Zalma

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE BEAUTY OF BOSCASTLE. By T. MULLETT ELLIS. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. THE DAILY CHRONICLE says: — "This is a powerful and fearless piece of work. Mr. Ellis has drawn a man. . . . His crimes, his remorse, his atonement are all on a large scale. He took a life and gave one at a moment when all for which he had sinned lay near to his hand. He loved his uncle ; but when that uncle declined to pay his debts, he hurled him over a cliff, no one witnessing the deed but the girl he had seduced. . . . There were two beauties of Boscastle, both of whom play a part in the history of Norman Forrabury. Jenny Tredorn, the blacksmith's daughter, is a fine portrait, painted with great breadth, of a strong character, reared amidst the simplest surroundings. . . . To her Lady Violet Eoterel was as moonlight unto sunlight, as a delicate Sauterne to a full-bodied Burgundy.

She was the daughter of affluence and luxury ; a poet, painter, and sculptor. In her studio among her chosen friends she tried to lead what she called the ' Beautiful Life.' . . . There is a fine dramatic scene between her and Jenny, who swore to have Norman arrested as he left the church if Violet refused to give him up. Mr. Ellis himself has called his story melodramatic, and he is right. It is highly improbable too ; yet it holds the reader ; for it is written with so much verve and go, and the setting is so wild and so vividly painted, that one forgets its improbability. The author has drawn all his characters with care and thought, and he is so recklessly lavish of incident that he might well have written ten other books of similar length with the materials he has compressed into this one."

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH says:— "The author is a person of lively imagination, quick observation, and no inconsiderable erudition, gifted, moreover, with the knack of felicitous description. . . . ' The Beauty of Boscastle ' is a strong story. . . . It abounds in clever characterisations, deftly fitted to the requirements of a singularly ingenious and intricate plot, the interest of which is steadily maintained from the romantic opening of the narrative to its tragical close. . . . It is an eminently readable book." THE MORNING POST says : — "The book has some rather strong scenes and good word pictures of the Cornish Coast." THE STAR says:— "There is a curious blending of the very real with the fanciful in 'The Beauty of Boscastle.' . . . The book is distinctly above the average. . . . Each of the sixty chapters bears the title of a well-known novel very aptly and ingeniously chosen."

Chapter I

gfg| yjO£p>VE'" said a soft V0ice- "Ah! that is what ijH W^&% t'ie^ fca^ °'' "' yreen lanes." " An<:1 m barracks," said Lieutenant Mountjoy, Jp^ggjgj| twisting his blonde moustache caressingly. • "And on the Stock Exchange," echoed a dapper Little gentleman with very white hands. " At least that's my experience, when business is dull." " I don't think they know much about Love on the Stock Exchange : do you, Dr. Adern ? " said a pretty girl with brown hair and hazel eyes. " What is love ? " replied the Doctor. He was a very young man, who had already abandoned the regular pursuit of his profession in order to practise as a bacteriologist. "Let us regard it analytically. Love is the influence exerted by certain molecules set in motion by the nerve centres. The red corpuscles in the blood, and the attraction of — " " Oh, Doctor !

" interrupted Mrs. Graves, the wife of the Member for the County, " spare us, please." " It seems to be a subject," said the brown-eyed girl, " that ought never to be talked of at the dinner-table. Love and meats seem incongruous." "If ycu were married," commented Mrs. Graves, "you'd know better, my dear." Zalma 2 " If we don't talk of love, what are we to discuss ? " asked the Stock Exchange man ; " politics are barred." "They ought never to bar politics at the dinner-table," said Lord Beaumaris, with the deliberate drawl that he began to affect fifty years ago, when he set the fashions for his college — a drawl that has now not only ceased to be distinguished, but which has become universal. " The topic for dessert is emi nently politics. It is a subject which no one is ever sincere upon, and yet in which everyone affects to have convictions ; and ladies always talk it charmingly, because they know nothing whatever about it.

Let me crack you some filberts, Lady Rottenham." " I always crack my own nuts, Lord Beaumaris," replied the Countess of Rottenham. " It is the one thing I can do : and in this age, when every woman is expected to do something, — voila ! " " Believe me, a woman who can crack nuts can do any thing," said Bernard Daw, extracting a squashed walnut from its shell with difficulty. " Problems in politics are compara tively easy." " If you find problems in politics so easy," remarked the Countess of Rottenham, "why do you make such long speeches in the House without ever solving them ? " " When you have cracked your walnut, you have still to get the skin off." " That is so like Bernard," said Mr. Graves, the Conservative Member for the County, a rather clever young man, with a Prim rose-league moustache, who secretly cherished the belief that he would one day become Prime Minister.

" Your Fabian has always his subtleties, expressed in language of the simplest, but so full of hidden meaning. Firstly, there is a foolish assertion ; secondly, there is an absurd proposition ; and thirdly, there is an obscure explanation." "Jack, are you addressing your constituents? "exclaimed Sir James Draper, from the head of the table. " No politics, you know — no politics on the mahogany." " We have a little camp of traitors here, Sir James " said Zalma 3 the Countess, addressing their host, a rich manufacturer, whom she surveyed in the dim distance, over forests of ferns and palms. " Traitors ? " exclaimed Mr. Graves. " How so, Lady Rottenham ? " " At our end of the table," she replied, — " it was Lord Beaumaris who started it, — we were saying that Love, which in the long-run always leads to the Divorce Court, and gallantry, because it is extinct — like religion, — and all the rest one talks of over our peaches — poetry and that, — are to be set aside for the only subject women really like, which — don't laugh — is politics, if you please !

" " It is very true," said Miss Draper ; " although men think that women care for nothing but the emotions." "It is delightful to find myself in agreement with you, Miss Draper," said Lord Beaumaris slowly, and looking through his wine as he gracefully held up his glass to the light. " Women are not emotional now, because — " " Because they have no hearts," interrupted the Countess, as she finished her Burgundy. " And all the emotions have gone into politics, and are abandoned to men," said Bernard Daw. " Because they have no heads," growled Jack Graves. At this the women tittered ; and all the men, in proof of the accusation, inanely lifted up their chins and tilted their wine. " But, thank God ! they still have stomachs," continued Jack Graves bluntly. He rather prided himself on his " plain Saxon," and he took his port in a tumbler : it was an old fashioned Tory sort of thing to do, and reminded him of Pitt, whom he flattered himself he resembled.

" Whilst we are destroying ours," said the Countess ; " for we are taking to inhaling cigarettes " — and she lit one. " That is not my reason for objecting to this so-called easy custom that our country houses are adopting." "Then it is— " " Simply that when you ladies had gone, and we took our Zalma 4 cigars and coffee, we crossed our legs and pushed back our chairs — we were free. For a few minutes we could speak the truth." " Yes ; and you could tell stories too, I know," said Lady Eottenham, with an arch twinkle in her eye. " Since we women have taken to invading the smoking-room, the good story has become extinct." " So the smoke-room story and the drawing-room scandal both became defunct simultaneously. What's taken their place ? " " The Advanced Woman," said Miss Emmeline Draper. " A scientific product of an aspiring age."

"There will always be advanced women," said an old fashioned little girl in spectacles. She had scarcely entered her teens, but her brow was lined with anxious thought. " There will ; and there will always be old women. What I begin to wonder about is whether there will always be young women," said Lord Beaumaris, as he lapsed into reverie. Mrs. Graves looked across the table at a sweet-faced little saint from Wales, Daisy Kees, and felt quite sure there always would be young women, and innocent withal. So she said nothing. "The young woman has had a good innings anyway," laughed Jack Graves. " She has ruled the world up till to day — for how long ? Shall we say since Cleopatra's time ? " " Since the days of Eve," corrected the Countess, with the titter of frivolity that made her so welcome in gay society ; " or since the fall of man."

" There is a new phrase now," remarked Miss Draper in her severe way ; " ' the ascent of man.' I belong to the new school. I believe in the ' ascent of man.' " " It sounds rather dreadful," drawled Lord Beaumaris, " and revolutionary." " It means Anarchy, Socialism, Nihilism," said the sententious little girl in spectacles, setting her teeth aggressively. " What is Socialism ? " asked Sir James Draper. " That's what I want to know." Zalma 5 " Socialism is a society which excludes Society," said Lady Rottenham. " On the contrary, Socialism is society to which everyone has the entre'e," said Bernard Daw. " Socialism ? Bah ! " growled Jack Graves. " Socialism is a mere name comprehending all the unsociable people. They rarely meet each other ; but if they do, it is to wrangle — never to agree.

They are almost like the Anarchists — without cohesion, without authority." " Authority indeed ! " said the little girl in spectacles ; " without authority obviously, for Anarchists do not believe in a head, and — " " And consequently they haven't even got a tail," laughed Jack Graves. " And like the Nihilists, who believe in nothing — " " They are nothing, they will obtain nothing, and above all—" " They are good for nothing," interrupted Jack Graves, with his hearty laugh. " Fill your glass, Lord Beaumaris, — God save the Queen, — and let us go on to the terrace." " Or billiards, eh ? " said Sir James Draper, rising from his chair with some difficulty. He always dined too well. " Now, some of you old fogeys — a pool ; and ladies — you too. The youngsters always give me such a licking. Will your Boyal Highness take a cue ?

" The illustrious guest whom the host now addressed was the nephew of the exiled heir to the French Crown. His English residence was near Sir James Draper's, and the dinner now being digested was given in honour of this distinguished man. The billiard-room was as luxurious as an Eastern harem. The well-stuffed seats and soft pillow's invited repose. Two gorgeous footmen were ready to act as markers, and an over fed boy brought round half-crown cigarettes. Sir James smoked these himself invariably; though he rather grudged them to his guests, except to the French Prince, to whom he was obsequiously hospitable. A few of the guests followed Sir James, and lolled upon the Zalma 6 sofas. Some of them soon began to doze a little— some even to snore gently. Two very young gentlemen— a bald young man and a grey young man — essayed to play at one of the tables, their conversation being carried on in the blase" manner that is characteristic of modern youth.

The French Prince discussed finance and City news with the gentleman from the Stock Exchange. A few ladies, who, having wined well, were beginning to have complexions, gossiped with a clergyman on the im morality of the poor, and a Justice of the Peace, sweltering in fat, kept mopping his brow with a " sample " pocket-handkerchief, — a sample of the kind that his firm turned out by the million ou the sweating system. This person had a great contempt for " the poor." Whenever they were mentioned he would grunt : " The poor ? Umph ! The poor ? Boil 'em ! Boil 'em ! " "Isn't it dreadful?" said the wrinkled little girl in her teens. " Isn't it dreadful ? " " You think so when you are very young, Miss Dodd. But when you grow older you will find it is only a way men have," said Mrs. Graves. " I think with Miss Dodd," said Emmeline Draper.

" Pa is too rich. That fat, snoring man there is too rich also. The wealth and the waste one sees, if one thinks of the poverty that exists around us, is dreadful. Look at all those lolling men in their sleek black coats like Berkshire pigs, wallowing there on the cushions. We took two hours over dinner to night. Two hours ! Come, Daisy, sing us a sweet Wrelsh song. I want food for my soul. Oh, Pa ! Mr. Tillett wants you." " Come in, Tillett. The ladies will excuse you. What is it ? " and Sir James, too comfortable to leave his lounge, turned to talk in an undertone "to the manager of his works. " The men do not accept the terms, sir. They say they will have the reduced hours and the overtime-money, or still keep out." " This is the third week of the strike, isn't it ? " " Yes, sir." " How is stock ?

" he asked, still in an undertone. Zalma 7 " We can keep pace with all orders, sir, for six months to come." " When will the new Belgian factory be finished ? Before that, Tillett ? " " In three months' time, sir ; in four certainly." " What fools the men are ! " " It's not the men, sir — it's the leaders, the hagitators. Bill Joice 'as been down again, sir." " To the factory ? What did he say ? " " Oh, he said as 'ow there'd be no masters soon, except the men themselves. And that all unionists should have strike pay ; and he said, ' Stick to me, mates, and I'll stick to you.' " Sir James laughed and lit another cigarette. " I know," he continued, " they cheered that ; and yet the fools really know they will have to go in, in the long-run. They know that — they must know I can't afford to give 'em higher wages ; and if they work shorter hours, the foreign factories will undersell us.

Well. I won't give way, Tillett. I can't give way." " Last strike you did, sir." " I know," said Sir James angrily, as he rose from the lounge ; " and I've never ceased to regret it. The new factory will be ready in three months, eh ? Can we let Angel Street ? " " Well, it's the 'eart of London, sir. Convert the factory into anything sir, I suppose. No one can do short sixes so cheap as us." " I'm tired of these strikes, Tillett. I don't get worried like this at my Eouen Works. I really almost made up my mind a long time ago to have no English workmen. I'll have no English factory. Put up a notice, Tillett. I'll let Angel Street. Post a bill to-morrow on the works. Pay off what men there are. Bill Joice, indeed ! Ha ! ha ! ' These eligible premises, consisting of a large factory and three magnificent warehouses, with a long frontage to Angel Street, situated ' — that was a good expression of yours, Tillett — ' situated in the heart of London, to be let or sold.' It will look very pretty, and I hope my men will think so on Monday morning, when they see it up."

" What will the poor men do, sir ? " said Tillett solemnly. Zalma 8 " The poor men ? " exclaimed the fat J.P. " Bah ! Boil the poor men, sir. They won't work. Boil 'em." " And what about me, sir— what am I to do ? " _ " You ! " exclaimed Sir James, with a laugh ; " ask Bill Joice Then, after a pause and a giin, he said : " You've been a good servant, Tillett. I think you'd better learn French. Our shipping trade is being forced over to Antwerp— the London basins have been emptied by the dock strike. Perhaps I can find you a job in Belgium. I've got a French Marquis or two in my house here now who'd be delighted to give you French lessons for a few shillings a week." Then, more seriously : " Put up the poster in big letters— so high— the first thing on Monday without fail. And now, Mrs. Graves, I know you'll think me a brute for talking business before you.

I didn't think it was going to be so serious, or I'd have gone into the library." " We overheard little of it, Sir James," said Mrs. Graves politely. " You talked so quietly until you got angry. And enough to make you angry too. Those men striking like that, without any regard for their poor wives and the children — dear little starving things." " Yes, the women and the children must suffer if the men are foolish," he replied. " But enough ; to billiards ! Will you play me a hundred up ? " " What do you think about the strike, Dr. Adern," asked Miss Dodd seriously, " and of all the poverty it entails — the misery it causes to women — the starvation of children ? " " Nature is very lavish," replied the young scientist ; " if a million of human young died in the metropolis, their place would soon be restored."

Miss Dodd took off her spectacles and looked at Dr. Adern. " You shock me," she said ; " I expected a different answer from you." He smiled in his very superior way. " Nature is full of waste," he continued. " How little of the spawn of fish matures, for instance. I do not see the great advantage of treasuring human beings vitiated in their origin, as so many are, nor of rearing the offspring of any parents who, through their environ- Zalma 9 ment and privations, or by their follies and excesses, deteriorate their successors. We know how to breed our horses and dogs ; surely we should be equally careful of the human progeny. If we bred our labouring population carefully, we shouldn't starve them. Be sure of that, Miss Dodd. The Draper strike begins at an earlier stage than a rowdy meeting in Trafalgar Square.

It began before most of these people were born." They were like boy and girl, — they were indeed boy and girl, for neither of them had yet come of age, — but they were both endowed with the nineteenth-century conceit, and they argued as seriously as though the whole future of man depended upon the result of their discussion. Miss Dodd put on her spectacles again, and wrinkled her brow into creases that would have been a credit to a woman of eighty. " These physiological subjects always interest me vastly," she said. " I know that you were at the head of your physiological class, Miss Dodd," said young Dr. Adern, with boy-like polite ness, but also with the air of a professor condescending to address a favourite pupil out of lecture hours, "and con sequently I knew I might speak freely to an enlightened woman.

Eeally, the starvation of a few hundred, or even a few thousand, children is nothing." He waved his hand majesti cally. " Our interest is with the survivors." " And yet does it not occur to you that Science should not permit so many children to die absolutely uselessly, Dr. Adern ?" Thus appealed to, the diminutive Dr. Adern — for this learned piece of precocity was of small stature — put his head on one side, with all the gravity of the great Lord Eldon, and then smiling curiously, he observed in his bass voice : " The best thing Science could do with 'em would be to prolong their lives by a process of vivisection — painless vivisection — under anæsthetics. Better they should die so than by process of starvation." " You are not serious ? " " I am always intensely serious, Miss Dodd. At present, the law compels us to make all our experiments on dogs, rabbits, frogs, and other animals.

That experiments upon Zalma 10 human beings would be more tuitive than those upon animals, is patent. If the subjects referred to, instead of being allowed to die, were handed over to the hospitals for the purposes of Science, their lives would be indefinitely prolonged." " What would the hospitals do with the children ? " "A few might be tubercularised with great advantage to the progress of knowledge. Cultures of cholera and other diseases might be introduced and developed, and by the use of germicides the children inoculated with the cholera bacillus might probably recover. They might then be retained in the hospitals for further experiment, or — " " Do you positively mean to suggest," exclaimed Miss Dodd, aghast, " that you would deliberately sacrifice these poor children, to be experimented upon with the deadliest diseases — that you would torture them to death by inoculating them with cholera and tuberculosis ?

" " I have only proposed to prolong lives already doomed : to utilise, for the advancement of Science, lives which would otherwise be ended by the existing processes of Nature in a few hours." " I call it murder," exclaimed Miss Dodd excitedly. " Starvation itself is an interesting study," replied Dr. Adern. " Some experiments on dogs have very recently been made, iu which their vagus nerves were divided, with the result that the stomach could no longer secrete its proper digestive fluids, and hence the dogs died of slow starvation. There are many questions connected with starvation on which medical science is very incomplete at present." " It is wicked, it is accursed, it makes my blood boil to hear you speak of it," said Miss Dodd. " You are opposed to Vivisection ? " "Dr. Adern, I am the secretary of our local Anti- Vivisection Society, and I consider that all these tortures by you young doctors and students upon cats and dogs are unholy and most dreadful.

The tortures you inflict are useless. What do you discover ? What has Vivisection found out ? " " So much, that we may reasonably hope for infinitely vaster Zalma 11 discoveries in the future. It would be easy to make a long catalogue of them. Careful students, with the object — " " I deny that any student," interrupted Miss Dodd, " has the moral right to inflict the prolonged and agonising torture in volved in the vivisection of animals, no matter what his object. And as for experiments upon mankind, — that is to say, upon poor hospital patients, — I have no words to express my horror of such outrages upon humanity and religion." " Then what would you do with the starving children in Draper's strike '( " " I recommend Cannibalism," said Miss Dodd, with an ironical mimicry of Dr. Adern's manner.

" You see that fat, snoring man on the sofa — I'd boil him, Dr. Adern. I'd boil him, and distribute him amongst the poor." " Then we are quite agreed at last," said Dr. Adern, laughing. " Let us join the others on the terrace." " What a lovely sunset ! " exclaimed Miss Dodd enthusiastically, as her plain features, emerging into the light, caught the beauty of the ruddy glow. " How tender the tints, Dr. Adern ! How poetic all the — " " The laws of refraction, and the absorption, by a purely scientific process — " " Oh, Dr. Adern — please. Science must leave me my sun sets. This way. Mind the step." The scent of lilacs invited them, and they went through the French windows on to the marble pavement overlooking the river-front. Crowds of guests were taking coffee outside at little tables, and wreaths of cigarette smoke hung over the garden chairs.

On one of these sat the guest of the evening, the Due d'Amiens, who had escaped from the incessant attentions of his host, to steal a few moments with one of the most handsome women he had ever met in England. She was talk ing to him in a soft voice. " When you get your crown, Monseigneur, as men say you will do in the distant future, won't it be a dreadful burden to you ? " " Pallas," he replied, gratifying her by using her nom deplume, " Anarchy may bring me the crown of Fiance, not in the distant Zalma 12 future, but any day. Yet I shall never find my crown a burden." "Why, Monseigneur ? " " Because it will always be in pawn for Love." She laughed, and struck his fingers lightly with her fan. He seized the haft of it playfully. " Prcnez-garde, Monseigneur" she whispered, in accents of mock-heroic caution.

" Love is the danger of Princes. Here, in this little island, our Prince loves women, and our women love the Prince — but women will be the ruin of the Mon archy ! "

Chapter II

T had been, perhaps, rather dull — all large parties are ; and this was an unusually large party, for the whole county was there, and scores of people who did not know each other. But it was pleasant on the terrace. Sir James Draper was an ambitious man ; and if he had his house full of people he didn't like, he had doubtless his reasons. He made a good host, however. He entertained liberally ; and he picked his guests like a commercial traveller, who packs his merchandise with special samples of good old-fashioned articles, a selected stock of the best novelties, and an abundance of common goods. He had several approved varieties of the old French nobility, and, lest his neighbourhood should look upon their titles as spurious, he had that distinguished noble man, Lord Beaumaris, one of the bluest-blooded men in Britain, though this most pauperised of peers had never possessed a farthing of his own in his life, for his estates were mortgaged out of the depth of all Christian arithmetic.

But his sou, the Hon. Gwynne Griffiths, had already discovered their rever sionary value, although the realisation required Hebraic cal culations aud the assistance of Moses and Aaron. Miss Emmeline Draper, who had been a young lady some years ago, — namely, when her father was plain Mr. Draper, — was even then plain Miss Draper. She had been kept, however, for a brilliant match (of the kind that is warranted to light only on the box), but had somehow failed to go off, and now she was becoming quite eminent for her ugliness. As she sat in the garden now, Zalma 14 she was secretly meditating how she could ignite the heart of the Honourable Gwynne Griffiths, whilst he was privately pondering by what mode he could inflame the affections of Emmeline Draper : he with a charming modesty, conscious that generations of crested ancestors had exhausted all his hair as well as his ha'pence ; she with a delightful innocence, wondering whether the successor to so many time-honoured debts could feel anything but contempt for a man who, through life, had regularly paid his way every Saturday.

Others were there: Sir Philip Saunders of the Foreign Office, and the Earl of Rottenham. The Earl was originally an Army Service man, but abandoned it for the matrimonial service, and, becoming an adept, had been thrice married. The first time for money, but his wife predeceased the fortune she would have inherited if she had lived only three weeks longer. This misfortune left the Earl free for another venture, however, and his second marriage was a more direct worship of the golden calf. The widow whom he then allied was rich, but her fortune died with her, and he was not fortunate enough to keep her alive many months. His third marriage was a desperate affair, for his new Countess married him for love, though he, habitually constant, married her for the usual reason ; but as neither possessed either of the attractions the other had anticipated, they spent their lives in mutual reproaches.