'--//'. ~ ;.$*//. ,_ ,/ ?/>? /r^u?>r/ t / f / f v7^> s/t-llll/ tr <--M-< ,/A^X**. THE MASTERFOLK Wherein is attempted the unravelling of the Strange Affair of my Lord Wyntwarde of Cavil and Miss Betty Modeyne by HALDANE MACFALL Author of 'The Wooings of Jezebel Petty fer,' etc. London William Heinemann 1903 All rights reserved TO GEORGE MEREDITH ESOUIRE TO GIVE YOU THE SALUTE OF SOVEREIGNTY, SIR, CAN ADD NO TITTLE TO YOUR STATURE J BUT THERE IS SOLDIER'S DELIGHT IN SALUT- ING A CONQUEROR AND TO YOUR BAYS THERE IS NO PRETENCE OF A PRETENDER R&81336 CONTENTS OF THE BUDDING OF THE TREE OF LIFE Chapter Page I. Which shows some of the Gods in their Machinery , with but a Shadowy Hint of the Printer's Devil . . 3 //. Wherein it is discovered that, likely enough from an Ancestor who was Master of the Horse to King Harry the Eighth, Master Oliver had inherited some Gift f Horseplay, together with a Keen Eye for a Fine Leg on a Woman . . . . . .13 ///. Wherein Master Oliver comes to the Conclusion that, to complete the Dramatic Picture, Greatness should have known the Hair-Shir t and the Make- shifts of Adver- sity ......... 20 IV. Wherein it would appear that the most respectable Stucco Architecture may be but a Screen for Gnawing Secrets 30 V. Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne is introduced to the Study of Nature ........ 36 VI. Wherein it is hinted that to be Famous is not necessarily to be Great . . . . . . 41 VII. Wherein Ambition shrinks from looking down the Ladder . 5 1 VIII. Wherein it is discovered that the Strength of Genius may lie in the Hair . . . . . . 5 5 IX. Wherein Master Oliver is convinced that it is Difficult to play the Marfs Part on a Weak Stomach . . 71 X. Wherein Master Oliver entertains Guests . . 77 vii viii Contents Chapter Page XI. Wherein Egoism begins to suspect that there is a Bottom to the Pint Pot 82 XII. Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne wins more Hearts . 88 XI II. Which contains Some Hints towards the Making of a Baronet ....... 93 XIV. Which has to do with the Fascination of Naughtiness 97 XV. Which tells of a Poet that ofered Himself for Sacri- fice, and was rejected of the Gods . . .100 XVI. Which hints at an Age of Gold . . . .105 OF THE BUDDING OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE XVII. Which has to do with the Awakening of Youth . . 1 1 1 XVIII. Of the Coming of Quilliam O' Flaherty Macloughlin My re upon the Town . . . . .115 XIX. Wherein a Strutting Cock comes near to losing a Feather upon his Own Dunghill . . 1 1 8 XX. Wherein Master Devlin throws a Fierce Sidelight upon the Genius oj Poetry . . . .121 X XI. Which discovers a Great Man in the Hour of his Triumph . . . . . . .124. XXII. Wherein we are obliged to spend a Brief Moment in the Company of the Titled Aristocracy . . 128 XXIII. Wherein the Major fghts a Brilliant Rearguard Action; and beats of a Pressing Attack . . 133 XXIV. Which tells, with quite Unnecessary Frankness, of what chanced at the Tavern of The Cock and Bull in Fleet Street 138 XXV. Wherein the Major takes to his Bed . . .142 XXVI. Wherein Tom Folly blunders along in his Self-centred Gig and drags a Dainty Little Lady's Skirts into the Wheel 144 Contents ix Chapter Page XXVII. Wherein a Dainty Little Lady, looking out of the Window of a Shabby Home at a Shabbier Destiny, joins the Streaming Crowd whose Faces pass in the Street, drifting towards the Strange Riot of Living . . . . . H7 XXV 111. Wherein Dawning Womanhood whispers that Dolls are Dolls 150 XXIX. Wherein Mr. Pompey Malahide loses his Breath in the Midst of a Boast 155 XXX. Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne posts a Letter . . 157 XXXI. Wherein a Great Financier is satisfied with his Bargain . . . . . . .159 XXXII. Wherein the Gallant Major rises from the Dead . 162 XXXIII. Which has to do with one of those Emotional Crises that change the Whole Tenor of a Man's Political Convictions . . . . .165 XXXI V. Which, to some extent, discloses the Incident of the Sentimental Tea-cups . . . . .170 XXXV. Wherein we are bewildered by the Cooings of Chivalry 175 XXXVI. Which touches upon the Pains of enjoying the Glow of Self- Abasement whilst maintaining a Position of Dignity 177 XXXVII. Which is Uneasy with the Restlessness of Youth . 182 XXXVIII. Which has to do with the Breaking of a Pretty Lady's Picture 186 XXXIX. Wherein, the Barber letting the Cat out of the Bag, we give Chase . . . . . .189 XL. Which, in Somewhat Indelicate Eavesdropping Fashion, hovers about a Try sting-Place, and Scandalously Repeats a Private Conversation . 194 XL I. Which discovers Something of Despised Poetry in a Waste-paper Basket 197 x Contents Chapter Page XL II. Wherein we are shown an Emotional Hairdresser at Loggerheads with Destiny . . . . . 1 99 XLIII. Wherein we catch a Glimpse of the Benefits that accrue to a Sound Commercial Education . . .203 XLIV. Wherein a Palace of Art disappears in the Night . 207 XL V. Wherein a Poet burns his Verse to keep his Feet Warm ^ \ \ OF THE BLOSSOMING OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE XL VI. Wherein the Husband of the Concierge fears that he is growing Blind . . . . . .217 XL VII. Which introduces us to the First Lady of France . 220 XL VIII. Which has to do with the Motherhood of the World . 223 XLIX. Wherein the Rich Man's Son seeks the Sweets of Poverty not Wholly without Success . . .225 L. Wherein the Spring comes a-frolic into the Court . 229 LI. Wherein it is hinted that it were Best to " Touch not the Catte botte a Glove" 234 LII. Wherein Yankee Doodle is bugled with a Strong Foreign Accent . . . . . .238 LIII. Wherein we skip down the Highway of Youth . . 242 LIV. Wherein the Wifow Snacbeur separates the Milk from Human Kindness . . . . . .249 L V. Wherein is Some Worship of the Moon . . .252 LVI. Wherein it is suspected that there has been Peeping through Windows . . . . . .256 LVI1. Which treats of what chanced at the Tavern of The Scarlet Jackass . . . . .261 L VIII. Wherein the Tears of Compassion htal the Bleeding Feet of a Straying Woman . . . .271 Contents xi Chapter Page LIX. Wherein it is suspect that our Betty has the Healing Touch 275 LX. Wherein Betty feels the Keen Breath of Winter . 277 LXL Wherein the Landlord of The Scarlet Jackass is unable to sing his Song . . . . .279 LXII. Wherein a Comely Young Woman waits at a Window all Night, watching for Sir Tom Fool listening for his Step 281 LXHL Wherein the Ceiling of the Tavern that is called The Scarlet Jackass is stained with Blood . 283 LXIV. Wherein the Angel of the Annunciation enters into a Garret 285 LXV. Wherein Betty walks into the Desert . .. .288 LXVI. Which has to do with the Great Orgy of Youth . 293 LXV I I. Wherein Youth Jinds the Cap and Bells to be but a Bizarre Crown . . . . . .300 LXVI II. Wherein it is seen that a Man is More or Less Responsible for his Father . . . .301 LXIX. Which treats of a Farewell Banquet to Departing Youth whereat Gas ton L at our glitters with a Hectic Glitter 305 LXX. Wherein a Comely Young Woman broods upon the Years ....... 309 LXX I. Which treats of a Harmless Riot amongst Buck as Dwell on Mount Parnassus . . . 3 1 3 LXXII. Wherein our Hero is ill at ease with his own Shadow . . . . . . 3 1 5 LXXIII. Wherein our Hero dabbles his Hands in the Turgid Waters of 'Philosophy ', and brings up Some Grains of Truth from a Pebbly Bottom. A Chapter that the Frivolous would do well to skip the Ironies being infrequent , if not wholly wanting, and the Humours lacking in the Comic Interest . 317 xii Contents Chapter Page LXXIV. Which sees the Day break in the Tavern of The Golden Sun . . . . . .323 LXXV. Wherein our Hero goes out into the Night . , 329 LXXVI. Wherein our Hero sets Foot upon the Road to Rome . . . . . . .332 LXXV II. Wherein Foul Things are plotted with Some Glamour of Romance . . . . .336 LXXVIII. Wherein our Hero scatters Some Pages of the Indifferent Wisdom of the Ages to the even more Indifferent Gulls . . . . .340 LXXIX. Wherein the Honourable Rupert Greppel shows Hidalgic . . . . . . 344 LXXX. Which treats of the Masterfolk . . .349 LXXXI. Wherein the Widow Snacheur comes into her Fortune . . . . . . 351 LXXXIL Wherein Quilliam O' 'Flaherty Madoughlin Myre struts airily towards the Goal of Freedom . 355 LXXX III. Which essays the High Epic Note . . .358 LXXXIV. Which has to do with Blue Blood and a Jade- handled Cane . . . . . .360 LXXX V. Wherein a Man of the World commits the Indis- cretion of putting his Experiences into Writing 363 LXXX VI. Wherein our Hero, and Another, go Home . .366 OF THE BLOSSOMING OF THE TREE OF LIFE LXXX VI I. Which has to do with the Binding of Books in Half -calf, and the Whimsies of Calf Love . 375 LXXXVIII. Wherein it is suspected that, on Occasion ', the Trumpet of Fame is not Wholly Immaculate of the Hiccup 381 Contents xiii Chapter Page LXXXIX. Wherein Andrew Blotte draws aside the Arras that hangs Across the Unknown and joins the Company at a Larger Banquet ..... 396 XC. Wherein Hereditary Greatness fails to Glitter Hidalgic ....... 400 XCL Wherein the Heir of the Ffolliotts falls the Victim to a Limited Badinage . . . . .405 XCIL Wherein it is seen that the Blood of the Oldest Families may run to Inconsequence and Mere Vulgar Stains ...... 407 XCIIL Wherein our Hero comes into a Wide Heritage . 411 XCIV. Wherein it is suspected that the Garden of Eden was Well Lost 413, OF THE BUDDING OF l\> THE TREE OF LIFE CHAPTER I Which shows Some of the Gods in their Machinery -, with but a Shadowy Hint of the Printer's Devil AMIDST the untidy litter of torn paper that strewed the bare plank floor there stood a large double writing-table, spread with proofs and manuscript and pamphlets ; and, with his feet in the litter of the floor and his elbows in the litter of the table, sat a gaunt yellow-haired youth, solemnly writing. Netherby Gomme peered at his work* in the waning light of the departing November afternoon ; and the deepening dusk that took possession of the shabby room, turning all things to the colour of shadows, strained his attention, drawing long lines about his mouth and pronouncing the pallor of his serious face the grim mask of the humorist. The slips of paper that were set into the sleeve-ends of his well-brushed threadbare coat to save the soiling of his shirt-cuffs, and the long reach of yellow sock that showed his feet thrust a wrinkled span beyond the original intention of his much-knee'd trousers, marked the ordered untidiness of the literary habit. Everything in the room the overflowed waste-paper basket at his feet ; the severe academic comfort of the polished wooden arm-chair that stood yawning augustly vacant opposite to him ; the shut door at his right hand, with its curt announcement of " Editor " in stiff, for- bidding letters ; the low bookshelves about the room with their rows of books of reference, stacks of journals and literary scraps piled a-top of them ; the walls with their irregular array of calendars, advertise- ments, notices, and printed and pictured odds and ends ; the atmo- sphere of the scrap-gathering paste-pot and of clippings from the knowledge of the world ; the sepulchral, monotonous clock that ticked its aggressive statement of the passage of time as though with a cough of admonition that, whatever journalism might be, life was short and art was long ; the naked mantel beneath it, which held the shabby soul of the jerrybuilder turned to stone for it is the hearth that is haunted by the spirit of the architect, and this one had been a vulgar fellow the bare fireplace that did not even go through the feeble pretence of giving comfort, for it had no fender, no hearthrug, but gaped, bored and empty and black, upon the making of literature everything marked the room to be one of those scanty workshops where opinions are made, the dingy editorial office of a struggling weekly review ; 3 i2 4 Of Some of the and the extent of the dinginess showed it to be a very struggling affair indeed. The young man blotted his writing, and flipped through some pages of manuscript : " Oliver," said he, without looking up, " a light, I think ! . . . We have here lying before us a most caustic literary criticism ; but the light is so far gone that we can scarce see the dogmatic gentleman's own literary infelicities nay, can scarce see even his most split infinitives." He spoke like a leading article, with a slight cockney accent. In the gloom of a dark corner by the window, at a high desk that stood against the wall, where he sat perched on a tall office stool with his feet curled round its long legs, a small boy ceased reading, and, fumbling about in the breast-pocket of his short Eton jacket, lugged out a tin box, struck a match, and, leaning forward, set a flame to the gas-jet. The place leaped into light. The youngster flung the match- box across the room, and went on with his reading. It fell at the feet of the yellow-haired youth. " Ah, Noll," said he, stooping over and searching for it amongst the torn fragments of paper, " like those of even greater genius, our aims are only too often lost in the sea of wasted endeavour." He found the box ; lit the gas at his right hand ; coughed : "Are you putting that down?" he asked drily of the grim un- answering silence. The boy took no notice. The yellow-haired youth chuckled, and the deep-furrowed lines about his mouth broadened into a quizzical smile. The boy Oliver could scarcely have been fourteen years of age, and had he not been son of the editor, and that editor the thriftless owner of but a very broken-winged Muse, and of a steadily diminishing literary property, the boy must still have been at school. He sighed heavily, rousing from his reading : " I say, Netherby," said he, " here's a poem by that fellow with the hair." He held out the manuscript. Netherby Gomme looked up : "A lyric?" he asked. " No. Drivel.' Netherby Gomme sighed, and sat back in his chair : " With what candid brutality the sub-editorial mind treats the most ecstatic flights of the imagination !" said he. The boy Oliver shifted impatiently on his high stool : " Shall I reject the ponderous rot ?" he asked. Netherby Gomme coughed : " We if you please, Oliver we. It is always better to adopt the editorial we in matters of weight ; and it throws the responsibility upon the irresponsible gods of journalism." Noll sighed, stretched himself, and yawned. " All right. We'll reject it, eh ? . . . No good troubling the governor " he jerked his thumb towards the editor's room " he's so beastly short this afternoon. But I had better write the rejection, I suppose the father doesn't like poets to be rejected on the printed form they're so sensitive." Gods in the Machinery He settled himself to write a letter, tongue in cheek, head down, and quoting for the other's approval as he wrote : " The editor regrets that whilst he appreciates the beauty of the lines herewith returned he is unable to make use of them owing to " He came to a halt and invited the prompt. None coming, he glanced over his shoulder : " What is it owing to, Netherby ? I'm such a beastly poor liar. You've been on the press so much longer. Hustle your vivid imagination and chuck us an excuse." Netherby Gomme shook his head : " I am only a humorist, Oliver humour must walk knee-deep in truth. I do not travel on Romance " " Oh, shut up ! ... No good chucking the idiot roughly. . . . It's beastly long. . . . We'll chuck it for length, eh ?" Netherby Gomme smiled at him : "Noll," said he, "you are possessed of the magnificent careless- ness of the gods and I never interfere with religious bodies." Noll turned to his writing again, and there was a steady scratching of pen on paper. Netherby Gomme sat for awhile, his face seamed with comic lines of grim amusement : " I suppose," he said at last " I suppose we have read the poem, Oliver ?" " No, / haven't. Rut you can." Netherby Gomme moved uneasily in his seat : " N-no. No thanks, Oliver. We'll take it as read.' He coughed : " By the way, Oliver, have you got the dummy for next week's issue over there ?" Noll licked, sealed, and thumped the letter on the desk : "Oh, ah, yes I'm sitting on it and a bunch of keys to remind me." He took a bunch of keys from under him, and put them in his trousers pocket, then lugged out from beneath him the dummy form of the review in its brown-paper cover. He opened it, and wetting his finger on his lip, he flipped through the leaves with their proofs pasted in position for guidance to the printer. " Look here, Netherby." He held up the booklet, pointing to a blank space. " The governor said I was to tell you we had better complete this column with a poem says verse gives a pleasant appearance to the page." He dropped the dummy on the desk in front of him. " It's an awful bore, Netherby," said he, " but that bundle of poems he gave me the other day took up such a lot of space on my desk that I flung them into the waste-paper basket. Can't you knock up about twenty lines of amorous matter ? I promise not to whistle." Netherby Gomme smiled grimly, sighed, took up a pen, and, drawing a sheet of paper to him, prepared to write. . . . The yellow-haired youth had been with this literary venture from the start. He had begun as office-boy ; and as each member of the original staff had fallen out, at the stern prunings of necessity, he had 6 Of Some of the been promoted to their places, until he sat alone, as leader-writer, humorist, topical poet, sentimentalist, sub -editor, office lad, and general usefulness. Scrupulous to the smallest detail, reliable in the performance of the minutest fraction of his bond, he got through his work with the facility of a man of affairs ; and, like all busy men, finding time for everything, he had spent his hours of leisure outside the office in the humane atmosphere of the theatre, in the tragic fellow- ship of the street, in the eternal fresh comedy of the city's by-ways, and in the company of the mighty masters of his tongue ; in this, the best school of education in all the round world, he had acquired such a knowledge of letters, such a taste for the niceties of the written word, and such a mastery in its use, as would have astounded, as indeed it was destined to astound, even them that thought they knew him to his fullest powers. The other, the editor's son, Oliver Baddlesmere, had come to the office to complete establishment straight out of the schoolroom some months back. He had been brought in to reduce the pressure of clerking work, and, owing to extreme youth and inexperience, had been given the simpler duties to perform, so that he came naturally and as a matter of course to preside over the destinies of the poet's corner and to impart information to a hungry world from the battered volumes of an encyclopaedia, and suchlike heavy books of reference, the weight of which, in the intervals of airily relieving the world's thirst for knowledge, the boy used for the purpose of pressing prints of which he was gathering a collection from the illustrated papers of the day, pasting them into brown paper scrap-books of his own making. Netherby Gomme had scarcely got under fair way with the writing of his amorous matter when the boy whipped round on his office-stool. " I say, Netherby," said he ; " your book is making a splash all along the Thames. The bookstalls are covered with it the whole blessed town is saffron with it." The yellow-haired youth smiled complacently ; sitting back in his chair, he nodded : " Indeed ?" he said. Noll slipped down off the stool, took it up, and carried it over to the fireplace : " You were a chunk-head not to put your name to it !" he said. " But all the same, you know, it's been roaring funny to hear the father and mother talk about it." He vaulted to the top of the high stool, scrambled on to his feet, and, reaching up, opened the glass face of the clock : " It almost bursts me sometimes that I can't tell 'em you wrote it," he said. He got on tiptoe and put forward the large hand twenty minutes, shut the face with a click, turned where he stood, and, thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets, he added confidentially : " D'you know, Netherby, between you and me and the office ink-pot, I never thought myself that you could be so uncommon funny." The yellow-haired youth blushed. Clambering down off the stool, Noll carried it back to his desk, Gods in the Machinery took down a tall silk hat, ran his coat-sleeve round it, and put it on his head. Netherby Gomme coughed : " Oliver," said he hesitated made a pause then added nervously : " Oliver, I am going to confide in you. In fact, if I don't I shall get some sort of low malarial fever. Now, don't treat the confidence with the giggle of childishness." Noll sighed. He turned, leaped on to his office-stool, swung round, set his feet on the bar, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms, and, peering at the other out of the shadow from under the brim of his hat, said gloomily : " O lor ! the little typewriter girl ! . . . Why the dickens you don't kiss Julia and have done with it, Netherby, I can't make out. Hang it, /have ! . . . It was very nice whilst it lasted, and all that, but there was nothing in it to write poetry about !" Netherby Gpmme flushed. " Oliver," said he, with biting distinctness, " we have not yet shown the resentment that your vulgarity courts ; but we would remind you that we may be goaded into flinging the office ink-pot " He stretched out his long arm towards the large zinc well of ink before him. Noll slid off the stool, putting it between them with the swift and calcu- lated strategy of experience, guarding his head with his raised elbow : " Chuck it, Netherby !" he bawled, dodging under cover of his desk warily ; and he added in a hoarse aside, jerking his thumb towards the editor's door : " Chuck it ! I withdraw." The yellow-haired youth put down the heavy ink-pot. Noll saw out of the corner of his alert eye that honour was satisfied, and as he ran his finger pensively down a large splash of ink that had dried on the wall beside his desk, he asked : "Well ? . . . About that confidence !" Netherby Gomme cleared his throat : "Now, Oliver, don't say anything about this to anyone. It might make me so ridiculous, and professional humorists are keenly sensitive to ridicule " " Lor !" said Noll, leaving the patch on the wall. " Get on." " This is in strict confidence, Noll." " Oh, it's Julia all right enough," growled Noll. Gomme went on, ignoring the comment : " Noll, it is one of the penalties of fame that its victims must appear in the brilliant world of fashion." He coughed. " Come here, Noll." He unlocked and pulled open the drawer before him, and Noll, aroused to sudden interest, sidled over to him as he brought out from the drawer a very carefully folded dress- coat. " Oliver, I've got a dress-coat You see, I may have to go into society at any moment, now that my book has caught the public eye." Noll put out his hand : " Let's look at the thing," said he eagerly. Gomme caught his arm and kept him off it : " Careful, Noll !" he gasped anxiously " gently ! or we shan't get it back into its folds." 8 Of Some of the He put it away carefully, locked it up, and, sitting back in his chair, he added gravely : " Now, Noll, as one who has knowledge of the usages of polite society " " Eh ?" said Noll. Gomme touched him on the shoulder nervously. "No, no, Noll I'm not accusing you of practising them. But as one born within the pale of good society from no fault of your own, I admit ought one to put scent on the coat ?" Noll whistled : " Je hoshaphat !" said he, " I never noticed " He pushed his hat back on his head, thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and fixed a searching eye on experience : " I'm not sure. N-no I don't think so. The governor doesn't." The yellow-haired youth shook his head solemnly : " It's a most awkward point, Oliver a most awkward point and somewhat momentous. . . . One's first step at the threshold of a career should not be a stumble." Noll's face lighted up with a suggestion : "Tell you what I should do, Netherby. Just scent your hand- kerchief ; and if it kicks up a beastly lot of notice and makes you uncomfortable, you can always get rid of it " " Indeed, Oliver !" " Rather. Hand it to a lady and ask her if it is hers. Gives you a sort of introduction, too." Netherby Gomme stared aghast : " B-but, Oliver, surely one is introduced in society !" " Rather not it ain't form." " Why ? " Oh, I don't know ; it's the new hospitality. But about that scent, Netherby let us try some on me, and I'll see if it worries the mother. The father '11 soon be nasty about it if it's bad form." Gomme shook his head, and sighed heavily : " Ah, Oliver, one has to be very careful in one's pose on entering a new world." Noll nodded : " Rather ! . . . Do you know, Netherby, it's a rummy thing how one begins to wash one's self and think about ornaments and things when one becomes a man, eh ?" " A most rummy thing indeed, Noll." Netherby Gomme sighed : Noll looked at him with interest : " It must be wonderful to feel famous," he said. "It is," said Gomme gloomily. " Wonderful." " But I don't see why you should be so beastly miserable about it, Netherby. It don't hurt, does it ?" " Not exactly, Noll." The yellow-haired youth sighed. " I am only suffering from the mood of the time. . . . Pessimism is on the town. ... A clerk with any claim to culture must affect Decadence this season and it gives me the hump." He coughed. " Causes me acute mental discomfort." Gods in the Machinery 9 Noll snorted "Then I should chuck it," he said. "When I was a kid I used to worry if I were not the same as the other kids ; but hullo !" He looked up at the clock. "It seems to me it's about time to go and get tea.'; He winked an eye solemnly at Gomme, and whistled his way airily out of the office. The door swung open, revealing a dingy stair- landing, shut with a bang, and swallowed him. The sound of Noll's retreating footsteps on the stair had scarce faded away into the distant echoes of the street, when the door that led to the editor's room opened, and a well-groomed man of about thirty-five entered the office. Anthony Baddlesmere was a handsome, well-set-up fellow indeed, it was as much from his father as from his mother that Noll inherited his good looks. He was handsome to the degree of beauty ; and this it was, perhaps, which, in spite of the easy carriage of the body and the subtle air of good-breeding, gave the impression of some indecision of character in the man. Or it may have been that this indecision was increased by a certain embarrass- ment as he endeavoured to get a firm note into his voice : " Oh, Gomme have you completed the dummy yet for this week's issue ?" Gomme got up from his chair and searched for the dummy amongst the papers on Noll's desk. But Anthony Baddlesmere had seated himself on the corner of the desk, and, fingering a paper-knife, he said : " Oh er never mind. There's another matter, Netherby. . . . It's some years since I started this sorry venture in this office." He sighed, and passed his hand over his forehead wearily " more years than 1 care to remember. You, the office-boy, were a lank lad of thirteen I a young man, full of literary enthusiasms. ... I tried to sell the public artistic wares " he shrugged his shoulders " tried to show them vital things real things, instead of sham tried to encour- age promising youth " he laughed sadly " and a nice waste-paper basket we've made of it !" He swung his foot and kicked the waste-paper basket into the middle of the room, sending its contents flying over the floor. Netherby Gomme coughed : "Yes, sir," said he, " a great deal of the promise of youth goes into the waste-paper basket." Anthony Baddlesmere laughed uncomfortably ; the laugh died out of his eyes, obliterated by a frown : " Downstairs," he went on, as though repeating an unpleasant task he had set himself "downstairs they have given the public trash cheap. And I have lost. ... In me the literary enthusiasm, a little chilled, perhaps, remains ; but the youth has gone. As for you you are office-boy still, to all purposes, and lank still but, lord ! how you have grown !" Netherby Gomme looked down at his scanty trousers and sighed : " Yes, sir, I have grown." " H'm ! like a scandal," said Baddlesmere ; and a gleam of merri- TO Of Some of the ment shot into his eyes, ran round the corners of his mouth, and vanished. " Gomme," said he, " we are at the end of our resources. This is our last \veek in these rooms. . . . The office is bare my home is bare. All my money all my wife's literary success all have gone to feed the printing machine. It's great inky maw has swallowed everything. . . . However, there is no debt except to you. But that is a heavy one. My conscience tells me that you ought not to have been allowed to remain here and share in the collapse ; you ought to have been promoted to have been sent to to " He hesitated stopped. " Where, sir ?" asked the yellow-haired youth. The bald fact was that Baddlesmere had never given the matter a thought until this disaster was upon him. He smiled sadly, and added vaguely : "No place would have been good enough for you, Gomme. . . . You should have been promoted long ago. . . ." He roused and faced the position boldly : " But you have been such a good friend to me and to the boy so useful a part of this office, that I am afraid I have treated you like a part of myself, and have come by habit to think the hat that covered my head covered yours. . . . Dame Fortune has knocked the hat off and I find there were two heads inside it." " Well, sir, we can look her in the face without the hat." " Yes, yes, Gomme but I have looked over your head." "It has saved your eyes from the commonplace, sir, and my heart from a bad chill. I wouldn't have missed the past years in this office for a fortune." " No, no, Gomme ; nor I nor I." " They have made a man of me," the youth added hoarsely. Baddlesmere put his hand on the other's shoulder : " But you should have been promoted you should have been pro- moted. . . . And I could so easily have sent you to a better billet." He sat down, and, fidgeting with the paper-knife again, he added, alter a pause : " By the way, Gomme, I wish you did not write such a shocking bad hand." He smiled, half jesting, half serious. " Why don't you practise writing ?" Gomme's face became a dull, expressionless mask : " I have, sir," he said grimly. "How? You have!" " I've written a book," he said. Baddlesmere whistled : " The devil you have ! . . . Ah, Gomme, everybody writes books nowadays." "But they read mine, sir," said Netherby Gomme. He dived his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and, taking out a bundle of press-cuttings, drew a much-thumbed one from the others. " Listen to the mighty Thrumsby Burrage in The Discriminator, sir." He read out the paragraph : " We have here a refined humorist, whose work is stamped with the hall-mark of genius? Baddlesmere nodded ; he was only half listening. " Oh yes," said he "hail-mark of genius is Thrumsby Burrage." Gods in the Machinery 1 1 Gomme went on with a yawning travesty of the pulpit manner : " In the present day it is indeed a veritable intellectual treat to come upon the subtle workmanship of a man of large experience of life workmanship marked by that delicate wit which grows only to per- fection in the cloistered atmosphere of scholarship? "Yes cloistered atmosphere is Thrumsby Burrage." Gomme's eyes twinkled : " We rejoice that a new man of genius has risen amongst us, and we do not hesitate to say that the anonymous writer of 'The Tragedy of the Ridiculous ' is that man}'' Anthony Baddlesmere shook off boredom, stood up slowly, stared at the gaunt yellow-haired youth before him in frank tribute of bewilder- ment, and said at last with hoarse surprise : " You wrote this book, Gomme ?" " Yes, sir," said Netherby Gomme simply ; " but when I write my tragedy " Baddlesmere clapped a hand on his shoulder, and pleasure danced in his eyes. " But, good God ! you are famous, man famous ! . . . And you must be making a fortune." " No, sir I sold the thing for a few pounds." Anthony Baddlesmere strode up and down the room. " But, man," said he " I have been trying all my life, and with every advantage, to create a work of art such as this ; and here are you, a mere stripling damn it, scarcely out of knickerbockers though, on my soul, you are nearly as old as your trousers here are you, a mere stripling, famous !" He came to him, gripped him affectionately by the shoulder. " Of all men that I know, I would rather this thing had come to you than to any." He turned and got to striding up and down the room again. " Famous ! at least you will be as soon as you give out your own name." Gomme's face had flushed a little with the praise : " But," said he, " when I write my tragedy " Baddlesmere turned on him sharply : " Tragedy be hanged !" said he. " My dear Gomme, you've got to recognise that the world never takes its humorists seriously. It's always looking for the joke in their tragedies. . . . Which reminds me, Gomme, I'm afraid to-morrow must see us out of this." Gomme's face lost its mask : " But, sir !" he faltered fidgeting nervously with the papers by his hand "what are you going to do? and Noll ? and Mrs. Baddlesmere when the blinds are pulled down ?" Baddlesmere strode over to the window, and, gazing down into the dusk of the chilly street below, made no answer. He stood so for a long while, and wondered. He wondered if he had given the public vital things ! His mind ran rapidly over the failure of his scheme a scheme that, as he now saw, had been inherent with failure at its very inception. He saw now, as he stood there ruined by it, that it was folly to expect a public to buy literature built up on the mere brilliant literary exercises in technical skill of a smart group of young fellows who had 12 Of the Gods in the Machinery really had no claim upon the consideration of the world, nothing to say, no gift but a capacity to use the machinery of letters prettily ; who had had positively nothing to offer to the world but old idioms freshly arrayed in pretty clothes make-believe kings at a calico-ball. These had been but smart mediocrities not an ounce of wisdom amongst them all. It came to him now with grim irony, as he stood there in confession to the clear-eyed judge of Self, that for all their cackle of literary style and their contempt for everyone else, these men had uttered no single thought worth preserving that they had left their youth behind and were growing bald atop, and full-blown and ordinary except Yes, the work of this Netherby Gomme. He knew now as he ran over the years, that all the best work had come from this youth's pen about the only one of them all who had not given himself airs, who had put down the absolute truth as he whimsically saw it, who had worked and wrought amid bare walls and in hours snatched from toil- won leisure, whilst they all sat and prated of what they intended to do, and of how it should be done. He turned from the window into the lighted office, and his glance fell on his son Noll's desk. It was the only artistic corner in the room the prints, mounted on brown paper, which the boy had tacked to the wall, had a decorative effect that showed rare artistic taste in one so young. A touch of pride came into the man's eyes, and went out in a frown. Netherby Gomme, watching him in alert silence, with delicate tact uttered no word. As Baddlesmere moved towards the editor's room he asked abruptly : "Where's Noll?" " Heaven knows, sir," said Netherby Gomme airily. The door closed on the editor, and Gomme heard the slam of the outer door, which told that Baddlesmere had begun to descend the stair. " Heaven knows !" Gomme shook his head. " Playing with a sewer, most like. . . . But God is very good to boys." CHAPTER II Wherein it is discovered that, likely enough from an Ancestor who was Master of the Horse to King Harry the Eighth, Master Oliver had inherited some Gift of Horseplay, together with a Keen Eye f or a Fine Leg on a Woman. NETHERBY GOMME had been sitting some time writing at his desk when the door behind him was stealthily opened and Noll's head popped round its edge. There was a sharp click of a pea in a tin pea-shooter as the youngster let fly a careful aim at Gomme's poll. Gomme jumped, and scratched the back of his neck irritably : " Curse it, Noll !" he growled testily. " Naughty !" said Noll, coming into the room, but giving the yellow- haired youth a wide circle as he moved to his desk, and keeping a wary eye on him under a magnificent pretence of carelessness. " Caught you on the raw that time, I think, my ink-stained warrior !' he added cheerfully ; but the fire was gone out of the old jest, and it was borne in on the youngster that the oft-repeated joke is some- what of a damp squib. He broke the tin pea-shooter across his knee, and flung the two pieces into the empty grate. Strolling over to his desk, he took up the office-stool in his arms and carried it to the dusty fireplace. As he scrambled on to the stool Netherby Gomme watched him under his brows. " I am relieved to see, Noll," he growled, "that you remember your manhood and your pose as a literary prophet, and intend in future to split hairs instead of spitting peas." He scratched his head irritably as the other, standing a-tiptoe on the stool, reached up and put back the minute-hand of the clock. " Confound it !" he added, as Noll shut the glass face with a snap, and came down gloomily off his stool " the whole world seems to be suffering from the vice of forced humour in these days." " Don't be waspish, Netherby," said the youngster. He carried the stool back to his desk, took off his silk hat, hung it up, and solemnly mounted into his seat : " I confess," he said, and he sighed, " I do feel beastly young at times." " H'm!" grunted Netherby Gomme drily " you weren't very long over your tea." " No. ... As a matter of fact, I haven't had any tea. I had to dodge 13 14 Wherein our Hero shows an the governor, so I popped into the office below to call on your little typewriter girl." Netherby Gomme moved peevishly in his chair : " My dear Noll, for Heaven's sake don't call Julia my typewriter girl!" said he " you'd think you were talking of a sewing-machine." Noll raised his eyebrows. " But she is a bit of a sewing-machine when she isn't typewriting. He suddenly disappeared over the side of the stool and took up a defensive attitude beyond his desk. " Chuck it !" he bawled " shut up, Netherby ! . . . Put that ink-pot down and I'll tell you the whole tragedy." Noll climbed on to his stool again as the keen glitter went out of Gomme's eyes, and, sitting perched there with his back against the desk, he said calmly : " Julia is missing !" Gomme stared at him anxiously : "Missing?" Noll nodded : "H'm h'm !" said he. "They are getting rather fussy about it downstairs, and inclined to be nasty." He assumed an editorial manner and continued : " We regret to state that there has been marked uneasiness at Messrs. Rollit's typewriting offices owing to the fact that Miss Julia Wynne has not been heard of for the last hour ; and this conduct, which might have passed unnoticed in any ordinary female clerk, has caused considerable anxiety in the office where she usually carries on her avocation, for, owing to the regular habits and exemplary conduct of the young person in question, the half-starved beauty of whose Burne-Jones-like profile " " We have not yet thrown the office ink-pot, Oliver !" said Netherby Gomme grimly. Noll, guarding his head with his arm, peered out from beneath his elbow : " No but really, Netherby, it was beastly hard luck her being out. I like to go and gaze at her. She has such a jolly nice mouth. I should like to kiss it it would do her a lot of good. ..." He disappeared over the stool. " Shut up !" he shouted. " Put it down and I'll chuck it. I say, Netherby," he added confidentially, coming out into the open and disarming resentment by trusting Gomme's honour ; " I saw a ripping girl to-day. She gave me quite a thrill." Gomme sat back in his chair : " Indeed, Noll !" said he, putting his fingers together, elbows on chair-arm " this is most interesting. . . . What age was the lady?" " Oh, quite twelve or thirteen. None of your Burne-Jones-like He ducked his head under his arm and made for his desk back- wards. He scrambled on to his stool as he saw that the other was not for war : " No ; she was a girl, that ! Rich warm hair reddish. Plumpish. Jolly way of walking. ..." He paused for a moment and added critically : " She went off a bit in the legs but they mostly do at that age. ... I offered her chocolates. . . . She sniffed." " Not very encouraging, Oliver !" Hereditary Tendency towards Horseplay 15 " It was rather a blow," said Noll. " But I think a woman ought to be offish at first. I don't like 'em top easily captured myself." " May I ask," said Gomme grimly, "if she be a lady of position?" " Well her antecedents are somewhat humble. Her father is a wellhe's a butcher. But every tragedy should have comic relief shouldn't it, Netherby ?" Netherby Gomme shook his head solemnly where he sat : " Noll, you are very, very old. Let us try to be young again." " It's so beastly slow being young," grumbled Noll. "When I'm a man Jeroos'lum ! I should like to be a man and shave 1" " And then you'll damn the razor. . . . Ah, Noll, it is with the razor that youth cuts its throat." There was a long pause. The boy sat brooding on some perplexing problem ; the yellow-haired youth watched him. Noll broke the silence. He slipped down off his high seat, and came over to Gomme : " I say, Netherby, your book is terrific though!" ci Thanks, Noll you overwhelm me. . . . Ah, Noll, if all the world were as prejudiced an admirer as you are and as frankly honest in the statement of their admiration I might be a great man." " But, Netherby," said Noll, eyeing him critically " when did you discover you were clever ?" Gomme coughed : " Well er when people began to tell me my own stories." " I wish I could write that sort of comic rot," said Noll enviously. " Noll, it is easy enough to be funny. / envy the man of action." The yellow-haired youth got up from his chair, lank and lean and awkward, and paced the room with prowling gait. " To feel the blood tingle through one in hair's-breadth escapes to use one's strength to live, man, live 1 ... To be at grips with life and danger and death, instead of writing lyrics or other tomfoolery about it, or about what you think other people ought to think about it !" " Chuck it, Netherby !" Gomme, pacing up and down the room, took no heed of the inter- ruption. " Writing history across the face of the world ! . . . That is a bigger thing than spilling ink. ... I know what it feels like a little," he added. " The boxing sergeant knocked me down five times running in rapid succession at the gymnasium last night, and at the first fall I felt the transferred glory of what he must have felt. There is wondrous delight, a sense of the sublime,! in conquest even with the boxing-gloves on ! . . . Of course, now, it would be something to write a tragedy." Noll snorted : " Oh, tragedy's all piffle ! You don't go to a theatre to sniff. . . . Give me a jolly good pantomime for an artistic jaunt. Shush ! the governor." He vaulted on to his desk-stool as the door was flung open. " Cafoshulam it's Julia !" he cried, swinging round on his stool again as the door shut with a slam, and a pretty young woman in neat black dress ran up to Netherby Gomme. " Oh, Netherby," she gasped, seizing his arm, "there's a horror of a 1 6 Wherein our Hero shows an man keeps following me about from the time I was at the coffee-shop and I've been afraid to go back to the office lest he should follow me there. And so, at last, I've run up here. What am I to do ? The man frightens me out of my wits." " Hush, Julia keep calm." Gomme stroked her hand, and, leading her quickly to the editor's room, threw open the door: " Quick, Julia in here !" Julia grasped his arm as he was about to shut the door upon her : " No personal violence, please, Netherby. You won't hurt him will you ?" "My dear Julia," said he, hurrying her into the room, " I am sur- prised at such a suggestion !" He shut the door, and, turning his back upon it, he added grimly : " Personal violence is quite contrary to the traditions of this office, Noll it should, in our judgment, be the very last resource." He coughed. "The office broom, I fear, Noll, is in the editor's cupboard " Noll whooped : 11 Hooroosh !" cried he " we haven't had a row in the office for nearly five weeks !" There was a loud knock. Noll whipped round on his high stool, and was immediately engrossed in the heavy work of his office. " Come in !" cried Netherby Gomme. The door on to the landing was thrown open and revealed the figure of an elaborately dressed exquisite, who entered the room deliberately, diffusing scents one of those well-polished, shining beings who never seem to catch a speck of dust. He had an hereditary qualification to pass for a gentleman he knew how to dress for the part. He could strain good taste in adornment to the uttermost stretch without breaking it. He stood with the arrogant self-assurance that largely stands for good-breeding amongst the inane, and though the perfection of his clothes' fit could not hide the fact that the lamp of intelligence burnt but gutteringly at the top where were his wits, he had the self-respect to ignore his defects. He looked calmly round the room, and, taking a card with deliberate coolness from a silver cardcase, he asked : " Will someone ah kindly give my card to ah that most comely young lady who ah has just come in ?" Gomme walked over to him and took the card, which the exquisite held out to him between the first and second fingers of his lavender- gloved hand. "Will no one offer me a chair ?" the affected voice asked plaintively. Gomme motioned him to a seat by the empty fireplace, and the other strolled thither and sat down on the edge of it with deliberate care. The seat was gone a bristling hollow only left. He took off his hat and looked about the room with a cold, critical stare. Gomme took the card to Noll. " Mr. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott," he read in a gruff whisper, handing the card to the youngster ; and he added grimly : " Destiny was against the Thing from the beginning, Oliver. A man like that Hereditary Tendency towards Horseplay 17 was bound to go on all fours and eat grass." He raised his voice : " The editor's room, please," he said. And, as Noll scrambled down leisurely from his seat, the yellow-haired youth added under his breath solemnly : " Oliver, select the best office-broom, and as I cast him down the stairs, kindly crack the hero's shins. It will confuse his retreat. War is an art not a vulgar scrimmage." Noll solemnly carried the card into the editor's office. Gomme went to his seat, sat down, and aggressively paid no heed to the Thing. The exquisite became nettled. Said he affectedly : " That's an awfully smart office-girl of yours " Netherby Gomme rose slowly from his chair, and, walking over to him, stood and looked down at him with contempt. "Oh, you're a judge!" said he "a sort of overdressed Paris awarding the apple " u Oh, no," protested the exquisite Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott ; " you are quite mistaken. I have never been in Paris, and I'm not at all keen about apples." Gomme laughed loud. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott fidgeted un- easily. " Are you the editor ?" he asked. Gomme smiled. " No," he said and added drily : " Luckily for you." "Whyluck-i-ly?" Gomme coughed. " The editor kicks like a horse." Ffolliott sniggered uneasily : " Really !" he drawled. It was faintly borne in upon him that he was neither shining nor making an impression. His eyes ranged aim- lessly round the room, and he added fatuously : " So this is the sort of place where you literary fellows hang out !" Gomme stared at him in grim silence. The exquisite Ponsonby shifted in his seat : " None of my people have ever been literary," he drawled ; " they all belonged to the virile professions. ... At least, I suppose that's the office-girl. . . . However, as I said before, I'm not a literary man myself " Gomme' s eyes glowed threateningly, but the resplendent fool seated before him was too heavy-witted a dullard to hear anything but the cackle of his own voice, or to be alert to anything but the sordid desire of his own eyes. Gomme laughed drily. " Man ? . . . You're not a man !" said he. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott was genuinely shocked : " Really, you know " He stopped. He saw that this yellow-haired, gaunt other man, a loose-limbed, powerful fellow, was glaring at him in anything but friendly fashion, and he was dumb. Gomme's level voice went calmly on : "Tsh !" said he, " you're a perambulating monkey, scented and got up and flung upon the town by Providence to remind us all from what 2 [8 Wherein our Hero shows an we came and to what we may return if we forget that we were meant to grow into God's good image." "You you're a common fellow !" said Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott. Gomme's keen eyes remained fixed on him with a steady contempt, that ate even into this dunce's conceit. He went on, giving judgment on the travesty of manhood that sat before him : " You silly fool ! It's disgusting that a pretty woman can't walk down the high streets of the most civilized city in the world without the risk of some painted peacock of an 'Arry like yourself " " 'Arry, indeed 1" bleated the exquisite. Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott was wounded in his most religious parts. " I have the blood of the Plantagenets in my veins," he said. He was very indignant. He spoke with simple faith, as if of the certainty of a glorious resurrection. Gomme turned, and called out : " Open the door, Oliver F The door swung open, and discovered Noll at the head of the stair- way, gripping a long broom in his hands. " Oliver," said Netherby, and his eyes shone, " this is, I think, positively the first occasion on which we have flung a genuine Planta- genet down the office-stairs. It is indeed an emotional moment. . . . I am thrilled." He made a grab at the throat of Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott, who evaded it with an upward fling of the elbow as he scrambled in a lady- like way to his patent-leather feet, and put himself into an affected attitude of defence, his silk hat in one hand and his cane in the other. " Wh what are you do ing?" he asked plaintively. Netherby Gomme laughed, eyeing him as might a hungry dog a bone. " Ay, Noll ; take careful aim," said he, as the exquisite began to back towards the door. " What a destiny, to bark the shins of the royal house of Anjou !" Noll could be seen at the head of the stairway, beyond the open door, weighing the broom to get the balance and the grip, and swinging it with careful aim at the place where he calculated would come the shins of the exquisite Ponsonby. Netherby Gomme pounced upon the retreating body of Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott, and this time he got his fingers inside the exquisite's collar. GO away !" gasped Ponsonby Wattles Ffolliott. There was a sharp struggle as Gomme, gripping him by the throat, forced him backwards to the open doorway, nearly jerking the com- plaining head off the narrow shoulders, until the room swam round dazedly in the revolving addled wits of the miserable man. " I say," he gasped his plaintive voice in pained remonstrance as they swung round the doorpost " this is horribly sudden !" He groaned. In his frenzy his gloved hand made a grab at the handle of the door, which shut upon them with a loud slam. Julia opened the office-door stealthily, and put forth an anxious head. Hereditary Tendency to Horseplay 19 She could hear the scuffle outside. She ran into the room in a state of nervous trepidation : u How dreadful !" she said ; ran back into the office ; shut her- self in. A yell of victory from Noll told that the office broom had got home amongst the shins of the Plantagenets. Julia opened the door a little way again and peeped nervously into the office. She saw the door from the stairway fling open, and Gomme stroll in, adjusting his coat and smoothing down his hair with his hands ; and through the open door there came the sound of fugitive anxious feet going nervously before pursuit, rushing frantically down the stairs, leaping and stumbling. Noll, with the broom poised in his hand, was leaning over the balustrade, his legs and back exquisitely thrilled, and as he flung the broom he burst into a cheer, his aim carrying away the silk hat of the fugitive exquisite below. " Ripping !" cried Noll, and dived down the stairs after the hat. Gomme halted, and listened. The distant sound of feet, rapidly descending the stairs, told ot the recuperative force and staying power of the Plantagenets even in defeat. There was a loud crash of glass. Julia started and wrung her hands. A bland smile came over the face of Netherby Gomme : "We have repeatedly pointed out to the landlord," said he, "that the large glass door at the foot of the stairs is a source of consider- able danger to any person proceeding down the staircase at an acceler- ated pace." Julia came out from behind the door, and ran to Gomme : " Netherby," said she, "it made a horrible noise." She wrung her hands, grasped his arm. " I hope to goodness you haven't dashed that stupid man's brains out." Netherby put his hand on her shoulder gently : " It cannot be done, Julia," said he. " No jury would convict on so weak a charge." The tears sprang into Julia's eyes : " I hate to see men quarrel," said she petulantly; " they always push each other about instead of reasoning." Gomme laughed loud and long : " Ah, Julia," said he, tenderly taking her hand in his ; " there are some things beyond reason. Take ourselves. The reasons why a certain little woman finds reasons for not being reasonable oh, bother !" The door shut with a loud slam, and Noll came into the room, trail- ing the office broom after him. " I say, Julia," he said ; " it's very soothing and nice, but there's some one coming." He shot the broom into a corner, and vaulted on to his high stool, as Julia put herself as far from Netherby as the office would allow. Footsteps came to the door. 2 2 CHAPTER III Wherein Master Oliver comes to the Conclusion that, to complete the Dramatic Picture, Greatness should have known the Hair- Shirt and the Makeshifts of Adversity. THE door swung open, and a handsome woman of about thirty walked into the dingy room. She was possessed of that calm and the fresh easy manner and movement that come of generations of women who have exacted respect from their fellows and given it. Netherby Gomme went to meet her, and as she shut the door she held out her gloved hand to him : " How are you, Mrs. Baddlesmere ? 5 ' said he. " How are you, Netherby ?'' It was a charming voice that spoke. " Julia, too ! why this thusness ?" Julia blushed and smiled embarrassedly : Mrs. Baddlesmere turned to the boy : " Hard at work, Noll ?" Noll shrugged his shoulders, where he sat hunched on his office- stool : " No, mother, I miss my tobacco," said he. Mrs. Baddlesmere laughed lightly. " Don't be stupid, Noll. Remember, you promised me for a fort- night, you ridiculous child." Noll smiled dryly : " Mother still thinks I am in knickerbockers," said he. " She wanted me to wear a sailor hat last summer with ribbons hanging down behind and H.M.S. Sardine on it in gold letters. Women have the strangest ideas about men's clothes even the married ones." Caroline Baddlesmere went to the boy and put her arm through his. " What an inky state you get into, my dear Noll !" she said. " Literature is not to be made without the spilling of much ink," said Noll. Caroline Baddlesmere sighed sadly. " Well, Noll, after to-day you need not trouble with the spilling of ink," she said. "Why, mother?" Mrs. Baddlesmere turned to Gomme : " I suppose, Netherby, you know that our days at the old office are over that we have failed to make the ends of this paper meet !" 20 Concerning Greatness and the Hair-Shirt 21 "Mr. Baddlesmere has told me," he said simply. It struck him painfully, in spite of the calm of the delicate woman who stood before him, that she too had been told the worst not very long : " I am afraid," he added, " it is a very anxious time for you, Mrs. Baddies- mere." " Yes, Netherby ; but we must be packing what few things we want to keep." Cheerily drawing off her gloves, she added with sudden seriousness : " I had not realized the position until Anthony told me a day or two ago, but within twenty-four hours I had settled everything even the debts. And we have just taken a top-floor within half-an- hour of Charing Cross. It's very airy and it's a large room and the landlady's a dear soul." A twinkle came into her eyes. " But I'm afraid we must give up our weekly receptions." Her shoulders gave the slightest suspicion of a shrug, and a serious catch came into her voice : " I'm only distressed to think, Netherby, that your loyal friendship to us has brought you no richer reward than a share in our disaster " There was a heavy step on the landing without. Caroline Baddies- mere dashed a handkerchief across her eyes, and, opening the editor's door, she signed to Julia to slip away with her. There was a loud knock. A big, gloomy man entered, flung the door to again dramatically, and strode solemnly into the room. His lank iron-grey hair, the massive pale clean-shaven face, the seedy frock-coat tightly buttoned across his body, his close-fitting much-knee'd trousers, and deliberate calculated stride, all gave him the air of a decayed actor of the old school ; and his large gesture and full dramatic voice, that gave value to every word he spoke, heightened the impression ; whilst the loose black cloak that was flung back from his shoulders finished it. " I am Eustace Lovegood," he said tragically, and brought his cane down upon the floor. " Yes, sir," said Gomme. " Thanks, young man," said he ; " I require your confirmation of the pathetic fact. I dined out last night" he touched his forehead with his forefinger wearily " and my most unprofitable intellect reminds me of what my bank-book and the neglect of the world have long since ceased to remind me that my name is Eustace and Love- good. ... I must see the Editor.'' " Yes, sir." Gomme waved him to the chair by the fireplace. " Be seated, sir." Lovegood looked at the forbidding chair, then glowered at him. " No," said he, " I will not be seated." As Gomme rose, and, hiding a smile behind a cough, moved towards the editor's office, the tragic eyes of Eustace Lovegood turned to the boy Noll, where he sat, still as a statue, on his office- stool : " Ah, Oliver !" said the big man ; and a smile shot into his eyes. ' How is the boy Oliver ?" He was moving towards Noll when the office-door opened, and Caroline, followed by the others, entered the room. " Hah, Caroline a pleasant surprise indeed I" 22 Concerning Greatness He took off his hat with the grand air, and swept her a low bow. He strode to her, and, raising her hand to his lips, kissed her white fingers. " What ! you too, Miss Julia ? I am your servant." They all smiled affectionately he was obviously an old friend. As his voice ceased there was a brisk step on the landing outside a sharp knock and the door flew open. A little man with a big moustache entered fussily, on jerky restless feet, and glanced sharply round the room ; he was best known as a minor critic one of those men who condemn everything they do not understand : a How do, Mrs. Baddlesmere ?" he said, with a harsh voice and nervous manner. His eyes glanced away to Julia, to whom he nodded : "How do, Miss Julia?" His glance jumped to Noll where he sat observant, chin in palms, on the high office-chair : " How do, Master Noll ?" The boy nodded : " You've forgotten your hat, Fosse," said he. The fussy little man snapped off his hat : " So I have so I have !" he yapped. Eustace Lovegood took three heavy paces towards Gomme, and said, with a black frown, in a confidental aside : " Faugh ! that dreadful fussy little man of rude health and the scarlet voice !" Mr. Fosse turned at the grumbled bass : " How do, Lovegood ?" said he. " Thanks," said Lovegood solemnly " I don't." And he added in growled aside to Netherby Gomme : " I wish this person would not be familiar with my health." Mr. Fosse skipped nervously towards Caroline Baddlesmere : " Eh eh ! Well, Mrs. Baddlesmere ; and how's the book?" Caroline Baddlesmere's shoulders gave the slightest possible shrug : " My book is dead, Mr. Fosse." Fosse folded his arms : " Precisely," said he. " Honestly, it lacked the vital element of style." He blew out his narrow little chest he had the floor. " You have tragedy pathos and er, yes comedy. Yes, you have a certain amount of humour a marvellous amount, indeed, for a woman, if you will excuse my saying so. Yet, comedy but raises a laugh " he shrugged his little shoulders " and there you are ! . . . Tragedy but appeals to the emotions draws a tear" he shrugged his little shoulders again "and there you are ! . . . But Style is independent of laughter or tears. Tragedy " Pish !" pshawed Eustace Lovegood. He stepped a pace into the room : " Tragedy !" he roared scornfully, glaring at the fussy minor critic before him ; and even the light of the conceited little Egoism seemed to flicker out, blown aside by the big man's contempt : " Tragedy is the mere melodrama of life the shedding of blood but the indecent accident of death. ... It is comedy, the expression of the joyjDf living, that is worthy the serious attention of genius." He and the Hair-Shirt 23 rose on his toes and made an elephantine gesture of sending off butterflies into the air. "The exquisite little mot the fairy fabric of a dainty paradox the swift epigram ! Think of it the rapture of the exquisite agony that is in the elaborate workmanship to create the spontaneous repartee !" Mr. Fosse was not quite sure whether he was being chaffed. He was one of those men so wanting in humour that he accused the humorous of lacking humour. He knew that his thin voice sank to insignificance in the deep thunder of this big man. " Er yes. N'yes," he said and glanced uneasily at the others. Gomme's face was a stolid impenetrable mask. t Fosse skipped over to Gomme, and seizing him by the coat-lapel he said nervously : " Oh ah Mr. Gomme " Eustace Lovegood snorted and strolled away to where Caroline stood. Fosse blinked uncomfortably at Gomme. " Ah as a matter of fact I came on business," said he. His harsh jerky voice dropped into confidential whisper. u Might I beg of you to put in a little paragraph about my coming novel ?" Gomme nodded. The little critic coughed : " If you could hint just hint that it is somewhat daringly original ! I don't even mind if you hint that it is rather sinful with er just a little suggestion that I am the English Maupassant, eh ! ... I can assure you," he added, touching Gomme's arm, " I can assure you that Thrumsby Burrage of The Discriminator said so at dinner last night." Netherby Gomme coughed : " I did not know that Thrumsby Burrage drank," said he. " Does he ? Indeed ! Very sad !" The fussy little man's foxy eyes turned inwards, searching through his quick weasel intelligence to discover the connection, but failed : " Very sad indeed ! Genius is nearly always wanting in the moral attributes. . . . But to return if you would suggest that my work contains that er that er " Netherby Gomme nodded : " That combination of religion and immorality which is so alluring to the British public in a work of art," said he " yes, I quite understand." Fosse roused from his self-concentration " N'yes," said he" but perhaps if I " " Certainly, Mr. Fosse ; I was about to suggest that you should write it yourself ; and we'll whip it into shape " "Delighted, my dear fellow, delighted!" The fussy little man's fussy little feet began to shufHe with eagerness ; he skipped towards Gomme's desk. Gomme put himself in his way : " If you would send it by post, please, Mr. Fosse ! Good-evening 1" Fosse came to a halt : Oh a moment !" He took a pinch of Gomme's coat-sleeve : " Y'know the whole town's as hot over this new humorist, the fellow that wrote The Tragedy of the Ridiculous, as they were over Mrs. 24 Concerning Greatness Baddlesmere a few years ago ; but, y'knoxv, they're overdoing it they're overdoing it. There's bound to be reaction. So I've just written a scalding little thing about it." Gomme's eyes twinkled : " But " Fosse tugged impatiently at his sleeve : " Y'know, it doesn't do to go with the crowd. Art is only for the elect. The popular verdict must be vulgar " Noll, watching from his high perch on the office-stool, raised his voice : " Now, that's curious, Fosse," said he " for he was here only this morning and he was talking about you." Fosse was intensely interested : " Indeed !" said he " how very interesting ! May I ask what he said ?" " Well, you know, it was a private conversation I don't quite exactly like to say " "It will go no farther go no farther," persisted Fosse, on the tiptoe of eagerness. "Well, he said you ought to chuck literature and try window- cleaning " Lovegood's deep chuckle echoed about the room, and Caroline Baddlesmere reprovingly said : " Noll !" The little man's face became scarlet ; then went white. He raised himself on his little high heels as far as his full rigidity of back and limb and pride would take him, and, tilting his nose in the air : " Puppy !" he snorted, and walked angrily out of the office. Julia went and scolded Noll, who hugged her. Lovegood turned to Caroline Baddlesmere, and the laughter went out of his eyes : "Caroline," said he, " I have heard rumours of the disaster impend- ing here Anthony told me only this morning." " Yes, Eustace. I've gone quite out of the fashion just like your- self. But we must not whimper when the days are black." "It grieves me," said the big man sadly. ... " You are not a good subject for the boiled potato the homely bun." " Nonsense, Eustace ; we were all happy enough in the old Paris days before I made my mark with the book." Eustace Lovegood's eyes turned into the past. "Ah, the Paris days !" said he, and fell into reverie. ... " That reminds me," he added after awhile. " Last night, as I supped under the stars at an itinerant barrow, regaling myself on a wondrous baked potato, a wandering musician splitting the air with peevish song in the murk of the London night, like some lost soul from the damned most dramatic situation a note of tragedy in the blackness of the world " His mind wandered off into his thoughts, and he stood for awhile gazing into the night that was gone, forgetful of all that stood about him. " Well, Eustace !" The big man's consciousness came back to his body with a start and the Hair-Shirt 25 and he took up his tale again : " A little woman in seedy clothes, a tattered shadow, flitted out of the other shadows of the lamp-lit night, and touched me on the arm. She wanted money. ... It was the husk the dusty shabby husk of little Kate Ormsby, whose singing had some vogue a few years ago " " Kate Ormsby ? who was engaged to poor drunken Andrew Blotte ?'' she asked hoarsely. "Ah, but remember, Caroline, he did not drink when he was engaged to Kate Ormsby. Blotte was the most brilliant in promise of us all. ... All that began when Paul Pangbutt took her away from him " " But why didn't you send her to me ?" Caroline suddenly flushed embarrassedly, and added with a dry laugh : "Ah I forgot." She traced her confusion with her fingers on the palm of her slender hand. Lovegood went on dreamily : " Since Paul Pangbutt threw her over in Paris, like one of his dis- carded painting-rags, she has steadily gone down hill. . . . She wanted to know if I had seen Paul since he returned from his tour of the European courts and had set up his big studio in Kensington." He shrugged his huge shoulders. " But I told her that the great did not much care about associating with me that most of those that once knew my Christian name have forgotten even my surname." Caroline nodded : " Kate Ormsby never had imagination," said she " she does not realize how greatness crowds out the memory." Lovegood smiled sadly : " She sings for money at tavern doors now," he said " and she was such a dainty creature !" " Yes I suppose you gave her your last half-crown, Eustace !" The big man put out a deprecating hand : " You exaggerate, Caroline ; I lent her a florin " She nodded : "And so there was no lunch to day and will be no dinner !" " Pray do not exaggerate, Caroline. I wish you would not exagger- ate. ... I shall not regale at a restaurant that is all. . . . Look at the potentiality of satisfaction in the homely bun ! ... As a matter of fact, I think the moderns eat too much flesh " " Tut !" said Caroline Baddlesmere " don't make excuses to your own conscience. . . . But you want to say something, Eustace I know by the way you are fiddling with other subjects. Do say it like a good fellow." Lovegood coughed : "Yes the fact is I have in my room an old chippendale writing-table. It belonged to an eighteenth-century ancestor who wrote the most execrable verse. You remember the modest piece of furniture ?" A twinkle shot into Caroline's eyes : "Well, since you press the question, Eustace, there is a piece of furniture in your room." 26 Concerning Greatness " It is grown somewhat shabby," he resumed " and a friend of mine who has long had a great fancy for it " Yes," said Caroline slyly" what was your friend's name, did you say ?" " Oh ah yes his name is Gordon." Caroline nodded : "Yes," said she "I suspected it was your uncle, Eustace his Christian name is, I think, Isaac." The big man chuckled : "Do you know, now I come to think of it, his Christian name is Isaac," he said. ... "He has long had a fancy for it. I called in just now as I passed, and told him he might have it. ... It will give me more room " " Oh, yes it will give you more room," said Caroline dryly. " Go on, Eustace." " Yes," said he" I detest to feel cramped. And I thought as an old friend I might be permitted to suggest that as you might want a little loose cash on changing houses " Caroline Baddlesmere stamped her foot : " I am exceedingly angry with you, Eustace. You had no right to sell an heirloom," she said furiously. " Your room is a positive dis- grace of emptiness as it is." She made an effort to keep her voice steady. ..." It is quite bare and homeless enough to make me miserable every time I think of it." Lovegood touched her arm : "Well, it's done now/' he said pathetically "and unless you take the money I don't quite see how I am to proceed in the matter with- out thwarting my original intention " he added fatuously. " I shall go and have the whole bargain cancelled," she said. " Hush ! Caroline ; I don't think it would be quite a proper place for a gentlewoman to be seen in upon my word " Who is the pawnbroker ?" she asked bluntly. Lovegood coughed : " Caroline, I do not think I deserve this unkindness. He is a collector of second-hand oddities. As a matter of fact, I only lent it." Caroline tried to keep back the tears : "You are a ridiculous good fellow," she said ; "but you do exasperate me. . . . What on earth are you going to write upon ?" Lovegood looked relieved : " I wrote for an hour in bed this morning," he said. " It was an intellectual treat. I shall always compose the finer flights of my imagination in bed in future." Caroline laughed, with a sob in the laugh, and stroked the big felloes sleeve affectionately : "No, Eustace I cannot accept it, old friend." She dashed the handkerchief to her eyes, and added airily : " Well, well it's really very serious I shall have to wear shabby gowns again. Hush !" She signed for silence. They all listened. There was a shuffling footstep ^on the landing, and a ridiculous and and the Hair-Shirt 27 quavering attempt at a drinking song. The door was flung open and a man, giddy with strong liquors, lurched into the room. He came to an unsteady standstill, blinked at them all, and solemnly took off his hat. " My God !" muttered Caroline Baddlesmere " it's Andrew Blotte I" " Here's poor Mr. Andrew Blotte," said Julia in a frightened whisper to Noll. " Hullo, Mr. Blotte !" cried Noll from his high perch " we've just been talking about you." The drunken man sniggered : " Talk of a nightmare and you hear it hiccup !" said he. But the effort at merriment upset his balance, and he made at a rolling gait for the desk, gripped at it to steady himself, and turning himself very carefully so as to avoid confusing his feet, he sat himself down against the edge of it. His face became a bland smile. His was a splendid head. From the square brow the strong hair sprang like a lion's mane, and the fine massive head was set on the shoulders in a way that gave a sense of forcefulness in the man. But the once-handsome features were now heavy with drink, their beautiful form was being scarred deep with harsh lines, and the hint of beauty was only a haunting shadow of the thing that had once been. His chin and jowls were sprinkled with a grizzled growth of beard a couple of days old. He waved his hand round the room, and brought it with a strong masterful grip upon the desk on which he leaned. "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," he said, somewhat shame- facedly " I had only looked for Anthony Baddlesmere to find out his new address but the fact is " He looked slowly round the room, and his eyes lighted up as he recognised Caroline : " Ah, Caro- line ! just the person I would have wished to see. You'll excuse me maintaining a firm position here but the fact is I'm far from sober." " Ah, Andrew !" she said, coming to his side. "Yes, Caroline I've been watching the almonds bloom I have been walking on air in realms where there is no solid, base, nor tangible reality. Tush ! And you would call me not sober ! . . . Most ridiculous prejudice ! . . . Why should people of taste be sober, when by tasting what tastes well they may walk on air ? Such a strange convention ! . . . Consider the position : You stroll down the filthy Strand in muddied boots, all the shabby world hurrying by, thinking sordidly of money and greynesses or crawling along with hunger in their eyes under the miserable gas-lamps. . . . Sip the nectar of the gods, commune with Bacchus, and you are in a street of the world of dreams you are a-riot you walk on the wind the trees are all in bloom faces are laughing at you the very cast-iron lamps come to greet you the air is full of music you sing everyone sings 1 ... Tush ! you are a god." "Ah, Andrew when vice becomes a virtue, virtue seems but a feeble vice." 2 8 Concerning Greatness Andrew Blotte laughed : " It's your trick, Caroline," he said airily ; and added, in a thick- voiced confidential aside, glancing round' the room with drunken caution : " It's rather a confidential matter, Caroline but we seem to be amongst friends. So I suppose it's all ^ right. We're amongst intimates, eh ? Good ! All right." He whistled a refrain gallingly out of tune. "Andrew ! Andrew !" She put her white hand on his arm. Andrew Blotte patted the slender fingers : " Now don't go wasting shame on me, Caroline. The fact is nobody ever expects me to be in anything but a shameful condition. Think what a disappointment I must be when I am sober ! What more embarrassing to a sober community than the return of the prodigal son ?" . . . He laughed sadly, then seriousness came back to him. " But what I want to say is this : I hear you want money. . . . Well, I can lend you a loan. ... I can't get it to-day because well, you see, it's rather a ridiculous position the fact is, I'm not quite aggressively sober and my landlady has strict orders not to give me any money unless I am able to count a handful of small change without leaning for support on a physical basis. . . . Rather acute, I . think isn't it ? ... But I'll make a note of it for to-morrow. I'll tie a knot on my handkerchief hie " (He fumbled for his hand- kerchief with drunken awkwardness.) " No I you tie a knot on my handkerchief." He held it out, and she took it to humour the poor fellow. " Andrew," she said, " do go and rest awhile in Anthony's room. There's a comfortable armchair for you." " No," he said peevishly, " I don't want to rest. I'm always resting. Andrew Blotte is tired of Andrew Blotte. . . ." His mood suddenly changed ; a light came into his eyes : " Yes," said he, " I will promise to rest if you'll promise to take my loan." Caroline shook her head. Lovegood went over to him : " Come, Blotte," said he. Andrew Blotte shook his head : " No," said he, " I mustn't rest. . . . I've promised to take a poem before gaslight to the editor of that new literary review forget his name, but his address is on one of my cuffs somewhere. . . ." He chuckled, as at some reminiscence : " He said he wanted a sonnet of two or three pages or so, but I told him it couldn't be done even Will Shakespeare couldn't do it. ... But he wasn't to be put off." He dug Lovegood in his tightly buttoned ribs : " He said I might choose my own subject! . . . But I told him hie he must mean a madr'gal. . . . We became quite friendly. For an illiterate person he was almost poetical. He confessed he had known love. Even editors have not always been bald. But it is time to come and see the almonds bloom." He took Lovegood's arm and made for the door. As they strode out together he turned and kissed his fingers to them all. Caroline followed them to the head of the stairs to see them depart. and the Hair-Shirt 29 Julia slipped anxiously across the room to Netherby Gomme : ' Netherby, what is this ? Is it all really true?" 'Yes." 'Why didn't you tell me, Netherby?" The tears sprang into her eyes. ' I guessed what I guessed, Julia; but I have only known to-day." ' Where are they going to live ?" Netherby Gomme smiled sadly : " Well Mrs. Baddlesmere has taken what is called by the house- agents the spaciotis, well-lit ', and airy upper floor of an imposing family mansion in the West End, . . . We should call it an attic in Hammersmith." Noll, who had slid down from his office-stool, crept up to Julia : " I say, Julia," said he, " things seem a bit sour, don't they ? . . . I suppose you and Netherby will be wanting to get married, too, and all that sort of tomfoolery and I had hoped to have coloured a meer- schaum pipe for him as a wedding-present. I did begin one, but it made me so jolly sick. I have started a sailor on it now. Awfully ripping chap ! Said he didn't mind doing it for half-a-crown if I supplied the 'baccy. He's a terrific clever fellow he can spit fifteen feet ! I measured it. ... I was very lucky to get him " he sighed heavily "but I don't see how the deuce I shall pay him for the iob now." Julia put her hand on Noll's shoulder : " You are such a sadly vulgar boy at times, Noll," she said. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. " What are you sniffing about, Julia?" he asked, knitting his brows. " The mother has taken a jolly nice top-floor, / can tell you. One of the rooms is whopping big. We are going to do our own cooking on such a rummy little stove. It'll be a tremendous lark, won't it ? Rcof slopes like a hen-roost. ... I once poached an egg in the lid of a biscuit-tin over two candles Jeroosalem ! it did take a time but it was an egg it never quite got out of the wollopy condition, I don't know why and it burst half-way through the business I think I kept jogging it up too often with a pencil to see if it were stiffening. But it was the most eggy egg I ever tasted." Julia laughed lightly to smother a sob : " You are a ridiculous boy, Noll," she said. Noll held her out at arms' length and looked at her keenly : " What are you sniffing about, Julia ? Anyone been annoying you?" Caroline had stolen back to the room. She walked over to Julia and put her hand on her shoulder : " It's all right, Julia," she said gently " no one will be any the worse for it. It's always darkest before the dawn. ' " Of course," said the boy -Noll, straddling his legs and peering at the coming years " every great man begins in an attic." CHAPTER IV Wherein it would appear that the most respectable Stucco Architecture may be but a Screen for Gnawing Secrets THE boy Noll shut the door that gave on to the narrow landing from the two large attics which were now his home, pushed back the silk hat on his head, and thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets, and whistling an air, he glanced up at the skylight above him to see whether the weather held. He tramped slowly down a few steps of the top flight of carpetless stairs that proclaim the attic heights, and halted aimlessly. It was more than vaguely borne in upon him that a great change had come over his life since, a month ago, he had taken down his prints from the walls of his empty home, and, with them tucked in a bundle under his arm, had walked into the twilight, trudging it on foot after the cart that contained the few pieces of furniture and such belongings as had not been sold, and, at the solemn journey's end, skipping up three or four whitened steps, had entered the doors of this stucco well- to-do house that was let in apartments, standing, one of a row of like houses, glued together along the length of a long winding street a " street with a good address," the advertisement had it. The cushioned and unthinking ease of childhood was gone, buried in that empty house he had left behind him the door was shut on that for ever. The rougher, hardier period of boyhood was upon him. It now came to the boy, who had never even wondered where every- thing came from, that each such everything had always had to be won by the sweat of toil. He had wondered more than once why that for which he had asked had sometimes been refused. But he now realized that the lucky-bag from which childhood gets all it wants was empty sold at a tap of the hammer with the other things in that dead house, by an auctioneer fellow gone vanished. He tramped down some half-dozen bare board steps that resounded to his boots, and halted again. He was beginning to see that the fuel of life was not to be had for the asking. His mother sitting the livelong day and far into the night in that big attic he had just left the one with his little bed in the corner of it, the large room that served as general sitting-room by day, his bed with coloured covering becoming in the daylight a couch 3 Stucco Architecture and Gnawing of Secrets 31 therein his mother sitting there writing, with absent eyes fixed on her distant purpose, brought into hard reality the harder fact that money had to be earned that it did not come from Somewhere for the beckoning. His father's long absences, and his boots muddied with long trudges, were significant and unspoken about, hinting of mys- teries he could not wholly fathom nor was the serious gaze of the handsome face as his father sat at night and stared at the stove less troubling to the boy. He tramped down another step or two. It bothered him that he could not help. He knew he must grow into youth before his hand could win this wage that all the world was hurrying after. He tramped down a few more steps. For one thing he felt glad. He had thought it a bore when his mother had made out a scheme of reading for him, making him give his morning and a couple of hours of the afternoon to a course of English literature and history, and a promise to keep up his mathe- matics ; but, as a matter of fact, and to his intense surprise, he was enjoying it. He tramped down a couple of steps. It was so like the mother to have clung to her books when she sold even her silks and satins ! He tramped down another step. He wondered why there was no carpet to the attic flight. He won- dered who lived in the rooms on each of these four landings below. That Major Modeyne, who lived on this one below them, seemed such a pleasant old fellow it was a great pity he came in so late and so often the worse for liquor. . . . But he was mighty funny over it. He wondered if he felt as funny as he looked. It seemed such an odd thing to fill one's self with strong liquors until one glugged hiccuping and ran over ! He tramped down several steps. The boy had always thought of himself as being a part of a vague body of people called gentlefolk a people who were always provided for from some gentlemanly source of livelihood which demanded clean hands and a sense of duty and no manual labour or a shop, quite a species apart from the mere middle-class world, and for whom the working classes provided the comforts of life, cleaning their boots and doing them service. Tradesmen and the labouring class, of course, were bound to earn a livelihood a thing which he had always felt, without being expressly told so, to be rather a vulgar thing to do ; although, of course, it was a very good thing for that sort of people. As he reached the bottom of the uncarpeted stair, and was about to step on to the drugget of the landing, a door opened, and there came out on to the landing a child of about twelve. She shook back the nut-brown hair from her clear grey eyes and gazed defiantly at Noll : "You're a fool '."she said. Noll took off his hat, sat down on the bottom step, put his chin in his hands, and gazed at her : 32 Of Stucco Architecture " You're very pretty," he said. " I didn't say you were an impudent fool," she said hotly " I meant a common, vulgar tomfool." Noll nodded. The dainty slender girl before him gazed at him sternly : "It was you that put all the water-cans about the landing, and the water-jugs on the stairs, for my father to fall amongst when " she hesitated and flushed angrily "when he came back late last night.' 3 Noll nodded : " Yes," said he" and he fell amongst them." He chuckled. " I watched him over the rail. It was moonlight up here. He came crawling up the stairs in the dark, saying Shush ! to himself if a board creaked, and carrying his boots in his hand so as not to wake the landlady and when he got on to this landing he gave a monstrous hiccup that jolly nearly pulled him off his feet, and he tripped up amongst the cans away went his boots, and fell in the hall below. D'you know, I shall never play a lark on your father again he's such a gentleman. Most people would have sworn themselves putrid, but he just rubbed his shins and elbows, sat up in the moonlight, and said with a hiccup : ' What a prodigious number of stars there are at the north pole ! Shakespeare has cracked every nut when beggars die, says he, there are no comets seen, the heavens them- selves blaze forth the fall of the landed gentry. ... / did not know all heaven held so many, various, multitudinous, and vast prodigious stars /' " The girl waited grimly until he had done : " It was you who made a booby-trap in his bed so that he could not get into it ?" Noli nodded : " Yes," said he ; " he looked jolly comic under the bed ; he got under he must have slept there." " That's just where you are mistaken," said the child with a sneer. " I never go to bed until my father is asleep. I got him out. ... I suppose you thought you were funny !" Noll nodded : " Yes," he said ; " I did, last night. But I don't now. I think I was a cad." " So do I," she said. . . . Noll sat for awhile and gazed at her. He got up and held out his hand sheepishly : " Shake hands/' said he ; "I apologize. It's my birthday to-day." Betty considered. She hesitated then put out a delicate thin hand : " What age are you ?" she asked. '* Fourteen," said Noll. " I shall be twelve to-morrow," she said. " Then let's keep it now," said Noll. " I'm going to see a splendid fellow, a friend of mine he's a prodigious clever fellow he's written a book." and the Gnawing of Secrets 33 The child's eyes glittered : " Has he ?" she asked. " Yes, rather. Come and see him too." "All right," she said; "but come in and have tea first, and I'll put on my hat and jacket. We shan't be very late out, shall we ?" " I'll bring you back the moment you like, : ' said Noll. " We only have high tea in the evenings now, so my people don't mind my being late to an hour or so ; they know I'm with Netherby. But we'll be back sharp, and you can come to tea with us, eh ? I'd like to introduce you to my mother." The child nodded, and led the way into the Major's quarters. Noll, with the boy's quick vision, took in a first picture of the little lady's surroundings that never left him. It was a large and airy room, furnished within the absolute limits of necessity. In a corner by a door stood the child's little white bed, but it required more imagination than was given to the ordinary to call up the image of a small child that stood every night listening at that other door to hear whether her father's breathing were heavy enough for sleep ; to call up the vision of the slight figure that nightly opened that same door with stealthy care to make sure of the candle being out, and all danger of fire set far from the reach of awkward drunken hands ; it demanded a keener ear than his to hear the last sigh of the child as she slipped into her bed in the small hours of the night and lay down to take her long-delayed rest in that sleep that should have sealed her eyes for hours, and had already held the rest of the world for a half of the night. The dainty little figure that now stood before the mirror, giving to her hat just that touch which makes or mars the adornment of women, showed no peevish rebellion against, nor carping discontent with, the sordid burden of life that had been thrust upon her far too young and sadly thin little shoulders. She might indeed have gone, as she stood, to Court, and withal taught the ladies of fashion there assembled more than something of the queenly attitude. The atmosphere of the child it was that took the sense of emptiness from the empty room. The little table that stood before the fireplace, with a napkin spread upon it for table-clothit had been washed by her small hands and the coarse tea-things set out upon it: these things and the kettle that bubbled on the hob had quite evidently been deserted by the child when she marched out to her attack in the passage. Noll now proceeded to make the tea at her bidding she giving him orders as she gazed into the mirror, in which she commanded a view of the room. The lad's eyes wandered over the walls, which were bare enough to bring his quick attention to rest on the picture of a man in uniform that hung over the mantel the picture of handsome Cornelius Mauduit Modeyne as he had been when he married the mild beauty with the tragic eyes that dreamed out of the picture hanging pendant to his, and to whom the child bore more than a little likeness. Had the 3 34 Of Stucco Architecture pictures been inspired with the history of these lives, they would have revealed the early death of the brooding beauty in the birth of the small child whose hands were now the only hands that tended these two miniatures with the caressing touch of affection the man's picture would have continued the confidence, and told of handsome Corney Modeyne's seeking relief from loneliness in the mad lees of the bottle it would have whispered, too, of the meeting of his old comrades in his room to tell him he must slip quietly out of his old regiment of his retirement with a step of rank of the two years of his living upon his relations until they grew first weary, then exasperated, then hostile towards him, and the always rather silent child that flushed at all their harsh thrusts at her easy-going father and of his final collapse as that mysterious personage who is an urgent daily " something in the city." It would have revealed what was hidden even from the buzzing gossips of the Street with the Good Address that Major Cornelius Mauduit Modeyne, when he sallied out at the breakfast hour with a swaggering air, in well-groomed attire, polished boots, and shining hat, as soon as he could be got out of bed by the silent child who guarded all his secrets that could be hid, owed his good care to those self-same small hands. As it would also have revealed that, in spite of all shame, the dainty hands that did these things and had these cares, touched everything that had to do with this foolish sinning man with a fierce affection. Indeed, there is more in noble tradition than in blood. The battle- cry of the ancient Modeynes had been Loyalty. Modeyne came of old aristocratic Catholic stock, but he had long ceased to attend his church ; and the image, a very beautiful image of the Mary and Child, that stood upon his mantel was the sole relic of his old beliefs even it did not stand there from any vague sentiment towards his church ; indeed, it had not gone to the pawnbroker as much from negligence as from religious bias. The child would sing to herself at times the beautiful lines of the Ave Maria that Gounod has set to Bach's Fugue, just as she would lilt a nursery rhyme ; but the learning of it was an early reminiscence of her father in his cups, moved to song. Her prayers, on going to bed at night, were just a part of her duty in putting off her clothes it warmed and coloured the child's imagination, was the full stop to her day, but it was quite aloof from the conduct of the world. From Modeyne the child had in- herited remarkable charm of manner as well as much of her dainty delicacy. . . . The hat and jacket being arranged to her taste, the child went and sat down beside Noll, and presided over the hospitalities. She apologized for the thickness of the bread and butter, but she said it was her last meal of the day, and she was always hungry for it. She remembered she had some cake, and tripped off to the cupboard ; but her face fell when she took the fragment out of its carefully enwrapping silver-paper. " I got it nearly a month ago for my father's birthday," she said simply. " I'm afraid it's gone dry." and the Gnawing of Secrets 35 " I like it all rubbly best," said Noll" it tastes so nutty." He deceived the child into a smile. In any case he was in the caterpillar stage of youth. They ate it between them. " It is rather nutty," she said. tl I never noticed that before." Childhood takes the world for granted. As the two went cheerily down the stairs and out into the street, the boy's heart lightened ; the gnawing sense of loneliness that had oppressed him fell from him, and the stucco street turned to a way of palaces in the grey of the twilight. 32 CHAPTER V Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne is introduced to the Study of Nature As they stood on the doorstep, waiting for the answer to their ring at Netherby Gomme's bell, Betty broke a pensive silence : " I have never spoken to an author," she said. She had not imagined the spring of literature as running in so dingy a well. Noll pshawed airily : " I've known a lot," said he. " They're just like everybody else, except when they think they are not and then they are beastly tedious." The door was opened by the grim old lady who was mother to Netherby Gomme. Her, Noll saluted cheerily. The old lady shook hands with him and darted a jealous look at the girl. Noll explained : " I have brought a friend of mine," said he " Miss Betty Modeyne." The old lady bowed stiffly to the child. Noll took off his hat : " I suppose Netherby is in ?" he said, calmly walking into the passage ; and the child followed him. The old lady shut the outer door : " Yes," she said" he's about finished work by this, I think." "Don't you trouble to come up, Mrs. Gomme," said Noll airily, opening the sitting-room door with elaborate formality for the old lady ; " I know the way up, don't I ?" She smiled. The light suddenly snapped out of her shrewd eyes again she glanced sharply at the girl : " I suppose," said she, " the little lady will remain with me ?" Noll laughed : " Oh no ; she wants to see a great writer in his workshop," he said ; and the jealousy went out of the old lady's eyes. She nodded and smiled as she withdrew to her chair by the fire. The youngsters made a move for the heights. Noll, when he had shut the old lady's door, said to Betty in a whisper : " That's her bedroom at the back." They mounted the stairs. " She lets the other floors," added Noll, as they passed shut doors. " Netherby's room is right at the top. . . ." 3 Of Heroines and the Study of Nature 37 Netherby Gomme made his visitors welcome. The talk was soon rattling at a pace. He suddenly missed from her place the dainty little figure, and, looking up, he found that she was making a round of the attic, his beloved workshop. The child had slipped off to peer at the prints which hung tacked on to the walls on squares of stiff brown paper the overflow from Noll's collection. They added a delightful touch of beauty to the dingy place, and were in splendid sombre harmony with the books, themselves amongst the most decorative of all ornaments which here held possession of every nook and cranny, and overflowed every shelf. Netherby Gomme went and lit a candle, holding it for her that she might see the better. " What does that say to you ?" he asked the solemn child. She was gazing intently at Timothy Cole's exquisite wood engraving of Millet's ** Sower." "It says no, it sings to me," she said, trying with deliberate searching to find the absolute word, as a young thrush tries its notes ; and the effort of her intellect to express the right hair's-breadth value touched Gomme's instincts and made the art leap within him. He nodded. The child faced the picture, and went on haltingly : " It sings to me of It is a man walking in a furrow and all the earth seems to be whispering in a sort of hush as if live things were coming out of the silence. Twilight is far more full of spirits than any other time things that beckon and tell secrets. The dusk is always filled with whispers, as if sweet young things were being born, and poor dying things were glad to be going to sleep. . . . That's the sower he walks along and sows. And he is solemn, because he knows that all that he flings on the dark earth will spring in the dusk, and become alive." Netherby stroked her head : "Betty," said he, "do you think the artist who painted that picture meant you to feel all that ?" " Didn't he ?" she asked simply. She looked at it again with serious grey eyes. She shook her head doggedly. " No ; that isn't just a man in a field. Sometimes pictures look as if they had been painted just because the painter wanted to show how cleverly he could draw an eye or an ear or a bootlace ; but, look ! this sower has not got any of these things, yet somehow they are there they seem to come in as one looks. The sowing in the twilight is the thing. I can hear the big clumsy man walking with long strides, his heavy footfall all muffled in the brown earth. I can see it and hear it and smell it " The child ceased speaking, at a loss to explain, her little brows knit as she stood searching for expression. The boy Noll stood at gaze, wondering. Netherby Gomme said not a word. The girl sighed : " Doesn't it say that to you ?" she asked, looking up at the big awkward fellow, whose intent face, lit by the candle-light, showed large eyes fixed on some distant thought. 38 Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne is He came back to earth : " Yes, Betty," said he" something like that. That is one of the world's masterpieces." "Masterpiece." The child repeated the word lovingly"! like that word masterpiece." She went to the next print. It was the wondrous little wood- engraving of the vision as seen by the youthful Holman Hunt of The Lady of Shalott when the mirror cracks from side to side and the web on the loom flies wide, for her eyes have seen unheeding Lancelot. The child looked at it for a long while : " I think I know what that means," she said "the lady has been weaving something, and it has all got tangled about her, and she can't undo the knots." She sighed : "It is so hard to undo the knots," she said. Netherby Gomme coughed : " Have you ever heard the ballad of The Lady of Shalott, Betty ?" he asked. The child shook her dainty head. " Sit down in a cosy chair and I'll read it to you," he said. And he set his armchair for her, seating himself by his lamp. He took up a battered, dog-eared volume of Tennyson and read the immortal ballad, and Betty, to the haunting music of the verse, strayed into the meads by Camelot, and, lingering by the river's brink, she listened with the awed reapers amongst the bearded barley, watching the heavy barges glide by until there came wending past that most tragic barge of all that floated down to the hushed death-song of the broken-hearted faery Lady of Shalott. Netherby Gomme closed the book gently, and watched the child. Her eyes were full of tears : " But but why did she die ?" she asked eagerly. " She loved what could not give her love," he said. The child nodded her head : " I think I understand," she said. The child sat silent for a long while. Then she took the lighted candle and went and peered at the little design. She came back to the table, and put down the candle upon it : " I like the way that lady's head is placed right up against the top of the picture," she said "as if she felt something were crushing her down. . . ." She put her small hands on her dainty head "crushing and crushing her down and she can't get away from it, because it's all tangled tangled tangled. And it won't come right. ... It always feels just like that." " Good God !" said Netherby Gomme hoarsely" has this child begun to suffer already ?" The child went to his knee and gazed at him : " Your eyes are full of tears," she said. He blew his nose noisily : " You must not take my tears too seriously, Betty," said he " I am a humorist." " But Mr. " introduced to the Study of Nature 39 " No, no, Betty no misters, please, between us here plain Netherby," he corrected her. " But, Netherby," she said simply, " I thought everyone had known suffering." " No, thank God," said he. " Only women ?" she asked. " No it isn't a matter of man or woman. Only God's aristocracy are crucified," he said. " Only a few suffer so." She looked into the beyond ; a smile ran round the serious little lips : " I am glad to hear that," she said. And she added after a while : " I shall sleep better now." Netherby turned in his chair and looked at the child solemnly : " Come here, little woman," he said. She came to him, with her light walk, a dainty lank child, wrought of the finest fibre. He held out his two hands, and she put a slender little hand in each. " Betty," he asked, " who have you heard say these things ?" " No one," she said simply " I just feel them so." Netherby stroked her head : " One of these days, Betty, the world will listen to you. But don't trouble about things until you are grown up just enjoy your life now. Noll-, Betty is too much indoors. She must get out into the fresh air of the world she must study nature we must take her to the theatre." Betty's eyes sparkled : . " I've never been to a theatre," she said, her nerves dancing. " Then we'll go to a pit to-morrow night, Noll, eh ? all three of us." When Betty and Noll with Netherby descended the stairs, the door of the old lady's sitting-room was open. Betty turned and walked in stepped lightly to the side of the old woman where she sat before the fire in her armchair, her old watchful eyes fixed on the open door, and the child leaned forward and kissed her withered old cheek : " I love you," she said, " because you love Netherby ; and you have his big kind eyes." The old lady put out her old hand and stroked the child's head : " But you are leaving Master Noll sadly out in the cold, my little lady," she said. Betty turned and looked at Noll : " Oh no," said she " I love him in quite a different way." The old lady laughed. The next morning being Betty's birthday, she found at her door a sheet of stiff brown paper on which was fixed the print of " The Sower," the whole set in a battered old picture-frame of Noll's. It was the first birthday gift she had ever had as long as she could remember. . . . 40 Of Heroines and the Study of Nature The evening of her twelfth birthday Betty spent in the pit of a theatre. The sound of the rushing feet of the theatre-goers passing eagerly into the pit in holiday humour ; the rustle of silk and satin and the leisurely entrance of handsomely dressed women into the more gorgeous comfort of the stalls as they dawdled to their elaborate seats ; the delicious tunings of violins as the bandsmen took their places in the orchestra ; the burst of music ; the echo of the stage carpenter's hammer from the screened world hidden by the great curtain beyond the footlights ; the lowering of lights and resulting sudden darkness in the theatre ; the sharp clink of a bell for the ring- ing up of the curtain ; the hushing into silence of the whispering audience ; the slow uprolling of the great curtain as it was gathered into the flies ; and the footlights disclosed another world, flinging its large picture upon the vision the fantastic reality of the drama a world that comes to life for a little while and holds the imagination as it were held by a dream. So the child sat, between Noll and Netherby, holding a hand of each. It struck her keen wits as strange that in the large drawing- rooms of her fashionable relations she had felt no warmth of affection towards the glittering women who turned their cold critical eyes upon this child of their ne'er-do-weel soldier kinsman yet here were two lads, whom she had not known a couple of days ago, winning her confidence by their large chivalry, their whole-souled friendship now grown as old as her life friendship such as makes of life a splendid adventure. When the curtain came down on the last act, the child sighed. She realized with a pang that the play was over. CHAPTER VI Wherein it is hinted that to be Famous is not necessarily to be Great IN a large and richly furnished studio that was the splendid workshop of a fashionable portrait-painter there stood before an easel a hand- some fair-bearded man handsome, though the head was small a fellow who held himself with self-reliance, straight and satisfied. And with the calculated stroke of one who has mastered the technique of his craft, he set down the loaded brush on the embrowned canvas, yielding a touch of colour that told like living flesh on the portrait of the pretty woman whose likeness he was building up into life. The stroke of colour pleased him, and he stood back and peered at it. He turned his head and glanced keenly at the pretty woman where she sat in the handsome chair that stood on the painter's throne before him, her beauty enhanced and brought out by the carefully arranged crimson draping that was set in the grand manner as a heavy curtain looped behind her with golden cords and tassel indeed, she made a telling picture as she sat there framed in by the great screen that was placed at her left hand to keep away the draught from the large double doors near by. The beauty of Lady Persimmon, as the world knows, had caught roving royal eyes ; and she was at the height of her vogue, gathering from this strange source of public esteem such homage as is given to the toy of a court. She was, in very truth, exquisite as a butterfly. " Ah," said she with languid, lazy accent that caressed the words she uttered, " I should love to live in Bohemia." And she added with a pout : " Society is such a weary round and so spiteful !" Paul Pangbutt shrugged his shoulders : " A part of the price you must pay for being a beautiful woman, my dear lady," he said and he went back to his painting. " What ? Spite !" she asked, the handsome brows meeting in questioning furrows. Her lips were very red half open with delicious whisperings of scarlet sin, a minor poet had it so she would keep them half open, though she most pronouncedly estranged herself from the minor poet for close upon a fortnight in display of her deep resent- ment. Thus, too, she was now being limned. Pangbutt painted the corner of her pathetic mouth : " Spite is the unwitting tribute of a petty mind," he pronounced. " I don't see that that is any excuse for it," she said smartly. Pangbutt stood back ; and he uttered a light laugh : 42 Wherein it is hinted that to be Famous " The world is one vast engine of criticism," he said. " A man is not a critic because he writes for a newspaper. That act is generally the mark of his incapacity. We are all discriminators. Bless my soul conversation is criticism more than half the time ! And why not ?" " That's rather alarming, isn't it ?" she cooed. " Fancy if we criti- cised our friends !" " Exactly what you do !" he pshawed. " You give your friendship : it is criticism in action. On others you turn a cold shoulder. You have said no word but you have passed criticism. You have well ! you have turned a very pretty but cruel back uttered a more brutal verdict than tongue ever spoke." She laughed lightly : " You're a charming colourist, Paul but all your craft cannot white- wash spite," she said. " No, no," said he. " I only say that criticism has its shabby side. Spite is criticism gone sour. . . . But, tsha ! I don't believe there is all this venom