," said Lionel. "He usedn't to be, perhaps, but he is now, for he never goes anywhere." Lionel stuck to his guns, however, aiid saw Marjory safe to St. Aidan's, returning there afterwards to pick her Up in the brougham. But at lunch she re-opened the subject. "Mama," she said, "it was such horrible walking this morning up that wet, slippery Vennel ; and I wanted Lionel to let me go with him to chapel. I told him I 185 186 KRIEGSPIEL didn't believe you'd object much, because I've often heard you say that St. Aidan's is not a bit better than a mass-house." " Better," replied Mrs. Avenel, " a great deal worse, for Ritualism is just the shadow of a shade, Giant Pope's false teeth, and a very poor set they are. Mr. Sydserf was High enough in all conscience ; but the fresh man, the 'Very Rev. the Dean,' is positively mountainous. Ultramontane. (That was meant for a joke, but it didn't go properly off.)" " Oh ! that's the Dean, is it ? " Mr. Avenel said, laugh- ing. " I was in the Bank the other day talking with old Lorimer, when I saw the queerest little manikin coming down the High Street, the most shovelly, aprony, gaitery figure conceivable. 'Who's that?' I asked, and Lorimer (he's very Scotch, you know) answered, ' That, oh ! it's just a puir silly body that ca's himself the Dean o' Rowick.' What's his name, Adelaide ? " " Balmerino-Smith — he is very particular about the ' Balmerino,' and hints at a connection with the Elphin'- stones. He called here one day, but you were out, or I let him suppose you were. He is most anxious to meet you, regrets he never sees you with me at St. Aidan's, and actually asked, did I think you would be willing to aid a hai-d-worked brother priest now and then with a sermon f Would you, Mark? His church really is something like a Romanist chapel, with a cross and candles and flowers; and once last October he tried incense, only it wouldn't go right, and old Mrs. Cum- bernauld objected, said she should give up her sittings. But you see you'd feel almost at home, and you could preach your old sermons, because Mr. Smith did so once. I mean he preached one of your sermons : I recognized it instantly." "I can't fancy you preaching, Father," remarked Marjory. " I wonder if you ever preached about ' juoys '." " About what, Madge?" "Joys — 'juoys' the Dean calls it. He preached on KEIEGSPIEL 187. them this morning : ' And there is yet another iuoy, my brethren, and that is the juoy of St. Juoseph.' And the little choir-boys all had new white woollen comforters, Lady Baxendine's Christmas gift." "Rather a Pentecostal one," Mrs. Avenel observed sotto voce. "And the Dying Duck," Marjory went on, "was more dying and duck-like than usual." "Who on earth is the Dying Duck, Madge!*' Mr. Avenel inquired. "It's Marmaduke Baxendine, Lady Baxendine's son. He's rather deficient ; at least, he couldn't get into the militia, hut he is supposed to be very musical. So he plays the harmonium, in a surplice, and always tries to wear a rapt expression. He told Mama so once, when he was apologizing for having lost his place in the anthem. Oh yes, it's rather amusing sometimes; but I did want to go with Lionel this morning. And I might have, mightn't I, Mama?" Mrs. Avenel stole a strange, quick, wistful look at her husband, which Lionel intercepted, and which set him wondering (he was for ever wondering, that boy). He did not see Mr. Avenel's face, but she must have read something in it, for, in a different voice from that in which she had been speaking, she said, " Yes, Marjory dear, you may go with Lionel next Sunday, if you wish it." So Marjory went a week after, and was mightily delighted. "I did like it, Father," she said, "it all seemed so real and so reverend. Why, there was an old woman banged two people's heads together." " Banged their heads together, Madge 1 To test their reality? " " No, it was a young man and woman, the young man, I think, out of Turnbull the draper's. They had just come to laugh, I suppose, for they kept on giggling and sniggering and whispering — whispering quite loud.. And this old woman (she was a nice old woman, in a clean white mutch) was sitting behind them ; and first she 188 KEIEGSPIEL nudged them, and then she prodded them, and then — it was when the people all were bowing down, and the little bell went tinkle, tinkle ! — I couldn't see what they'd done, but there was a bang you could hear all over the church, and they got up, and went out hurriedly. He did look so sheepish, and she might toss her head — yes. I like Father Swinton, too; he takes such quanti- ties of snuff." " Reverently, Madge, I hope." "Yes, quite; and I enjoyed his sermon so, it was not the least bit like a sermon. There's no pulpit, you know, and he stood up by the altar, and seemed just to talk to the people. I know he talked me out of five shillings, and I was meaning only to give one. It was for some society or other, I forget what, but something for the poor." "St. Vincent de Paul, possibly." " Yes, that was it, and I believe I can tell you exactly how he finished ; he was preaching about the cup of cold water, you know. 'The day will come,' he said, 'when, if so you choose it. He wiU say that to you. And you'll be for asking Him, " When was that, Lord 1 I don't remember ever giving you a cup of cold water." And He will answer, " It was that time, on Sunday, the 5th of January 1873, when you were sitting in St. Cuthbert's Church at Kowick in Roxburghshire, and were thinking of giving only sixpence to the collection, but changed your minds and gave half-arcrown instead." In the name of the Father and of tlue Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' Such a funny, quick little voice he said that last in, and the sermon was ended." Marjory chattered on and on, but at last she had finished, and departed in quest of Lionel. Then Mrs. Avenel, who had been sitting over the fire, came and stood by her husband. "Mark," she said, simply " Mark," and stroked his hair, a way she had sometimes. He took her by the wrist, and drew her down beside him ; and a long while they sat there in silence, looking out into the twilight. CHAPTER IX " T E nez de Cleopatre, s'il eust estd plus court, toute la 1 1 face de la terre auroit change." — Pascal. ' Just so ; and if Dr. John Brown had not written his exquisite essay on Minchmoor, the second half of this novel might never have happened. For it was the reading of that essay fired Marjory and Lionel with the notion of making the ascent of Minchmoor. They must have been close to it already, for Minchmoor is close to Traquair, and at Traquair old Adam and Alison had been living for nearly three years past, on a small farm which gave Adam something to do, and more to talk about. Lionel had often been over to visit the old couple, and Marjory had generally accompanied him ; and yet they had never seen Minchmoor, or at least had not known they had seen it. For, except in Turner's drawing of Traquair House, where Minchmoor and its neighbours figure as mighty pyramidal Alps, that 'buirdly,' round-topped hill is not conspicuous. Nay, when they got to Traquair, having come by the early train from Eowick to Innerleithen, both Adam and Alison would have it there was no such an eminence thereabouts. Lionel had written to Adam to announce their coming, and the old man met them at the station, and walked with them up to Mossicleuch, which stands about half-a-mile beyond Traquair House. Here a tremendous breakfast was awaiting them. " Trout, and ham and eggs, and scones and buttered toast, and marmalade and jelly ! " laughed Marjory. 189 190 KEIEGSPIEL " Oh ! Mrs. Mackenzie, if we go and eat all that, we shall never be able to get to the top of Minchmoor." " Minchmoor, Miss Avenel ? Ay, that'll be what you couldn't make out, Mackenzie, in Sir Lionel's lettef. And what, then, is Minchmoor, Miss Avenell" "Why, it's a mountain near here, a very celebrated mountain. How high is it, Lionel 1 " " I'm not quite sure," answered Lionel, who was gazing out through the window, " but it's three times as high as Arthur's Seat, near Edinburgh, so it must be a good bit over two thousand feet. It's marked in this map here" (producing one from his pocket), "but I can't make out which it is exactly, uidess it's that lumpish one opposite." " Yon one," said Alison, " no, no : that's just the Minch, the one the old drove-road goes over." "The Minch — Minchmoor; why, that'll be it, then; and isn't there a spring some way up it, the Cheese Well? " "The Cheese Well! oh! ay; I was up there once, lang syne, when I was a lassie, and I mind that fine, because you have to drop a bit of cheese or bannock into it, or a pin maybe or a penny. But you're never going up there. Master Lionel : it's an awf u' vulgar place for a young gentleman, let alone Miss Avenel." "Vulgar, Alison, how vulgar?" "Oh ! I can't say just rightly, but it's an awfu' steep brae ; ye'll never win up it." " If you could, Alison, I should think we might man- age it too. What do you say, Marjory ? " " Of course we can," she answered confidently. " Do you know, Mrs. Mackenzie, I walked once more than twelve miles, from Garelochhead to Arrochar, and I wasn't the least bit tired. And this won't be anything, like that distance, will it, Lionel 1" " No, as near as I can make out, it'll be about three miles each way, so that will make only six." " And what are you going to see when you get there ? " Adam asked. " HUls," answered Madge, " the Cheviots and Eildons KEIEGSPIEL 191 a^d Smailholm and all the rest, aud the s&y and the grass and the heather, and snow perhaps, and that Cheese Well, and, I dare say, plenty besides." " Hills and sky," said Alison, " I can show you some- thing more wonderful than they. You've seen her before, the two of you, but she grows more wonderful daily, your own kinswoman, Master Lionel, the Lady Louisa Stuart. Thursday first she'll be ninety-eight (she told me so herself) ; that's within two years of a hundred. Ay, she'd be well over forty when first I mind her, and her hearing and eyesight are fully as good now as mine. There she sits in that great old ramshackle house, and whiles she spins with her wheel, and whiles with her distaff — you never saw her at that. Miss AveneL Leave the Minch alone, and we'll pay her a visit ; she'd be vexed to hear you'd been here, and not gone nigh her." " No, not to-day, Mrs. Mackenzie, unless we should get back in time. But it's funny how Father tried to dissuade us from our ' perilous ascent,' and now you. One would think there was something terrible about Minchmoor." Presently, about twelve, then, they started, Adam setting them on their way as far as the sign-post, where the drove-road strikes up the hill. It runs up straight and steep for a mile or more between stone walls, closely bordered by fir plantations ; then there is a gate, and then one emerges on the wild open moor, where low pillars of stones have been built at intervals to indicate the track in time of snow. It was a Saturday, a bright blustering day of late March ; the higher they mounted, the stronger became the wind. " It's lucky it's at our backs," said Marjory, " how it does help one along ! But it must be further than you said, Lionel, for it's past one now, and we are nothing like near the top." " Oh ! we can't be so very far. What a lot of snow there is on that big hill opposite, and here hardly any. I vote we rest a bit; I want to have a look at the map. Yes," he said presently, after they had seated themselves to 192 KRIEGSPIEL the lee of one of the pillars, " that fellow must be the Dun Eiig. And I say, Marjory." "What?" " When we're at the top, I believe we shall be quite as near Yarrow as Innerleithen. Yes ; I can't see the Gordon Arms marked, that inn, you remember, where we stopped last summer with your father when we rode to Moffat ; but I believe it must be quite close to where the drove-road comes out. Now, why shouldn't we go right on, and hire a trap there, and drive into Selkirk for the last train ? We should get back to Eowick just the same that way." " Yes, I'd like that too, but we can't. I promised Alison, you know, we'd be back ,to tea, and it would never do to disappoint her, or Adam either. I like them both so. I was amused at their different reasons for complaining of the remoteness of Mossicleuch from Ih- nerleithen — Alison because it is such a way to the chapel, and Adam because it is such a long whUe from the hotel." " But we might send them a telegram. I don't know whether there's an office in Yarrow, but from Selkirk anyhow." " No, Lionel, I'm not going to disappoint old Alison. We can come again some time later in the year." " Well, we've got to get to the top anyhow." (Lionel spoke a little aggrievedly.) " Shall we make another start t We can't be so far now from that Cheese Well." It was further than he imagined ; still, at last they got to it — a little natural basin, with a clear spring welling up in it, and half -melted snow all round. " Ugh !" Marjory shuddered. "What a wind! And I thought we might have rested again a bit, and had a scone (Alison made me take some), but it's far too cold," " I'm sure it's not so awfully cold ; I know I'm quite hot with the climb. Well, we must drop in something and wish ; else what's the good of having come at all ? " Of course Lionel got his way ; he always did get it with Marjory. She produced the scones, and they each had one, and each dropped a fragment in. KRIEGSPIEL 193 "I wished we were well down again," observed Marjory. " There now ! isn't that just like a girl, and then go and tell what you wished. If you do that, you know the wish is bound not to come true so at that rate we shall never get down at all. I know I wish I hadn't wished, because then I'd have wished that I had come up by myself, or with some other fellow. Bob Marshall would have come and been glad to. But you seemed so set on it." " So I was, Lionel, and so I am. I'm enjoying it awfully, only " "Only what?" " My left heel's hurting me so ; I think I must have raised a blister on it. I felt it first nearly an hour ago, and it's getting worse and worse." " What a nuisance ! I mean," added Lionel, relenting a little, " it is a pity, because I thought you'd have en- joyed the view so from the top. And it must be quite close now. Look here, Marjory, " "Yes, Lionel." " I was thinking a rest would be the best thing for you. That next pillar there's a good big one, and you might sit with your back to it, so as to keep the wind off, and I'd wrap you up well in my mackintosh. And I'd just go on to the top, and see if there really is anything worth seeing (I dare say not), and then come back and pick you up — you'd be quite rested by then. I'll not be long." " All right," she assented, a little piteously : three minutes later she was sitting there all by herself, and Lionel's figure was lessening in the distance. Marjory watched him as he mounted up and up, over the dead brown heather and the bleached wind-swept grass, with a patch here and there of snow ; suddenly she saw two hares get up from right under his feet, and come scurry- ing towards her. They came within twenty yards, and theD« catching sight of her, sat up, their eyes staring, their ears like a donkey's j an instant, and they were off again, to the right hand and to the left'. 194 KEIEGSPIEL " March hares," thought Marjory, " and therefore mad ; I dare say they think us the same. Father said it was silly our coming this time' of year, that if we'd wait a month or two, he would come too, and we could all three ride it together. I think I should have liked that best, only Lionel wanted so to come at once. Why ! I can't see him now j he's over the brow. I do hope he'll not be very long, for it must be getting on — yes, close on three. It will take us all our time to get back, even if this stupid foot doesn't bother me more than it has already." Eut she sat and sat, and waited and waited, and grew more and more fidgety, looking always to the point where Lionel had vanished. At last from another direction, the south, not west, she heard a faint, distant " Hoy 1 " She looked, and there on another eminence, a little lower than Minchmoor, and connected with it by a sort of " neck," stood Lionel, his figure sharply outlined against the sky. He was working his arms like a sema- phore, plainly beckoning to her to join him, " If his lordship commands," she soliloquized, " the slave of course must obey ; " and, rising, she set out to accomplish the distance between them. It could not have been half a mile, but it seemed to her six times as far, for the ascent here is steepish, and the wind now, as strong as ever, blew sideways, not from behind ; besides, she was weighted with Lionel's waterproof in addition to her own. Her foot was not quite so painful perhaps as it had been, at least not at starting ; still, she was not half up, when Lionel lost patience, and scrambled down to meet her. "Good gracious! Marjory, what an age you've Oh ! I'm sure I'm awfully sorry if your foot's hurting again, but you know I told you to put on thick stockings and soap the heels, and I'll be bound you didn't do either. But you couldn't stop there ; now, could you 1 Because I was quite right, I find, that we had best keep straight on, instead of going back. For I tried a few yards against the wind myself, and it was all / could do to manage it ; it's like swimming against a strong current. KEIEGSPIEL 195 Now you're just at the top ; don't look up until I tell you. There 1 " It is, indeed, a marvellous fair prospect that bursts on one all of a sudden from the Harelaw — Eildon's triple height to the left, and, in front, earth's most storied valley, that of Yarrow. " Yes," resumed Lionel, " I knew you wouldn't like to miss that. From Minchmoor itself you really can't see very much, because this hill blocks the view. So 1 thought I'd just follow the ridge a bit, and it's lucky I did, for do you see that ? " " That 1 " said Marjory, her eyes following the indica- tion of Lionel's finger to a grey building down the valley. " Yes, what is it 1 " " Why, can't you make it out ? — I can quite plainly, and I knew it at once. It's Newark." "Newark!" " Yes, not our Newark, of course, but Newark Castle, the Newark of Scott's Lay, where the Duchess of Mon- mouth lived. Don't you remember we picnicked there last July ? " " Oh yes ; where they butchered Montrose's Irish followers, men, women, and children. ' The wark goes bonnily on,' I remember Father telling us, that's what the grim minister said, as he plashed to and fro in their blood." " Yes ; well, you can see that's no distance off, two miles, I should say, at the very outside. And there are a lot of houses about there ; at one of them we'd be certain to be able to get a trap, and it's no way into Selkirk then. Or do you see that cliimp of trees down there, quite near, well under a mile ? I believe that's a farm, and I might try there." " But, Lionel, there was a farm, I remember, just where the drove-road struck off, where we left the Sergeant." " That, oh ! no, that's only a cottage, I'm certain, not a farm ; one wouldn't be the least likely to get a horse there ; and besides, back to there it must be four or five miles^ and that beastly wind too. No ; I'mas sorry as you 196 KRIEGSPIEL are, Marjory, to disappoint the old people, but you really must let me settle what is best for you. We'U go a little way down the hill out of the wind, and rest a bit, and then make a good start. You shall have my stick, and I'll give you a help on the other side, so we shall get along famously." It was easy talking, but it was not so easy doing, if only because Lionel himself was growing weary. It would never do, though, to let Marjory suspect this, and diu'ing the first half-mile of the descent he wore a brave assumption of light-heartedness, spoke of their chances of having time to get dinner at Selkirk, remarked on their luck in the day having kept up so well, whistled now and again, and finally dropped into absolute taci- turnity. Then it was Marjory's turn to make an effort. " I believe," she said, " that must be an enchanted castle ; the more we walk to it, the further it recedes. Something Hke that German village you told me of, where you went one hot day of harvest. And there wasn't a soul about, except a goose looked out, like Jezebel, from an upper window. And I said it must have been Mother Goose's village, and that Oh dear ! how they startled me ! " The " they " were six horses tied head and tail in a string, that had come on them noiselessly from behind round a bend in the drove-road ; the first and the fourth bore a rider. Hider No. 1 was red-headed and white- eyed, with the sort of face that suggests a pig ; his appearance was otherwise horsy, and his age might be anything between twenty and thirty. Eider No. 2, who could hardly be twenty, presented a striking contrast to his fellow, for he was swarthy and good-looking, with short, crisp black hair, a nice little moustache, dazzling teeth, and dark lustrous eyes j he also, however, was horsy, but with the look of a stud-groom, not of a stable- help. It was he who addressed himself to Marjory, as she sprang, or rather hobbled, to one side. " Ax your pardon, Miss, humbly, I'm sure, but it was Bill's fault, not mine. Why couldn't you 'a hollered out. Bill, and not go scaring people ? " KEIEGSPIEL 197 " Folks arena that easy scared in Yarrow," was Bill's grufE rejoinder. " They ain't, ain't they ? and me all of a dither riding down this side of a house. But, dear heart ! Miss, you do look beat." " Yes," Marjory was beginning, " I am rather " when Lionel interrupted with dignity — " We ascended Mmchmoor this morning from Inner- leithen, and she, this young lady, I mean, has hurt her foot, and I thought it best to descend into Yarrow, and hire a trap there, to take us into Selkirk. How far is it now to the valley t" " Don't ask me, sir, for I'm like the babe unborn. Bill, how far is it?" " Ou ! a mile," answered Bill, " or mebbe a mile and a bittock." " That horrid bittock ! " sighed Marjory. She was eying the horses, and Rider No. 2 . perceived and inter- preted the wistful glance. " There isn't one of them bosses," he said, " Miss, as I wouldn't disdain to offer a young lady ; and ne'er a side-saddle either. But, not to ofEend you, Miss, I could shift this stirrup, so, from right to left, and " (dismount- ing as he spoke) " take up the leather. Yes, that'll be your length about, I fancy. Now, Miss, just you put your foot in my hand ; that's it ; up you goes. Ah ! it's not the first time you've ridden, by a long way, I can see." And before she knew how she got there, Marjory found herself seated on her improvised side-saddle. What a relief to be delivered from that tramp of the nule and a bittock ! Her deliverer viewed her approv- ingly, and proceeded to tuck her waterproof round her for a riding-skirt. ■ " There 1 " he observed, " that's proper, fust-rate, capital. Now then, sir, what can we do for you 1 I have it. Down comes Bill, and up you goes, sir ; and. Bill, you take his boss's head, and I'll take Missy's here. There you are agen. For-wards ! " It was hardly three minutes since Marjory had been 198 KBIEGSPIEL startled by the horse's head suddenly looming over her shoulder; it was not twenty minutes before they had gained the bottom, but during that twenty minutes Marjory and her guide had conversed a good deal to- gether. " Whatever," he began, " Miss, took you up them nasty, poverty mountains ? " " We had been reading about one of them, Minch- moor, in a book, and it seemed so interesting ; and we wanted to see the view. But what took you there 1 " " Bill, Miss ; him and his short cuts. No, thank 'ee, not any more o' them for Pyramus." "Who's Pyramus V asked Marjory. "Yours to command. Miss — Mr. Pyramus Stanley, Esq., horse-dealer, violinist, and tip-top gentleman traveller." " But not really ? that isn't really your name ? " " Well, it ought to. Miss, being it's what I was christened. I never can make out what people find so comical in it. I'm sure it's as good any day as Jock or Sandy or Bob or Hector, more like dogs' names nor Christians'. But there was a chap t'other day in Edin- burgh Grassmarket, one of your would-be, prodigal monkeys, and he hears my name, and says he, ' Where's Fuzby ? ' ' Meaning who ? ' I asks him ; and ' Meaning Mrs. Pyramus,' says he; ' Pyramus and Fuzby are bound to be in partnership.' ' I'll trouble you, my man,' I says, ' to leave Mrs. Pyramus alone ; ' and I lands him one aside the head just to larn him civility. It was likely I was going to tell the likes o' him my missus's name. But for real comical names these Scotch towns beat everything. You wouldn't guess now where I'm come from to-day." " Where ? " Marjory inquired. " Bigger. What do you think o' that for a name ? " "Biggar, oh yes. I've read about that town, but I've never been thera " " Well, I bave, yesterday, to a horse-fair ; and soon as ever I seen the place, I says to Bill, ' Now, I know,' I ^ys, ' why its name had to be Bigger.' ' Why ? ' says KRIEGSPIEL 199 Bill. 'Why,' says I, 'because it couldn't possibly be Smaller.' " Marjory, wbo " took to any one," was quite interested in this young man j there was a pleasing absence of humility about him. But what nonsense his being married I "I suppose," she remarked, "you said that about your ' missus ' on purpose to puzzle him. ' Of course you are not really married." "A long sight more really. Miss, than half these Scotch people, leastwise by what they tells me. Me and Olive was married in a church, in broad daylight ; but in Scotland, seeming-ly, you can get married any- wheres, and anyhow, and any time. I don't hold with such ongoings no-how." r " There ! " Marjory cried triumphantly, " you've told me her name. What was it — Olive ? " "Ay, Olive Olivia, Miss. I don't mind telling you; no, or as I've got two ' bony barns ' either." "Two what?" " Why, that's Scotch, ain't it ? I thought you'd sure-ly understand that. But two dear blessed little children, Lord love 'em ; and their names is Mantis and Delarifa." "What extraor — I mean, what very uncommon names I They sound quite foreign. Yet you are English, aren't you? At least, you do speak with rather an English accent." "Which so I ought to, Miss," said Pyramus, seem- ingly flattered; "but no, I reckon I'm a kind of a mongSrel, not English quite, or Scotch, no, nor Irish neither, thank the dear blessed Lord." " My mother is Irish." " No, not really. Miss?" " Yes j quite really." " Ah ! but then she'll not be one of the low-classed Irish. She'll be a member of the aristocracy, one of the Abercorn family, like enough, or Lord Donegall's. Oh ! bless your heart, Miss," he went on, as Marjory smiled, " but I knows the quality when I sees 'em. Tha,t's how I come Co speak to you up yonders." 200 KRIEGSPIEL " Oh I that was it," said Marjory; " I am disappointed. I hoped it was from pure compassion, the goodness of your heart." "So it was. Miss, for I'm the best-hearted fellow a-goin', always compassionable to the quality. But " (P}rramus paused for an instant, and ga^e a shrill, curious whistle) " here we are at our place." They were down in the valley now, within fifty yards of the high-road from Selkirk to St. Mary's Loch. The turf-clad drove-track had widened into a roughish cart- way, a stone wall on either side, fringed with rowans and birch-trees. There was a gate in the left-hand wall, a little way on, but no sign of a house, except a thin column of blue smoke that rose up straight into the gathering darkness, l^ow, when one hears speak of " our place," one looks for a mansion. " Your place 1 " echoed Marjory inquiringly. Bill, at any rate, set the gate open ; and the leader, with Lionel on his back, passed through, followed by Marjory and Pyramus and the other five horses. CHAPTER X THE gate led into a meadow, rather long for its width, and traversed by a small burn. House there ■was none, sure enough, but at the lower end Marjory could make out two somethings which might have been loads of hay, with two lesser somethings beside them which might have been hay-cocks. Only one of the latter seemed aglow with internal fire; it was from it that the smoke rose upwards. As she looked a dog or two barked, and a shrill, cooey-like whistle came back in response to her guide's ; then a woman's voice called out, "Is that you, my Pyramus?" " Ay, mother," he answered, " and I'm bringing you some wisitors." The horses had meanwhile advanced, and been brought to a halt J and the loads of hay had resolved themselves into two great green caravans, the haycocks into two tents. At the mouth of the larger of these, in the light of a bright fire, stood a little brown woman of fifty; from the other emerged two very much younger women, one of them carrying a baby. There was a rapid inter- change of greetings, partly in English, but partly in what was to Marjory an unknown tongue ; during them Lionel came and helped her down. " They're Gypsies," he said, " English Gypsies. Isn't it fun? That fellow, Bill, was telling me all about them. They're not in the least like those poor wretched Tinklers we see sometimes (though he's one, I rather fancy), but real Epping Forest Gypsies, and that old 201 202 KRIEGSPIEL woman's the queen. I'm awfully glad we came on ; it's quite an adventure." "Ye-e-s," Marjory assented, somewhat dubiously, "it's quite an adventure. Only shan't we have to be getting on to Selkirk t " " Oh I that's all right. The train's safe not to leave Selkirk as early as the one from Innerleithen, so that gives us good two hours, and it won't take half-an-hour to drive to the station." " But what are we going to drive in ? " " Why, a dog-cart, their dog-cart ; they've got a capital one. Bill tells me, and a regular stud of horses. They're quite celebrated horse-dealers."' " Yes ; so he, Pyramus, told me. I like him rather ; only you remember in Cfuy Mannering " — Marjory would have said more, but the little brown woman approached them at this instant. "Young lady," she said, "and young gentleman, if you'd please to step into my tent, and rest yourselves a bit, you'll be kindly welcome as de flowers in May. It's but a poor smt of a place for de likes of you at de best, and I didn't think I'd have company calling this even- ing ; but I can make yous a nice cup o' tea, and just a bite o' som'at to go with it, whiles you's resting." It was not what she said, but the manner in which she said it ; she had the ease and distinction of a high- born lady. And little as she was and brown (" like a lintie," said Marjory afterwards), there was a grace in her movements that tallied with her voice, whilst her dress, although, plain, was good, and from her ears hung heavy gold earrings, on her fingers sparkled valuable rings. Her tent made an excellent setting for, her. About the size of an ordinary drawing-room, it was formed of thick reddish blanketing, stretched over stout curved ash-rods. The fire, in an iron brazier, stood on a hearth-stone near the entrance, and round the sides ran a divan spread with furs and bright rugs ; at the further end feather-beds, blankets, and other bedding formed a kind of dais ; and in the midst was a Turkey carpet. An old-fashioned cellaret, two large square KRIEGSPIEL 203 ■wicker-baskets, a nosegay of wild-flowers, a bunch of withered hops, some peacock-feathers, a looking-glass in a gilt frame, and a pair of resplendent carriage-lamps were all the plenishing ; but the effect was neither un- homely nor inartistic. Marjory liked it ; her doubts were instantly dissipated. " Why, it's lovely," she cried, " quite lovely," as Mrs. Stanley settled her comfortably with a good big cushion to lean against, "and so warm and cosy. Isn't it, Lionel?" " Ba-ther ! " he assented — a boy's most emphatic of expletives. Mrs. Stanley smiled, as, opening a basket, she took from it a snow-white table-cloth, and spread it on the middle of the carpet. " Dere ! " she remarked, as though to herself, "my silly child Pyramus was right for wonst." " Right about what ? " asked Marjory. " About you, my lady. De boy said you was some- bodies, and I can see he was right now." " I'm afraid we're not anybody of very great import- ance, but this is Sir Lionel Glemham " (Lionel bowed ; he could not have bowed more deferentially to a countess), " and I'm Marjory Avenel. Only what made you think we were somebody 1" "That's easy answering, my dear young lady. It's like this, you see. I'm sitting some day in my tent, as it might be now, and up comes two die-away creaturs, all scent and satins and fallals. 'Walk in, ladies,' I says to 'em, but do you think they'd set foot in a tent ? ' Oh no,' they cry, ' oh ! I couldn't, I reely couldn't. And do you acshtially live in a tint ? ' ' No, mem,' I answers her, ' I wouldn't presume for to go and call it " living," leastwise not to grand ladies like you.' But I says to my own dear self, ' Shopkeepers,' says I, ' and a precious poor kind o' shopkeepers.' iiVell, they goes off, and bad cess to 'em ; and presently up comes a gentle- man and lady, wery plainly dressed, and ' Would you permit us to come in?' he says, quite friendly-like. ' Oprtainljr, sir,' I answers, ' with the greatest o' manner- 204 KEIEGSPIEL able pleasure.' In they comes, and sits 'em down, and I make 'em a cup o' tea, as I'm making this now for you. They talks away, and they talks away, as pleasant and sociable as ever was ; and then he'll say to her, ' Julia,' or ' Clara,' or whatever her name is, ' by Job, this is jolly, this would suit you and me first-rate, hey I' And then I says to myself, ' Gentryf oik ; ' ay, and it'll be a duke and his duchess, maybe, or a prince and princess. Yes, my dear young lady, I've had ryalty in this wery identical tent, and leaning agin' that wery identical pUlar." "But you are royalty yourself," Lionel interposed. " At least, I understood from " — " Bill " he was going to say, but it sounded disrespectful in the Presence, so he substituted — " William, that you are the Queen of the Gypsies." " BM told you, did he, my gentleman? It was like Bill's big mouth. But you'd 'a knowed it without any tellin', for I'm sartain-sure I favour a queen. Now, don't I, Missy ? " " We have not met many queens," replied Marjory, who had a sort of Alice-in- Wonderland feeling, but took the situation less seriously than Lionel. " No, rU be bound you haven't," Mrs. Stanley said, laughing — she was sitting cross-legged beside the fire, on which a bright copper kettle was coming near the boil — "and me too with my best goulden crown out at the wash, how was yer to know me ? SaguL" She had been speaking thus far in a smooth, small, bird-like voice, which yet could be heard distinctly above a smart hubbub of voices from the adjoining tent, but the last word was called out sharply ; its meaning was dark to both Marjory and Lionel. " Sagul," she repeated, still louder, and this time her call brought an answer of " Coming, coming ; " and a girl darted in, and dropped down cross-legged, motionless. She was a girl of sixteen, but looked more like twenty. Her eyes, which, except on occasion, were all one saw of her, were of the first magnitude, with blues, not whites, and with brown- black, dark-lantern pupils — one moment blank and ex- KBIEGSPIEL 205 pressionless, the next positively blazing. Only when they were blank, could you see besides that she ^yas tall and lithe and strong, that she had a wealth of wavy black hair, that her face was an exquisite oval, that her teeth were even whiter than they were regular, that Of a sudden her eyes blazed again, and you were solely conscious of a beautiful wild creature. " Lord ! " she remarked, " / wouldn't like to be married." "What's de gal on about next?" Mrs. Stanley inquired. " 'Tisn't me what's on," the girl answered, "but she, with him, about " She did not finish her sentence, but nodded slightly in Marjory's direction. " I never did see such a woman ; on, morning, noon, and night. And the poor boy only just back, and been gone nigh a fortnight. If I'd a woman like that, I'd rattle her." " You let 'em be, Sagul," said Mrs. Stanley, " and help me set out de tea-things." Those were something like tea-things : Newark Peel could not boast their like. For cups and plates were of the finest china ; and the silver tea-pot, cream-jug, and sugar-basin were of a fine antique pattern (" All the same pattern, too," said Marjory afterwards). The tea was as good as the tea-service, and so were the pickled salmon, cold beef, and bread-and-butter that went with it. Lionel ate heartily, and Marjory did her best, in response to Mrs. Stanley's repeated soKcitation, "Just a dear teeny little bit more, young lady, for I'm sartain- sure you're a-needing it." During their meal there was a good deal of conversation, in the course of which they learnt that Mrs. Stanley's husband abd two sons had been absent since Monday week in Edinburgh and GlasgQW and elsewhere, buying horses, that Mr. Stanley and the younger boy had gone on to a fair at Lanark, and that Pyramus had returned with the six horses and with Bill, who, it seemed, was a kind of servant. " And speakin' o' princes,"- Mrs. Stanley remarked, " there's a prince for you." " Who, not Bill i " said Lionel. 206 KRIEGSPIEL " Ay, Prince Bill Blyth (and he is sl blithe tin), but I suppose his mother is reckoned for a real queen by these poor dear ignorant Scotch people. Our Wanselo picked him up somewheres, and brought him to de place, and he looked proper prince-like then, with his rags fair jumping for joy. You wouldn't hardly know him now for what he was then, through living with Christens." "Yes," Sagul explained, "but then Bill's the boy for his wittles. Not as we grudges 'em, Miss, but, dear heart ! it do amuse me. ' Will ■ you have any more. Bill ? ' Olive will say to him, and him had three already. ' No, mum, ah'm no carin' muckle,' says my noble Bill, but he always takes it. Cobham-like, Miss, you know, that's the greedy dog with us Gypsies. And crafty too, real Scotch. He'll sit, and harken, and harken, and never let on." There was plenty for Bill to hearken to just then, if BUI was an inmate of that other tent, where a war of words seemed to be raging. Hardly one of the words, however, was intelligible to Marjory; it was just as well possibly. "And your name?" she asked Sagul. "I suppose that's foreign too?" " What, my name, Miss, no ; Sagul, that's one o' them white sea-birds, don't you know. I can't say it's a name I'm wery partial to. Give me something romantical — Keperonia or Curlenda — or else a kind o' useful good working name, like Seusan. I'd 'a made a real fust-rate Seusan. Now, that young gentleman it's a sweet dear name he has — Lionel. It don't sound like one of this- country names, but I can't think rightly where I've heard it afore." " It isn't a very common name either," said Marjory. "I never knew any one else with it. But now that we've finished tea (we enjoyed it both so), and before we start, I wonder if you could let me have pen and ink and paper, because I ought to write a note to an old friend of ours, whom we have shamefully disappointed. I could post it at Selkirk. " " To be sure, Miss, I'll fetch you 'em out of the wagon, KEIEGSPIEL 207 without you'd like to come up and -write it there, for you'd have a table and chair then, so you'd feel more natival." " Oh, thanks ; yes. TTp in the caravan J I should like awfully to see it." Sagul lighted an oil-lamp, and led the way to the caravan. It was not so unlike a ship's cabin, with a cur- tained bunk at the further end, a bright brass stove, a corner cupboard, a hinged table, three chairs, a clock, and some photographs and gaudy-coloui'ed prints, com- fortable enough, but not to compare with the tent for picturesqueness. The cupboard yielded some primitive writing materials, and Marjory dashed off a note to Alison, Sagul sitting and watching her admiringly as she was writing. " Book-larning's a grand thing," she remarked. " I should dearly like to have you aside me. Miss, to write ' my love-letters for me to my young men." " Have you many 1 " asked Marjory. "Scores on 'em. Miss, and oh! such a handsome lot. And they're for ever a-sendin' to me, but I never answers 'em. Just a heap o' snubble-jacks, that's my name for 'em. And I'd set you to read to me, too, Miss. Now did ever you see that book 1 " And from the cupboard also Sagul produced a well-thumbed volume, a copy of, Grimm's Household Taies. " Yes," she went on, " that was give me by an old gentleman, down Gloucestershire way ; Mr. Julius his name was. I believe he's dead now (God rest his dear blessed soul !), but he was a great man for our people, and used often to come to the place ; and one day he come, and brought that book for me. And he'd read 'em out hisself to us children ; Lord ! I thinks I can hear him now. All about the Frog-princess, and ' Oh ! if I could but Shiver,' and Mr. and Mrs. Hedgehog (who'd ever believe there'd be hedgehogs put in a book 1), and that one about the iron stove, and the poor gal what had to walk over the glass mountains, and the young prince as she saved — yes, I liked that one best of all. Our Wanselo can read above a bit, and Bill is a rare 208 KBIEGSPIEL scholard, only he do put his words that funny. But I would take it kind, Miss, if you'd read me that story yourself, being you're not too weary." " Oh no, I would like to," said Marjory, " only I am sure we ought to be starting in half-an-hour. Perhaps you would speak to your brother." " All right, Miss ; I'll tell Pyramus.and he'll tell Bill. I 'spect Pyramus '11 be wishful to drive you hisself, only, mark my word, she won't let him. Oh 1 I can't abear that kind o' character." " Was that she I saw with the child when we arrived ? She looks very pleasant." " Looks, ah ! she'd look anything. And what arter all. Miss, I puts it to you, is looks ? No, Miss, give me a quiet, Christen, good-principled kind o' young piisson, and not one of her stamp. For there's two, class o' Gypsies ; and us, the better class, is high-minded, upstart, consequential people. But them North Country travel- lers, them Herons, are fair ondikelous ; Lord ! I wouldn't demean myself by talking of no such sleer." As they were leaving the caravan, Sagul paused on the top of the steps, and called, " Pyramus ; " and Pyramus answered back, "Ay." "It's the young lady, she says they ought to be starting soon." " All right, Daughter, BUI shall put the mare in, and I'U drive 'em over." " No, but you won't," said a woman's voice ; and Sagul exchanged a glance with Marjory. Mrs. Stanley meanwhile had profited by Marjory's absence to inquire of Lionel if he would like to have his fortune read, and Lionel had very properly said No, that fortune-telling was forbidden by the Church. They had held a small theological discussion on the subject, which Mrs. Stanley had wound up, somewhat d la Charles II., with " Dere, sir, I don't think de dear blessed Lord will pinch a poor piisson for just a few foolish words." Now, on Marjory's reappearance, she inquired if the prohi- bition extended also to her ; and Lionel, possibly curious, or possibly judging that Marjory as a mere neophyte KEIEGSPIEL 209 might have more latitude, allowed her to choose for herself. Yes, Marjory would greatly like to have her palm read ; but if Lionel hoped that he too was to hear the oracle, he was disappointed. For Mrs. Stanley drew Marjory to the further end of the tent, and in tones of mystery imparted to her, after she had duly crossed her hand with silver, some most remarkable revelations as to "hasty news," a "fair-haired woman of whom she was to beware " ("Not Fraiilein surely," thought Marjory), a future " v'yge across de salt ocean," and so forth, and so forth. Her skill in palmistry must have been extra- ordinary, for she looked all the while, not at Marjory's hand, but in her eyes. " Yes," she concluded, " and I can tell you who you're to marry, my dear young lady ; and it'll not be where you've been thinking, but higher, iver so much higher. And his name it begins with de 0." The prophesying ended, Marjory returned to her royal pillow, and read out the story of ' "The Iron Stove.' Sagul listened intently, as likewise did her mother, the latter uttering occasional ejaculations, such as "Ah sure ! " or " Dere now, dere was a monkey for you ! " Lionel also was listening, not to the story, however, but to renewed hostilities in Pyramus's tent, whence proceeded strange words and phrases. His face wore a puzzled look, as though he were trying to remember something : the little pucker on his brow came out stronger than usual. What was it in his look that of a sudden arrested and absorbed aU Sagul's attention, that made her say some- thing quickly to her mother, something of which Marjory could not make head or tail, but at the sound of which Lionel started 1 " Why, that is Welsh," he cried, '* yes, I'm certain now that was Welsh." "Welsh, my gentleman, what's Welsh? " asked Mrs. Stanley. " What she said just now, about the t&rno rye. I know what that means ; it means the ' young gentleman.' " "Be t6/r7u> rye I Lord bless and save us all ! however do you come for to know that? " p 210 KBIEGSPIEL "Why, I picked it up from a boy, a Welsh boy, Llewellyn Roberts, three or four years ago. I used to know a good lot, but I've almost forgotten it. Only I caught a word or two that they were saying there (I couldn't help it, you know), and I thought it sounded familiar. There was grdsni, that's 'a mare,' isn't it? and juloel, ' a dog,' — yes I was certain I knew that word, because I had a dog called Yarrow, like the stream here, and Llewellyn always used to call him julcel. You travel about Wales, then, I suppose." "Yis, my gentleman," Mrs. Stanley made answer, recovering herself with amazing quickness from a state of amazing astonishment, " we do travel Wales ; that's how we speaks de Welsh. But it seemed so cur'us-like you knowing it too, and you from Suffolk." " Marjory must have told her that," thought Lionel, who agreed, however, that it certainly was curious ; he rather liked finding himself an object of interest, and such assuredly he had of a sudden become to Mrs. Stan- ley and her daughter, Sagul. Yes, they were both sitting gazing at him strangely, absorbedly ; he had a sort of sensation as of a boy Grand Lama. " Dere now ! " Mrs. Stanley muttered, relapsing into astonishment, " and me not to know, not to see it, and him de wery spit ^ of de poor gal. Dear heart ! but I'm mazed, my gentleman, I don't know myself right what I'm saying, I'm fair mesmerized, so you'll have to excuge me. But, Sagul " (again quite recovered), " run you and tell your brother- — ^^about de dog-cart for de people." Sagul's communication about de dog-cart had a wonder- fully pacifying influence, for the strife of tongues in- stantly ceased. A minute or two later she returned, and with her came the late combatants, Pyramus and Mrs. Pyramus, the best of friends seemingly. Mrs. Pyramus was a comely enough but rather ordinary-look- ing brunette, the had a couple of children with her now, one a baby-girl whom she was nursing, and the other a tiny fox-cub of a boy, who peeped out from behind his ' Image. KRIEGSPIEL 211 mother's skirt. Husband and wife squatted down, and Sagul also ; there were the four of them, all gazing intently at Lionel. Pyramus at length broke the silence, which was becoming a trifle embarrassing. "Well!" be exclaimed, "I am jiggered; but that beats cock-fighting. You sitting there. Sir Lionel Glen- ham, Baronite, and us goin' on like two porkypines, and you knowing every blessed word as we was saying. Well ! I never." " No, not every word," replied Lionel, rather loftily, "but a word here and there." " They were cur'us words, too, some on 'em," said Pyramus. " But you see, Miss " (turning to Marjory, with sudden expansiveness), " it was like this 'ere. Me and my missus was argying a bit. ' Pyramus,' she says, ' my dear blessed Pyramus, if you drives them people to their home in Selkirk, you'll catch your death o' cold, going out of the warm tent into the night air. Let Bill do it.' ' But perliteness,' I says, ' my sweet Olive Olivia, consider perliteness.' 'Perliteness,' says she, 'be ' No, she didn't say that, in coorse, but she meant it. That's how it was." " Selkirk is not our home," explained Marjory, "we only want to get to the station there. And, Lionel, really I think we ought to be starting." J " Where does yer live, then ? " Mrs. Stanley asked. "Near Rowick," Lionel answered; "Miss Avenel's father has a place there, Newark Peel." " Rowick ? " said Pyramus, ' ' that's where the big horse fair is, isn't it, a fortnight come Tuesday 1 " " There is a Spring fair, but I couldn't say exactly when." "Yes, that's it, a good sizable town, with a lot o' mills, and a big old ruinated church, ahd the fair-ground anunst the church, and a public. The Foresters' Wel- come. Oh ! bless yer, I know Kowick ; we've been twice to that fair afore." " And you'll be there this time 1 " "Ay, sure. Westops in a nice little meadow, a ' park ' they calls it, whafr belongs to a gentleman, Mr. Peter 212 KRIEGSPIEL Dawson, a butcher I think he is. Is that you, Bill 1 have you got the mare in t " Yes, mare and dog-cart were standing in readiness, and a very smart turn-out it was. Pyramus was to drive after all, Olive raising no hint of objection ; and they made their farewells to the rest. It was in vain that Lionel tried to press a pound-note on Mrs. Stanley. " Lor' ! child," she said, " I- means young gentleman — a likely thing as I should take your money." And she looked at him kindly, wistfully. Pyramus at least bad no such scruple : he pocketed it affably, remarking, "I'm poor, my £ye, but I ain't proud." This was in Selkirk station, shortly before the departure of the train ; his parting words were, " Good- night to you. Miss, and a pleasant journey; good-night. Sir Lionel, I'll see you agin at Eowick." Seventeen days later Lionel repaired to the fair-ground, but though there were scores of dealers who might have been Bill's twin brother, and four or five swarthy, foreign-looking men who might have been cousins to Pyramus, neither Pyramus nor Bill was to be seen there. Nor in Peter Dawson's ' park,' which Lionel found by inquiry, was there sign of a Gypsy encampment. " Perhaps," Marjory suggested that evening (she had been meanwhile re-reading Guy Mawn&rvng), " Gypsies sometimes tell — well, are not always quite dependable." "That's so like a girl," said Lionel, "just because they made rather a fuss about you at first, until they found out that I could speak Welsh, And then you didn't like it, of course." THE END OF BOOK THE SECOND BOOK III CHAPTER I r the autumn after the ascent of Minchmoor Lionel went up to Morham College, Oxford. Morham is (or rather, it may be, was) one of the smaller colleges, with a reputation for reading and rowing. Its boat always stood high on the river, and it took, for its size, more firsts than even Balliol. There had been some discus- sion whether, on the one hand, Lionel should not be entered at Christ Church, or whether, on the other, he should not stand somewhere for an open scholarship. Mr. Discipline favoured the former course, and Dr. Carson was strong for the latter ; his entering Morham as a commoner was a kind of compromise. It is not my purpose to teU much of his life there. (The reader, if she has not been a student at either 'Varsity, may here pause and consult Yerdamt Green — it will show her admirably what Lionel's life was not like. Fendennis, Tom Brovm, Ramenshoe, and Mr. Parker's excellent Handbook vaa,y thereafter be drawn on ad.Ubitum.) He read very diligently, after his first term was over, so that in his second year he took a first-class in Moderations — a rare distinction for a wealthy com- moner. He rowed even more diligently, so that in that same year he first stroked his college torpid, and later pulled three in its eight. Withal he learned to smoke (at the cost of much suffering), and to play whist very badly, and billiards, if possible, worse. All this might be achieved by any one, but for Lionel it was reserved to become a Demosthenes, and to take up 215 216 KEIEGSPIEL the study of Comparative Philology. He really out a great figure at the Union. For, thanks to his cosmo- politan up-bringing, he was less shy and self-conscious than most lads of his age ; his voice, besides, was good, his memory better. The latter enabled him to reproduce almost verbatim whole " screeds " of Mark Avenel and of Professor Miiller (now Professor von Miiller) ; with him he had renewed his old acquaintance during his first long vacation, when, with the Professor for bear- ward, he travelled in France and Italy. " I am content to call myself an Englishman," was always Lionel's dignified response to the question, what were his politics; and it delighted the younger dons, ever on the outlook for the least spark of originality, to find a lad who dared liken to Tweedledum him of Hughenden, and to Tweedledee him of Hawarden. This was in Lionel's greatest efEort, his speech on the question, "Is England ripe for a Democracy i" in which speech he moved an amendment, " For ripe read rotten enough," and which he wound up with a quotation from a little- known Suffolk poet — " "Would we but teach the People, from whom power Grows slowly up into the Sovereign Flower, By aU just dealing with them, head and heart Wisely, religiously to do their part, And heart and hand, whene'er the hour may come. Answering Brute-foroe, that will not yet be dumb, — Lest, like some mighty ship that rides the sea, Old England, one list refuge of the Free, Should, while all Europe thunders with the waves Of war, which shall be Tyrants, Czars, or Slaves, Suddenly, with sails set and timbers true, Go down, betray'd by a degenerate crew." It was a tremendous oration that ; why 1 it was com- mented on, perhaps somewhat sarcastically, in Eeynold^ Lionel's taking up the study of Comparative Philology was due to his tutor, the Dean of Morham College. The Rev. Jacob Bryant, as a grandson or great-grand- son of his illustrious namesake, the author of the Analysis of Ancient Mythology, tyas entitled to hold KBIEGSPIEL 217 views } but that he could hold all the views he did was astonishing, for he was very diminutive. He was a man well abreast with the times ; the times, indeed, were apt to lag behind him. Consequently he was heretical. One of his heresies, which will always be damnable, was the possibility of a mixed language ; another, which has since become tolerably orthodox, was his locating the cradle of the Aryans in Europe, not Asia. " The idea was mine, solely mine," he said once to Lionel, who had been breakfasting with him; " but, in a moment of unwise confidence, I imparted it to Latham, and he coolly appropriated it, and gave it forth to the world as his own. What has been the result ? Why, that the idea has been flouted and scouted, where it has not been wholly ignored. Nor, indeed, without reason, for as I pointed out in the Jowrnalof Classical Fhilology — you remember my articles there, I presume. Sir Lionel ? " "No," Lionel answered; "I'm ashamed to say I missed them. When did they appear t " " They extended over the years 1866-67." " I fear I didn't know then even of the existence of the Journal. You know I was brought up in Germany." " But my articles created a prodigious sensation in Germany ; they elicited from Professor Wehmuth an answer of a thousand and seven closely-printed and closely-reasoned pages. I will lend you Wehmuth's work ; it well deserves study, though it requires to be studied with caution. You shall take it to your rooms, and a copy also of the Journal with my five articles, and — ^yes, Latham's Elements of Compatrative Philology. For worthless as the work is, it is by the very weakness of its arguments that the strength of my claims is best vindicated." The above is the merest dry bones of a conversation, or monologue, that lasted fully an hour ; Lionel was not sorry to escape with the four volumes, which he carefully deposited in his window-seat. Sitting in that window- seat, one commands the dons' garden with its antique 218 KEIEGSPIEL terrace ; and Lionel was sitting in it on a May Sunday morning a fortnight afterwards, when a French window in the dons' buildings opened, and out stepped the Dean and a lady : hand-in-hand, like the Babes in the Wood, they strolled up and down the terrace. It was a pretty sight, or would have been, if he had not been such a pygniy, and she such a giantess. "Hullo ! " thought Lionel, " that will be the fiancee, and she'll have been breakfasting with him. I wonder how it would have struck ' Gulielmo de Morham cseteris- que benefactoribus nostris.' But he's a good little chap. I was quite ashamed of myseK on Friday when he asked what I thought of his articles. Hang it! I'U have a shot at them now." " There," he said to himself at the end of ten minutes, " I can teU him now I've examined them, and that they seem unanswerable. Only fancy answering them, like old thick-sides " (glancing at Wehmuth's exterior). " And what was this one ? — Latham, oh yes, that's the fellow he's demolishing. I'll just glance into him, and tell old ' Safety Matches ' that it seemed perfect rot." So Lionel dipped into Latham's Ehments, and the Sortes PMlologiccB, if such there be, led him to open at pp. 664-5, which treat of the Celtic tongues, beginning with Welsh. " Welsh, now that's odd. Here have I been knowing Welsh all these years to speak, and have never read one single word of it. Let's verify my knowledge. HiUoa ! <^ffy^' ' * horse,' and ci, ' a dog,' and dafad, ' a sheep,' — why ! there isn't a single word right ; it ought to be grei, And jiikel, and hohro." Sure enough in the whole vocabulary there was not one word that seemed familiar to Lionel. Perplexed, he , turned over the pages, and came on the section deahng with French (that seemed right enough), and German (that was right, too), and Latin (ditto), Greek (ditto), Persian (he couldn't say as to Persian), Chinese (nor as to Chinese), Gypsy — Potztausend ! what, pdni, 'water,' fewi, 'ear,' 6aZ,,'hair,' eap, 'snake,' Oig, 'fire' (" yog Llewellyn used to call it ") ; why, he knew every KRIEGSPIEL 219 single word. Yes, and he had heard Gypsies speaking it, that time tip in Yarrow, and yet had still thought it was Welsh. . . . But if it wasn't Welsh, how had Llewellyn come to speak itt . . . And if it was Gypsy, why had he called it Welsh ? . . . And what — Lionel lost himself in a maze of speculation. His only con- clusion was that, like M. Jourdain, he had been speaking he knew not what. That was how Lionel took up the study of Comparative Philology : he never pursued it far. CHAPTER II MY last chapter muddled up the true course of events, for Lionel's philological discovery was made in May, his speech not till November — November 9 — 1 875. It was a fortnight after the latter date that he dined at Trinity with a Scotch friend. Maxwell, who after hall gave a small wine. The talk there had turned, as usual, on various topics, when a new-comer asked — " Have any of you fellows been at the encampment 1 " "Encampment, no, what's that? " " A big Gypsy encampment in a field out beyond the station. They've been there two or three days. Clifford and I were in seeing them this afternoon." " But what's there to see ? " " Some deuced pretty girls for one thing ; and you can have your fortune told if you're so minded. And the tents and caravans are uncommonly picturesque." "I expect," said another man, "it will be the same lot I saw last winter at Bath. They gave balls, though." " And so do these ; they're going to have one to- morrow in a big marquee. What do you say, shall we make up a party and go ? " " All right," agreed two or three, but Lionel was not of their number ; he would certainly visit the encamp- ment, but he would rather do so alone. As he walked back that night to Morham, just the least bit winy- cigarrified, he saw a huge poster on a hoarding in Cardinal Lane, and by the light of a street-lamp, de- 220 KEIEGSPIEL 221 ciphered, "Monstre Bohemian Carnival . . . Epping Forest Gypsies . . . King and Queen . . . String Or- chestra . . . National Dances . . . Admission, one shilling." " I wonder," he thought, " if it can be the same lot. Anyhow, I'll try and solve that puzzle." The gate at Morham was shut. The porter said, as he opened it, "There's a telegram come for you, Sir Lionel ; it's in the lodge." Lionel did not undo the envelope till he had got to his rooms, and lighted the candles. The telegram ran : " Handed in at the G.P.O., London, 6.30 p.m. Received h^re at 6.55 p.m. Sir Lionel Glemham, Morham Col- lege, Oxford. Full information about 20 October, 1869, on west side Waterloo Bridge, London, to-morrow, Thursday, at noon." " October 20, 1869 — the day my father was murdered. At last ! " thought Lionel : he had not an instant's hesitation what he should do. He fished out a Brad- shaw, and found there was a train up to Town at 10 a.m. ; he wrote a note for his scout, " Breakfast sharp at 8," and left it lying conspicuously on his table. Then he undressed, went to bed, and, in less time than he had himself expected, was sleeping soundly. It was stni dark when he woke — woke with a vivid conscious- ness of last night's summons, and with an almost joyous sense that he was about to accomplish a long-deferred duty. It was strange how that summons had reached him in the very nick of time, little more than a month after his attaining his majority, so that he was free to act for himself. On the other hand, how easily it might have come too late, supposing, as Mr. Discipline had counselled, he had left Oxford that summer, and gone into the army without bothering about a degree. That he should obey tfie summons he never doubted for a single second, less because he had a supreme belief in himself than because it seemed plainly a call to his supreme duty. He no more weighed the pros and cons of his intended action than he would have weighed the pros and cons of jumping into the river to rescue a drowning child ; he no more thought of asking advice 222 KEIEGSPIEL as to the wisdom of his decision than in such a case he would have asked the advice of a bystander. But what his action would be, or whither his decision tended, he knew as little as might an old mariner, setting out for the Unknown Goa). He lay and thought and thought, and could not think for thinking. By and by he heard his scout moving about in the sitting-room ; he got up at once, and dressed. He breakfasted well, as he had elept soundly, for he wanted to be fit for the task before him ; then, having seen that chapel was out, he went across to the Dean's. " Good-morning, Sir Lionel," said Mr. Bryant ; " you are earlier than I expected." " Earlier, sir 1 " " Yes ; I presume you received my message ? " " No, sir ; I came to ask for an exeat to go up to Town to-day." " Up to Town 1 No bad news, I trust 1 " " No, sir, not bad news — good." And there was a flash in Lionel's eyes and a ring in his voice that betokened gladness. "You'd be back to hall?" " I quite intend to." "Very good, very good. Sir Lionel. I need not trouble you then about the message. It was merely that there is to be some kind of an entertainment, a Gypsy ball, held this afternoon, which is likely, it, seems, to be a perfect Saturnalia, so the Senior Proctor sent round that I am either to gate the college, or else put our members on their honour not to go near the place. That will do; you may go. You will find it cold travelling." When Lionel reached Paddington, he at once took a hansom, telling the driver, " "Waterloo Bridge." " Yesser ; main line or loop ? " "No, Waterloo Bridge, I said. Stop just before you come to it. And look sharp." So the man drove fast, and when he pulled up before Somerset House there was some little time yet to noon. Lionel got out and paid him, and at once walked over KRIEGSPIEL 223 the bridge, keeping to the west side. Having reached the end, he turned and walked back again ; but still it was not quite twelve. He had a fixed idea that the moment it struck the hour, some one (he knew not who) would accost him, and he would hear from him what he should hear. It was annoying then when twelve struck, and nothing happened ; when the clock-hands at "Westminster crept slowly on to five, ten, fifteen minutes past the hour, and still nothing came. "It certainly said the west side," thought Lionel, who had been pacing backwards and forwards. " I will sit down conspicuously in that middle recess and watch the passers-by." He sat for five minutes — it seemed more like fifty — then got up, and resumed his pacing to and fro. There was a story running vaguely in his brain of some- body, the pedlar of somewhere, who was sent by a dream on a wild-goose chase to London Bridge. Or was it a wild-goose chase ? No, he remembered now, it led to his finding a big pot of gold in his orchard. Besides, who was there, that would hoax him, who that knew of October 20 ? No, it was nonsense to fancy that ; some- thing triMsf come of it. So again he paced backwards and forwards, and sometimes again sat down; and slowly, tediously as the minutes dragged by, the hands pointed to 1.20, when suddenly a telegraph-boy. ran up to him. " Sir Lionel Glenham ? " he asked breathlessly. " Yes," Lionel cried, and snatching the orange enve- lope from his hand, tore it open and read the telegram : "Handed in at Oxford, 11.40 a.m. , Received here, 12.15 p.m. Sir Lionel Glemham, Waterloo Bridge. Not bridge, but at Gypsy encampment." Lionel looked up ; the boy was gone. He ran along the bridge and into the Strand, and hailed the first hansom passing. " Paddington," he cried, " and half-a- sovereign if I catch it." He said this, not knowing when there would be a train ; and on reaching the station he found there was none till past two, and that but a slow one. Well, he would get a mouthful to eat 224 KKIEGSPIEL in the interval ; but though it was almost six hours since he had breakfasted, he could not eat now; he could do nothing but chafe at the delay, it seemed interminable. Even when he was ofE at last in the train, he still chafed at its slowness ; he would never be in time. By the by, was there any time mentioned J he pulled out the telegram and re-read it more carefully. "It was a long while being delivered," he thought, and then suddenly it struck him : " How on earth did the boy know me 1 and what a direction, ' Waterloo Bridge ! ' Still, he did know me, and he did deliver it, for here it is. But I can't make it out. . . . 'At Gypsy encamp- ment.' How lucky it is old Bryant didn't put me on my honour ! [Even if he had, I half beheve I should have gone." And so on, and so on ; one can think a great deal in two hours. It was dark when Lionel got back to Oxford. He did not know the whereabouts of the encampment more precisely than " in a field beyond the station," but he was hardly out in the road when he heard the sound of not very distant music. That must be it : he followed the direction of the sound, and was just turning down a side lane when a gruff voice accosted him — " Beg yer pardon, sir, but you won't get in that way, for the proctor's at the gate a^turnin' the gennelmen back. But if you're minded, I could smuggle you in easy the back way by a punt." The speaker seemed to take it for granted that Lionel would follow him, and led the way down the "Witney road, across the bridge that spans one of the many branches of the Thames; then he struck through a gate into a grass-field, and followed the stream up for a couple of hundred yards. "Mat," he called cautiously; and a punt stole over from the opposite bank. "It's another of the young gennelmen wanting to cross to the encampment. Thank you kindly, sir " (as Lionel handed him a florin), "and I think, Mat, I'll come over too. When you've had enough of it, sii-, you'll find Mat here." KRIEGSPIEL 225 The illuminated marquee was some' fifty yards from the stream ; around it were seven or eight tents and as many or more caravans. There did not seem many people about ; what there were were all collected in the marquee, and it was not more than half full when Lionel looked in at the entrance. A "national dance" was going on ; it had much the appearance of an ordinary quadrille, except that it was performed with extra- ordinary flourishes. The performers were all Gypsies — the women in silks and satins, every colour of the rain- bow, and the men in shiny black, with big shapeless white gloves. Lionel glanced from one face to the other, expecting to recognize some of his Yarrow ac- quaintances, but one and all were unfamiliar to him. At the further end of the marquee were a couple of chairs : on one of them sat a middle-aged Gypsy woman, who would have made two of Mrs. Stanley, and on the other a portly, over-dressed dame with a gold pmce-hieg — in her Lionel recognized the real head of St. Salvator's College. The other spectators were almost all towns- people, with a very thin sprinkling of gownsmen, the latter striving not to look uneasy. The orchestra was " Slap's," and " Slap " himself was of course conducting, but with none of his wonted fire; in fact the whole proceedings were as flat as ditch-water, anything less like a Saturnalia were scarcely conceivable. Lionel gazed awhile listlessly ; his expectations suddenly had dropped to zero. Those Gypsies in Yarrow had strongly appealed to him ; but these, and the flaring marquee, and the familiar street-band, and the gaping shop-boys and shop-girls — ^pshaw ! it was a hoax, and the sooner he got out of this the better. As he turned to depart, Lionel noticed that some of the Gypsies were departing too. One great caravan was moving off lumberingly towards the gate, and a Gypsy was putting the horse into a smaller one, beside which Lionel found himself. Lionel glanced at the man ; the light fell on tn'Tti from the marquee, enough to show that neither was this Pyramus, but a thick-set, middle- aged man, with a face which was meant to be jovial, 226 KEIEGSPIEL but which just now was wearing a troubled, uneasy expression. A man with his back to Lionel was speaking with him. "It's all right, I tell you," Lionel heard him say, " it's perfectly " when at that instant there was a sudden cry of " The Proctor ! " The speaker broke off, and hurried to the marquee, peered in, and then, as though missing what he sought, turned away and looked round : in an instant his eye fell on Lionel. Lionel saw in him only a shabby, elderly man, with a beard and a furry cap ; but he seemed to know Lionel, for he hastened to him where he still stood by the caravan. "Don't try the punt, sir," he said, "for there's two o' the ' bull-dogs ' there, and Mat's bolted. And there's a whole mob more at the gate, and the proctor's inside the marquee a-takin' down names. Guvnor" (this to the Gypsy, as though an idea had struck him), "couldn't you pass the young gennelman out in your carawan? he come over with me in the punt. Up you get, sir ; up you get, sir, quick." And before he well knew what he was about, certainly before the Gypsy had said yea or nay, Lionel found him- self almost shoved up the caravan-steps by the furry- capped stranger, who, he now thought, must be his late guide, and who, crying, "All right, sir, I'll see you tomorrer at the river," pulled the door to smartly, and jumped down from the foot-board. A minute later the caravan was in motion. There was much motion also in the caravan as it jolted across the uneven meadow. One heavy lurch had almost sent Lionel over, but he brought himself up by the table, and landed safe in a chair. It was pitch-dark inside there, and he would not look out through a window, but he could tell when they were ofE the grass and in the lane ; ^ two or three hundred yards now, and they would be out on the high-road. Well, it was a blessing at any rate to have got clear off, for he would not have cared to be caught there, even although he ^ TMs lane seems to have been obliterated by allotment-grounds, but the meadow itself yet remains. KRIEGSPIEL 227 bad not given his word to Mr. Bryant. What a fool he had been made of, and who on earth could have done it t He would do his utmost to trace out the sender of those two telegrams ; he would That must be the turn at the end of the lane into the high-road, and they had turned towards Witney, not Oxford. Well, it would be just as well to go a little way in that direction before he got out ; he would still be able to get back in time for hall. By Jove ! what a rate the caravan was going at ; how it rattled and jolted ! Here ! he had had quite enough of that. " Hi 1 " Lionel cried, " you might stop and let me out now." But the caravan went on even faster it seemed than before. " Confound it," thought Lionel, " he can't hear me, I suppose ; and I don't wonder, with all that racket. Where the deuce is the doorl then I can make him hear." He found the door, felt for the handle, and turned it : the door remained fast. Then, as he stood there fumbling with the door-handle, he felt stealthy fingers groping about his neck, and suddenly a thin sack was cast over him, over head and shoulders and arms. It is ill work fighting so, still he struggled and kicked out behind. But, merciful God 1 what was this — this subtle pene- trating vapour, that seemed to possess and paralyze his whole being, to plunge him down, down, into a gulf of nothingness? CHAPTER III WHEN he came to himself, Lionel found himself stiU in the Gypsy caravan, now brought to a standstill. He was lying on the outside of the bed, divested of his ulster, boots, and collar, and invested with a pair of handcufPs and a right-leg anklet, which was secured by a chain to a staple in the woodwork. His head felt heavy and swimming ; he had a sense as of waking suddenly from a nightmare; but his every faculty was quickened to intense consciousness by the sight of a man who stood watching him. This man held a lamp shining full in Lionel's eyes ; as he saw them open, he raised it and let the light fall on his own face. It was not a face one might forget easily. Cold, piercing eyes that could see; sharp, sensitive ears that could hear ; a mouth that could keep silence j and above them a vast bald brow — it was the face of a hooded cobra, not a man's, but Lionel knew it for the face of Dr. Watson. " I see," he said, as he set the lamp down on the table, " you recognize me, Sir Lionel. Yet you failed to the other evening." "When?— where?" " In your guide to that punt, to whom you gave the florin." " Punt — my guide to — you 1 Ah ! it was you, then, murdered my father." " I, no. I never murder any one myself " (he said it as he might have said he never smoked). "Besides, if you remember, I was away at the time in London." 228 KBIEGSPIEL 229 " But it is you who have trapped me here." "Yes, that I must own to. And, if you feel ahle to follow me, I should like to impress on you the difficulty of escape and the utter unlikelihood of rescue, / could not release you, even if I wished to, for your — Perun Stanley, the owner of this house on wheels, keeps the key of your chain in his pocket. Then there would be the Chubb lock and a bull-dog to reckon with, and other obstacles which I need not specify. As to a rescue — But it is rather close, don't you think, in here. I might let in a breath of fresh air." With a key attached to a bunch he unlocked the door, and flinging it open, stood awhile in the doorway. From where he lay Lionel could see his form silhouetted against the sky, in which there was a tinge of coming dawn. And as he stood thus, there came a tramp of footsteps below, and a gruff voice said — " Mornin', master, you're up betimes." " Good-morning," replied Dr. Watson. " Making your round, constable ? " " Murder I help I help ! murder ! police ! " yelled Lionel, then paused : his cries must surely have been heard. Yes, indeed, for the voice asked — " What's that ? whoever have yer got up there ? " "It's a poor lad," said Dr.. Watson, "a nephew of mine. He is down with the small-pox " (" Lies ! lies ! murder ! help ! " shrieked Lionel) " quite delirious. We are taking him to his mother near Carnarvon. Would you care to come up and look at him ? " " I, Lord love us aU I not I," the voice exclaimed, and the footsteps retreated hurriedly. Dr. Watson shut to the door, saw it was fast, and came and sat down. " As to a rescue " he began again, and again broke off, with a laugh, or rather with a sUent snarl. " No," he said, " I don't mind showing you my hand, or at least that particular card. It was not really a policeman, but your — the Perun Stanley I was speaMng of. We were merely rehearsing. Only I am half afraid now he will be set again on that gag" (Dr. 230 KRIEGSPIEL Watson glanced towards something hanging on the wall), "and I do hate talking to any one who cannot answer me. Besides, it would be so uncomfortable for yourself. Yes ; I always have thought that must have been one of the worst tortures of the Inquisition, to be tortured and not to be able to scream." Dr. Watson had an unpleasant trick of italicizing certain words and phrases in a way that branded them on his hearer's memory. " Not," he went on, " that we propose to tor- ture you, for, strange as it may seem, we are working for your advanceraent — and our own." He paused, and gazed steadfastly awhile on Lionel, as an operator, about to begin, might gaze on a subject. "No," he murmured, but the murmur was perfectly audible, " I think I will defer that." Then he pro- ceeded in his customary undertone, " Still, I may as well tell you now the means we adopted to ' trap ' you ; they wiU show you the folly of looking to be rescued. You received a telegram at Morham College last Wed- nesday evening or night, four days ago." " Four days ago ! " exclaimed Lionel. "Yes, indeed rather more than four days, for this is Monday — Monday morning. If you had had ears to hear, you might have heard the church bells from this field quite plainly yesterday. That is why we are halting, for to travel on Sunday might attract attention. . The telegram was an appointment for noon the next day on Waterloo Bridge, and you kept the appointment. You would have to ask leave of your tutor to go up to Town ?— ^yes, I counted on that. Well, then, they will have grown alarmed by your disappearance ; they will have obtained a copy of that telegram ; they will have learnt you were noticed hanging about on Waterloo Bridge. But when they cast about to trace you thence, Oxford would be the very last direction they would think of." " But the second telegram, sent from Oxford," Lionel could not help saying triumphantly. "The second telegram was never sent at all ; if you had thought, you might have seen it bore no post-office KEIEGSPIEL 231 stamp. I wrote it myself at Paddington, after I had seen you arrive by the Oxford train ; and from Padding- ton I followed you at my leisure to Waterloo Bridge. I saw you there repeatedly from the south end, where I was loitering on the east side ; and presently, when it was too late for you to catch the 1.30 train, I stopped the first telegraph-boy who was passing, pointed you out to him (your long ulster made you conspicuous), and promised him a shilling if he would run up to you, hand you my telegram, and run straight back to me. The boy did my errand very neatly. You will be thinking that they will find that boy, and that he will remember your name. I dare say they will ; I fully intended they should. He will also remember that I spoke with a strong foreign accent ; I did the same when I handed in the genuine telegram on Wednesday. And as to the contents of the second supposed telegram they will know nothing. No, the only weak points — and I fear them so little that I do not mind letting you know them — are, first, the cabman who drove you back from Water- loo Bridge ; secondly, the chance of your having been noticed at Paddington ; and, thirdly, your return ticket, delivered up duly at Oxford. I hardly think, if I were you, that I would build much on any of these. Mat 1 no, nor on Mat, for even if he observed you (it was dark, you remember), and knew you for who you are, he will be much too afraid of the authorities. It was through me that he was put up to going there with his punt, just as it was from me that the proctor received information on Wednesday about the disreput- able character of the forthcoming Gypsy Ball. I tell you ail this that you may see with what nicety our plans were laid; they have miscarried in no single particular. That, then, is pretty well everything, for you have doubtless surmised that it was your — I would say, Perun Stanley, who was lying perdu beneath that bed with my patent inhaler. So now you know fully how we have brought you here, ' here ' being upwards of a hundred miles from Oxford, and more than half- way to our destination. We shall take the road again 232 KRIEGSPIEL early after breakfast, and I think I will retire and get an hour's more sleep. You should be well rested ; not particularly hungry or-, thirsty, I imagine, from my knowledge of the action of — the ' inhaler. I wonder whether — yes, I think> ton my own refepoasibUity, I will release you from those ^handcuffs. So." And producing a kej something like the key of a railway-carriage, Dr. Watson liberated Lionel's wrists. "There," he said, "that will give you relief. And the leg-chain is long enough to allow you to move about, if you are minded. Only I would not attempt to escape, for friend Perun is masterful. Auf wiedersehen." Dr. Watson departed, leaving Lionel to his own thoughts. They were a strange medley of wonder, certainty, anger, hopelessness, but not fear. Of wonder, why this had been done ; of certainty, that somehow it was connected with his father's murder ; of anger, fierce anger at the recollection of that murder and of Dorothy's consequent death ; and of hopelessness — he could hardly have felt more hopeless if he had found himself, in an oubliette of the Bastille. The metallic, passionless monotone echoed still in his ears ; he still seemed to feel that pitiless, petrifying gaze ; and he had a presentiment of possibilities of horror, as a sailor fallen overboard in Kingston harbour might have a suspicion of sharks. But just as that sailor might resolve to keep up as long as strength lasted, so Lionel resolved to do his utmost for life and freedom. Stirred by that impulse, he sprang from off the bed ; as he did so, the chain rattled. Lionel e:samined it closely. The ring round his ankle was of steel, padded on the inside, and not unlike a dog-collar ; its hasp was padlocked to the steel chain, which, if light, was strong, and whose further end again was padlocked to the staple. It allowed him to move the whole length of the caravan, to which he now turned his attention. It was about fourteen feet long, seven broad, and six high. There were four windows. The one over the bed, and the two side ones, were shuttered on the outside ; through that in the door he could make out, fifty yards KRIEGSPIEL 233 away or more, a larger caravan and a couple of tents, before one of which some one seemed to be kindling a fire. " I wish I knewwhere I really am," thought Lionel. " It's all rot what that old villain said about its being Monday j it can't be. But it must be close on sunrise, for it was as dark as this, or darker, when I got up yesterday. By Jove ! I wonder if they'll have left me my watch." Yes, the watch was all safe in its pocket ; but when he puUed it out and looked at it, it was stopped, the hands standing at 9.30. "I must have forgotten to wind it," he thought, " unless it has got broken ; " no, when he fished out the watch-key, and wound it up, it started oS instantly. A sudden thought struck him ; if he had neglected to wind up the watch on "Wednesday night (" last night " he called it in his own inind), it would have run down on the Thursday morning, whereas he was positive it was going while he was pacing Waterloo Bridge, and afterwards in the train back to Oxford. Then plainly he must have wound it up on the Wednesday night, the last thing, as he always did, before undressing ; and if so, this could not be Friday morning, for then the watch would be stUl going — of that he felt positive. He had really then lost one day, and if one day, why not thi^ee ? In one thing at least the old man had been deceived (there was comfort in the thought) : Lionel did feel thirsty, desperately thirsty, and hungry too in a way. There was a jug on the table — it was empty; and a copper kettle on the hob of the brass stove — not a drop in it either. But opening the cupboard that fronted' the stove, Lionel found, besides a few books and some crockery, half a cold beefsteak-pudding, a cottage loaf, the heel of a cheese, some butter, and, best of all, three pint bottles of Bass ; there was even a corkscrew. " Beer to breakfast," thought Lionel, " quite like Oxford ; " and drawing a cork, he filled a big tea-cup, for there was not a tumbler. " That's good," he said to himself, " though it's rather flat ; let's try the pie now. 234 KEIEGSPIEL Well, they might have given one a knife : I hope they haven't touched mine." They had, though ; the knife was gone, which showed that his pockets had been tampered with ; but his purse was all right, with a fiver in it and three sovereigns. A fiver, yes ; but had not his been an Old Bank note, whereas this was a crisp Bank of England one ? — Lionel could not feel certain. Well, he must make shift with a fork and his fingers, it was not at all a bad pudding ; and yes, he really must try another bottle of that Bass, for he was awfully dry still. And as he ate and drank, the dim twilight grew into day, and from where he sat he could now plainly discern several figures moving about at the camp yonder — one a very tall man, and women ; yes, there were women, one of them with a bright yellow kerchief on her head. And that would be the buU-dog ; and that must be v'ry strong beer he felt so drowsy he didn't th'least mean to sleep he would get-up walk about walk about walk ab no must lie down minute just minute just Quarter of an hour later, Dr. Watson and the very tall man peeped in through the door-window : Lionel lay stretched upon the bed in a deep slumber. " It is all right," said the doctor, as he opened the door, and came in. " Yes," he continued, " two bottles, though one might have done." He went up to Lionel, drew out his watch, and examined it. " As I expected," he said to his big companion, " he has set it going again, Perun, I wonder whether he has drawn the desired inference. Anyhow, he is safe now till we get him to Arthurstone ; and I think you might relieve him of his fetter." CHAPTEE IV rwas an ample meadow, a mile perhaps in circumfer- ence, and almost encircled by a broad rapid river, which here made a horseshoe bend. Its surface was dotted by a few fine old trees and a good many ancient thorns, whilst the river-banks were densely clothed with pollard willows, rowans, and poplars. Right in the centre of it was a mound, and on the mound stood a ruined cromlech, close beside which were Lionel's caravan and one of the two tents. The other tent and the other caravan were at the entrance to the meadow, barring the narrow neck of the peninsula. Half a mile away or so, across the river, rose a little church-spire ; and all around were wooded hills or distant mountains, the latter sparkling with snow. For it was broad daylight, when this time Lionel came once more to himself. He was lying undressed in the bed ; his clothes, neatly folded and brushed, were on a chair ; a bright fire was burning in the stove ; and on the table were preparations for a meal. This time he felt refreshed, as though awaking out of honest sleep ; he had to think for a moment before he could remember where he was. In the caravan, yes ; but where, then, was the caravan ? He jumped up and looked through the windows, which were all unshuttered now, and it was only as he was looking through the fourth one that he recollected the chain, and found that he was free of it. The door (he tried it) remained locked, and though he could open down the side windows, there was an iron 236 236 KBIEGSPIEL bar across each, that rendered egress by them impossible ; be was still, then, a prisoner. Yet it should be easy to escape out of a mere wooden box like that ; Lionel thought of the escapes that he had read of from strong jails. There was Jack Sheppard, and Margaret Catch- pole the Suffolk girl, and an Italian whose name he had forgotten : what they had done he too might do, only how should he set about it? The first thing obviously was to get himself dressed, and he found to his surprise that he had been furnished with a complete change of underclothing, not half a bad fit either, as well as with a pail of water, brush and comb, sponge, etc. He had nearly finished, when the door was opened, and the very tall Gypsy came in. He was good two inches taller than Mark Avenel, and of a much larger build, the build that suggests a life- guardsman. His age would be something about forty, though he hardly looked it ; his least movement seemed to indicate vast strength. Very swarthy, of a coppery, shining complexion, he had a big, beak-Uke nose ; great, prominent, staring black eyes; and a heavy black moustache. His forehead, though fairly high, was narrow and receding ; in fact, the whole upper half of his head was disproportionately small to the lower half. He was less a man than an animE(l, if a splendid animal ; splendid, although his face had a puffed, almost bloated look that to a doctor's eye would have told of hard drinking. Anyhow, there was a swagger about him and a bumptiousness that seemed to argue perfect self- satisfaction. His dress might have been that of a swell betting-man. " Morning, Lionel," he said in a voice that was meant to be affable. " The doctor said you'd be stirring." " ' Lionel ! ' fellow, confound your impudence. Do you know who you're speaking to?" " I ought to," the Gypsy answered with a grin, " and you'll know who I am too, precious soon that." " Who the devil are you, then ? " " I oh ! I'm Perun Stanley." He said it as though he could have said much more. KRIEGSPIEL 237 " Perun Stanley. Ah ! I remember, it was you that were under the bed." " Eight you are, Lionel, it was me was under that bed the night we brought you from Oxford." " What have you brought me for ? where am I ? what day is this 1 " " This is in North Wales, Lionel, in Carnarvonshire ; and to-day's Wednesday the sixth of December." " The sixth of December ! nonsense." " All right, nonsense, if you hke it so. I don't carry a almanac, else I'd 'a showed it to you." "The sixth, why, that would mean almost a fort- night." " Ay, it'll be nigh on a fortnight now, Lionel, since we was at Oxford." " But I should be dead by n,ow ; how is it I'm living 1 " " Oh ! you've been living like a fighting-cock, eating and drinking and sleeping regular." " Stuff and nonsense ! " " All right, stuff and nonsense this time, if you like it so. Only when did you shave last ? " Lionel put his hand up to his chin. He shaved in those days only every other morning, and he remembered that he had not shaved on the Thursday, the day he went up to Town. Yet his chin, he found, was much too smooth to haive gone four or even three days with- out a touch of the razor. His face must have ex- pressed the. doubt that was in his mind, for the Gypsy went on — "Do you see? You can look for yourself in that looking-glass. Only you won't remember how you stood in front of it yesterday and shaved yourself, and me sitting here, and Dr. Watson there, a-ordering you to do it. And would you like for me to teU you how that come?" Lionel remained silent. " What, you won't speak, won't yer ? Well, I'll tell you anyhows. Do you remember them two bottles of beer you drank back yonder t'other morning 1 They were mesmerized, they was, mesmerized by Dr. Watson. So 238 KRIEGSPIEL now you've just got to do what Dr. Watson tells you — eat when he bids you, and drink when he bids you, and walk out when he bids you (you was walking arm-in- arm with me" all round this meadow last evening), and to sleep when he bids you, and wake up when he bids you, like what you've woke up now. That's it ; you can't help yourself. So now I'll bring you your dinner." " Is it mesmerized too ? " asked Lionel, " No, it ain't," answered Perun, " 'cos there aren't no call for mesmerization now. I'll be back in a minute." And in a minute or two he returned with Lionel's dinner, a savoury enough stew, to which from the cup- board he added a bottle of beer, bread and cheese, butter, and so forth. " There," he said, " and some 'baccy too in this paper, for I know you uses it, 'cos I've seen the pipe and 'baccy- pouch in your pocket." He departed, and Lionel, after a brief hesitation, made a tolerable meal, only abjuring the beer in favour of water, of which there was a jugful on the table. Then he eyed the tobacco, a two-ounce packet or so, and, opening it, found it was much such as he usually smoked. His pouch, he remembered, had been almost empty, but there should be enough in it to compare the two mixtures by ; yes, the two were almost, if not quite, identical. He was proceeding to fill his pipe, having transferred the tobacco to his pouch, when the paper in which it had been wrapped arrested his attention. It was a scrap of newspaper, the " mingham, Post," and it bore the date, " Monday, December 4, 1875." Lionel scanned the scrap eagerly. On the side which had first caught his eye there was nothing but advertisements, but on the reverse side, besides half-a-dozen miscellaneous paragraphs of news, there was in the lower left-hand corner the following fragment : — KBIEGSPIEL 239 E MISSING OXFORD BARONET. resh has transpired as to the mysterious anoe of Sir Lionel Glemham, Bart., an duate of Morham College, Oxford ; police are actively following up the clue by the Old Bank (Oxford) £5 note paid haring Cross booking-oflSoe on the evening It. It is believed that if a crime has petrated, the criminal probably has the Continent ; and this confirms the at the disappearance of this youthful the aristocracy may not be uncon- ith that of his father, Sir Charles am, six years previously, who was mur- is supposed, by members of a Russian t society. The sender of the telegram to ollege on the 22d ult. was cer- a foreigner, and so too was the man, mably the same, who stopped the telegraph ger on Waterloo Bridge. Sir Lionel, a ption of whom is still published in our ny column, was a young gentleman of It was easy to supply the missing words, with the exception of the date in the seventh line ; but it was not cheerful reading for Lionel, as it showed that the police were on an utterly false scent, and had no sus- picion of his having returned to Oxford, whilst it con- firmed the Gypsy's assertion that since that Thursday nearly a fortnight had elapsed. Yes, it must be later than the fourth ; and yet it could not be, the thing was impossible. Mesmerism — ^he had seen a Madame Garde perform some ridiculous tricks at the Music Hall in Holywell Street, make one man fetch a coal-scuttle out of the Bang's Arms coffee-room, and another sing 'Home, Sweet Home' under the belief that he was Patti. But that he, Lionel Glemham, should be at the beck and call of that Dr. Watson, pshaw ! the idea was 240 KRIEGSPIEL monstrous ; he would let Dr. Watson see. Yet, un- bidden, there recurred to his memory a dozen stories told him by Llewellyn, of the same Dr. Watson's powers ; besides, what had be, Lionel, been doing in the interval ? He could recollect that one hour in which he had break- fasted o£E beefsteak-pudding and bottled Bass ; otherwise everything was a blank to him. He could not say where he was then ; he could not say where he was now. It might be, indeed, in North Wales, the hills and mountains looked like it ; but it might have been any- where else, for anything he could say to the contrary. So, as he sat and smoked, he thought on and on, getting more and more lost in conjecture. At last he got up impatiently, and, after again gazing through the four windows, again to see the same view of meadow and river and encircling hills, he reopened the cupboard, and presently pulled out the four volumes it contained. The two first were a couple of works by Braid upon Animal Magnstism (Lionel pitched them back again) ; the third was the Annual Register for the year 1870. In its appendix of causes cSlhbres there are five pages devoted to " Mysterious Murder of a Suffolk Baronet," and a leaf had been turned down here, so that the book was bound to open at the place. Lionel read for the first time the story of his father's disappearance, and of how he himself and old Adam had discovered the body ; he read, too, the conjectural solutions of the mystery, some of which sounded plausible enough, but which he now knew to be one and all equally false. That gave him fresh food for thought ; and naturally one of his thoughts was that the book did not come there by accident, but must have been put on purpose that he migiit study it. So also, of course, the two first ones ; and the fourth one, what, then, was it ! Curtis' s Manual of Toxicology, and it too had a leaf turned down, at Chapter II., on ' Poisons of Savage Races.' "Again," he read, "the gipsies, speaking a tongue whioh is essentially a deformed prafcrit, and therefore Indian in origin, have long possessed a knowledge of the properties of the curious ' mucor phycomyces. ' This was considered an algae by Agaron, but Mr. KRIEGSPIEL 241 Berkeley refers it to the fungi The gipsies administer the spores of this fungi in warm water. In tms way they rapidly attach themselves to the mucous membrane of the throat, all the symptoms of a phthisis follow, and death supervenes in from two to three weeks. Mr. Berkeley informs me that he has seen specimens growing on broth which had been rejected from the stomach, and that it develops in enormous quantities on oU-oasks and walls impregnated with grease. "To the Times for February 21, 1862, a Yorkshire medical practitioner contributed the following letter on the trial of a gipsy fortune-teller for supplying a Mrs. Noel of Clapham with a brown powder mix-ed with water for the purpose of ensuring her husband's death within a month : ' Among other jealously guarded secrets of the gipsy race is the art of preparing what they term drei or d/ri, a most deadly and insidious destructive agent, and for which medical science knows no antidote. Analysis detects no noxious properties whatever, and the most careful examination, microscopical or other- wise, shows it simply to consist of apparently harmless vegetable matter. The drei, then, is merely a brown powder, obtained from a certain species of fungus forming the nearest connecting link between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, the powder consisting of an infinity of sporules. The fungoid sporules possess the peculiar property of being further developed only by intimate contact with living animal matter (as when swallowed, etc, ) ; they then throw out innumerable greenish-yellow fibres about twd,ve or eighteen inches in length. When the drei is administered, usually in some warm drink, these sporules are swallowed, attach themselves to the mucous membrane, germinate, throw out millions of these silky fibres, grow with awm rapidity, first producing symptoms of hectic fever, then cough, eventually accompanied by incessant spitting of blood, tin death finally supervenes, usually in about a fortnight or three weeks' time. A case of this description came under my notice in Italy in 1860. Although the patient was attended by eminent physicians accustomed to deal with cases of slow poisoning, no suspicions of foul play were entertained till the day after the decease, when an autopsy revealed the cause of death. The fibres, the growth of which had ceased with the cessation of the animal life and heat that had supported them, were abeady partially decom- posed ; had another day or two elapsed, no trace would have been left ofthe foul deed.'" " H'm ! " commented Lionel, " ' an algae,' ' this fungi ' — they are singular singulars ; but I do wonder how it feels to have that beastly stufE growing up inside one." He had a horrid suspicion that he could feel the sensation already. CHAPTER V AT his dinner-liour Lionel had set his watch again by guess-work to one o'clock, but that must have been much too fast, for it was not dusk yet, al- though the hands pointed to four, when Perun Stanley re-entered the caravan, and announced — "Dr. Watson's come, and 's wanting to see you, Lionel, but he says you're to walk round the meadow with me first." " Oh 1 I am," answered Lionel, showing no intention of stirring. " Yes ; and he says, if you'll promise not to try and give us the slip, Pm to let you go just as you are." " He does, does he ? — it is very good of him." " That's all right, then, Lionel. You promise ! " "No, I do not ; and I feel no inclination to go." "But you've got to go when. he bids you." " So you informed me before ; I am delighted to find you were wrong." " Wrong am I ? " said Perun, and whipped something out of his pocket. A click, and round Lionel's right wrist was a handcuff of the kind known, he afterwards learnt, as the " twisters." " There," said the Gypsy, " just you get up at wonst now and come, else I'll break the arm of you." And as Lionel still would not budge, he gave the least turn : it brought Lionel instantly out of the chair and to his knees. "I told you," Perun ssiid, and picked him up; and, 242 KEIEGSPIEL 243 consoling himself with the thought that this was brute force, not mesmerism, Lionel could not but follow him down the steps of the caravan and to the river, which, red-hued and angry, swept strongly between brimful banks. It was fifty to sixty yards broad, and so swollen as to submerge the lower branches of the trees that grew by it. "You might wade it," observed the Gypsy, "any- wheres in summer, and now 'twould be over your head, ay, or mine either." They came round to the gate ; it was padlocked and further protected by a perfect network of barbed wires. The other tent and caravan were on the further side of it, and beside them stood a neat dog-cart, with an olive- faced man-servant in plain livery, in whom Lionel recognized Yusuf ; beside them also was a notice-board. Lionel could not see what was on it, but Perun told him — "Small-pox in the camp." "That's you," he explained, and then called out, "Wester." A girl's head emerged for an instant from the tent ; the glimpse was enough to show Lionel that it was Sagul, whom he and Marjory had seen in Yarrow. She drew back at once, however, without seeming to have recognized or even noticed him ; and a moment later a Gypsy man made his appearance, whom Lionel knew for the fellow he had watched harnessing his horse at Oxford. "Dr. Watson's wanting you, Wester," said Perun; "wait a second; I'll let you in. But you give that first to the dummy " (handing a scrap of paper) ; " it's to tell him put up at the HoUybush." Then, still hold- ing the " twisters " with his left hand, with his right he undid the padlock, admitted Wester, and carefully re- closed the gate. The three walked over to the encamp- ment beside the cromlech. Dr. Watson, in a sable-lined pelisse, was sitting at the further end of the tent, which generally resembled Mrs. Stanley's, except that it was smaller and more unadorned, and that its covering was made of a lightish check saddle-lining. " Good-day, Sir Lionel ; and good-day to you, Sylvester. 244 KRIEGSPIEL You had better come in and sit down." Dr. "Watson spoke as though the tent were his own. " Thank' ee, no, sir ; I'd liefer bide outside." "Very good, as you will. I merely desired your presence that you might be able to corroborate your brother. Sir Lionel, perhaps you would come and sit there opposite me. I am sorry that Perun has had thus to incommode you. But you might take it off now, Perun." Perun removed the handcuff, and himself sat down cross-legged near the mouth of the tent, whilst his brother remained outside, leaning against one of the tent-rods and looking in. "So," Dr. Watson said. "Now, Perun, to enlighten Sir Lionel. What, first, was the name of his mother, and who was she ? " " Ercilla, Dr. Watson, Ercilla Stanley, and she was my own cousin, my Uncle Plato's eldest gal." " And you knew one another as children ? " "We was brought up boy and gal together: she wouldn't hardly " "Yes, all right, presently; but how did she come first to meet the late Sir Charles Glemham ? " " He was out huntin'. Dr. Watson, and he come down over a fence, and was picked up like dead, and took into my Uncle Plato's tent, for we were all stopping into that field." "That was where?" "At Buddiscombe, nigh by Plymouth." " Yes, and when was it l " " It wks a Valentine's Day ('cos Ercilla said summat about him being her Valentine), but I couldn't say rightly the year, only I know it was just afore the fighting broke out, for Orpherus Boswell, that was my Aunt Richenda's boy, was sent off to it, and never come back no more." " But you are certain it was on Valentine's Day, the fourteenth, that is, of February, and certain also that your cousin Ercilla had never before that set eyes on Sir Charles Crlemham J " .. KRIEGSPIEL 245 " Sartain-sure, Dr. Watson." "Very good. Now, Sir Lionel, may I trouble you to look at this copy, this duly-attested copy of a marriage register." And producing from a pocket-book a longish strip of paper. Dr. Watson handed it to Lionel, who, read the certificate on p. 246. " And now at this register of birth, your own, Sir Lionel Ghmhmn," said Dr. Watson, handing this other slip: — 1854. BiBTH IN THE DlSTEIOT OP DkVONPOET IN THE County of Devon. When and where Bom. Name (if any). Sex. Name and Surname of Father. Bank or Profession of Father. Signature of Registrar. Ninth October 1854. Devonport Lionel Keith Boy Charles Keith Glemham Baronet G. Bloss Registrar. "Keep them a little, pray," Dr. Watson resumed, " or altogether if you choose, for I want you to consider the dates carefully. Your father, you will observe, the late Sir Charles Glemham, and your mother, who had first met on the fourteenth of February, were married on the nineteenth of March, and you were born on the ninth of October, less, that is, than seven months after. Now " " But," Lionel broke in, " the name here is < Beshlay,' and he said it was Stanley." He had no idea yet whither all this tended, but Dr. Watson's suavity and cold insistence provoked him more even than the Gypsy's familiarity. " That," Dr. Watson answered, " is easily explained. All Gypsies have two STirnames, one which they use among themselves, and one for the outer world. Thus the Smiths, who are a noted Gypsy clan, how is it they call themselves, Ferun ! " 246 I n S 5 H - I o 1^ ii m b -3 fe I CO tS m| §3' m a 13 S m S3 1^ I .g •i ^ I § I :§ 13 a I bo I 1^ KRIEGSPIEL 247 " Petulengro, Dr. Watson, and the Lovells are Komomeskr6, and the " " Exactly, and so Beshlay, or more accurately BeschaM, is the esoteric name of the Stanleys, though why your mother should have married under it, I cannot say. But with regard to the dates, Sir Lionel, to which I was drawing your attention — of coiu-se they will not have taught you physiology at school or college. Still, calculate and think." A glimmering of his meaning began to dawn upon Lionel's mind. No, he never had learnt physiology j but like a flash there came back to him the memory of once at Eowick, of the upper class-room, and of Davy Anderson thus rendering a line of Ovid's Fasti : — " Aut, or, quia, because, femina, a woman, pwrit, brings forth, his, twice, quimo mense, every five months." And he could hear again in fancy Dr. Carson's sarcastic com- ment, "No, hardly, David, it is not quite so bad as that. Thank Heaven therfor, if the result were to be two David Andersons." He remembered that, and, remembering it, could dimly divine what Dr. Watson was driving at. "But these copies," he said hotly, " will be like your telegram, of your own copying." "A natural thought. Sir Lionel, but no: I do not expose myself to penalties such as a forgery like that would expose me to. One of them you can verify your- self ; I presume you know your own birthday. As to the other, if you are still in doubt after you have heard a mass of corroborative evidence, you shall yourself write to the Superintendent Registrar at Plymouth, enclose the fee, and seal your letter up ; I promise you, you will receive in reply an absolute duplicate of the marriage register you hold in your hand there. Besides, in the old Plymouth newspapers you may rest assured you could find an account of your f ath of Sir Charles Glemham's 'accident in the hunting-field.' Anyhow, I propose Perun goes on with the story. You were telling us, Perun, that you and your cousin Ercilla were brought up together. Were you fond of one another J " 248 KRIEGSPIEL " Ay, Dr. Watson. I always told her I'd got to have her, that it wasn't no good talking : mine she was, and mine she'd have to be. And " " Yes, and her father and mother, did they approve of it?" "No, that they didn't, Dr. Watson, 'cos, you see, they were all for marrying her to some great gentleman, Uke my Aunt Marbelenni, what was married on a very rich squire in Gloucestershire. So she was mighty well off ; and one day some of her brothers, my father and Plato including, went to call on her, but she wouldn't allow 'em into her mansion, for says she, ' Now that I am a great lady, I shall expect you only to come booted and silver-spurred.' So my Uncle Plato was for Ercilla doing according." "And did you and ErcOla acquiesce? I mean, did you give her up ? " " No, I didn't. Dr. Watson, for she and I was married on Plough Monday." " Plough Monday, that is early in January. But in what year was it ? " " I couldn't say the year rightly. Dr. Watson." "But was it before or after she met Sir Charles Glemham?" "Why, before, of course five weeks and three days before." "Five weeks. cmd three days he/ore. And you let her father and mother know? " "'Twasn't likely, no. The old man was away aU that day, fiddling up to a big gentleman's house, Bickleigh Abbey, and my Aunt Dosia, that was ErcUla's mother, had got three weeks in ' Tavistock JaU for fortune- telling." "And — ^but stay one moment. Have you ever. Sir Lionel, read a work by George Borrow, The Rormmy Bye f No. I feared as much, and tried in vain to procure a copy in the — the town where I am living. Else you would have found it beside the Anniial Eegisterj and from it would have learnt that, strange as it may seem, of nothing are Gypsy parents so careful KRIEaSPIEL 249 as of a daughter's chastity. If a Gypsy father and mother found their daughter had gone wrong, Perun, what would they do to her i " "They'd kill her. Dr. Watson, kill her dead." " So you just said nothing, and then — but you know already what happened then, Sir Lionel. Five weeks afterwards your mother met Sir Charles Glemham, and a few weeks after that he married her." " But she was married abeady," cried Lionel, " by that hound's telling." "Married, yes, but only according to Gypsy use (did you jump the broomstick, Perun, or how was it 1), and in the eyes of the English law a Gypsy marriage is mere concubinage. So that need not trouble you. But did he. Sir Charles Glemham, never find it out, Perun ? " "Ay, he did, and he went off, went off to furrin parts." " And during his absence used you ever to see your — cousin i " "See her, why, I pretty well lived at the house. Lansdowne Cottage it was called " (as Lionel knew it was), " and rare times I had, too. There was a butler there, Kenzer his name was, but we called him 'Sergeant' ; and it was Sergeant here. Sergeant there, and nothing too good for me." " And Sir Charles Glemham never came back 1 " " Ay, he come back wonst. Dr. Watson." " And caught you ? " " No ; it was me caught him, sneakin' into the garden. And I took him, and shook him, and chucked him in a briar-bush. Lord ! I often wish I'd broke the neck of him." That at least was uttered with sincerest passion. " And what said she, your cousin, to all this ? " " She come riding arter me. Dr. Watson, and begged me take her with me, only I couldn't that day. And I s'pose when she got back to him, he knocked her about, used her cruel, so as she took to her bed, and died when he was born." " You ' suppose,' Perun ; your supposition is foolish- ness : no, limit yourself to fact. But you are yourself 250 KRIEGSPIEL acquainted with the subsequent facts, Sir Lionel. You know with what loving solicitude Sir Charles Glemham tended your infancy ; you remember how he would hardly let you out of his sight, and, when he did, would be constantly writing to you. Yet ill-natured gossip has it, that an old flame of his, whom he wished to marry, insisted, as the price of her hand, on your being brought back (or brought for the first time, was it?) from Germany to Eressingham. Was it she too insisted on the translation of the remains of her predecessor from Devon to Suffolk 1 That was your.speoial grievance, Perun, was it not ? " "Mine? what. Dr. Watson ?" "The removal of the body of your cousin from Plymouth to Fressingham." "He'd better not have," said the Gypsy, hoarsely. " He was to cart her about just as he pleased, was he, and him never wonst nigh her grave. Why, I'd go there every twelvemonth regular, and some years two or three times in the twelvemonth, 'cos I thought she'd feel lonesome among a lot o' nasty goMJoes?- Yet 'twas a beautiful place too, all grass and srubs and flowers, and the sunshine and wind on her grave, and you could hear the sea there — dear wench, she did love the sea. So I went that year, she was gone ; my lord has had her dug up, and carted away, and laid in a poverty stone cellar, for all the world just like a jail. ' Damn him,' I says, ' but I'll be even with him yet ; ' ay, and I was too afore I was done. It was you wrote and told me where they'd put her. Dr. Watson, for you was living at the time at Fressingham, in that old Gibbet Mill. I don't know rightly now what you were shaping at, but I know my lord must have been in it, 'cos 'twas for him you got Wester here to let you have Wanselo for your grandson. But you told me that time when I come to you first by Brummagem as I was to get my wish, and 'twere just after that you went to Fressingham. And I was to keep away, not show myself ; but you wrote ' Gentiles, non-Gypsies. KEIEGSPIEL 251 and told me where he was, my lord, in Americay ; and where he was, this young un, in Garmany. And then you wrote to me as he was coining home, and the boy to be fetched there top. And then about her, as I've named her too often to-day; and then you come and met me nigh to Ipswich." "Yes," said Dr. Watson, "it was on Eushmere Heath you were stopping." "Eiushmere Heath it was, and 'twas there we made it up. I was for doing it at wonst, but ' No,' says you, ' let him marry her, let lum enjy hisself a little : it will make it the bitterer.' So I. waited, and long and by last you sent word as the time was up; and me and "Wester travelled by the train to Woodbridge, and walked when 'twas dark to the mill. Tou weren't there, for you was away in London, but the dummy was expectin' us and looked arter us. Three weeks we bided there, and never stirred out but till nightfall ; and Wester was wantin' to chuck the whole job up." " Tes, you were against it from the first, were you not, Sylvester?" said Dr. Watson. "The wonder is, you engaged in it at all." "No wonder that," replied Wester, who stood chewing a pin-thorn,^ "for if I hadn't gone, Dr. Watson, Perun said he'd take Nathan. He's our cousin, is Nathan Boswell, and of all the cowards and big-mouths — there ! I knowed if he went, it was bound to be all up with Perun." " So you went from pure brotherly affection ? " "I went, Dr. Watson, for the sakes of our dead mother (God rest her dear blessed soul !), for when she was dying she said to me, 'My Wester, you'll look arter Perun ; you'll take care of. your little brother, that he mayn't never come to no mischief ? ' " " Ah ! you engaged in — ^weU, in what you did engage in, to keep Perun out of mischief. Very good. Perun,' proceed." " But that evening the white pigeon come, as Wanselo ^ A big thorn used to pin the tent blankets with. 252 KEIEaSPIEL was to fly, to tell he'd come riding alone. We went right to the ford, Wester in a soft hat something like he'd be wearing, and me with the sack full o' chaff what I kept ready. And I puts it in the middle of the ford, and muddied the water " " One moment, Perun," Dr. Watson broke in. " It was you. Sir Lionel, who told Llewellyn that water was fatal to the Glemhams ; and he told me, and I told - Perun — it made a deep impression upon Perun. So you muddied the water." " Ay, muddied the water above, for fear he should see the sack, then waited. There's an old bit o' brickwork sticks out, and Wester stood just beyond that, and me under the arch. And at the ford the water was hardly up to my knees, but t'other side the bridge there's a pool with it over my waist. So I waited, waited, till I could hear the click-clack o' the horse's hoofs, and looks out to make sure it was he, and no one with him ; then I first seen his dog, one o' them wicious Scotch sheep- dogs, a breed I can't never abide. So he comes to the ford, and the horse stumbles over the sack, was wery nigh down (I meant it to save his knees), Wt Wester grips hold of the reins, and me whips my lord from his saddle. He tried to wrastle me, but 'twarn't no manner o' use, I felt I could 'a, held a score like he. Ay, though his dog was tearin' at me cruel, fastened on my left thigh here : I've got the marks still, and can feel it too, every year as that day comes round. And Wester there like a stuck pig, feared to loose the horse, and a-f lunbUng in all his pockets. ' Cut its throat,' I calls to him, but he didn't, just slashes its forepaw ; but it dropt di-rekly, couldn't hardly scrawl out on the bank. ' There, ofE with his cloak now,' I says, and held him out to him ; and Wester undid it, puts it on, and ups and away. ' Now, Sir Charles Glemham, I'm going to drownd you,' I said, and he never said nothink, only looking stern at me. So I under the bridge, and puts him down in the pool. And I can tell you a cur'us thing. There was a terrible sight o' mice about the mill, and I'd catched half-a-dozen, and drownded them in a pail. Chuck 'em KKIEGSPIEL 253 in, and they'll swim and swim for ever so ; but hold 'em under, and maybe you can count fifty, then one dear little teeny bubble (that's the life, I s'pose), and they're stifE uns. He did struggle under water most tremenjus, couldn't help hisself, I take it; bijt then he growed deathly still, and I thought he was gone, though there'd never no bubble come. So I drawed him out, when he opens his eyes and looks at me — a nasty kind o' sneerin', hateful look. That wexed me : I druv his head hard agin' the brickwork, and he never stirred arterwards. I've been sorry for it many, many's the time, 'cos I can't never feel sartain-sure 'twas the water what drownded him. So I emptied the chaff out, and pops him in the sack, and carried it to the mill by the old mill-lade. And it hadn't took no time hardly, for it wasn't yet properly dark. But you know, Dr. Watson, that ' smuggler's hole ' in ,the mUl, where they used to keep the lace and gin and brandy and 'bacca : that's where I put him. Ay, and I pickled him — pickled my lord like a mullo hcmlo, a dead hog." And Perun laughed. " Ay," he resumed, " for I'd got to go up to London, to see you, Dr. Watson, and tell you how it all happened, and to get that church-key made. I'd took the mould for it ; and your London chap made it proper. And you give me the print-writin' I was to cut on the coffin- plate, and I come back, and did it, and shifted 'em. Lord ! there warn't much left o' her, o' my Ercilla." It may sound ridiculous, but Perun wept. "For mine she was," he said fiercely. "I alluz said she'd got to be mine. And years afore, when we was quite young children, and was sitting one evening around the fire, she'd said to me, ' Dordi ! my Perun, I'd dearly love to be buried at a tent-place ; it'd seem so natival.' And that's where she's buried now, at that wery identical tent-place. But where that is, no man shall ever know but Perun Stanley." CHAPTER VI DR. WATSON broke the silence. " I must," he said, " be lacking in dramatic instinct, for I confess I do not see at exactly what point. Sir Lionel, you and your father should have fallen upon one another's necks. Your father I mean de facto, for you may still regard the late Sir Charles Glemham as your father dejwe, or rather perhaps de lege, inasmuch as you were born in lawful wedlock, and he never attempted to challenge his paternity. It is a difficult situation to realize all of a sudden, and I should wish you to think it out carefully. Meanwhile, Perun, you and your brother had better leave us. And try, if you can, to keep sober." "Wester moved off, as if relieved at this dismissal; and Perun was following, when Dr. Watson recalled him. "To fix himself, if not his attention, for what is coming, it may be as well, Perun, to use the fetter once more, I hope for the last time." So Lionel found himself alone with Dr. Watson, and tethered up somewhat closely to a stout tent-rod. They were sitting facing one another at the upper end of the tent, and between them hung an oil-lamp, which Perun had lighted, and which shone down brightly on their faces. lionel's head felt bursting ; his blood seemed to be coursing his veins like a mill-race, and in his ears rang every word that he had heard. " Lies, lies, lies ! " he kept repeating to himself, as fresh doubts arose and assailed him. Lausdowne Cottage 264 KEIEGSPIEL 255 — yes, that was where he was born ; and old Adam was there; and till he was fourteen his father never had seen him, never had sent hiin so much as a single message. Yes; but Adam had always said that his father could not bear to set eyes on the son because of the great love he had borne the wife ; strange, then, he shoiild not have been present at that wife's child-bearing and death, and yet if he had been, he must have once at least seen the child. He was in England at the time too, for Lionel knew that Sir Charles had been present at the deathbed and funeral of old Lady Glemham, which took place about much the same date ; and besides, he " Lies, lies, lies ! " that he should doubt the dear father whom he idolized, that father who was his ideal Bayard. But it was true about his mother's having been buried in Devonshire; true that she had not been brought to Suffolk until the eve of Sir Charles's marriage with Dorothy ; no, that did not look like great love. Whose was the fault, then, if he had not loved her ? Lionel would not follow up that impious thought ; it was a sacrilege against his unknown dead mother. That filthy animal ! that vile and bloody braggart ! ugh ! his blood curdled with loathing. There came back this scrap of a talk of Mark Avenel's with him : " Perhaps, if a son knows that his father was a brave and honourable man, it is safer for him to rest satisfied with that knowledge. You have that knowledge, Lionel" but had he? had he? "Lies, lies, lies!" he groaned once more within himself, then of a sudden was thrilled with the sense of the presence of Dr. Watson. Yet Dr. Watson had been there all the while, had been sitting much as he was sitting ^now, silent and observant. Only somehow he seemed now to have turned his will on to Lionel, and to be striving to dominate Lionel's will with his own. His snake-like eyes were fastened on him intently; his fingers, motion- less but quivering slightly, were pointed towards him ; his voice, deeper than its wont, was low, but strangely audible. 256 KBIEGSPIEL "So you have grown conscious of it, Sir Lionel There are, you should know, three stages of mesmeric trance. The first, which you have already experienced, is transient. The second, into which I am about to cast you, is permanent. And the third is more permanent still, for the third stage is death. You may go on with your thoughts, you may move as much as you please ; it will make no difference." "Snap your eyes if you want to," thought Lionel, " it's like being photographed." Ah 1 it is easy attempt- ing to assume indifference, but the attempt is by no means necessarily successful. The fascination of ser- pents is said now to be a myth, but it would possibly seem a frightful reality if there was a serpent confront- ing one. So Lionel, though he tried to think of any- thing else, could think of nothing but of Dr. Watson, though he " knew it was all rot," could not help feeling sure there must be something in it. Something in it, but what then ? was he to become the tool, the creature of this old miscreant, to lose all power of independent action, or even thought, to forget what honour and truth meant? He struggled fiercely within himself against that monstrous fear, and at the close of the struggle the snake-like eyes were still fastened intently upon him. Only they seemed so far off now ; were they indeed then eyes, or what were they ? Lionel felt as if beneath the focus of some mighty burning-glass ; he was conscious only that he was losing consciousness, when the sudden hoot of an owl recalled him to himself : he could see Dr. Watson, and knew him for just Dr. Watson — ^Dr. Watson, moreover, plainly startled by the bird's cry. Lionel laughed aloud, and, as in the old fairy tales, the spell was broken. Dr. Watson instantly resigned the contest. " Yes," he said, rising, " that was an unlucky inter- ruption, especially unlucky for yourself." (Even while he spoke, there came the owl's hoot once more, quite close to the tent.) " I was unwise, perhaps, to attempt it ; to-morrow we shall have recourse to sharper methods. Only think over all that you have heard to-day, and KEIEGSPIEL 257 bear one thing chiefly in mind : that you are grown dangerous to us with the knowledge you now possess, that you could hang your good father, and almost hang Sylvester, and me, you coi^d get for me lifelong penal servitude, if not the gallows. So you are dangerous, Sir Lionel Glemham, unless " He drew from a pocket a whistle, and, going outside, blew it shrilly, waited awhile, then blew it a second tinie, remarking when he had done so, " Drunk again, I suppose, and I told the fool to keep sober." Again he paused, and again was about to blow, when a husky voice came through the darkness, " It's all right ; coming 's fast as I can come," and Perun appeared with his brother. He was not drunk exactly, still less was he exactly sober : therefore he bore himself with singular gravity. "Thought I'd give you lots o' time to do it in, Dr. Watson," he observed. " I sh'pose it's all right ; you have done it ? " " No, I have not done it," Dr. Watson replied, irrit- ably. "How on earth was I to do it with that cursed owl hooting all round 1 " " Owls I there isn't no owls here." " Oh, there are no owls, are there 1 No, of course I know what- it was. It was a muUo, a spirit, sent to protect the lad — ^his mother's probably ; she was wailing all round the tent. And but for me she would have entered it, and torn him from us. And you meanwhile must be soaking ; you reek of brandy. Can't you leave it alone for once, fool % " "And me never touching nothing hardly, only just one dear little teeny drop, to keep Wester company." "Sylvester is sober enough," Dr. Watson said, shortly ; "but then he knows better than thus to disobey me. Why, fool, I have but to lift my little finger, and in an instant you But pick him up, and take him to the caravan. Then come back at once, for I have much to say to you before I leave." Half drunk though he was, Perun lifted Lionel as he might have lifted a baby, carried him up to the caravan, s 258 KEIEGSPIEL and there, having lit the lajup, re-chained him to the staple. " And you've beat the doctor, have you 1 — beat the gdzvero gaujo?- But you won't beat me," he said, savagely, as he stood swaying backwards and forwards in the doorway. " Lord ! for the sake o' two pins I'd knock yer stupid this instance. But mind yerself to- morrer, my fine fellow; mind yerself tomorrer, that's all." With which he slammed the door, and left Lionel to himself; and Lionel sat long and thought of many things, but most of Marjory. He had known her more than five years now, and from the first had loved her, but his pity for her had always been stronger than his love. It was not her fault, of course, the circumstances of her birth ; still, any good Catholic could n6t but regard them as a stigma. That he, the representative of one of the oldest Catholic houses in the kingdom, could marry the daughter of an ex-priest had never once entered his imagination ; his love for her therefore had never tiU now been other than that of a brother for a sister. Whenever he had thought of her during the last few days, his thought had been merely, "How Marjory will miss me !" now his one thought was, " If I could but see Marjory ! " Even if this story — this monstrous story — were true, he would still, he felt sure, be certain of her love ; nay, she would love him, if possible, all the better because of it, for she always was kindest towards mongrels and cripples and beggars and friendless things generally. He had laughed at her sometimes for it, had told her she was wanting in proper pride — God ! if that horror was true, proper pride would contemn one so abject as himself. He would have in that case no right to the name he had gloried in, much less to his rank and fortune ; he would be the son of a murderer and an adulteress. And then came anger at having admitted that hateful thought, and then in some form or another the hateful thought recurred ; so it went on for an hour, or possibly hours. 1 Wise man, wizard. KEIEGSPIEL 259 But as he sat there in front of the fireless stove, he felt of a sudden a little draught from beneath, and heard a light rattle of something against the roof, followed by a like rattle of something upon the floor. Lionel glanced up, and next glanced down, and saw that a trap-door in the floor was open (the small trap-door through which one sweeps out a caravan), and that three or four tiny pebbles lay ' strewn around it. As he looked, a bell- mouthed tube was protruded through the opening, and from itsmouth came a gentle ^'Ssh." " What's that ? " he cried, unheedful of the warning. " It's me," said a whisper, " Sagiil, under the wagon. But don't you talk loud for any sakes, fear you'll waken him. Put your ear to this thing — it's what Granny Evans hears through (leastwise, the little she can hear) — and your mouth to it when you speaks back. Can you hear me now what I'm saying 1 " "Yes, yes; quite plainly." " 'Cos I'm here to tell you as we're all a-workin' for you, me and my daddy and mammy and Wanselo. Only they was feared for the doctor, but they won't be so feared now. It was me what hooted " (with a whispered laugh) ; " I was there all the time in the Arthurstone." " But how did you get past the gate? " " In a boat — the miller's, Mr. Evans's boat. Charlie, that's his son, lent it me; and Wanselo has hxed it up with a rope like a ferry-boat from our side the gate to the meadow, so as I can get in and draw myself along beneath the willows. I was in here last night, only he wasn't drunk then." "Who?" " ' Credit Longsnout,' the fine handsome Perun." " Yolu: uncle." " No uncle o' mine ; I wouldn't own no such a down- come. Him and his Wise Man I and him and his nasty black dummy ! " "But where am II" "You're in his wagon — the fine handsome Perun's wagon." " I know ; but where is it ? I mean, what place is this ? " 260 KRIEGSPIEL " Llanfihangel, above the Welsh Hay. That's where he's stopping to, the pretty fine handsome doctor." "What river is that, then?" Sagul's answer sounded like " Why ? " *' Because I want to know ; because it might tell me whereabouts I am. What" (very distinctly) "is the name of the river t " Lionel this time made out, " The Wye," so proceeded to ask next, " What day is this ? " "Tuesday?" " But what day of the month 1" , " Don't know no days o' the month ; but Presteign fair's a week now come Thursday, and Christmas Day two weeks after that." "Two weeks and a week; but aren't we well into December ? How long is it since you left Oxford ? " " Oxford — why, the first night we stopped beyond Witney; and the next we drawed into Mr. Duffield's meadow, the t'other side Malvern; and next day (Sunday that was) we come through Ledbury, stopped in the Snaky Bottom ; and next mofning came on here. So that was like four days." " But how long ago was that — since you arrived here, I mean?" "Why, yesterday; we come here yesterday morn- ing." " Yesterday ! and to-day Tuesday. Then it's less than five days, and to-day can only be the twenty-eighth of November. But it must be later than that, for the newspaper was dated fourth December." " Don't know nothing about no newspapers, but don't you put no harkenings in anythink they tells you. And don't you have nothing to do with his pretty daughter." " His daughter — whose ? " " His — Dr. Watson's — her what we seen wonst by Glasgow : he brought her out to us when we was stopping to Coatbridge. Lord 1 and she is a sweet creature — oh ! a nice, dear, fine, handsome creatur'. Airs and graces and fallals, and she hadn't ' never been KRIEGSPIEL 261 used to low company.' And nothing in the blessed world but a tatti luvni." ^ " But what has she to do with me?" " She's got to have you, says Perun, and him and the doctor to come and live with yous. I could hear 'em settlin' it all, and Perun nod-nodding oiEf, he was that drunk, and Dr. Watson raging on him awful. The doctor's gone now — druv home to the Welsh Hay, and Longsnout a-snorin' tremenjus. But I'd best be off, fear he come to, and catches me — and this moonlight like the broad day. Good-night, and remember as we're all a-workin' for you, me and my daddy and mammy and Wanselo. And Wanselo hopes no unpleasantness.". The ear-trumpet was withdrawn, but reappeared almost immediately, and the whisper added somewhat falteringly, "You might reach me your hand, if you would, through the trap-door, one dear little minute." Lionel did so, and to his surprise he felt the hand covered with kisses ; it was wet, too, with tears when he looked at it. ' A hot harlot. Lworni, like the Latin lupa; means originally "a she-wolf," CHAPTEE VII "T AY down at wonst on that bed, as I told yer. Jj What ! yer won't ? — then take that." And with his open hand Perun dealt such a blow to Lionel as knocked him out of the chair where he was sitting, and stretched him on the floor of the caravan. "That'll do," he said, "just as well;" and, kneeling on Lionel's prostrate body, he proceeded to measure it with a piece of string, and to mark off its length with a knot. Then he unfastened the padlock, coiled the chain up, and, picking up Lionel, carried him down the steps into the tent, where, as on the evening before, he tethered him to a tent-rod. " Sit there and watch us," he said ; " watch me and Wester digging." It could not be much past noon, but either Perun had been drinking again that morning, or the effects of his last night's potations had not worn off yet ; still, he and Wester fell to their task in a workmanlike way enough. First they removed the iron brazier to just outside the tent J next, where the brazier had stood, they measured off a distance with the string ; and then with pick and shovel proceeded to dig a big hole, about six feet long, by three wide. Lionel watched them pare off the turf, and lay it on one side ; but he watched them heavily, listlessly. He had hardly slept at all during the night, and felt frightfully drowsy now ; indeed, it seemed to him afterwards that he must have dropped off to sleep, else that hole could never have suddenly grown so deep. Why, he could scarcely see their beads above the heap 262 KRIEGSPIEL 263 of earth they had thrown out, and Good Lord! where on earth were those worms from? The place seemed crawling with them, and — ugh ! there was one down his neck. He had always abhorred creeping things, and even in the old perch-fishing days he could never quite stomach the wormy part. He jumped up, wide-awake, but sick with loathing, and tore ofE his coat and waistcoat. As he did so, the brothers scrambled out of the hole, and Perun said sneeringly — "Ay, never was such a meadow for wurrums; the sile's fair thick with 'em. ' Mammy ' (that's what the boy said), 'what was wurrums made for?' 'For the ducks to eat, sonny.' ' And what was the ducks made for, mammy ? ' ' For us to eat, sonny.' ' And what was we made for, mammy ? ' * For the wurrums to eat, sonny.' D&hla!'^ I wonder if these uns are hungry. Anyways, I'm thirsty. Give us another drink, "Wester." "There ain't not a drop in," Wester answered, also thickly, as he turned down a good-sized tin pannikin, " and the kettle too 's empty." "Then go you fill 'em," said Perun, who seemed to take the lead of his elder brother ; " and I'll bide here agin' the doctor come. Only look sharp back ; and here's the gate-key." "Wester departed, carrying the kettle, and Perun during his absence busied himself collecting the worms, and flinging them back into the hole — " to be ready," he remarked, with an unpleasant grin. Lionel said nothing; he was firmly resolved to say nothing; but he knew what that hole was now. Presently Wester came back. " I ain't but three-parts filled it," he said, " 'cos you know what the doctor tolled us ; and I spilled half the kettle bringing it across." "And why," asked Perun angrily, "couldn't you 'a filled up the bottle with water, then?" "'Cos I likes mine neat," answered Wester; "but there's plenty more water where that comes from." He poured himself out a drop into a teacup, and then 1 God, 264 KRIEGSPIEL handed the pannikin to Perun, who poured out for him- self too, and then, as if from sheer contrariety, filled his cup up to the brim from the kettle. He swigged it off at one gulp, and fell straightway a-spluttering, "By gum!" he said chokingly, "that'sh ver' strong brandy, and more'n half water too. Wester" (with drunken solemnity), "best fill up bottle 'th water, for doctor comin'. You've got keep shober, doctor said." " All right," answered Wester (and one might have fancied that Wester winked), " 'twere a pity to waste good — water ; " and he filled up the pannikin from the kettle, screwed the top on, and handed it to his brother, who consigned it to a deep pocket. Just then a shrill whistle sounded from the gate. "That's him," said Perun; "go you and let him in, Wester ; I'll shtop here. But don't let him see you're drunk. He is drunk," he added, as he watched the retreating figure, whose course was decidedly zigzaggy. Then he turned savagely on Lionel. " And you beat th' doctor, did you, my fine fellow ? but you won't beat me ; you won't beat Perun Sthanley. For when I says a thing's got to be, it's got to. And don't you go looking at me likes that, 'cos I won't have it, not if it was ever so. D — n you, you think you're somebody, I sh'pose. You're like th' whole breed on 'em, you are. Why, I can tell you somethink " " And I can tell you something, Perun Stanley," Dr. Watson's voice broke in sternly ; " that, if you have not a care, you will provoke me beyond endurance. Fool, am I to waste my time and energies and intellect for a drunken hog, for a dolt that without my assistance would now be rotting in a felon's grave 1 OS with yon, straight or crooked, to your precious brother; and if, when I want you, the pair of you are not sober, then " It matters the less,'' he continued, as Perun slunk ofE towards the gate, " for, if it is to be done, he will have to be drunk to do it ; and if not, for us he may be drunk or sober. Sir Lionel, I will not apologize for his blackguardism ; a son should overlook a father's weak- KRIEGSPIEL 265 nese. H'm ! I see he has been busy " (looking down in the hole as he said this), " but of that presently. First I desire to make you a full and frank confession — the story of my life. It will take some time to tell, but it is not uninteresting, and it is necessary for your proper understanding of why you are here, and of what I design for you in the future. You have your pipe with you, I hope, and your tobacco. And there are matches." So seating himself comfortably where he had sat on the previous evening, Dr. Watson began — " Whatever our friends here may believe, I am not a hundred years old. A hundred — they are not over strong in figures or in history ; and I fancy if I were to tell them I had been an eyewitness of Charles the First's execution, they would not dream of gainsaying me. But S, claim should never be founded save on reason or un- reason — the unreason of others is a very secure founda- tion — so I make no such claim to you, for you of course would simply laugh at it. Yet I do possess the know- ledge and experience of a hundred, ay, of a hundred and thirty years : it was in 1746 that my grandfather was born at Elgin. I could not sketch the story of my own life without having first sketched his, for I and my grandfather are But I forgot : as a CathoKo you will not know your Bible. " His reputed father was an opulent merchant of that northern burgh ; his real father was of a rank so exalted, that Kobert Watson, the lowly physician, might, had he chosen, have borne the royal arms Vith the bar sinister. (Elgin lies on the road to Culloden.) The merchant, who was a sour Hanoverian, detested both the boy and the b6y's mother, a lady as unfortunate as she was beautiful; bo infamous became his treatment of them, that the pair resolved to escape to America. The vessel they sailed in from Greenock was wrecked upon Sable Island ; and though my grandfather managed to reach the shore, he reached it without his mother, and, alas ! too, without his mother's husband's savings. I have heard him narrate his five months' horrid sojourn among the wreckers of the ' Sailor's Grave ' : at last he was 266 KEIEGSPIEL taken off by an undermanned whaler, and in her worked his passage to Hull. From Hull he proceeded to London. " He was barely eighteen, he knew not a living soul in the great city, he reached it with less than four guineas in his pocket : in two months' time he had found a wealthy and powerful patron — found him by one of those fortunate accidents that are always present- ing themselves to whoso dare seize them. He had sought to find ' honest ' employment, and naturally had failed ; he was returning one afternoon from such a search, half starving, to his garret in Brooke Street, when he observed a Church dignitary slip out of the opposite house. My grandfather had often studied that house from his attic window ; raw Scotch lad though he was, he could not mistake its character. Therefore now he looked after this dignitary curiously, and, behold, a silk handkerchief was hanging half out of his tail- pocket ; quick as thought my grandfather whips it out altogether. Not that he meant for one instant to pur- loin it ; no, he had formed a design, which he put into prompt execution. He followed the divine into Holborn, heard him call a chair, followed the chair to Essex Street, and saw him alight and go into a fine house, the door of which was opened by a serving-man. "Hardly had it shut on him when my grandfather knocked boldly. 'I would speak,' he demanded, 'with that clergjrman who has just entered.' ' Speak with that clergyman ! ' said the footman ; ' the likes o' you speak with Dean Beaumont ! ' For my grandfather's apparel was mean ; fortunately from his mother he had acquired a breeding congruous to his origin. ' Yes,' he replied, ' I would speak at once with Dean Beaumont ; and I counsel thee, fellow, to deliver him my message, else it may cost thee thy livery.' ' Message ! ' said the man, taken aback by this language, ' you never gave me no message.' 'Tell him,' says my grandfather, ' that Mr. Brooke-Holborn must see him.' 'Twas a ready device, and a happy one ; with no more ado the serving- man goes and returns, and ushers my grandfather into a handsome library. KRIEGSPIBL 267 " The dean was standing there beside the fire-place ; he was a bland and holy-looking man, advanced in years. 'You desire to speak with me, young man,' he said mildly. 'Leave us, Joshua.' But no sooner was the door closed upon Joshua, than, ' Sirrah,' he cries, ' what means this monstrous Intrusion ? why hast thus dogged me ? But I . know thee, I know thee w^U, for the brother of that unfortunate young female, the profligate brother who panders to her shame.' ' Sir, you mistake,' said my grandfather j ' I understand not your meaning.' 'How?' said the dean, 'but you sent in the name Brooke-Holborn, and from Brooke Street, Holbom, am I but now returned, where I have been ministering to the wants — ^the spiritual wants — of a distressed gentle- woman.' ' I know,' said my grandfather, ' for I live right opposite, and have often observed you ' (which was false, but he looked the dean hard all the while in the face, and noticed him flinch) ; ' and just now from my window I saw you let drop this handkerchief. I hastened down, picked it up, and ran into Holbom in time to see you disappear in a chair. I followed it to your door, and thinking you might not care I should inform your servant or amy one else ' (looking hard at the dean still), 'I sought to deliver it personally to yourself.' And handing the dean his silk handkerchief, my grandfather made as though he would withdraw. ' Stay,' said the dean, ' I first would reward your honesty and discretion,' and offers a seven-shilling piece. ' Sir,' said my grandfather, 'the favour were tenfold if you could put me in the way of some employment.' ' Honest employment, I trust,' says the dean. ' Honest cmd discreet employment,' replies my grandfather. " The dean thereupon put many questions to my grandfather as to his manner of life, and my grandfather told him everything, or so much at least as seemed to him judicious. ' H'm,' said the dean, ' but how then didst know my name t ' (The serving-man probably had told the dean that Mr. ' Brooke-Holborn ' inquired for him by name.) ' Frankly,' replied my grandfather, ' so often seeing your reverence, I was curious to learn it, 268 KRIEGSPIEL and nothing is difficult to curiosity.' 'H'm,' said the dean again, ' and thou wilt know hers also, the gentle- woman's, I mean, for whose welfare — ^her spiritual welfare — I am concerned so deeply 1 ' ' One could hardly live two months opposite,' replied my grandfather, ' and not know that. Indeed, it was the coupling of her name with Dean Beaumont's that arrested my attention.' ' But,' said the dean, all a-tremble, ' they do not know my name — she cannot know it ; I have taken good care of that.' 'Does she not?' said my grandfather; 'her brother, at any rate, knows it, and knows too your place of abode. For I heard him nine days ago vaunting much of your reverence to an ill-looking fellow in the Blue Boar tavern.' ' Alack ! ' cried the dean, ' scandal ever flies swiftly from tavern to coffee-house; and just now too when my lord bishop is in extremis. Would God I had complied with her request ! Harkye, Master Watson ' (for my grandfather had informed him of his name), 'you know this brother, then?' 'Nay, sir,' replied my grandfather, ' hardly to say I know him, for we have barely exchanged a dozen words together.' ' Still, you might tell him,' Dean Beaumont said, pon- dering, ' or, better still, you shall carry word to Mistress Fitzherbert, that I will do as she desired, will send her brother to Edinburgh, there to study medicine, and there to remain till his studies are accomplished.' ' But,' said my grandfather, ' I know not Mistress Fitzherbert save by name and sight; nor am I certain I would exactly choose to ' and he broke off, all Joseph-like chastity. ' Tush ! ' the dean answered, ' I will give you a note to her, and rest assured. Master Watson, if you fulfil this message to my satisfaction, you shall not find me ungenerous.' "There was more discourse passed between them, the upshot of all which was that my grandfather called the next forenoon on Mistress Fitzherbert, dressed otherwise than he had been the day before, when he followed the chair to Essex Street. He knocked, and presently from behind the door a woman's voice called, ' Who's there 1 ' ' A messenger,' h? answered, ' for Mistress Egther Fitz- KBIEGSPIEL 269 herbert from Dr. Barsham ' (for such was the name by which the dean passed in Brooke Street). The door opened a little way, but still was kept on the chain, and a tawdry madam with a fiery face looked forth. ' Here,' she said, ' give me the letter, I'll take it up to her.' ' Nay, but I am to deliver it only iilto her own hand.' ' But she ain't up, I tell you ; she From Dr. Barsham, said'youl' "And with a little more parley she admitted my grandfather, and bidding him wait there in the lobby, went up-stairs to ' ses if Mistress Esther was awake yet.' She was long gone, and, it being dark and ill-smelling in the lobby, my grandfather had grown weary of his waiting, when some one descended , the stairs, and, making for the door, brushed rudely against him. ' Plague on thine awkwardness, fellow 1 ' said a fine- gentleman voice, and its owner drew forth a perfumed handkerchief, and dusted his sleeve where it had touched my grandfather. Then he undid the door and passed out, but not before my grandfather had seen that he was young and comely and gallantly dressed, with scarlet coat, gold-laced hat, cane, and rapier. " A few minutes later Madam's voice called from over the stair-head that he might come up now (' now, aha ! ' thought my grandfather), and, mounting, he was shown by her into the bed-chamber of Mistress Esther, who was not yet risen, even hardly awake yet — she was yawning so terribly. Her name may have been Esther Fitzherbert, but it might well have been Biddy O'Rooney. Anyhow, she would have been delightful under any name ; the good dean had been lucky in his penitent. 'Oohl' she said, 'and are you the new messenger? shure ! 'tis a new thing intirely him sending a message at all. But where is it, then ? ' "She took it, and ran her eye over it; its contents were of the briefest, merely stating that the bearer, Mr. Robert Watson, had somewhat of importance to com- municate. ' Bedad, then,' she observed, ' and ye don't look it. But out with it. Oh ! it's her you're minding ' 270 KRIEGSPIEL (as my grandfather glanced towards Madam). 'And what good would that do 1 She'd be bound to have it out afterwards, as she always has iverything out of me, and off me too for that matter. But she shall pack, if you want it. Countess ' (with the air of a stage-queen), ' you may quit the aparrtment.' " Exit Madam, demurring, and, soon as she was gone, my grandfather explained to Mistress Esther that Dr. Barsham had sent him to say that he relented; that, moved by his, Mr. Watson's, kindly mediation, he was willing to send her brother to Edinburgh, and maintain him there while he made his medical studies. Where- upon Mistress Esther broke into immoderate laughter. " ' Me brother ! ' she cried ; ' bedad 1 but it's good of the doctor, and it's grateful I am to him, and so will me .brother be too. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ! Only I'm not that shure Patrick hasn't altered his mind, and is for study- ing the law here in London, not mid'cine at Edinburgh; And ye know him yourself, then! — ye tould him ye knew me brother 1 ' " ' Yes,' said my grandfather quietly, ' I know him quite well by sight — wears a scarlet coat and a gold- laced hat, and puts musk on his handkerchief.' " ' Och ! ye thafe of the world, and it's spyin' on me ye are ; and what do I care then for you or your Dr. Barsham? And him an ould grey-headed reprobate, should be thinking of his Maker — bad cess to the making of him and the likes o' you ! A couple of black- hearted Protestant Englishers.' " ' Nay,' said my grandfather, ' I at least am no Englishman.' " ' Shure ! and ye're not Irish, else ye'd never be prowlin' around a distressed countrywoman.' " ' No, Irish am I not, but a true Scotchman.' " ' And is it Scotch ye are ? and a mighty dacent people the Scotch is. Faith ! then, I know a Scotch gentleman meself, and a cliver singer he is, and how does his song got' And she lilted clearly and tune- fully— KRIEGSPIBL 271 'What can a young lassie, What shall a young lassie, What can a young lassie, Do wi' an ould man ! ' / " ' And isn't it thrue now ? Not that he isn't a nice, kind-hearted ould gentleman, only for him to be jealous, jealous of "me brother" (ha, ha!). Listen, Master Watson dear, and I'll tell ye the whole of that comedy, for you'd never be for repatin' it. It came like this, you see. I was taking the air one evening on the river with Captain shure ! and I'll tell ye his name, ye'll not divulge it Captain Archibald Kestalrig (he's a raal army officer, and third son to Sir David Grant Restalrig), and there was another boat passed us quite close, and Dr. Barsham into it. I made certain he'd seen me (but he hadn't), so I tould him the next day 'twas me brother Patrick I was out with. And it's thrue enough I once had a brother Patrick, only I don't know rightly where he is now, without he's dead, for then 'twould be aisy guessing. And the ould man got asking me about me brother Patrick, what he was ; and I tould him " a student." And then another time I came in late, and found him waiting on me — the ould doctor, I mane, had been waiting for nigh two hours : and that was me brother Patrick had detained me. And another time 'twas a dirty little trifling account, and what, pray, had I done with all my last money 1 so av coorse I had given it to me brother Patrick. Long and be last the ould doctor got angry, and said he wished Patrick was further, and I said I wished it too, and that Patrick wished it himself, for he was dog-tired of his hell-raking in London, and was wishful to learn the doctorin' in Scotland — wouldn't Dr. Barsham assist him? No, he said, he wouldn't, short and stiff, and I tould him he might keep it. So that's the end of the ould man and his ass.' " ' Don't you think,' said my grandfather, ' it might rather be the beginning t ' " ' As how i ' she asked. , 'Thus. You are right, I would not for worlds III' 272 KHIEGSPIEL betray you : to do so would go sore against my con- science. Still, the stomach is mightier than conscience, and if I was starving, it were hard to say what I might do or might not do. But if / was in Scotland, if / was sent to EdinbiuTgh by the — Dr. Barsham to study medicine, I should be far removed from London and temptation. You follow me 1 ' " ' Anan ] ' she said, then broke into a laugh. ' Av coorse I do : ye'd pass for me brother Patrick. Faith ! it's beautiful.' " ' Yes, it is not half bad,' said my grandfather. ' You see, Dr. Barsham is gravely suspicious, but if I was to tell him that I had seen and spoken with your brother, that he threatens all manner of things, but really is anxious to be sent to Edinburgh, where Dr. Barsham's command of the purse-strings would keep him in absolute dependence — yes, I think I see my course pretty plainly before me. And you, Mistress Esther, would equally be free from the possibility of my betraying you, and ye-es, again — ^it would hardly pay you to betray me. Is it a bargain ? ' "The bargain was struck, and the plan was carried out duly, with this development, that my grandfather was to accompany Mr. Patrick Fitzherbert to Scotland. Fob, as he pointed out to Dean Beaumont, there was a Morayshire bursary which, with a trifling augmentation, would enable him to support himself creditably at Edin- burgh college, and then, why, then he would himself be four hundred miles from London, and, besides, he could keep an eye on Mr. Patrick. — By the by, would the dean care to have an interview with that young gentle- man ? What, by no means ; well, possibly his reverence was right, only Mistress Fitzherbert had seemed so to wish that her brother should profit by the dean's exhort- ations. No, she never spoke of him as ' the dean ' ; to her, she said, he would ever be ' dear Dr. Barsham.' " Of course, the trifling augmentation was forth- coming, and during the three years of his medical studies in the northern metropolis my grandfather wrote regularly to Dr. Beaumont, who from dean had mean- KRIEGSPIEL 273 time been promoted to Bisliop of Exminster. In his letters he described the career, by no means too reputable, of Mr. Fitzherbert, who was not, it appeared, over- grateful to his benefactor, but in his cups would threaten a descent on Exminster unless fiu'ther supplies were remitted per Robert Watson. As they were not unfre- quently ; but in his third year, shortly before he should have taken his degree, Mr. Fitzherbert ' sickened of a putrid fever' (the details were unsavoury), and, dying, was buried in the Greyfriars churchyard, Edinburgh. Good Dr. Beaumont defrayed the biu'ial expenses ; and my grandfather three months later passed his final examination with distinction." CHAPTER Vin I AM not going to inflict on my reader the whole of Dr. Watson's narrative. It opened badly, and it went on very much worse : at least, two-thirds of it were " quite unfit for publication." Besides, it was terribly prolix. Dr. Watson suffered from the hies BosweUiama : ■ his seemed to be a Ptolemaic system whose centre was "MY GRANDFATHER AND I," both uttered always in the largest capitals. Not that he mouthed, but that a sense of wise complacency appeared to pervade all his narrative. _ How much of it was invented as he went along, or how much really quoted from those famous diaries, Lionel could no more tell than he could tell how much of it was truth and how much lies. It bristled with the names of popes, kings, and such-Uke exalted beings ; and it solved, or professed to solve, a score of mysteries, from the disappearance of Mr. Benjamin Bathiirst to the discovery of the flowered carpet-bag "on the pier of a bridge, which you, Sir Lionel, have reason to remember." Thus, true or false, it was sufficiently curious ; still, here such few bowdler- ized extracts must suffice as axe indispensable for the thread of this story : — "... It was in 1793, the year of the death of that madman. Lord George Gordon, that my grandfather had married Cecilia, widow of the sixth Lord Rollo, and sister to the Chevalier de Johnstone. A poor enough match for him ; but from it sprang a remarkable woman, my mother. I have it on the authority of Mr. G. A. 274 KBIEGSPIEL 275 Sala (he did not know it was my mother he was speaking of) that from Cecily Fitzwalter the late Mr. Thackeray drew the heroine of ' Vanity Fair. But, whilst I will not deny that ' Bebecca Sharp ' has certain attributes in common with my mother — beauty, cleverness, wit, versatility — my mother could never have been guilty of her fiascoes. for, as she began well, so she ended better ; nor once, to the last day of her long life, did she neglect to profit by an opportunity. Truly, I owe much to her counsels and example. On the other hand, one of my fathers was undoubtedly ' Lord Steyne's ' prototype. One of my fathers say I, for there were two who dis- puted the honour of my authorship — the celebrated Viscount Haileybury and the scarcely less well-known CoL Luttrell Monifieth. I may have my own doubts as to both ; but from both I derived substantial benefits, which were cut short only by the death of the former in his eighty-first year, when I was but fourteen years old, and by the bankruptcy hardly a twelvemonth after- wards of the latter, he having run through the whole of his third wife's fortune. It was then that my grand- father came to my assistance. He, like myself at the present time, was wanting an assistant and successor ; and from the middle of 1825 until his death in the autumn of 1838 we were almost inseparable. Boy though I was, I was initiated by him into his deepest secrets ; with him I travelled over the whole of Europe ; and when I too studied at Edinburgh, he was constantly with me, for about that same period he had often to visit the Highlands. And it was to me at the last that he committed everything, his diaries, his papers, his wealth. That was at Bath, the city of my birth ; and from Bath he went back to London, where, penniless and alone, at the age of ninety-two, he strangled himself in an obscure tavern, by twisting his neckcloth with a poker as with a tourniquet. I knew that it was to be done ; and, indeed, it was time he should do it, for during the last two, or perhaps three, years of his life his magnificent intellect had grown much enfeebled. I remember, the last day before he left Bath, we played a game of Chess together, 276 KEIEGSPIEL and I purposely made a blunder (not, of course, a too obvious one), to see whetlier he would notice it. He did not, and, on my pointing it out to him, he said it, was time he were gone, that he felt he might make just such another oversight in the larger game in which we were engaged. Naturally, I did not endeavour to dissuade him ; stUl, I could have wished to be able to be with him in his last moments, to guard against any possible in- discretion. It might not be ; and, as a matter of fact, he did chatter in true senile fashion to the keeper of the pothouse where he died : my one comfort was to feel that he was dead. "And what a comfort the news of his death must have been to scores of the very greatest ones of the great world ! — what a shock must have been the discovery that he lived still in the person of his grandson I I look younger now than my years, though I am not old, for if I attain but my grandfather's span of existence (and he, you remember, curtailed it), I have twenty- seven years more to run. But when I was nearing thirty, I looked a good ten years older; and then, as now, I bore a striking resemblance to my grandfather. I could ' make up ' wonderfully like him, and our voices are absolutely identical. So you may conceive the stupefaction of Lord Tannington when, one day early in 1839, I waited upon him in Downing Street. I sent in my card, ' Robert Watson, M.D.,' scarcely expecting that he would receive me. But he did, after some delay — enough, I imagine, to summon a detective in. If so, his services were not required. No, I thought his lordship would have swooned when he set eyes on me ; and when I went on to speak, to remind him of the old story" (Dr. Watson told it to Lionel : it was sufficiently nasty), " he simply asked me what I was wanting this time. I verily believe he took me for my grandfather, come to life again some- how and rejuvenated. I told him my want, but I never got it, for that very night Lord Tannington blew out his brains. " Yes, I could write a most curious essay on ' The Convenience and Inconvenience of Suicide,' pointing out KRIEGSPIEL 277 how sometimes I have had quite as much difficulty in ■withholding one man therefrom, as in impelling another thereto. There was a Nonconformist minister over whom I had a strong hold, which I should have been most sorry to see loosened. I found that he was con- templating suicide, and I employed the argument that after all one could not be certain : it mJvght be out of the frying-pan into the fire — ^Hell-fire. That argument told, and it was the only argument would have told with him, for at bottom he was a deeply religious man. On the other hand, there have been those among my co- operators who, knowing that it was either neck or nothing — Mr. Calcraft's noose or respectable self- annihilation — have yet hesitated : with such men I am apt to lose patience. Certainly, one should never dissuade or advise without knowing the exact circum- stances. ... "You wonder possibly I am not afraid of trusting myself among these Gypsy desperadoes, of placing my life in the hands of your father, my dear friend Perun. I have no apprehensions whatever on that score, for I adhere to my grandfather's methods of life-assurance. You will have heard tell of Wainewright, Thomas Grif- fiths Wainewright, Wainewright the Poisoner 1 No ! you surprise me. Well, he had been an officer in the Guards, but had sold out and taken to dilettanteism, painted in a gentlemanly way, and wrote gentlemanly articles for the reviews, and married — married on a few hundreds a year, and lived at the rate of more thousands. Naturally he had come to the Jews : through them my grandfather got to know of him and know him. He proved most useful to my grandfather, for he had the evdree of very good society ; and presently he thought that my grandfather might prove useful to him. He poisoned his uncle with strychnine (it was his first attempt, and a clumsy one), and he called in my grand- father as a medical man to certify to the cause of death. By his uncle's will he fell into a largish inheritance, and he calculated that, being deeply in my grandfather's books, he would be safe with him, that my grandfather 278 KEIEGSPIEL Would not denounce him, for fear of lying out of his moneys. My grandfather neither denounced him nor dunned him : he simply used him twice as much as ever hefore. Wainewright at last grew lazy or impatient ; he invited my grandfather to dine with him in three days' time. I believe I can tell you what followed in the very words of my grandfather's diary : — "'So I drove down to Turnham Green, and, dinner over, Wainewright goes himself to the cellaret ; and " What are you for now, Dr. Watson," he asked, "port or sherry, sherry or port ? " " Port," I said, and he brought out port, then, hesitating an instant, said, "No, damme, I think I'U take sherry," and brought out sherry. He poured us out each our glass, and sat sipping his own, and rattling away in his customary lively fashion : suddenly, " You're not drinking, old boy," he said. " No," I replied, " I was trying to remember whether to-morrow is my day for writing to my lawyer and the bank." "More money-grubbing," he laughed, "old guinearbagsl " "No," I answered, "a formal precaution of mine. I send every third or fourth day as the case may be a message in cipher to my lawyer acquainting him with my immediate plans, any engage- ments I may have, any possible peril that may threaten me. I do not send him the key to the cipher : that goes to my banker. But if, when the next third or fourth day comes round, my lawyer does not receive a sirailar message, then he has instructions to go at once to my banker, and my banker has instructions to deliver him the key to the last message. No, I remember now, this is only Thursday, and it was Tuesday when — Venfrelleu/ Monsieur Wainewright, your much-prized Venetian glass ! " For, grabbing at something or nothing across the table, he had upset and shivered both my wine-glass and my decanter : the mahogany was swimming with port wine. " A thousand pardons," he stammered, " ten thousand pardons, my dear doctor, but I was reaching for the olives — no, I mean, that fruit-knife. How damnably clumsy 1 But do have a glass of this sherry." " Thank you," I said, " but I think I will stick to port. KBIEGSPIEL 279 You might, Mr. Wainewright, bring out the other decanter, the one mthout the label. Yes, thank you, I thought as much. And there'll be a second decanter of sherry (is there not?) with a label." So I sat and talked with him, and drank my port, half-an-hour or more before I left for Town — I had to do most of the talking. Mr. Wainewright, I fancy, will henceforth be trebly useful.' " I have told your father," Dr. "Watson went on, " of a similar device of mine, brought down to the level of his comprehension, and I feel perfectly safe. It was sufficient to tell him : as a matter of fact, not a soul really knows where I am." " And what if I told him that-? " asked Lionel. " In the first place he would not believe you, and secondly, if he did, it would do you no good, but harm. Besides, it was told you in confidence. No, no one would ever be wiser, if I disappeared herein Radnorshire." " I thought this was supposed to be Carnarvonshire." " Yes, it was," Dr. Watson said coolly, " but it really is Badnorshire, in Llanfihangel parish, and the other side of the river is in Brecknockshire. That was simply part of the mystification which was meant to render you a ready subject to the mesmeric influence. And to-day is not the ninth or tenth of December, as you will be thinking if you duly studied the tobs^cco wrapping, but the twenty-ninth of November. It was Yusuf ' set up ' that scrap of newspaper ; he copied it, all but the date and that paragraph, from a page of the BwrnvngJuMn Post. I had him taught the compositor's craft in a deaf and dumb institute at Paris three years since ; and sometimes (though not in your case) his skill has come in very handy. It was he, too, who shaved you the morning of our arrival (he is an excellent barber); and it was I who took out the balance and the lever of your watch, let it run down, and then replaced them. Chloro- form and sleeping-draughts explain themselves, and I think there is nothing else. Or is there anything you would wish me to account for ! " « N'otbing, unless how your great grandfather, I mean 280 KRIEGSPIEL your wonderful grandfather, could be certain he was safe till the dessert?" " A very acute question that, Sir Lionel, but Waine- wright most likely would eat ostentatiously of the soup, and partake ostentatiously of the sherry or champagne, or whatever it was during ditmer. Remember that my grandfather was watching for the danger, and spoke only when the danger showed itself. After all, Wainewright was of very little use afterwards : in barely a twelve- month he had to fly the country. He was one of those men who will exceed their instructions ; he always would be cleverer than his counsellor. H3s mother-in-law — that came off capitally ; but the sister-in-law's business was shamefully mismanaged. He never touched one farthing of her insurance (it was fifty thousand pounds sterling). It has always seemed a pity to me, for she was a beauti- ful and most accompUshed girl. Myself I have never consciously been guily of gratuitous cruelty, that is to say of cruelty at all. Mistaken cruelty i — well, yes, it may be, more than once; and, mind you, mistaken cruelty is as crass a blunder as mistaken kindness — with the last, at any rate, I cannot tax myself. No, I aim at treating my co-operators well, as I wotdd treat a horse well. Only, they have to co-operate. " ' Who are my co-operators ? ' you will ask, perhaps : I answer, 'Any one, everybody.' If you ask me next, 'What are they?' my answer isj 'Holders of secrets.' Now, there are some who receive secrets ex officio, as it were — doctors, confessors, procuresses, lawyers, bankers, telegraph-clerks, and money-lenders. There are others who receive them unofficially — wives, mistresses, valets, ladies'-maids, id gen/us omne. My original bait for most of these is money ; afterwards comes in fear of exposure, fear of jail, fear of the gallows, and so forth. Your excellent father, now, there is nothiag he would not do for me, because he fears me as a dread magician, and because he knows too that I could consign him to-morrow to Portland, that is, if I felt mercifully disposed. With him the bait was not money, but revenge. And with some it is a wife, very- likely another man's, or ambition^ KEIEGSPIEL 281 or curiosity (for one may barter secrets) ; still, as a rule it is money. " As to whicli of all these classes is the most useful, that depends. Doctors might be, unquestionably, but they so seldom will, at least the better class. No, there was one young man of high promise, from whom I looked for great things, and whom I accordingly estab- lished in a neighbourhood where I had particular need of a co-operator. I advanced him the money for the purchase of his practice ; his house was furnished with my money ; and on my money he married. Yet, would you believe it, he chose to affect indignation thfe very first time I put a question, quite an innocent question, to him about one of his patients. He had to come under, though, for I had another hold on him than money — ye-e-es. " Confessors, again, the few whom I have employed, have been men on whose word I could place no kind of dependence. They will tell you this and that about any one, but ' this ' will be always false, arid * that ' very seldom true. There was Father Brangan, for instance. I knew what he had been guilty of, and he knew that I knew it ; but, out of pure love of lying, as it seemed, he fooled me with a story so improbable that I fancied it must be true — ^I believe that he was sorry for that afterwards. " Money-lenders, on the other hand, are safe. No man ever goes to a money-lender quite openly : there is always some one he would not wish to know of it. You will have had no dealings with the tribe, but you have probably heard of the mythical 'friend in the City.' He is not such a myth after all : my grandfather and I have made him a reality, ourselves have assumed the character. It is a popular fallacy that all money-lenders are old and rich : why, I have set up a dozen needy young men in the profession. I guarantee them against loss, and allow them a large percentage of profits; every applicant to them is really an applicant to myself . -. . "Then there are the Gypsies: I omitted to mention them, but they fall between the two classes. Them- 282 KEIEGSPIEL selves most credulous, they are objects of credulity; and their women, as fortune-tellers, are the recipients of numberless secrets. But to me the chief value of the Gypsies is their ubiquity. They may go anywhere, stop any time, and depart at the shortest notice, without exciting sxirprise or suspicion ; and I may visit them in the capacity of doctor, or, disguised as the blackguard who guided you to the encampment, may accompany them in their wanderings. I can disappear in one place, and re-appear in another, a hundred, two hundred miles distant. The secret of my power over them, the reason they are willing to serve my ends, is ridiculously simple : I know their language, I can rokha RomaneB?- ' They guard it jealously, but there is one rare work, from which I acquired a knowledge of its mysteries. The Gypsies, however, have never heard of that work, and so they ascribe my knowledge to omniscience. Yes; I remember the very first Gypsy who ever came to consult me; it is thirty years since now. I challenged him to test me, told him I should know what he said, though he said it in French or Italian. ' But you won't know what hongo grei means,' he said, and I answered, ' lame horse ' — that Gypsy was an uncle of your father's, Sempronius Stanley. In my grandfather's time — he had hardly any dealings with the Gypsies — they had their ' wise men ' dotted all over England and Wales; to-day they have only one, Dr. Robert Watson, to consult whom they would journey from Land's End to John o' Groats. . . . " Again, there are my unintelligent agents : not that the foregoing are by any means always intelligent. There are old newspapers, old magazines, and the like. One time and another I have gone through the whole of the Annucd Register from its commencement ; and whenever I am about to settle in a new place, I always go for some days before to the British Museum, and run over the files of the local newspaper for years and years back, noting down carefully old crimes, old accidents, any strange events generally. In this way I am able to tell ^ Speak Gypsy. KRIEQSPIEL 283 men of things that happened in their native place fifty years before, a hundred years before, with a fullness and a precision that amaze them. It takes little to amaze men. I remember in my first interview with the late Sir Charles Glemham I firmly convinced him of the truth of a cock-and-bull story by an imaginary blunder — Yusuf, my clairvoyant, had seen him at a bull-fight in Spain, when it should have by rights been in Mexico. Yusuf, as a matter of fact, had done nothing of the kind. No, your father, Perun Stanley, came to me near Birmingham, seeking information about a Sir Charles Glemham. By the help of my grimovre — in reality a Baronetage, a work Perun had never heard of — I told him that Sir Charles was born on December 27, 1832, had served in a bare-legged regiment, and so forth. Perun of course was immensely impressed, and told me everything he knew about him, including your existence, of which the Baronetage said nothing. Naturally that set me thinking ; and having occasion at the time to fix myself in Suffolk in connection with the great Jennings inheritance, I chose Fressingham for my residence, and there learnt a great deal more, from Sergeant Mackenzie, through a clerk in the Thwaite post-office, and in other ways. I learnt that Sir Charles was in Mexico, and that you had been brought up at Gbttingen ; I knew of your being brought from Germany, and of Sir Charles's expected return. I was the first to greet him in Fress- ingham ; and afterwards, had I 6hosen, he would have admitted me to the closest intimacy. But it was with you, and not with him, I had to do. Might I trouble yon for those matches again 1 " CHAPTER IX I TRUST," Dr. Watson resumed, after lighting the lamp, for night had fallen, " that I am not weary- ing you" (he spoke as if that were impossible), " but it was necessary I should explain my system to you with some little fullness, and myself I have really enjoyed our talk. Tou will now be able rightly to appreciate the advantages of the position I am prepared to offer you. I offer to make you my partner and ultimate successor, and I pro- pose to cement our partnership by a closer alliance, of which anon. There is an obstacle — I need not dwell on it^ — to my own advancement beyond a certain point; but you may, with my assistance, attain to anything : I can make you the Premier of England, a premier as young as, or younger than, Pitt. That sounds astonish- ing, does it not 1 that takes away the breath. But you, Sir Lionel, are a young gentleman of very much more than ordinary abilities. I have watched your career at Oxford with the deepest interest ; indeed, at this moment my one concern is that I have been forced to interrupt it. Still, it will be easy to concoct a story — I have drafted one roughly in my mind already — that will be perfectly satisfactory to your college authorities, and will invest you moreover with a ' romantic halo ' in the eyes of the British public So that need not trouble us. ' In 1847 Cecil Fitzwalter, aZiM the Hon. Ralpli Bollo, aliaa Bobert Watson, was sentenced at Chester assizes to five years' penal serritude for attempted blackmailing (Times newspaper, 13 July, 1847}. This perhaps was the obstacle. 284 KRIEGSPIEL 285 It is not your scholarship, your first-class in Moderations, that I set so much store by, as your unmistakable gift of oratory. I have heard you four, no five, times at your Union — I attended the debates ' made up ' as a country parson — ^and I was struck even more by your marked and steady improvement than by the brilliancy of your maiden effort. You can speak, and you have ideas, or rather you have a power, more valuable still, of assimi- lating the ideas of others, In your last speech, for instance, I recognized several views that I have heard enunciated by your late guardian, Mr. Discipline." " Him ! " Lionel flung in scornfully. " That does not speak much for your discernment." "Quite right," Dr. Watson assented, "always stick to it they are original. But all I meant was that you wiU be qualified to profit by ideas that I will communi- cate, yes, and by what is worth more than all the ideas in the world, by the facts, the hidden facts, the secrets that I can impart to you. There is not the statesman, the noble, the man (or woman) of position about whom I cannot tell you something. There is Mr. , of him I can tell you the exact truth about Madame Cora Dathan's and the Oriental habit ; and Mr. , about him and the little house in St. John's Wood with the green gate ; and Lord , / know why his ' uncle ' never married; and so I could go through tha entire list. ' Virtue ' is but a euphemism for ' secret vices '; and there is not one of them but I know something about him, something to his discredit, or to that of his nearest and dearest. And that knowledge. Sir Lionel, shall all be yours. Not to use necessarily, so much as to possess it : one should never make use of knowledge except as a last resource. But to know something of a man that he would not for the world have known, and to have him know you know it: it is a delightful feeling that, and I have felt it often, " Take your own case, for instance. Supposing you escaped (which involves, of course, my allowing you so to do), you would always feel there was some one who knew what you 9xe — the wrongful heir, the false Sir 286 KRIEGSPIEL Lionel. The feeling would cramp all your being; a generous action on your p&,rt -would always be really a meanness ; you could hardly be proud of your ' proud station,' for the thought of it would invariably suggest your vile origin. That is, supposing you do not bow to the inevitable, that you do not come over to me. But you will, you do; then things wear a different aspect. It will seem to you laughable then that you, the real offspring of two vagabond tinkers, of an assassin and a harlot, should be the bearer of an historic name, the possessor of a great fortune, ay, and the wielder of Eng- land's destinies. You will have a delicious sense of freedom from all responsibilities, for, with such a parentage, why trouble yourself about virtue or honour or any of the other idola noMlitatis 1 Yet at the same time you will be allied to the noblest blood in the kingdom. Look here." From a letter-case Dr. Watson drew forth a photo- graph, and handed it to Lionel. That of a girl of twenty, it seemed to recall to him some painting or engraving that he must often have seen before : perhaps it was the dress, which resembled that of the seventeenth century, or the little light ringlets, clustering closely about the brow. The face was a pretty one, but spoilt by an air of vanity and petulance, and by a subtle under-look of cunning and hardness. Dr. Watson received the card back, and before returning it to his pocket, gazed at it almost a:Sectionately. " Yes," he observed, " there is something of myself, but far more of her mother's namesake and ancestress, Henrietta Maria. As we journey northward, I will tell you in f uU that marvellous history, how her grandfather, the only son of Prince Charles Edward, was at his birth entrusted to an English admiral, and by him was brought up as his younger son. He entered the navy himself, married, and left two sons and one daughter. The last became my wife (I was her cousin already on the wrong side of the blanket); and now between this girl here and the throne there are only the' lives of her uncle, Charles Edward Stuart, Count d'Albauie, and of his eon, who, KKIEGSPIEL 287 though married, is childless. It seems a kind of iron^ of fate that you ' Sir Lionel Glemham,' should wed the rightful, hut dispossessed, heiress of three kingdoms. For that is the high destiny before you. From the hoiir of her birth I cast about for one on whom I might fittingly bestow her hand ; in you, the first time that I heard of you, I knew I had fouhd the man. I had of course then no conception that you would prove so worthy of my choice; as it is, our course is compara- tively simple. You, as I pointed out, are with my assistance to become the foremost person in the State; as such, you wiU guide things to a revolution, which will turn out the reigning dynasty, a house never endeared to the nation ; and then, at the proper juncture the claim of your wife, my daughter, will be published. It is irresistible, supported as it will be by a vast mass of documentary evidence, including letters from the First Napoleon, the Duke of Gordon, the Earl of Moray, the Marquis of Bute, Lord Lovat, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Sir Howard Douglas, and many others. Some of these, you will see, contemplated just such a revelation, as far back as the Keform BUI, when, in anger and despair at WiUiam IV. 's tergiversation, they ofiered the headship of the Conservative faction to the late Count d'Albanie, John Sobieski Stuart. You look incredulous : do I seem, then, to you to rave ? " He did indeed, yet his voice was as equable as though he were enunciating a proposition of Euclid. He seemed to proceed from one argument to another with the easy conviction that both were irresistible. Lionel said nothing; and, apparently satisfied, Dr. Watson went calmly on — " So there really is nothing much more, except for you two to be married, the sooner the better. Henriette's girlhood has mostly been passed^ in Prance, but she is at present in (jrlasgow, in an TJrsuline nunnery. Oh, yes, she is a good Cathplic ; there will be no difficulty on the score of religion. Let me see, then, we can travel up to Scotland by easy ^t^iges, and reach Glasgow in from three to four weeks' time. Only meanwhile there is one 288 KMEGSPIEL little formal precaution, a document — No, how stupid of me ! there is another point, which I was very nearly forgetting. Tou cannot reasonably be expected to entertain a strong filial affection for your father, for Perun Stanley ; and he might in the future prove most embarrassing to both of us. There is really no place for him, though he thinks there is, in our plan, under which you, the great Catholic baronet, are to marry the heiress to the crown of England. So it might be as well to rid ourselves of his presence. I could, but I will not, hang him, for, with the gallows in immediate prospect, men are apt to disclose very inconvenient secrets. But I undertake, on my word as a gentleman, to get him consigned for twenty years or even longer to Portland or Dartmoor or some other such seclusion, where he will have ample leisure to meditate on his past and to reconcile himself with offended Heaven. That, I imagine, will be a great relief to you. And the docu- ment I was speaking of, will you kindly write it down from my dictation. Here is ink and pen and paper — paper, you may observe, bearing the mark of ' William Hunt, Tavern Street, Ipswich.' " And Dr. Watson dictated — " 20th Octoier 1869. FressingJiam Priory. '"My deae Father, " ' Sir Charles is going to ride over to Henningham ' (you might spell it with one ») ' at four this afternoon. He wiU be alone. I am sending this by Anselo, So I remain your tatcho chavo,' (that is the Komany for ' true son,' is it not ?) ' Lionel.' " Thank you so much," he added, as he stretched out his hand for the paper. " I hope your handwriting has not altered greatly in the past six years: it used, I remember, to be very German in character. Anyhow, that will do." KRIEGSPIEL 289 Would it, though? — this was what Lionel had written — "I would sooner be chained to a leper or a putrefying corpse than to that man " (he could not bring himself to name him), "- but I would sooner be chained to him than chain- ed to a thing like you. Dr. Robert Watson. " Lionel." By rights Dr. Watson should have shot at Lionel a glance full of fury and malice and disappointment, the glance of the baffled Tempter. He did nothing of the kind. He read the paper, folded it up carefully, and placed it in his waistcoat-pocket ; then, perhaps for five minutes, sat eying Lionel meaningly. " Ah ! " he said quietly at last, " the next best thing to winning a game is losing it gracefully. But I have not lost the game yet; at the worst it will merely be drawn. Drawn } no. Sir Lionel, checkmate for you. You are no fool, and you must know you have not been brought here to fool with me. With or without you, I leave this place to-night, never probably to return. If without, then " he broke off, and glanced signifi- cantly towards the hole. "If I go, and Perun comes back and finds you here, he will pitch you into it. Whether he will finish you ofE before doing so, I cannot say, but I doubt it : Gypsies have a superstitious horror of blood-shedding. It must be a painful death that, to be lingeringly stifled. I remember reading lately about a man who had been buried alive and was exhumed : they coidd see he had gnawed his right arm. And if ever they discover your remains, the discovery will ex- cite no suspicion. For this meadow, which Perun has been renting these two years back on purpose to bring you here, is full of skeletons ; it was a pre-historic burial- ground. Some day they will howk up your skull, and a learned antiquary will make it a text for a lecture. I u 290 KBIEGSPIEL • half forget their jargon, but your skull should be brachycepfaalic ; you cannot be long-headed, if you reject my ofier. But you have not rejected it finally ; and I do not think you will upon reflection. I have no wish to seem precipitate. I have spent on this game great part of the last dozen years ; I can spare fifteen minutes more " (he paused and laughed). " The first time I saw you at Oxford, you were rowing in a boat-race. I had heard you were to row in it, and I wanted to have a good look at you, so, disguised as the country clergyman, I made , my way down the towing-path, and having found the Morham boat, stationed myself opposite it. I recognized you at once, and was pleased by your great improvement. Why I recall this now is because I remember the way they started the boats — counting out the minutes and the seconds of the last minute. I will do that now. I will tell you when the first five minutes is up, and the next five minutes ; and the last minute I will count out second by second. Before I reach the sixty, I feel confident you will capitulate : otherwise, ' Mort saps phrase,' I warn you in Sieyte' words." Dr. Watson drew out his watch, a handsome gold repeater, and sat holding it in one hand, his eyes always fastened on Lionel, and his bald head a little thrown back, so that it rested against the tent-blanket. There he sat motionless, silent, the cruel thin lips pressed tightly together, silent even when Lionel, stung by a sudden fury, sprang at him to strangle him No, the chain brought him up, he fell back : Dr. Watson had calculated his distance. If he would have gone on speaking, it might not have been so horrible ; for hor- rible it was, that grave and its worms, and the thought that in fifteen minutes Fifteen minutes ! it was too long or too short to form a decision in, the more so when that decision was one of death or life, of honour or dis- honour. Should he not feign to accede) — a promise extorted thus could never surely be binding] on the journey to Scotland there must be some chance of escap- ing ; that Gypsy girl had said her father was ready to help him J he hated the notion, still No, no, ten KRIEGSPIEL 291 thousand times no. If that foul story were true (and he half, more than half, feared it was), if he were the spawn of that cowardly murderer, then he might and would palter with faith and courage and conscience. But a son of the brave Sir Charles Glemham, would he, could he dream for one instant of "Five minutes up." And still Dr. Watson sat motionless, his eyes always fastened on Lionel. Lionel looked around desperately ; at such moments the eye takes in everything. It was a frosty evening, so still that he could hear the ticking of the doctor's watch, and bright with moonshine, which cast strange shadows on the opposite tent-blanket. That one must be the end of the caravan, for he could make out the fret-work carving ; and that one, the birch-tree before it ; and that low round one, a bush or a boulder ; and that one — ^pshaw ! to be fooling away the few minutes in guessing at shadows : could he not hit on some, any chance of escape 1 Could he not snap this tent-rod to which his leg was tethered 1 an ash tent-rod as thick as one's wrist is not to be easily broken. Should he not shout? cry aloud for help? no, he would reserve that for the last emergency] that, he thought, could but hasten the end. The end ! but it was impossible they could, seriously contemplate this villainy; they were merely trying to frighten him. Why, that Gypsy man called hiinself his father, he could never be meaning to murder his own That man had murdered Sir Charles, and knew that he, Lionel, could hang him. As he would, as he would, as he would : if a wish could have done it, he would have hanged him then ; and that old man, that execrable monster, him he would torture, torture slowly with such " Ten minutes up." And still Dr. Watson sat motion- less, his eyes always fastened on Lionel. A great horror fell upon Lionel; he strove, but in vain, to pray. No prayer would come to him, but only a silly old story of a Scotch farmer, driving from market, whose horse ran away, and who " kenned naething but the Lord's Prayer, and that was no use ava." Ah ! 292 KEIEGSPIEL but the Ave, yes, lie would try and recite the Ave ; and hurriedly, blunderingly, Lionel began : ' Ave, Maria, gratia plena, gratia plena, plena, benedicta tu in muUeribus, in mulieribus, yes, Dominus tecum : et benedictus, bene ' " " One, two, three, four, five, six," Dr. Watson began . counting slowly, still sitting motionless, his eyes still fastened on Lionel. " Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven," and lo ! at " eleven " the shadow of the bush or boulder rose suddenly and expanded into that of a mighty woman, wielding a mighty hammer — Lionel would have shrieked aloud, but he could not : he could only gaze wonder-struck, voiceless. " Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty- three ; " the hammer went up and descended. " Fifty- four, fifty-five, fifty-six ; " and again it was poised aloft. "Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-n " Crash ! crunch ! and on Lionel's lips the " wersh " salty taste of blood, in his mind's eye the vision of Irving as Louis XI. Bald Dr. Watson had toppled prostrate in front of him ; and there was a great crimson splotch on the tent-blanket, where his head had been leaning against it. CHAPTER X WHAT followed seemed like a dream to Lionel afterwards, a vivid dream, but with all a dream's unreality. The Gypsy girl, Sagul, darted into the tent. "Quick, get up," she cried, "the gate's open, and Perun that drunk he can hardly scrawl." " But I can't," said Lionel, " for I'm chained, and he's got the key." "What, him?" Sagul asked, with a glance at that huddled figure, " in which pocket 1 where did he put it ? " "No, the other one," Lionel said, shuddering; yet he felt more like laughing than crying. " Then he hasn't, for I have : he gave all his keys to my daddy, and my daddy give 'em to me." And pro- ducing a bunch from her pocket, Sagul knelt down by Lionel, and essayed to unfasten the padlock. There were only five or six keys, and first she selected the smallest, next one rather larger, then tried all the rest in succession. The padlock remained fast. "Dadia/"^ she murmured, "I'm all of a dither,^ and my eyes like Three-eyes', only none on 'em good for nothing. Here, try you, you're better used to 'em. Or I could cut the rod through easy in half a H'st! sTmkwr, shuha/r."^ She had opened a large clasp-knife, and was about to fall to on the tent-rod, when there reached them the sound of lurching footsteps and husky oaths. Quick 1 " My father 1 " a common Gypsy ejaculation. 2 "Tremble." « "Quiet, quiet." 293 294 tCRIEGSPIEL as thought she extinguished the lamp, pushed up the tent-blanket at the bottom, hustled Lionel through, and crawled after him to the outside of the tent. " It's the pretty Perun," she whispered. " Lord ! I wish I'd got the tent-mallet. But you've kept the keys ? Don't breathe, only try and undo it." The lurching footsteps drew nearer and nearer till they seemed to enter the tent : then there was a fall, and a fresh explosion of curses. " By G ," they heard him say, as he scrambled up again with much difficulty, "I was very nigh int' it, into 'e grave. Dr. Wa'shon, I-say, Dr. Wa'shon. Doctor'sh gone, an' lamp'sh gone too ; an', hullo ! what devil'sh that 1 " (as his foot seemed to trip over something). "Oh! it'sl^ you, ish it? it'sh Lionel, 'e baronight. Doctor'sh gone, left 'im. Then I know, I know. Where' sh shpade?" There was a sound of dragging, and next a heavy thud, and presently the shovelling of earth. Sagul cut a small slit in the tent-blanket, and looked through. "Oh! my dear blessed Lord!" she exclaimed, but always in a low undertone, "if he isn't a-buryin' the doctor. Ddbla/ and how he can work too, and him drinking that gin with his brandy, as you thought it was water, my Perun. Go it, my Perun, go it ; you're doin' splendid, owJacious, magnificent. Dear heart ! but it's comical. How my daddy will laugh ! " " It's off," said Lionel, " the key turns the other way." He had been working away half mechanically at the padlock, and suddenly it had opened. "Then it's time we was off too," said Sagul, "but bide one dear little instance. I must just see what Longsnout's up to, and, sartain-sure, he won't catch us a-runnin'. Well, of all the play-actings Ah-h-h ! " For Perun, after more than half fi.lling the grave up, had suddenly coUapsed. Down went the spade, and down he went on the top of it : a moment later there came a deep, long-drawn snore. Sagul's eyes and teeth gleamed in the Inoonlight, as, again quick as thought, she caught up the padlock. KEIBGSPIEL 295' "That's the right key into it!" she asked, "and that's how it works? yes, like that. I won't he a moment." She dived back beneath the tent-blanket, and re- emerged in barely a minute with a ringing, triumphant laugh. " I've done it," she cried, " I've handcuffed the fine handsome Longsnout. Often I've heard him boast. Ne'er a man should put handcuffs on Perun ; and (there ! I've done it 1 I've done it. 'Twas too small for his leg, so I padlocked it on to his wrist. Now he may wake or not : I wish he would, just to let me see what he'll look like. Wanselo, hi ! here, Wanselo." Anselo stole up furtively, with a scared and astonished look, as though he thought Sagul must have taken leave of her senses. Except that he had grown into a man, he was not much altered from what he had been in the " Llewellyn " days : the old curl of lip was still visible beneath a small dapper moustache. He was of a slighter build and very much fairer than his brother Pyramus. " It's all right," said Sagul, in response to his ques- tioning glance. " Perun's gone and buried the doctor — Dear Lord ! I did fetch him a crack, but his head looked that round through the tent-blanket. And then I suppose he was tired, for he fell sound asleep right a-top of him (don't you hear him a-snorin' ?), so I chained him up, chained up my noble Perun, like you'd chain up Trusty the watch-dog. You can see him through here ; and doesn't he look lovely. Ah ! " she continued, contemplating him herself, " and you were for burying my Lionel, were you? or he was to marry that old man's daughter, was he ? For the sakes o' one pin I'd do the same by you ; I'd " "Let him be, Sagul," Anselo broke in nervously. " Time we was starting off, and Sir Lionel here looking deathly. I've put the mare to, had her in half-an-hour already." "What, in my daddy's wagon?" said Sagul, "no, no, but we'll take the fine Perun's, for it runs twice as light again. But I say, Wanselo." 296 KEIEGSPIEL "Yes, what is it?" " Is the dummy waiting for him ? " (Sagul laughed as she asked it) ; " is he up at the HoUybush still ? " " No, he never put up there at all to-day, drove back right to the Hay. And from something what Perun said, I don't believe as the doctor was going back there, leastwise not to stop. Him and Perun and Sir Lionel were to have started ofE somewheres this very night, and we were to follow after, Hereford, Shrewsbiu'y, and Chester way." "That's better. Here, we two '11 walk on to the gate, and bide in my daddy's place ag'in you're ready." It was less than two hundred yards' distance, but Lionel never knew how they got there, never had more than a dream-like impression of the frosty moon shining above, of the field spinning suddenly round, of a sup- porting arm, of the kindly, pitying face of Mrs. Stanley, of Sylvester drunk, but less drunk than he pretended, and of a departure , then rumble, rumble, rumble for hours, days, weeks, and months. THE END OF BOOK THE THIKD BOOK IV CHAPTER I THOSE " Stranger Adventures of a Caravan " will never be written, for they were a blank, or all but a blank, to Lionel, He tried some years after to retrace their wanderings, but in vain. So far as he could remember, they seemed to have touched hardly any of the great towns that lie on the direct route from Radnorshire to Scotland. On the other hand, now and again he hit by sheer accident on places that he must have seen either then or in some state of pi'e-existence — the three tall spires of Coventry ; Dui-sford village green, with its shattered cross; Chesterfield and its twisted spire ; a hill that may be seen from the train near Appleby; and Branston, with children bathing in the river. Where, then, were those other scenes which lived even more vividly in his memory — the meadow in which a band of young men and women had come and sung hymns to them in an unknown tongue (query, Welsh) ; the haunted house on the hiUside (a child could have seen it was haunted) ; and the grey common or moorland on which one early morning, the mist having lifted a foot or two off the ground, he could see plainly the legs of the cattle, but not a sign of their bodies i One thing at least he knew, for "Wanselo told him this,'- that it was at a town or village called Newton or Newtown that he lay for weeks ill of a fever. " And ^ In tlieir walk to Clun, of which in the last chapter. 299 300 KRIEGSPIEL the doctor's name there was Tufnell, and he was a Tough un, said Sagul. He wanted to send you to the hospital, but she wouldn't let him, wouldn't suffer no soul hardly anighst you, only her. And when you come out o' the fever, you seemed that crabbed and sorrowful, wouldn't speaJc, nor wouldn't eat scarcely; and Dr. Tufnell told her you was dangerous, that you might start up any night out of your sleep and kill us. So he said she should place you in the 'sylum, that there was no one in the world could do no mannerable good to you, without it was Professor Macgiven of Edinburgh ; he'd been a student himself there, I fancy. And me and Sagul talked it over atween us, and she says, ' 'TwUl be better for Lionel to kill me, than for me to go kill my Lionel, as it would if we put him in the 'sylum.' Aid we started right away from Newton, and never had no more doctors till Sir Andrew Macgiven, but Sagul just tended you herself. Only many's the night, bor, I laid awake tremblings for fear of you." Yes, that was at Newton or Newtown, but, then, there are a hundred places of the name. And it must have come pretty early in the wanderings, though hardly so early as Sagul's discovery of the silver tefi- pots of guineas and sovereigns, for Lionel could remember that distinctly. There were five of them, hidden in a rude secret place beneath the caravan's bunk ; and Lionel could see Sagul sitting with her apron all full of gold, and could hear her say, laughing, "Bdbla/ how ever shall we get through all this money?" It was Perun's hoardings, his and his mother's and her mother's before her, that ought to have been divided between the two brothers, "only the fine handsome Perun collared 'em, and my daddy, simple-Uke, let him. Lord I " Sagul ran on, " I wish I could tell how it went when we come away from the meadow. There'd be a fight, I know, betwixt him and my daddy ; and, for all he's that big, my daddy can always best him, if he'll only fight cautious, 'cos my daddy ain't one o' your toss-pots. I would love to ha' been there to see it. And when he heared 'twas the doctor he buried I And KRIEGSPIEL 301 him fast with the handcufE ! I wonder how long it would be 'fore my daddy loosed him." That merry, bonny brown face, with its gleaming teeth and its flashing radiant eyes, how often it came back to Lionel in dreams years afterwards ! He could see her seated on the footboard driving, and now tossing up a smile to himself, as he stood leaning over the half- door, now exchanging a greeting or a jest with some passer-by. "Well, you be a jolly lass," he could re- member an old farmer saying : his yellow gig was coming down the hill, and the green caravan going up it. And also he had a remembrance of evenings when the rumble-rumble of the caravan had ceased, when it was "drawn into" some pleasant meadow, and when he would read and re-read aloud a story of a certain " King's Son, who was enchanted by an old Witch, and obliged to sit in a great iron stove which stood in a thick forest." He may have read other stories, but that was the only one came back to him; that was the one of which Sagul seemed net'er to weary. Yes, he could see her sit listening, big-eyed; and in his ears rang an echo, " My Lionel." And at last, one warija June afternoon, the meadow they " drew into " was within a mile of Edinburgh town. A burn ran through it, and on the burn was a sawmill, and there was also a pretty little house, in which lived an old Quaker lady and children who looked as if they had stepped out of the Pilgrim's Progress. She was a chatty old lady, and was presently chatting with Sagul, who informed her that she was herself called Kichenda Lovell, that her two brothers' names were Leonard and Goliath, that Leonard last year had had a bad sunstroke " nigh ag'in' Gorselar," and that they had brought him to Edinburgh to be cured by Professor Forgiven — " I'd scorn to tell the truth to mvmupli gcmjoes"'^ was a favourite maxim of Sagul's. "Professor Forgiven, art thou correct in the name, Friend ? " the old Quaker lady inquired. I Miserable Gentiles. 302 KEIEGSPIEL " Ay, that's it," persisted Sagul, " 'cos I prays every night in my prayers as my brother may be forgiven : Dr. Tufnell said nought else could save him." " That is true, Friend, we all have need of forgive- ness; but I doubt thou must mean J/acgiven — Sir Andrew Macgiven men call him now." , " Macgiven, forgiven : then I'll pray as he may be macgivened. But where is his house, ma'am ? for I'll call in and bid him come out here." " His house is in Charlotte Square ; I am acquainted with him. But knowest thou. Friend, his fees? two guineas at the lowest, or five, it may be, to come hither. Now to-morrow morning thou couldst hire a raachine, and take thy brother to the Infirmary, where he would see Friend Macgiven gratuitously." " No, no, ma'am, I'm not for no 'firmaries, or hospitals, no, nor 'sylums. But five gummas, well, now, that's cur'us. Why, I'd gladly give fifty. For whatever does it si'nify, leastwise when a piisson has got it." Accordingly that same evening, a little past seven o'clock, Sagul alighted from a cab, and rang the bell of a large house in Charlotte Square. She was splendidly arrayed, perhaps a trifie too splendidly, in a flapping black beaver hat, a yellow silk neckerchief, a scarlet opera-cloak, and a black satin gown. The door was opened by a solemn butler. "I'm come for Professor Macgiven to fetch him to see my brother. You're not him?" she asked dubiously. " Me, young woman, the notion ! You don't seem to be aware that Sir Andrew Macgiven, Baronet, is not in the habit of seeing anyone after five." " Baronight, what's he a baronight ? " Sagul was beginning, with a vague idea as to " Baronet help baronet," when she was interrupted by a mellow voice : "Now, Hopkins, I can't have you philandering with pretty girls on my doorstep." The speaker, who was dressed to go out to dinner, was a gentleman of sixty, florid and white-haired, a sort of small edition of a Roman Emperor. He had a KRIEGSPIEL 303 courtly bearing, that exasperated his enemies, for he was "only a crofter's son." " Me, Sir Andrew ! " said Hopkins indignantly, " but it's you the young person's come after." " In-deed 1 Excuse me " (with a bow, to Sagul), " I had no conception I was the favoured party. You don't look much in need of a doctor." " No, my gentleman, I mean Sir Andrew, it's not me, but my brother. He's had a very bad fever, and Dr. TufneU said you was the only doctor in England could cure him ; and she, the old lady in the funny bonnet, said it was iive guineas, and I've brought 'em, and there they are." And from a deep under-pooket Sagul extracted five gold pieces, and handed them to Sir Andrew. " A fore-handed payment, tut, tut ! And, bless me ! five actual guineas ! Why, I never saw so many together. Where on earth did you get them ? " " Out of one o' the teapots," said Sagul apologetically. " If I'd known, I'd 'a brought it you in notes instead, only she said ' guineas,' and I can't abide them Scotch pound- notes, they do smell so." "Ah! they do, you think; but here, take back your guineas, at any rate till I have earned them. Yes, I'll look in some time to-morrow. Who are you i and where do you live ? " "I'm Eichenda Lovell," said Sagul, "and we're Gypsies, we are, stopping into a meadow t'other side this town. You must go through there, you see, and then right along that street, and then turn to the right, and then keep on, oh ! ever so ; and you mustn't go up the hill, but take the turn to the left, and you'll see a white gate, and that's it." " Kather a puzzling direction that to remember, and still more puzzling to follow. Let's see. Along Princes Street, and then turn to the right (that '11 be over the North Bridge), and then out ever so far. Ha ! I believe I have it. Didn't you say something about an old lady in a queer bonnet ? Mrs. Cunninghame, for a thousand. Did she call you ' Friend ' ? " 304 KRIEQSPIEL " Ay, did she, my gentleman ; and you was ' Friend Macgiven.' " " Of course, of course ; I know the meadow well. By Jove, I've half a mind to (it will be a most deadly dull dinner) ; yes, I'll be hanged if I don't. Hopkins." " Yes, Sir Andrew " (meekly, almost reproachfully). " Tell Calder to go over at once to the New Club, and ' My compliments and apologies to Lord Bedrule, but I have been called out suddenly on a very important case.' And Calder may send a cab round ; and have something for me to eat about nine, or soon after. We'll drive out together, Miss Richenda." They did, by way of Lothian Eoad ("for fear old Bedrule might spot me ") ; and as they drove, Sir Andrew talked away gallantly to Sagul, whilst pointing out to her the Castle and the Meadows, Arthur's Seat and Craigmillar Castle. He seemed to her to know something about everything, even about the Gypsies, for nine years before he had attended one of the Lees, a cousin of her own, in a great encampment at Newington. But the instant he set foot in the caravan and came into the presence of his patient, his manner changed, he seemed in a way to dry up. He looked at Lionel, he examined Lionel, and he put a few questions, which Lionel answered listlessly and vaguely, or did not answer at all. "There; that will do," he then said. "You might come outside, Miss Richenda." " Now," he asked her abruptly, " what's this shock he's had?" "This shock," Sagul faltered, "what shock? Ah ! it's the fever you're meaning, the fever I told you about, what took him last New Year by Newton." " Yes, I know, but what caused the fever ? He has had some great fright, I am positive. Come " (as Sagul still hesitated), " out with it. I must know everything exactly, if I am to cure your brother." " But you won't tell, will you 1 Now, say you won't, my dear gentleman." "Telll what on earth should I tell for? You've not been committing a murder." KEIEGSPIEL 305 " No, it wasn't no murder, 'cos he was for murderin' him, so I hit him and killed him ; leastwise, my uncle buried him." " Tou hit him, and killed him 1 AncJ who, in God's name, then, was he 1 " " 'Twas the doctor, sir; the old doctor." "The doctor! the old doctor! you can't mean a medical man." And Sir Andrew seemed to be contem- plating flight. "Anyways, they called him 'the doctor.' And he was for mesmerizing Li — Leonard, and making him marry his daughter." "Mesmerizing — marry his daughter — oh! he must just have been one of those quacks, the creatures that go round to fairs. Why, when I was in practice at Peebles, I remember one of my patients being all but poisoned with the nostrums of one of those miscreants. Yes, indeed." Whereupon Sir Andrew, who was famed for his rapid diagnosis, and who, besides, like most Gentiles, could believe almost anything of the Gypsies, forthwith con- structed a highly ingenious theory, which a few more shrewd questions, put by him, appeared to establish triumphantly. " And your brother," he said, " saw you do it. I don't wonder it was a shock to him. Why, it was a shock, I can tell you, to Me. But the first instant I saw him I knew he had had some great shock — I couldn't, of course, be sure what. Now, has he always been used to this kind of life?" (with a jerk of his thumb towards the caravan). " No, he hasn't. Sir Andrew," said Sagul, " which I wouldn't attempt to deceive you. For when he was quite a dear little teeny young boy, there was a gentle- man. Squire Lucas, by Newton Abbot, had him into his house — and a grand house it is, in a park — to be brought up beside the young squire ; and he was there, oh ! ever so many years, and learnt to read and write beautiful, and to play the pianny, and do the 'rithmetic, and, oh ! I couldn't tell you what." X 306 KBIEGSHEL " I knew it, I knew it : at least, I don't wish to pre- tend that 1 knew precisely all that. But there lies our course ; that's what you'll have to do." " What ? " Sagul asked in perplexity. " Sartain-sure I'd willings do anything." "You must for a while forsake your nomad existence ; you must remove with your brother Leonard into a house, some cheerful house where he wiU have plenty to divert his thoughts, where everything will be new to him, or a reversion, rather, to a once familiar environ- ment. Now, let me think. Hah ! I have it. The Seton- Hepburns — Bothwell House — that huge empty barrack in the Canongate. The very thing, of course, of all others. I'll go in at once to Mrs. Cunninghame's, and scribble off a note tt) the professor, my brother-pro- fessor, the professor in partibus, or better, possibly, to Mrs. Seton-H. And you shall take it her to-morrow morning. Then, when you're settled there, you can drop me a line and tell me, and I'll look round and see how your brother is progressing. In six months hence I guarantee his complete re-establishment. No, no, no, no, no ; put up those guineas, I have not half earned them yet. Gtood-night, Miss Ilichenda ; good-night, my dear Miss Kichenda." " Now," mused Sir Andrew, as he drove in the cab back to Charlotte Square, "there's something uncom- monly attractive about that Gypsy girl I suppose it's her native truthfulness. Only fancy her killing the quack doctor ; one cannot, of course, feel sorry for the scoundrel. Gad ! if she would but hit Seton-Hepburn on the head, what a relief to Edinburgh Society ! " CHAPTER II FS cards bore " Professor B. Seton-Hepburn, Bai'-' thropolis University, Wis.," where the B. stood certainly for Benoni, and Seton for the S. of the days before he obtained the chair of Kosmology and the hand of Aurelia Barthrop. That was in 1870, when their united ages had amounted to sixty-three, she having the advantage of him in years as in wealth and social position. For he was then only a school-teacher, whilst she was the daughter of the " Lumber Monarch," Ulysses N. Barthrop, the creator of Barthropolis and the muni- ficent founder of its university. At first her father was strongly opposed to the match, but finally he oame round, and settled a hundred thousand dollars on his daughter. At present, in 1876, the professor was thirty or thereby, with a lanky, disjointed frame, a Mirabeauesque mane, a flux of high piping words, and a faith (in him- self) that should have moved not merely the Alps or the Rocky Mountains, but the whole earth, the universe : to regenerate the universe was one, indeed, of his fore- most aims. Mrs. Seton-Hepburn, on the other hand, was a good-hearted, wizened, little woman, with nothing more remarkable about her than a profound belief in her husband that almost equalled his own in himself. She was not the least bit ashamed of her occasional Americanisms, whereas he was proud of possessing none — " I am cosmopolitan, Sir, I am ; cosmopolitan tO' the backbone." 307 308 KRIEGSPIEL After the crash at Barthropolis, the professor had come to Europe, ■with his wife and her dollars, and many hopes, among them one that his father-in-law might not be released from Sing Sing before his full term was up. After a while he settled in Edinburgh, where he de- veloped his " Scottish ancestry," and made a great noise, if not name. He was one of those men who are willing to support any speaker on any platform, to lecture on any conceivable or inconceivable subject, to orate in season and out of season. Such men have their uses or misuses ; and before many months had gone by it was next to impossible to attend any public meeting, dinner, bazaar, etc., in Edinburgh, and not be favoured with a " few words " from the professor. And it was in Edinburgh that he developed his great scheme for the Deodorization of Hetairism. He unfolded it in the Queen Street Hall, which he had hired for the occasion. There was no charge made for admission, and the novelty of his subject (hardly any one had an inkling what on earth it could possibly mean) attracted a good-sized audience, for the most part consisting of women. " Aphrodite Anadyomene" was the text of his oration, and, being unintelligible, was received with a burst of applause. But little by little it began to dawn on the good ladies' minds what was the drift of this rhapsody, this cataract of phrases — "archsean promiscuity . . . high-priestesses of humanity . . . altruistic self-sacrifice . . . consecration of Nature . . . guardians of our domestic Lares . . . return to Hellenic ideals . . . the snapping of priestcraft's fetters . . . Lais and Apelles . . . Fhryne and Praxiteles . . . Aspasia and Pericles . . . Diotima and Socrates . . . King Harold and Edith Swan-neck . . . Mary Stuart and Chastelard . . . Ninon de Lenclos and Condi . . . Eromney's ' divine lady ' and Nelson," etc. etc. etc. And as he proceeded to depict the Edinburgh High Street paced no longer by tawdry Doll Tearsheet and bawling Moll Flanders, but by white-robed, melodious Hetairse, whose spirits should be purified by Wagner and Botticelli, and who thus should be " fitting helpmates for the stark warrior from the KBIEGSPIEL 309 Castle, the blufE blue-jacket from. Queensferry, the silver-tongued orator of the Parliament House, or the keen scientist of Surgeons' Hall," there was a rustle, a rising, a general stampede. At the close of his lecture one lady only was left : she, stone-deaf and purblind, sat grasping a threepenny-bit, under the belief that it was a missionary-meeting, to wind up with a "silver collection." But the professor was not a bit daunted " Every avatar of the Zeitgeist is bound to be greeted with obloquy." He resolved to put his theory into practice, and to that end took a lease of Bothwell House in the Ganongate, "the town-mansion. Sir, of my forebears." This last was addressed to the curator of the Botanical Gardens, who dryly advised the professor to take up the cultivation of insectivorous plants, seeing that Bothwell House at the time was a congeries of forty to fifty one- room and two-room tenements. But the professor gutted it, refi.tted it, and furnished it in the best Trans- atlantic style ; then himself and his wife moved into it from the hotel which had hitherto been their abode. They were to have been followed by Doris, Kosalind, Cecily, Elsie, and all the other bearers of those pretty names he had selected so carefully (such re-naming formed part of his system, and the names were already inscribed in golden uncials on the doors of the " cellse " into which Bothwell House was distributed). But wisest fate, in the person of Chief-Constable Arbuthnot, said No : he called on the professor, and pointed out to him very plainly that under Act this and that and By- law so and so he was about to become a nuisance and misdemeanant, who, if he persisted, would be sent to the Calton Jail and have his locks shorn. The professor talked of resistance to high-handed despotism, but did not go beyond talking ; his wife was secretly glad, but would not for the world have owned her gladness. So Bothwell House, which had until recently been peopled by upwards of two hundred souls, was empty now save for the professor, his wife, and their three "bower-maidens," when Sagul presented herself with this note from Sir Andrew Macgiven — 310 KRIEGSPIEL "17/6/76. "Dbae Mes. Seton-Hepbuen, " Knowing the professor's penchant for Bohemianism, I venture to inquire whether three veritable Eobemians might not be suitable inmates gf Bothwell House? It is by my advice that they propose for a while to renounce their wanderings and come under a civilized roof, where I shall be able to call and attend the young man. Money, I know, is of course no object to you, but they seem to have a more unlimited command of guineas than any patients in the whole course of my practice. With kind regards to the professor, in haste, very truly yours, "A. Macgivest. "P.S. — I should have told you her name is Eichenda Lovell." Sagul rang, and her ring was eventually answered by one of the " bower-maidens," an attractive young person in a toga or chlamys or something of the kind, all white, who straightway said — " It's no go ; they mayn't keep but three. And we're all leaving." " "What's that for 1 " asked Sagul. " I should think so. Him and his dearies.^ And not half the freedom what any real slavey would get. Why, they're watching the house day and night." "Who are?" " The d.'s, the detectives, put on by the neighbours. And you know, if you did come, he'd not let you go dressed like that. My word ! but you have got 'em on " (eying Sagul's attire with evident approval). " Look at me, then." "But you never go out that figure?" said Sagul, grinning. " No, / don't, but Celia did (that's Lottie Beattock, 1 Query, hetairoe. KBIEGSPIEL 311 you know), and they ran her in, and she had to come up like this before Baillie Lorimer, and he said it was dis- graceful (and so it is), and fined her seven-and-sixpence, or three days. And the professor stood up in court, and was for making a long speech, and paid it. No, you take a fool's advice, and keep away." '•But I've brought this letter here from Sir Andrew Maogiven for the lady, Mrs. Satan-Heaven — hers does seem such a cur'us-like name." " A letter ; all right, bring it up. For we're all in the drawing-room together. There's me, you know, and the other two young ladies ; and the professor, the weary man, is discoursin' of Elephantal Mortality ; i and she, poor silly body, sitting rocking herself in her rock- ing-chair, for the want of a wean to rock. Yes, come away up, Miss (for I'm sure I don't know your name); come away up, if it's only to stop his fool's havers." "Now, that's gratifying," remarked the professor, who, appropriating the letter, read it first to himself, then aloud, "ex-tremely gratifying. It is not that it emanates from a gentleman of title, for, high-born and long-descended though I am, I am democratic, therefore anti-titular. But as a communication from one man of science to another. And as a recognition. Now this young man he alludes to, Sir Andrew Macgiven's patient, he might, I guess, be your husband ? " " My husband i oh dear, no," said Sagul. " Not her husband, not married. Highly gratifying. And was he, Sir Andrew, aware of it ? I mean, did you tell.him?" " Yes, indeed, sir. I told him everything." "Hah ! most gratifying, most particularly gratifying ; a tacit recognition of my 'system. Oh ! yes, I would go out of my way to oblige Sir Andrew; and in this respect, certainly. Let us see : there are you two, and the third one — he speaks of three — who may that be ] " " That's my other brother, sir." * Perhaps, elemental morality. 312 KBIEGSPIKL " Your other Irotlwr I Ah ! ah 1 yes ! um ! ah ! I had hoped ; still, no matter. At least, Sir Andrew will visit here, and opportunities will present themselves of imbuing him with the hetairistic principle. In that case, I presume, you will each need a cella apiece J " " A cellar, sir ! me put my Lionel in a cellar ! " " No, no, you misapprehend ; a cubicle, a dormitory, bed-room I might have said. Or, stay, why not assign to you the entire storey above this; and then, even under the cramping restrictions of this petty bourgeoisie, you too might have your three bower-maidens. Chloris, Daphne, and Celia we have here already; and yours might be Rosalind, Phyllis, and Yiola. No, I am not certain I know at the moment of a good Viola ; but Doris might do, yes, or Allegra. Strange, the device should present itself thus fortuitously, but ga ira, fa ira; nay, I foresee a great impulse to the Cause through this interpenetration of Bohemianism. Aurelia, my ownest, you might conduct our new sister over the upper Uage, and any details I leave to you, love." As Sir Andrew Macgiven could believe almost any- thing of the Gypsies, so Sagul could believe almost any- thing of the Gentiles; still, if she had known, if she had in the least comprehended, they would assuredly never have taken up their quarters in Bothwell House. Yet they did so that same afternoon, and remained there for nearly a twelvemonth. True, Sagul made a few changes. One was that the pictures in their sitting-room, photo- graphs mostly from the antique, were one and aU turned with their faces to the wall. Another, and more sweep- ing one, was that, far from having "bower-maidens" of her own, Sagul within a week had routed and expelled Daphne, Chloris, and Celia. The causes of her action are obscure, but Wanselo somehow was involved in it. It began with her giving Daphne a black eye, and, when Celia and Chloris showed signs of assisting their " mate," she fell on the three, and drove them shrieking before her down the turnpike stair and out into the Canongate, then slammed the outer door on them, and bolted it. "TJgh!" she panted, "the dirty, nasty sleer! the KEIEGSPIEL 313 common cattle! And me to be jealous of their fine monkey's rags, that I wouldn't touch -with a kettle-prop, that old Long-hair won't let 'em be seen in. Me, Sagul, as always goes decent, and dressed like one should be. Wait a minute, I'll show 'em." Up the stair she darted, and, flinging open a window that gave upon the street, began raining down hats, parasols, satin shoes, laces, fripperies, finery generally. A small crowd collected, and cheered vociferously; it was late on a Saturday evening. " There ! " she cried, when at length she had finished, " you may have 'em and keep 'em, only don't never show back here no more. ' For if ever I catches e'er a one o' you speaking one word to our Wanselo, I'll — I'll — -well, I'll do somethink what never was so. But here" (with a rush of compunction), "I wouldn't be hard upon no piisson, not even a luvni,^ so you can take that, and that, and that." And that was in each case a sovereign. The white-robed ones gathered up their belongings and departed; the Hetairistic Community was broken up. And Mrs. Seton-Hepburn could not help being inwardly satisfied. » Harlot. OHAPTEK III ON the third floor of Both well House there is a window with a broad stone balcony, one of the best " bits " left of Old Edinburgh : it was here that Lionel sat and surveyed the Canongate. Both well House stands on the north or sunny side of the street, a little beloW John Knox's house, and from this window he could look up to the Tron and down to the Canongate Tolbooth, between which two points there was really a good deal to see. First and foremost there was daily the Holyrood guard, marching down from or up to the Castle ; and sometimes the whole regiment, on its way to parade in the Queen's Park; and once or twice a soldier's funeral, tramp I tramp ! tramp ! the firing-party with arms reversed, and the pipers playing ' The Land o' the Leal.' Then there were the fishwives, selUng mussels out of saucers, and the small legless man who played a concertina, and the chilly Oriental who hawked bootlaces, and the companies of Irish harvesters, each with his red bundle and his straw-swathed reaping-hook. They always turned into. the public-house opposite, the Golden Plough, and were always in due time turned out of it by the landlord, a puny bald-headed man, unmoved by dire menaces and brandished sickles. Once, a hot Saturday afternoon shortly after their arrival, there was a huge political demonstration, with bands, banners, and trophies, to denounce or to advocate something: the head and body of the procession were respectably sober, but its tail was disreputably drunk, so wriggled in 314 KRIEGSPIEL 315 true taiUike fashion. Another time it was a wild-beast show, the elephant curling his trunk back for ginger- bread-nuts from the children who trotted alongside, as a constable is supposed to curl his palm backward for six- pence. And — that was one of many such spectacles — one evening a girl borne past face-downwards by four policemen, beside whom stalked a dour middle-aged working-man. She was yelling and cursing, but some- times broke off to cry, " feyther, feyther, and me your only dochter ! " And every Sabbath there was the same street-preacher, whose voice, like that of Captain Mayne Eeid's villain, was " like the roaring of a bull, only far more blasphemous," for he raised it at certain words beginning with a dental or an aspirate, so those were the words that floated up to Lionel. He looked, he listened : it was interesting, very, but puzzling. It must have been later, a good deal later, that he watched a small dog playing with a greyhound. Round and round they scampered, and in and out, and round and round again : suddenly a fierce snap — the small dog lay dead in the gutter, Just then a dustman's cart came along, and the scavenger picked up the small dog's corpse with his shovel, and pitched it on to the top of the rubbish. Yes, that gave food for reflec- tion, but Lionel's muddled brain went groping idly for hours and hours after "In the midst of life . . . every dog." Then there was the small shop opposite, kept by a little old woman. She was rather a nice old body, in a mutch, and she sold sweeties and cookies and penny toys, as well as tea, snuff, and tobacco. One day she put a fir-tree in her window, and on its branches hung crackers and fixed a few tapers, which she lighted when it grew dusk. The effect was quite grand, and she came out into the road to admire it; there she stood proudly, three bare-footed children clinging to her skirts. Ten minutes later there was a fire-engine snorting outside, and a great mass of water, and a thick black reek, and the old soul crying — Lionel felt quite sorry for her him- self, and presently remarked, "But that was a Christmas 316 EBIEGSPIEL tree." Which, and especially the "but," showed a marked advance to recovery. All this, and much more than this, Lionel saw from his window; and even within doors there was plenty to see and hear. For Sir Andrew was faithful in his attendance on him (and on " Miss Richenda "). " Gad ! the more I see of thg^t girl, the more attractive I find her." Next, indeed, to the therapeutic action of exine, she was his pet discovery ; and, being a great diner-out, he raved about her at many dinner-tables. Curiosity was roused, and he found she had no objection to gratify such curiosity. " Not me," she said simply, "they may come if they're minded, knd welcome; I'm one as can face the world. For a pusson's comsplexion may be black, but that ain't no calls why her looks should. Now is it, my gentleman 1 " " Lady Lucy may come then, and you'll really teU her her fortune ? " "In course she may; and will a cat lick cream?" " Capital, then I'll tell you something for you to tell her fair ladyship." And Sir Andrew told Sagul — no, it would never do to repeat it; but a day or two later Lady Lucy in her turn was raving to everybody : " Of course it's all non- sense; stiU, it really is wonderful." Everybody of course followed suit-— this was three weeks after the expulsion of the " bower-maidens " — until sometimes of an afternoon there would be as many as four carriages- and-pairs blocking the Canongate in front of Bothwell House. Why, a question was put in the Town Council as to a visit paid there by the wife of the Lord Provost; and the Kadical Evening Neiwg had a smart little leader on " Aristocratic Credulity." There was no need now to draw on the five silver teapots; Sagul even talked of purchasing a sixth one. " Dordi ! " she remarked once, " if my old mammy could see me, bless us all, but she would laugh." Wanselo added his quota to the company, for in an incredibly short time he seemed to have struck up an acquaintance with half the medicals and three-fourths of KRIEGSPIEL ' 317 the vets who were studying, or not studying, at Edin- burgh. One of the vets, a Welsh lad, could play the piano more than decently, and used to accompany Wanselo's " dear little violin ": their playing was quite a feature of Sagul's assemblies, which must be remem- bered by a good many Edinburgh citizens. The pro- fessor missed no chance of assisting at them, and took to himself the whole credit of the performance. He was almost reconciled to the loss of his " bower-maidens " by this "accession of the ilite of our Modem Athens, this permeation of our outworn aristocracy by a Czech and Cymric renascence." (Where by Czech the professor, who was a great purist, meant Bohemian, i. e. Gypsy.) He was splendidly condescending to Wanselo's student acquaintances, being one of those men who can associate either with duke or with chimney-sweep, to whom patronage active is only less precious than patronage passive. He would fain have patronized Lionel, whose case he delighted to discuss with Sir Andrew; but Lionel ungraciously repulsed his overtures, and one day complained to the physician, " I wish to goodness he'd look sharp and cut my hair, and not stand there chatter- ing like that." Why he should have taken the professor for a hairdresser is quite uncertain, but Sir Andrew at once detected a subtle connection, cosmetics and kosmo- logy, and was hugely delighted : it was, he maintained, a most favourable symptom of Lionel's steady progress to recovery. Yet how slow that progress was ! Sir Andrew's six months had lengthened into ten before Lionel even began to come to himself: it was in the'spring of 1877 that he evinced a growing aversion to Sagul. Up to then he had regarded her with a dog's unreasoning affection for its master, had been contented when she was beside him, and uneasy when she was away. He would do anything she bade him do, get up or go to bed, eat and drink, talk or lie quiet, read aloud to her (so often that same old folk-tale), and, when he grew stronger, take long drives with her. And oh 1 how proud Sagul was of her influence over him: "Lord! it 318 KEIEGSPIEL seem to come so natival to me, my big sick baby." But now he would sit silent, brooding, puzzling, never look- ing at Sagul except for a furtive and mistrustful glance. Until at last, one sunny May morning, he said to her suddenly in a hard, cold voice — "I know you now; I remember quite well who you are." " In course you do," she answered gently, " I'm Sagul." " Yes, you're one of tJwse Gypsies. And I remember quite well who I am." " In course you do, my Lionel : you're Sir Lionel Glemham, Baronight." "No," he said bitterly, "that's exactly what I am not." CHAPTER lY AFTER that Lionel's progress was rapid ; in less than a month he had quitted Bothwell House, and was living by himself out at Newington, a southern suburb of Edinburgh. He had taken lodgings with a gardener, a single room, for which he was to pay six shillings weekly, having still his five-pound note; and a gold watch besides to fall back on. To earn a livelihood and enough withal to pay back Sagul was all his desire ; to that end he scanned the Scotsman's advertisements, " Situations, Agencies, etc., vacant." He almost instantly lighted on the very post that would suit him — " Tutor, Oxford or Cambridge man preferred, to prepare a young gentleman, about to proceed to Christ Church. Apply by letter, or personally between nine and ten a.m., to Christopher Buncle, Esq., 99 Coatbridge Crescent." Lionel applied personally the next morning, and was shown into the dining-room of a British merchant, as solid and ugly as a British merchant's dining-room should be. The British merchant in black broadcloth was at breakfast, and with him a watery-looking lad in a loud kilt. "Now then," said the British merchant, going on eating, and not offering Lionel a seat, "you'i'e after that place, I take it. I've plenty more applications here " (tapping a small pile of letters), " first-raters some of 'em by their own showing, and cheap; but none from Oxford or Cambridge college." " I am an Oxford man," said Lionel. "You are, are you? I suppose there are all sorts at 319 820 KRIEGSPIEL ' Oxford. It's for my son, this young gentleman here. He's had the advantages of a tip-top education at a private school near Windsor, the Hon. and Rev. Josce- line's ; but, by Jove ! when he went up last week to pass his — (what's that they call it, Sholto 1) oh ! yes, matriculation, would you believe it i they plucked him. So the Hon. Josceline wrote me, wanting him to go back to Wackf ord Vicarage for the midsummer vacation (he'd find a coach) ; but, ' No,' says I, ' I'll find the coach myself, and then / can be driver.' Pretty smart that, wasn't it, hey ? Now if I engaged you — mind you, I don't say I will — you'd have to be here every morning at 9.45 sharp, so then I could see you started, and you'd go on till I came home from Princes Street to lunch at one. Then you'd have three-quarters of an hour to your- self to go out and get your own dinner in, and be back by 1.45, and go on till five. I couldn't have you in the evening, because I entertain a great deal ; still, that would be seven and a half hours, hey!" Lionel intimated that he had no fault to find with the hours. "I should rather hope not. And the salary, the remuneration, would be fifty shillings, say two pound ten shillings, a week. It's a lot, but I never mind giving a sti£ price for a first-rate article. You'd be satisfied with that, I should hope, hey ? " Yes ; Lionel expressed his satisfaction. " I should say so, just. And your character, young man, you've a good character? I always insist on that with all my employees." Lionel hoped there was nothing against his moral character ; he had taken a first-class in moderations ; and " Yes, yes ; but I mean a written character from your masters, the professors, or whatever those Oxford chaps call themselves. You'll have to send me that before I could think of engaging you. And your name and ad' dress here in Edinburgh — Leonard Keith. Eh ! I hope not Scotch. I'm Scotch myself, -and I've a fine place up in Boss-shire, Meall Dubh-achadh House ; but then KBIEGSPIEL 321 I received my training in London, at an A 1 City establishment, and I certainly wouldn't care for Sholto to be brought much in contact with one of your beggarly Scotch students. Their accent's so vulgar, infernally vulgar ; and they're all Presbyterians, and that I can't stand, it's such a vulgar religion. Well, I must be off now, but you may send me your character; and if it's satisfactory, you might do for want of a better. Good- morning ; you'll find your way out." Lionel did not send his character (if only because " Leonard Keith " had no one to apply to) ; instead, he turned once more to the Scotsmcm'a advertisements. " French and German correspondent wanted. Apply Beulah Mineral Co., Coatbridge " — he knew French and German well, especially German ; he surely might do for that. So the next day he took train to Coatbridge. It is not an attractive town ; still, the ofl5.ce of the Beulah Mineral Company was sufficiently imposing, and the manager, who looked like a French general, was friendly, if somewhat abrupt. " I'm sorry," he said, " you came through, for I as good as promised the berth yesterday evening to a gentle- man from Glasgow, a Lorrainer, All the same we're not pledged to him ; here, let's see what you cam do." He picked up the Glasgow Herald, and, glancing over its columns, selected a passage, and scored it with a blue pencil. " There," he said, " sit down in this chair, and knock that ofE into French and German. I don't know too much of German ; still, enough to tell roughly what's what. The quicker of course the better." The passage was very brief ; it ran as follows : — " Copper duU with a poor demand at late rates. Tin steady, but quiet and unchanged. Tin plates in fair demand, but with sales only in small lots. Pig-iron unaltered. Trading restricted to local manipulations." "Whew!" thought Lionel, "that's pretty stiff for unseen. Still, there are no very difficult words. Here goes." He dashed at it boldly, and in less than three minutes handed his translations to the manager. 322 KRIEGSPIEL "H'm! you've been pretty sharp," said the latter, and ran his eye over them; suddenly he burst into a roar of laughter. " Pigs and whistles ! " he cried, " I half expected as much ; but fer-de-cochon 1 schweineisen J I forget at the moment myself what the German word is, but the French of course is gueuse ; and, oh yes, roheisen. Schweineisen 1 fer-de-cochon 1 1 — no, don't be offended, man. I've a boy of my own did worse, and he's been a whole twelvemonth in France. I told him the other day to send off a simple French wire for me, with ' bear ' and ' bull 'in it ; and how do you think Jack put it ? " " I'm sure I can't say," answered Lionel, " but ours and taureau it should be." " That's what Jack put. Now have you the dimmest idea what a bear and a bull really are ? " " Oh ! of course, how stupid of me, they're something on the Stock Exchange. Yes, a bear is — no, I forget exactly what." " That's just it, you see. You'd have to learn English first, and then the French (baissier, hcmssier) afterwards. Yes, I'm vexed you took the trouble to come through, but I won't detain you any longer. Good-morning." " Last place . . . character . . . good-morning " — how Lionel got to loathe the formula. He tried after everything, down to the poorest clerkships ; he had no conception till then how poor a clerkship could be. At one place, and one place only, was he put again to the test : it was a stationer, who set him to tot up a column of figures. He totted it up thrice, with three most surprisingly different results : " I could get a boy out of one of these new board-schools who would do it no worse," quoth the stationer. He even answered the advertisement, "Three to four pounds a week earned easily in leisure time. Send thirteen stamps to X. Y. Z., 13 Gladstone Terrace, Brondesbury, N.W." For answer he of course received a post-card, and on it, "Do as I do." iPinally he g6t em]&loyment, at least work, at least KBIEGSPIEL 323 walking about, as a book-canvasser. Any one may turn a book-canvasser. There is no awkward question of character. No ; all you have to do is to lodge a certain deposit for the specimen-copy of the book you are to canvas ; otherwise you woijld of course pawn the speci- men-copy, and straightway get drunk on the proceeds. Lionel, then, deposited ten shillings, and received in return a "sumptuously bound" copy of Everybody's Enchiridion : or. The Repository of Practical Omniscience. That splendid work was issued (to subscribers only) at one and a half guineas, and from each subscription that he obtained Lionel was to be paid a commission of five shillings. " Only four orders a day," remarked the agent encouragingly, " and that'll come to over three hundred pounds sterling per annvm," The life of a book-canvasser may suit some men; it should be eminently adapted to any member of the Mendicant Orders, to whom poverty and hiimility are an object of attainment. Still, I am going to dwell as little as may be on this part of Lionel's career. He did not take four orders a day, or even four orders a week (but then he was not quite a week at it) ; in fact, he took only one, and that was through a pure accident. It was on the third day that he called at a lawyer's office in the New Town, and inquired. Could he see Mr. Gilmerton ? " Any name ? " the clerk asked suspiciously ; but upon Lionel's answering " Keith," he bowed obse- quiously, said, "Certainly, sir, would you kindly step this way % " and ushered him into an inner sanctum, with the announcement, " The Hon. Mr. Keith, sir." A bald-headed gentleman, who was seated at a writing- table, rose, and advanced towards Lionel with a bow, remarking, " Grood-morning, Mr. Keith, you are more than punctual." " I'm afraid," faltered Lionel, " there's some mistake." " Mistake ! what ? why ? how t Lord Eavelston wrote me you'd call to-day about noon." Lionel explained ; and the old gentleman good- naturedly volunteered an order for the Enchiridion. 324 KRIEGSPIEL "It's odd too," he observed, "but there's a something of the Keiths — the real Keiths, I mean — about you." That was Lionel's solitary order, the day after taking which he was getting his lunch (a sandwich and glass of beer) in a bar on the South Side, when a Big Man entered the same box. He was a man of about forty, florid in dress and in person. " Morning, sir, morning," he said. " Koom for a small 'unr' "Good-morning," said Lionel, and went on reading the Scotsman. The Big Man rang the beU, and gave his order, then addressed himself again to Lionel : " Nothing like a good glass of beer, sir, is there, this warm weather ? " Lionel glanced up impatiently, but said nothing ; he felt out of temper with himself and everything. "No," his companion went on, "and that's what makes Beer and Brewing such an interesting topic. It was only last evening I happened to pick up a literary work that I've some slight connection myself with, and I pitched on the article ' Brewing ' ; and you may be- lieve me, sir, or not, but I was positively fascinated, read on and on, until at last Mrs. Beecham (my name is Beecham sir. Captain Beecham) said, ' Really, I do think you might be a little more sociable ; you should have enough of that book in the daytime.' 'But, my love,' says I, ' just you listen to this ; ' and I read her out two or three pages — by Jove ! she was simply fascinated too, would hardly let me leave off. Yes, it's a most stu- pendous undertaking. I happen to have a copy of it here, and perhaps you'd care to glance over it. It's a work, sir, you'll see for yourself as a scientific gentle- man, compiled at unparalleled expense by world-famous specialists in popular phraseology for " " I know," broke in Lionel, " for the multitude. The multitude don't seem to want it. No, for God's sake, don't show it me : I'm sick of the sight of it." " Well, I am damned," the Big Man said, laughing, "but I have made a proper juggins of myself. Why I KRIEGSPIEL S25 was standing at the bar there when you came in, and I spotted you for a medical, followed you in here on pur- pose to nab you, was going to ask if you wouldn't wish to contribute something to our next edition. Fancy my not twigging the Family Album" (with a glance at Lionel's copy of the Enchiridion). " And what do you make of it t " " Make of what? oh ! of that. Next to nothing." " No, I dare say not : no oif ence, but you don't look cut out for this business. ' Bounce, bounce, sir, and always bounce,' that's my motto, like it was Boney's. So you're not doing much : that's a pity. How long have you been at it 1 " " Since last Friday, four days." " Come, that's not very long. And What have you done in that time ? " The Big Man seemed disposed to be friendly. " Taken one order." " No, that's not very fat. Only who did you take it from?" " A lawyer, a Mr. Gilmerton." "Not old Gilmerton, the W.S. in St. Andrews Square ; little, bald, chubby-cheeked ohap, wears gold spectacles ? " " Yes ; that's the man." " Holy Moses 1 and haven't you called on the Lord President?" "No." " But he's his brother-in-law. Why, you should have cut ofE straight from St. Andrews Square to Palmerston Place (that's where he hves), and told him you'd been sent by Mr. Gilmerton : ten to one you'd have bagged > him too. And once you'd booked his name, you could have got every writer and advocate and S.S.C. in Edin- burgh down to the smallest law-agent. Better late than never ; off you go at once." "No, it was through a mistake and out of pure kindness that Mr. Gilmerton subscribed." " Kindness be blowed : a gentleman must live. No, 3^6 KEIEGSPIEL I never but once went out of my way for kindness. That was when I was working 2%e Tales of the Tolbooths. (Lord ! wouldn't I like to have that job to do over again 1) There were two whole numbers of it taken up with Miss Emeline Inglis : she was the Paisley young lady, you mind, who poisoned her sweetheart, and was hanged for it, though her father was one of the biggest mill-owners. "Well, I went through to Paisley, and in five days had taken close on two hundred orders : it was a £3 work in six vols., ten shillings commission each order. So that wasn't so Eieland, was it ? But old Inglis, her father, sent for me to come to him ; I went — ^he'd a copy of the Tales beside him. ' Is it you,' he asked, ' selling yon thing?' and, 'Yes,' I answered him, 'leastwise canvassing.' ' How many orders ? ' he asked, and I told him ' Four hundred ' (you know one must exaggerate a little). But no, he wasn't to be done like that, for he was a long-headed, close-fisted chap, had risen from a mill-hand. So I had to produce my order-book — there were the names of his foreman and the cashier and half his operatives. 'A hundred and eighty,' he said then to himself, ' say twice that, that's three-sixty ; and multiply by three, that makes ten-eighty : yes, I'll pay down a thousand pounds for none o' thae books to be sold into Paisley — Mem, it's no for myself, hut her mither.' I don't mind telling you, sir, I was vexed for the old boy ; and I worked it, I managed it for him : they had those two numbers cancelled. Yes, it was all right for them, they got their one thousand guineas (they stuck out for guineas). And what do you think / got i Messrs. Kidd & Morgan refused me my commission." It was not from his words, but from something in his voice, that Lionel divined the sympathy this bagman, this book-hawker, had felt for that father and mother. " But you weren't sorry," he asked, "you'd be glad to have managed it % " " I was damned sorry to have put it in BUI Kidd's pocket ; and you'll be sorry, too, sir, if you don't follow up the Lord President. Establish a connection, that's KRIEGSPIEL 327 your line ; it don't much matter -which — legal, medical, clerical, sporting ; the licensed victuallers are first-rate. Now, have you tried the hotels yet with the Enchiri- dion f I haven't, for I'm working Glasgow ; they know me too well here in Edinburgh. And now, before parting, sir, you'll join me in a half-yun." ^ ■ Half one, i. e. a small whisky. CHAPTER Y " TTANG it," said Lionel the next morning, " I will n try the hotels to-day; if they don't come off, then I'll chuck the Family Album." Accordingly he bent his steps to the Regent, the hugest of the caravanserais in Princes Street. A young waiter, who was crossing the entrance-hall, and to whom he addressed himself, replied in such broken English, and with a so unmistakably Teutonic accent, that Lionel asked him- in German, could he see the proprietor. " Ob Sie mdt dem Herrn Besitzer sprechen kbnnen, ganz gewiss, mein Herr," the man answered, rejoiced at re- lease for once from this unpronounceable English ; and nimbly preceding Lionel up the broad staircase, he proudly flung open a door marked " Private " on the first landing : — " A shentleman vil shpeak vit de Mister Innkeeper." " No complaint, sir, I 'ope, ahem ! /jope," said the proprietor civilly ; he was a man of sixty to look at, gross, ponderous, double-chinned, who might have sat for Orcagna's ' Mammon.' " No — I ," began Lionel, his confidence all fledaway : " I should like — that is, I thought perhaps You are the proprietor 1 " "Yes, sir, John Chester, at your service" (but not quite so civilly). " Because I — I've a book here, it's called the Enchiridion; and you'd like perhaps, I thought, to " Mr. Chester at this point flew to the beU with a most 328 KEIEGSPIEL 329 unexpected agility, and tugged it so furiously that the handle came away in his grasp ; then he darted out into the passage, and fell to vociferating ; " Maxwell, Maxwell, here, I say. Maxwell." " Maxwell, sir," said a middle-aged waiter, hurrying up at this outcry, " he's just stepped round to the hair- dresser's." " 'Airdresser's, to some pothouse ; well, teU him he needn't come back, that I've sacked him, discharged him, that I don't pay a porter to let loose this riffrafE upon me. 'A gentleman,' forsooth, and offfer me. Me, that beastly Henshvrigion. And the German, that ^ritz (I always call all of 'em Fritz), the new fellow with the moustaches — arid I will not have them wearing mous- , taches — he's discharged too, he shall go, may return to his beggarly Fatherland." "Pardon me, sir," put in Lionel from the background. " Eh ! what J " Mr. Chester cried, wheeling round on him. " Only it was wholly my fault ; I ought to have told the fellow. I beg your pardon for my intrusion." "And I beg yours, sir," was Mr. Chester's answer, his fury subsiding even more quickly than it had arisen. " God bless my soul ! what on earth are things coming to ? (It's all right, William, it's all right ; you can go away, you can go away.) And now, sir, if you would come in here again, and sit down; do, pray, sit down." He spoke earnestly, and, himself sitting down, gazed earnestly at Lionel; after all, he was not so like ' Mammon.' "I know, sir," he said, "I'm 'asty, ahem ! Aasty ; but. Great God ! for a gentleman to be 'awking that — that blasted Henshirigion ! Yes, there are some things I know, and more things I don't know, but I do know a gentleman. I'm not one myself, I lay no pretension to it ; but you are, you can't deny it " (this was said almost sternly). " Only you must give it up ; do give it up, I beg of you." " Give what up ? oh ! trying, and failing, to sell that rubbish. It would be no great sacrifice." " ' Sacrifice,' I should say not ; and ' rubbish,' egad ! 330 KEIEGSPIEL sir, you've hit it. But it's worse, ten times worse than rubbish ; it's a fraud, it's a theft from a dead man. You don't know, you can't know its 'istory, or you'd never have soiled your fingers 'andling it. For God's sake, my dear sir, pitch it out of that window." " What, into Princes Street 1 " " Pitch it into the kennel, to the devil, anywhere." (He was furious once more, but not this time with Lionel.) " And if you could pitch its editor after it, and break his neck, I'd — I'd, well, I can 'ardly say what I would not do. Sir, you know Edinburgh ; then, of course you know Gilbert Oharteris, the great Br. Char- teris. Yes, they've been giving him his LL.D., as I used to give him my dear old master's £ s. d. And for what did he get 'em both? I'll tell you. Have you ever heard speak of Mr. Henry Bracton % " " Henry Bracton, the Shakespearian scholar, of course I have. Why, there's a portrait of him in my old col- lege ha ImeanjI've seen a picture of him somewhere." " In Morham Hall, Oxford, yes, sir (it's quite safe with me). I've had a copy of that portrait made, have got it up-stairs ; you shall see it. He was my master for nigh on thirty years. I was a. biggish boy when first I saw him at Charlcote (my father kept the Lucy Arms there), and he came and stopped with us. His eyes were beginning to go already then, and he used to have me to read to him. I wasn't then the scholar I am now, and I hadn't my command of the ospirates that I have to-day ; but he used to say I was the most Shakespearian reader he had ever encountered. He was a gentleman loved his joke, and oh ! what a joke he made of my ' Ermy One.' That was Thz Winter's Tale, the first thing ever I read him ; and how was I to know better than ' Well said, Ermy One ' ? ' Well said, what, Jack ? ' he cried (I always was ' Jack ' to him) ; and I spelt it out childish-like, 'Haitch, he, bar, hem, hi, ho, hen, he.' How he did laugh and laugh, and me never dreaming why ; and ' Jack, but I love thee,' he said, 'twas a true word spoke jestingly." (Why, he was not the least bit like ' Mammon.') KEIEGSPIEL 331 " Yes," he went on, " and when at last he left Charl- cote, he took me with him for readet, and in time I became his valet and amanuensis, and went with him over half Europe — you'll know his Shahespewre's Localities. It wasn't all Shakespeare, though : by no means, his favourite notion, the ' pet child of his fancy,' was the GychpoBdia of Useless Knowledge. I never did like the title much, but it was to be a book which was to have something about everything that you couldn't find anywhere else, and nothing about things that nobody ought to be ignorant of. (It sounds difficult, but it's not so difficult when you come to think it out.) And he was always making notes for it — leastwise, I wrote the notes, each on its own piece of paper : there are three tin boxes full of them. It was to recall the associations of everything, and, after his eyesight quite went, he'd lie in his long chair (I fancy I see him now), thinking, remembering, and ' Jack,' he'd say suddenly, ' Bowls and the Spanish Armada, have you put that down V or 'Lampreys and Henry the Second,' or 'Peaches acd New Beer and King John (two entries that, Jack, one at Peaches, and one at Beer, New).' And there was the Mole and William the Third, the "Tide and Bang Canute + Mr. Barkis, the Mop and Mrs. Partington, the Inkstand and Luther, the Pen and Demosthenes, the Turncoats and Prestonpans, the Bolster and Desdemona + the Princes, Marmalade and Father, Garnett, the Battledore and Jeremy Bentham, the Primrose and Peter Bell, the Ring and Polyorates " (he called it " Polly Craits "), " + Hannibal + Essex, and thousands more. Just a jotting generally, nothing else — 'A jotting will amply suffice. Jack, when we come to the work of compiling.' Every- thing I read to him, — and I'd read to him hours and hours, — ^furnished fresh materials ; but when he died — he was eighty-five, and I forty-four then : it was twenty- there years ago— the materials still were all jottings. I have them ; he left me them, the three tin boxfuls. And he left me something besides." " What was that % " asked Lionel : the pause obviously demanded the question. 332 KRIEGSPIEL " Eighty-three thousand pound odd," Mr. Chester said calmly. " It was to have gone to his nephew, Mr. Edgar Chevenix, but he proved unworthy. My master liked his glass of wine and his cigar, and he hated a pretender. And a pretender Mr. Edgar was, if ever there was one. He pretended to be a student of Shakespeare, and didn't know the names of King Lear's daughters, called one of them ' GomereU ' ; he pretended to take a deep interest in the Cyclopcedia, and under ' Angling ' suggested for an entry, " Trail' st thou, the puissant pike?" And there was worse than that, for two glasses of port made him maiidlin, and half a cigar turned him green. So / never have blamed Mr. Bracton for that. Still, it was a surprise to me when, after a good many other bequests in his last will and testament (he'd made about twenty), came one ' to my nephew, Edgar Chevenix, of two glasses of port-wine, which is more than enough for him,' and when it went on to appoint ' John Chester, my faithful servant, reader, amanuensis, and friend, my literary executor and sole residuary legatee,' I was a proud man that day, I can tell you, and I'm as proud of it still, for it showed the liking he bore me. Ah ! but he showed that even in his dying. ' Master,' I remember, was my last word to him — he was lying in my arms — ' I 'ope we'll meet again.' ' I Aope so, Jack,' he murmured, and died laughing. " ' Dropping a tear,' say some ; but I say, ' not drop- ping a aspirate.' That's a thing I never do now, wouldn't know the way to, out of respect to my master's memory. But his literary executor is another pair of shoes ; that's my thorn in the flesh, and likely to be so. Less than two years after I came here — and how I came here was curious. I'm a man of ideas, though neither student nor gentleman ; and an idea had struck me long before then (I mean before his death) in this very identi- cal hotel. Mr. Bracton and me had been up in the north to Forres, and on our way back south we put up for a week at the Kegent. It was a small house then to what you see it now ; but, being winter-time, it was all but empty, and the service damnable. So my idea , KRIEQSPIEL 333 ■was, Shut it up altogether when the season's not on, and shift the whole stafE off to somewhere else where it is. That's what I've done. I took the business over in May 1856, on a lease first, and purchased it after- wards ; and the same year I had the ' Hotel dew Eegent ' erected at Mentone, as like it as may be. And ever since it has been : Edinburgh, May to September ; and Mentone, October to April. ^ . . . " I haven't doubled the eighty-three thousand odd, but I look to before I'm done, though what I shall do with it then is unbeknown to me — Mr. Edgar's children or that college at Stratford my master was sometimes for founding — I've got his scheme for it. But that wasn't what I was talking of ; no, what was it ? Oh ! I know — Dr. Charteris : Mr. Charteris he then was. Yes, it was about nineteen months after first I settled in Edin- burgh that I hired him to assist me in my literary executorship. I knew pretty well what wanted to be done, if I couldn't do it myself, for time upon time Mr. Bracton had discussed it with me. The jottings were all to be arranged alphabetically, which was easy ; and then they had to be verified and expanded, which is difficult. Some o' them leastwise. A child might tell what ' Cakes and Alfred ' stands for, or ' Tea-kettle and Watt ' ; or ' Cloak and Raleigh ' ; but> who's to make head or tail of ' Nightcap and May,' ' Clean shirt and Falkland ' -1- ' Foul shirt and Dr. Johnson,' or ' Cold in the head and Borodino ' % " " I believe," Lionel interposed, " I can make a shot at one of those, the ' Clean shirt and Falkland,' because Lord Falkland, you know, did put a clean shirt on to be killed in." " Lord Falkland, and where do you find that out ? " Mr. Chester asked anxiously. " It's in Clarendon's Great Eebellion ; yes, I'm cer- tain it must be that," I A great mass of details that followed as to the working of the twin establishments is omitted through lack of space. But any one who cares to may hunt up a long article in the Licensed Victuallers' Gazette, shortly after the death of Mr. Chester, which took place in the summer of 1887. 334 KBIEGSPIEL " I shouldn't wonder if you're right, for that was a book, I remember, Mr. Bracton was partial to. But Mr. Charteris would have it, it must be Falkland in Fife, because Dr. Johnson travelled through Fife once — he'd better go to the University Library, and consult some one's History of Falhlomd. He came to me well re- commended, and at first he did pretty well ; leastwise, I thought he did. Sometimes, to be sure, I'd suggest he might be a little bit quicker, mjght make a start, and then he'd say to me gravely, ' Mr. Chester, these col- lections were a labour, were they not 1 of fifty years, and they are now to be classified and verified amd expanded : the expansion of fifty years' work can scarcely be done in a twelvemonth.' Or else it would be, ' Mr. Chester, the work could be done im a way with celerity, but I was not aware that you wished it to be scamped.' And what could I say to that ? " In the winter, when we shifted to Mentone, he went too, making rather a favour of it ; and, seeing there was to be much of Shakespeare in the GydlopcedAa, he thought it advisable he should familiarize himself with Verona and Rome and Venice. I didn't know him any better then, and he did it at my expense (leastwise my master's) ; no, it wasn't till the next August I found him out, like this. He was for ever going to that University Library, to ' consult authorities ' ; and this time it was the ' Egg and Columbus,' and it was important he should hunt up the original sources in the something Collections. Well, as luck would have it, that very day I was passing a print-shop, and I noticed a picture of ' Columbus and the Egg,' so I thought I'd step in and tell him. And what do you think I found ? — that the University Library was closed, had been closed for the last three weeks, yet he had ' been there ' pretty well every day. I told him I didn't pay him to ' go to the University Library,' and what do you think he had the audacity to answer, that I didn't pay him (adequately) for anything. Well, that opened my eyes to him, and I found out he'd never done anything, so I sacked him — I'm not one to sack any man in a 'urry. But that wasn't half the KEIEGSPIEL 335 worst of it — ^his having done nothing ; it was what he did do afterwards. He took to writing then, wrote Reminiscences of Hemry Eracton and Bractoniana. They were just things I'd told him, and things I hadn't told him, all mixity-maxity, and they were printed in the Forum and the Quintessential. And I was 'Boni- face ' in 'em, and ' the Loyal Servitor,' and the mischief only knows what. After that came By-thov^hts of a Thinker — the Cyclopoedia tumbled topsy-turvy (I was surprised he knew so much of it) ; and now there's that Henshirigion, which I've never looked at it, and never will. But my master's, I know ; bound to be, from cover to cover." " I hardly think that," said Lionel, " because 1 haven't looked into it much, but it seems to be more of a regular encyclopsedia \%it does give just the things that you can find anywhere else — Shakespeare, you know, and the musical glasses, ajpd'>-^o forth. An old bookseller in George Street, whom I asked to subscribe to it, called it the illicit offspring of Chamhers's and the Britanmica." " Not a bit of it, sir, not a bit of it. And Shakespeare — ^that shows I was right. No, no, depend on it, every- thing that humbug's ever got or done has been through him. Why, he got the rectorship of Adams's Hospital by writing to Mr. Tennyson, and Mr. Halliwell, and all master's other old friends, and asking them for their testimonials to 'the late Mr. Bracton's biographer.' And they gave 'em, the bigger fools they ; if only I'd known that in time. But I didn't, and now my one comfort is to meet him in the street, and look him full in the face. He pretends he's forgotten me — no, he hasn't ; and I always say to myself, ' He's a humbug, and he knows 'e's a 'umbug, and 'e knows that l know 'e's a 'umbug '• — Damn the rascal ! " After which outburst Mr. Chester remained silent for some minutes, ruminating. Then in a very business- like voice, he asked, " And not doing much at it 1 " " Nothing whatever." " Hah ! couldn't be less, could it ? And a gentleman, 336 KBIEGSPIEL yes. Ami English. Avid college-bred, Oxford (it's per- fectly safe with me). Parents living, eh ? " " No," Lionel answered quickly and honestly, then wondered, Was it a lie ? " And " (rather hesitatingly), " your name, sir ! " " I call myself Keith ; it is, and is not, my name.'' " That wouldn't matter^-no, it would be just as well, for one must have a name to clap LL.D. to. And now, sir, excuse me, but it isn't idle curiosity, was it anything very disgraceful ? " " Yes," Lionel answered, flushing hotly, " it was, but none of my doing j I had no part in it whatever. That is all I can tell you." " And better than if you'd told me some cock-and-bull story. Yes, I've been looking for another ever since that Charteris ; and I did try two, but they wouldn't do at all — the first one knew too little, and the other a sight too much. And it was only last Thursday Pro- fessor Grant sent me a third one, a mighty smart young chap, all collar and yellow kid gloves. I'd hardly put a question to him myself when, ' Mr. Chester,' he says, ' before we proceed any further, I would ask what leisure I should have to myself.' ' Sir,' I answered him, ' so far as I'm concerned, you can have leisure to all eternity.' Yes, I know his kind, another Charteris ; but you, now No, I'm not going to buy a pig in a poke, as the saying is ; but come back here this evening, and dine with me ; and after dinner we'll go through some of the Cychpcedia, the posers, I mean ; and if you can score again once or twice, like you did with that Falkland (mind you, I think a lot of that), then, 'ang it, ahem ! Aang it, why, perhaps we might come to terms." CHAPTEE VI THEY did come to terms, and the next week saw Lionel at work on the Cyclopcedia. The terms, though they seemed to him wealth, were by no m.eans extravagant — £2 a week, with his lunch and dinner, a pleasant room to work in high up in the Regent, the free use of Mr. Bracton's rare library, and a stringent injunction against that of the University. He was engaged at first only by the week : " It will be time," Mr. Chester said, " to talk of further arrangements two months hence." But when the two months were up, and the time had come round for the move to Mentone, Mr. Chester was so well satisfied with the progress Lionel had made by then, that he engaged him definitely for the half-year, at thirty shillings a week, and £40 more to be paid down in a lump sum on the first day of May if he should prove to have gone on satisfactorily. The mechanical part of the work, the drudgery of arranging in alphabetical order, Lionel found had already been carefully done by Mr. Chester ; his part was as pleasant as it was profitable — ^no better coping- stone could be placed on a classical upbringing. But space fails to follow him in his researches, and to tell how he tracked to each individual source ' Bridge and Horatius Codes + Nepomuk + Robert Burton + Tarn o' Shanter + Mary Wollstonecraft + Crabbe + Byron + Wordsworth + Borrow + Tennyson + Longfellow.' Whoso will may refer to the actual result — the ' CyclopcBdia of Useless Knowledge^ By the late Henry Bracton. Author 337 2 338 KEIEGSPIEL of ' Shakespeare's Localities,' ' Collying a Collier,' ' In the Forest of Arden,' etc. With a Memoir-and Notes by his literary Executor, John Chester. -.(2 vols, ito, Edinburgh, 1880).' It had passed out of Lionel's hands many months ere it came to the printer's ; and his share in it after all was only that of the painful hack-writer. But what all this time of Sagul ? "Well, not much of her, if much from her — almost every day something, and some days many things. Now it would be a salmon, or a box of cigars, or a brace of grouse, a hare, or a couple of chickens ; and on the morrow, perhaps, a big order of groceries, and three ot fotw gorgeously-bound books (on remarkable subjects i), or a fur-lined overcoat, or a gold scarf-pin, and so forth. They were always directed to "Mr. Leonard Keith, care of A.. Wallace, 80 East Mayfield ; " and at first Lionel always returned them to the shops from which they had been sent — no doubt to the contentment of the shopkeepers. Sagul must have discovered this, for presently they arrived with no indication of their source j and then it was difBicult to know what to do with them, with such at least as were perishable. Lionel solved the. difficulty by taking these to the Infirmary, but that was only a make-shift solution. So he broke his resolve, not to see Sagul again, until he could repay her to the last fajrthing (repay her — how could he, with the debt thus ceaselessly swelling?), and went to ask for her at Both well House. No, she had left it some weeks ago — had left, for all they knew, Edinburgh. That could not be, else whence these presents, which still kept coming in : in despera- tion Lionel changed his lodgings. It made only the difference of a difEerence in the address : the fresh parcels were duly directed to "care of Mrs. Wilson, 3 The Sciennes." Clearly, then, Sagul must watch him ; only he never could catch her doing; so. Once, indeed, he thought he saw her in the distatwo doctors to her that wery night, and one out o' Chester next morning, but they couldn't do nothin', nor none on 'em ever since. It's a hypocriting disease that, and sometimes we've thought her better ; but not ^he, only was glad to be back to her mammy. And ^ Scarecrow. * Tell fortunes. KBIEGSPIEL S77 she's never said much about you till three days back, last Tuesday : then she made me write you that letter. And we knowed when you come she'd go, so I've sent to the others too." "What others?" " Mandra's- people and Olive's and my Aunts Shuri and Patience, and my cousin Orpherus, and old Britanny (that's my mammy's grandmother) ; and some on 'em is come, and some are coming." " Not he ? " asked Iiionel, with sudden apprehension, "he's not there?" "Who, bor?" " Perun Stanley, your father's brother." " Lord love us all, bor ! what, haven't you ever heard ? he's mad, stark, starin', outrageous mad, in the 'sylum at Brooklings, Americay. You know, that time yonder, when he found 'twas the old doctor he'd buried, and not you, he was in the most awf ullest ontaking ever was, said they'd know in three days he was dead, and who'd done it, and where 'twas done, and 'd come and take him, and my daddy too. So the pair on 'em starts rijjht away to Liverpool, and gets on a steamer there — Mr. John Smith, that was my daddy; and the pretty fine Perun was Mr. William Smith. And you. should hear my daddy talk about that v'yge, how they'd go up 'like Snowdon, and down like a crab in a coalpit, and the hutches all fattened down, and pumpih' (you'd think .they'd water enough already), and Perun always drinkin' when he wasn't dyin', and always a-lookin' out for the telegraph wires, which I suppose they really go under the bottom of the ocean. And all hopes given up, so a prayer-meetin' — there was a populated American 'wan- gelist on board. And he prayed and preached about Jonah, and my daddy consated who Jonah was ; and he prayed and preached about goin' on the deep waters, and feelin' the works of the steamship ; and he prayed and preached about buryin' the old man. Up jumps my noble Perun in a hurry : ' I've done it,' he says. 'I've done it, and more nor done it I've buried the Old Oentlemau hisself.' ' Glory 1 ' shouts the 'wangelist. 378 KRIEGSPIEL 'Glory!' and the seas growing calm in a minute'; and ■when they got to New York, no telegrams nor nothing Yes, that was how Perun became the ' Cbnvarted Gypsy,' and used to go about preachin' with that 'wangelist in a high hat and shining black suit and black kid gloves and a Bible, and never drinkia' (only unbeknowns), and always rebukin' my daddy, as wasn't convarted, for the least little bits o' things. Long and by last my daddy got sick of it, and came away back in time for the Derby week, 'cos he backed Kisber, and won fifty-two pound ten. And the very next thing they heard was Brook- lings — ^Perun had gone and wanted to bury that 'wangelist, and it took thirteen men to hold him (it was all in the papers). So my daddy sends something reg'lar there for ' William Smith,' and, when he's got a drop into him, he'll often cry about his ' little brother.' Not me, wouldn't cry for no such a rdtvalo jukel." * " So," thought Lionel, " that's where he is, in a mad- house; that's how they've never caught him. In a madhouse, he, in a madhouse." But he said nothing, and in silence they accomplished most of the rest of their ten-miles walk. They wa;lked through the delicate May morning air, sweet with tho scent of hawthorn and wild hyacinths, and vibrating with the lark's song and the cuckoo's note, walked down into the valley where lies little sleepy Clun, and up out of the valley on to the high green hills which separate England from Wales, and on which, just over the crest, the Stanleys had made their encampment. It was as large as, or larger than, the one at Oxford — stents, tUt- carts, and caravans, and in the midst the big red tent, and Sagnl lying there. Not know her — ah ! then shall we not know the Blessed Dead, for Sagul it was, but Sagul glorified. Her face was brown still, only somehow strangely transparent; her eyes were larger and even more luminous, but she could not keep them long open ; her arms lay straight, and wasted on the coverlet — they never more mighb ' Cursed hotmd. KRIEGSPIEL 379 wield a tent-mallet< They had made her hed up fronting the wide tent-entrance, and at its head on the left hand sat her father and mother ; on the right a place had been kept for Lionel. For she was expecting him, and had made them prepare for him a savoury stew — at least, ii> smelt savoury. " I knowed you'd come, my Lionel," she said (he had to bend down to hear her), " but it's good of you." Presently, " If you'd reach me your hand, my Lionel, I'd like it dearly*" Presently, "You aren't tired, my Lionel r' "Tired?" " Of me : I mean of sittin' like that beside me." " Sagul ! " He could have burst forth with anything, everything — anguish, excuses, unavailing regrets. Un- availing, indeed : what good could that have done ? — and he kept silence, it was better bo. The long day swept swiftly by, broken only by occa- sional arrivals, the last to arrive the great-grandmother, who was Lionel's great-grandmother too, though that he did not know till afterwards. A little, old, old woman, she had journeyed a hundred miles, mounted on a white donkey. They helped her off, and she came into the tent, sat down on the earth, and covered her head with her mantle. " Kmo shorn, ehawoU%," she said (" Little children, I am weary"). Perhaps it was noon when Sagul asked Lionel to read to her — " you know, min&w, the one of the Iron Stove." He read it as best he might, out of that oM, well- thumbed copy of Grimm; and all the time he read, her lips kept moving — she knew it by heart, and was repeating it after him. " Blessed words," said the great-grandmother when he had ended. She thought it was a chapter of the Bible. And it was towards evening that, still holding Lionel's hand, still feebly pressing it from time to time, she said to her brother, " Play me something, my Wanselo." How that scene came back to Lionel years afterwards! The tents were pitched upon the western hill-slope. Beside them ran Offa's Dyke, reared centuries before to 80 KRIEGSPIEL eep out the Welsh marauders ; the silver Teme flowed •eneath ; and beyond stretched the beautiful Welsh onntry, all shimmering through the soft blue wood- moke of the fire that smouldered outside. Some eat dthin the tent, but more on the turf without — ^the hildren awe-struck, puzzled. The sinking sun slanted hrough the tent-opening, and lighted up Sagul's face, rhich was lighted up, too, by happy recollections. For Vanselo was playing Scotch melodies, dear to her soul rom those old Canongate days. First, the ' Pibroch of )onuil Dhu,' and then from its stirring tones he slid mperceptibly into the tender 'Farewell to Lochaber.' Lnd as he played, he cried quietly, big merry-faced Vanselo. " Play that again, my Wanselo." And Wanselo did play it again, but not quite to the nd, for, as the last bar opened, Sagul died. Then there ras weeping in those tents of Egypt ; and I too, Lionel, rept. Yes J I who have written this " novel " am Lionel. THE END Richard Clay tb SonSj LimiUA, London % Sungpy, Warwick House Salisbury Square LONDON E.C A LIST OF n^vw and Popular Boo^s PUBLISHED BY WARD LOCK & BOWDEN LTD NEW WORK BY GDY BOOTHBY A Bid for Fortune; or, Dr. Nikola's Vendetta. By GUY BoOTHBY, Author of " In Strange Company," " A Lost Endeavour," " The Marriage of Esther," etc. With about Fifty Illustrations by Stanley L. Wood. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 5s. This story, during its appearance in serial form in the " Windsor Magazine," has met with extraordinary success. 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" Ought to capture hearts young and old as ' Helen's Babies' captured them — a book which both children and adults will love." — The Queen. " Our impressions , of this clever and vivacious narrative are so pleasing, that we hope, for the maintenance of life's gaiety and the power of laughter, there is more to come," — The Star. By the same Author The Family at Misrule. A Sequel to the above. With Twenty-nine Illustrations by A. J. Johnson, Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt edges, 3s, 6d, ^ By the same Author Tke Story of a Baby. With Two Illustrations by St. Clair Simmons. Square fcap. 8vo, cloth elegant, gilt top, 2s. 6d, {Nautilus Series.) " A very fetching little story." — The New Budget. " 'The Story of a Baby' is charmingly written." — Scotsman. MRS. A. BUTZ An Australian Millionaire. With Frontispiece and Vignette by George Hutchinson. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s, 6d. " Its plot displays remarkable originality of conception as well as ingenuity of construction. . . . The story in question has conspicuous merits of its own, which entitle it to honourable mention, and its author to cordial encourage- ment," — Daily Telegraph, E. DONNISON Winning a Wife in Australia. With Frontispiece and Vignette by George Hutchinson. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s, 6d. " Written in a spirited fashion, and one gets the impression that the ' local colouring' is as accurate as it is vivid. The story has plenty of ' go,' and on the whole gives a pleasing picture of Colonial Life," — Glasgow Herald. WARD LOCK &• BOWDEN LTD NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS II E. H. STRAIN A Man's Foes. By E. H. Strain. In 3 vols., crown 8vo, cloth, 15s. net. " The best historical novel pure and simple that we have had since Mr. Conan Doyle published ' Micah Clarke.' . . . One of the most picturesque, dramatic, and absorb- ing historical romances we have read for many a long day." — Daily Chronicle. F. MARION CRAWFORD To Leeward. A Novel. By F, Marion Crawford, Author of "A Roman Singer," "Mr. Isaacs," etc. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6cl. " Mr. Marion Crawford, in his new novel, ' To Leeward,' has achieved his greatest success ; indeed, it is not too much to say that this work takes a high place in the ranks of modern fiction." — Vanity Fair. By the same Author An American Politician. A Novel. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. S. G. FIELDING The Southern Light. By S. G. Field- ing. With Four Full-page Illustrations by Warwick GOBLE. Crown Svo, cloth" gilt, 3s. 6d. " The Southern Light" is a story of the Sea with plenty of adventure and incident, and many realistic descriptions of the perils and trials of a sailor's life. Some of the scenes are very vivid bits of word-painting, and make one almost hold one's breath as one reads. THOMAS HENEY The Girl at Birrell's. By Thomas Heney. With Frontispiece by T. S. C. Crowther. Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. A singularly realistic picture of Australian Bush Life. It may be questioned whether any more faithfiilly drawn picture of what " roughing it in the bush " means has been published. WARD LOCK &■ BOWDEN LTD 12 POPULAR NOVELS AT 3/6 AND 2/6 JULIEN GORDON Vampires, and Mademoiselle Rdsida. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. " A clever sketch of contemporary manners . . . fall of charming touches." — Morning Post. "'Mademoiselle Rdsdda' is a charming love story." — Sheffield Telegraph. EDGAR FAWCETT Her Fair Fame. With a Frontispiece by Geo. Hutchinson. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. "It is a cleverly written dramatic piece of fiction." — Publisher^ Circular. MAGGIE SWAN A Late Awakening. By Maggie Swan. With Two Illustrations by St. Clair Simmons. Square fcap. 8vo, cloth elegant, gilt top, 2s. 6d. (Nautilus Series.) Miss Maggie Swan bids fair to take a place side by side with her famous sister, Annie S. Swan. "A Late Awaken- ing " is engrossing in interest, wide in its sympathy, and graceful in style. JANE G. AUSTIN Standish of Standish: A Story of the Pil- grims. With Two Illustrations by Geo. Hutchinson. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. 6d. " Miss Austin writes their (the Pilgrims') story as one inspired. ... A most satisfying story, and a valuable addition to historical fiction." — Sheffield Telegraph. AVERY MACALPINE yoel Marsh: an American; and Other Stories. Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. " ' Joel Marsh ' tells the old tale of the Good Samaritan in a new guise — related with much humour, touched with sympathetic humanity. Of the other stories, 'A Sacrifice to Faith ' is the strongest, is powerfully depicted, and im- presses the hall-mark of distinction upon the volume." — The Speaker. WARD LOCK dr= BOW DEN LTD 23 SEP 1886 FEB 11 1899 gCT 8 1902) APk 1