A Prince of Mischance: a novel

Front matter

THIRD EDITION TATTERLEY THE STORY OF A DEAD MAN EY TOM GALLON In cloth gilt 6/-. A FEW PRESS OPINIONS St. James' Gazette. "'Tatterley* is, in a sense, an idyll such as Dickens himself might not have been ashamed to conceive. The author, it is true, possesses a style of his own — lucid, distinctive, forcible. In point of execution the book leaves nothing to be desired; it is in the sweetness, tenderness, and power displayed by the writer that a pledge of even better things to follow is revealed. Mr. TOM GALLON starts with a quaint idea, which he works out with admirable clearness and constantly increasing interest. Nothing, indeed, could be more beautiful or more sympathet ically related than the love story of Donald Brett and Ella Tarrant. Once taken up, there is small likelihood that 'Tatterley' will be laid down until the last page has been turned.

Originality and freshness are sufficiently rare qualities in these times to command appreciation. A writer who as his first essay can produce such excellent work should have no difficulty in making a public for himself." Academy. " We believe in ' Tatterley ' through thick and thin ; we believe every word of his story ; and we are glad that the ranks of the novelists have been strengthened by so clear-sighted and kindly and efficient a recruit as its author. We could not recommend a better story than ' Tatterley.' " Fall Mall Gazette. "A touching and charming story. The idea is distinctly unique and cleverly carried out to the end. The novel, written in bright, easy style, is decidedly a fresh and attractive one." N.B. Daily Mail. "A story of remarkable ability, pervaded by a sense of delicate humour and a power of pathos by no means common amongst living authors.

To give a hint of the denotement would be unfair; it is as far removed from the regulation ending as the story itself is from the commonplace. From beginning to end the perusal of this story is pre eminently refreshing." New Saturday. "Mr. TOM GALLON has accomplished a work which many experienced writers would be only too glad to acknowledge. It is refreshing to come across a book of this description. We shall look forward with interest to the next work with which the author may favour us." Bookman. " We have here a story so kindly, so pathetic, so able in its present ment of a difficult— some might even say an impossible— situation, that we linger over it as we do over very few of the books that pass before us." Leeds Mercury. " A. book which is conceived in a powerful and touching way, not with life's little ironies, but its great.

Book I Chapter

I. WHEREIN THE SEA FLINGS UP AN INVADER. It was quite dark in the long, low-roofed room, save for the faint glimmer of the far-off coming dawn through the broad, uncurtained window at one end ; quite silent, except for the sobbing, loud whisper ing, muttering wind, breaking sometimes into a thunderous roaring at the casements, and for the dull monotonous beat— farther off — of waters upon rocks. There were two little beds in the long room ; and in the nearest a girl lay, wide-awake, with her cheek resting upon one hand, and her eyes fixed upon the grey light beyond the window. She was so fully awake that she even put up a steady hand to brush back the straying strands of black hair from her face — so calmly awake that she beat out a little tune on the patchwork quilt with her fingers, in time to the beat of the waters and the sobbing of the wind.

Sudden steps beneath the window — the steps of a man who slipped, heavily shod, in haste on the gravel, and stumbled on hurriedly; then muttered voices, dying away in excited questioning and ex- H lprince os /flMscbance. 4 planation, and a far-off hail from a man's voice, broken and scattered by the roar of the wind. The girl sat up in bed, controlling her light breathing to listen. Swinging round, and leaning half out to pierce the darkness at the further end of the room, she called, in a quick whisper — "Lucy! The wind hurled itself at the rattling window again, and the girl glanced round, with a little frown of impatience. She addressed herself again to the other bed, still in the same suppressed excited whisper. " Lucy — Lucy ! Are you awake ? " There was a movement in the darkness — the sound of someone settling more easily among the pillows — a little contented murmur — and then silence again.

The girl flung back the clothes, and scrambled to the floor, and pattered across rapidly to the other bed; bent over it, with her hands pressed lightly on the covered shoulders of the sleeper. " Wake up, dear ; I've been awake for hours. Wake up — there's a wreck ! Lucy ! " The other girl turned, under the pressure of the hands, and looked up sleepily, startled; then, as the wind burst at the windows again, and howled away into the distance, she clutched at the hands that grasped her, and half-raised herself. " Eve ! " she exclaimed, almost querulously. " What is it? What is " " A wreck, I tell you. I heard the men running and shouting. Get up!" H prince of _HMscbai.ee. 5 " But, Eve— why? We don't want to go "Lucy! You can't lie here — with all that going on outside ! " She flung out an impatient hand towards the window.

" I've heard it rising — nearly all night ; it's near morning now. Quick —get your things on ; we must go down, dear. We couldn't be cowards — to lie here warm, while the men drown out there." "But — but Aunt Susannah?" objected the other, faintly. " She won't see us. Quick— there's the gun from the coast-guard. Make haste — make haste ! " She was back at her own bed by this time — scrambling into her clothes, and urging on the other with breathless whisperings, and flying across to the window, in vain hope of piercing the cold darkness outside. " Paddy will come, " she said, suddenly, as she struggled with a refractory hook and eye. " We must call Paddy ; he would never forgive us — if we left him asleep." She was out of the room in a moment, and gliding along the darkened passage to an other door.

Still in the same feverish hurry, she dropped to her knees, and put her mouth to the keyhole — softly rattling the handle at the same time. "Paddy— Paddy!" The door was opened in a flash, and a boy stood there, in the faint light — a boy with tousled fair hair falling into his eyes ; he was tucking the ends of a neck-wrap into the breast of his buttoned a prince of .fllMscbance. jacket. The girl sprang up as the door opened, and the boy grinned cheerfully at her, with eyes dancing. "It's a wreck," he whispered. "I was coming" to wake you. You've soon got dressed." "I've been awake nearly all night," replied the girl, with the dignity which is lent in youth by anything abnormal. " I heard the storm rise — and the men running down to the shore. Lucy's nearly dressed." The boy felt that much of the glory of the thing — of the initiation of it — had been stripped away from him, and was humbled accordingly.

He took the secondary position naturally, and followed in her wake, as she turned again towards her own room. Lucy was standing, dressed and trembling, at the door, prepared for fresh protest. " It'll be all over now," she urged, in a frightened whisper. " And perhaps it isn't a wreck, and " Here was a chance for re-assertion, on the score of courage, and the boy stepped into the breach, in smiling superiority. " Wrecks take a long time — sometimes hours," he said, with the air of experience. " And there's rockets, and— and life lines — and men with ropes round 'em — and — sometimes a Newfoundland dog, with a rope in his mouth." This latter as a daring afterthought, dragged from the chambers of boyish memory. So they went stealthily along the corridor — the boy first, and the girls — Lucy clutching her sister — close behind.

At the snot of a little flight of H prince of fllMscbance. 7 stairs, down which they had crept, the two chief conspirators stopped, as if by common consent, with their eyes on a door, and held a hurried whis pered consultation. "Shall we?" asked the boy, as though no more extended question were necessary. "Yes — yes — he'll come. Yovi go in, and wake him. Make haste!" said the girl. The boy turned the handle softly, and disappeared into the room. The listeners heard a sort of gurgle, as of one waking hurriedly, and then whisperings, and once a little pleased laugh. Then the boy came out again, in smiling triumph. "He's coming," he whispered, jerking his head in the direction of the room. " Tried to be fierce about it — but he's coming. He's cutting into his trousers as if the house were on fire, and laughing all the time, under his breath."

While they waited anxiously, they heard vague movements in the room, and in a few moments the door opened, and a man came out, with his boots in one hand. An elderly, small man, with scanty grey hair rubbed in all directions about a rather large head, and with the mildest, sweetest, kindliest face — so full of wisdom, and yet so youthful — it is possible to imagine. His face was beaming, even while he shook his head at the three waiting figures. " Naughty girls — naughty girls ! " he breathed, with an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, and with the air of a school-boy breaking bounds, and prince of flDtscbance. 8 glorying in the breaking. " What would Aunt Susannah say — what would she say? But come on — come on ! " He had a big shawl wound round his shoulders, over his coat, and he went off down the stairs, with the boots dangling from one hand, and with the other spread out as if to balance him, while he picked his way softly on tiptoe— looking back at them every now and then, with broad smiles, and reproachful shakes ofthe head, to murmur — " Naughty children — naughty children!"

He sat down on the bottom stair, to pull on his boots, while the children scrambled past him. As he got up, he saw Lucy trembling, and had the big shawl off, and round the child's shoulders, in a moment — making the fastening of the shawl the excuse for a reassuring caress. The boy snatched down his cap from the hall stand, and a grey wide awake for the man ; the dark-haired girl Eve swiftly drew a hood over her sister's head, and another over her own ; and, with much cautious drawing of bolts, and many guilty backward glances, the four went out into the darkness stealthily. Once outside the house, they set off, helter-skelter, for the shore, running down through the ill-paved, irregular streets of the little village — the boy ancl Eve well in front — Lucy and the man panting behind. The man had stuck the grey wide-awake hard at the back of his head, and a burst of wind — coming at them threateningly round unexpected corners — more than once whirled it off his head, and sent it H prince of fllMscbance. 9 dexterously spinning away behind him; laughing more than ever, he flung himself joyously into the pursuit of it, while they waited impatiently for him.

At last he gave up the attempt to keep it on his head, and carried it flapping in one hand, using it to urge on the others in their running. Gradually even the timid Lucy got into the spirit of the thing— the wild, tragic frolic of the night — and ran on eagerly, glancing up now and again at the face of the man to whose arm she clung — mutely seeking sympathy in her excitement. The boy and girl before them went on steadily — the boy in dogged hope of adventurous happenings — the girl with lips slightly parted, and eyes that strained for the sea, in keenest pity for the possible victims of its raging. Stragglers from the cottages — adjusting shawls, and crying enquiries — joined them as they neared the shore; the light from open doorways streamed across the road, and lit the hurrying figures for a moment.

And, through all, the wind howled, and raced, and drove at them, and buffeted them heavily, huddling them together, gasping. Gradually, too, a silence fell upon them, as they came into the actual scene. For here was Life — grim-faced, lusty, bearded — battling sternly with Death ; Death elusive, shrouded in darkness, in a shape they knew and feared. At some little distance out, with her spars keenly cut against the grey-coming dawn, was the wreck — a tiny thingenough, in all that raging, boiling expanse. Some men, eagerly questioned, said that she appeared to be a small yacht, driven hard on a reef, and breaking up; that she had been there for hours. A woman — shuddering — whispered that she had seen men swept from her decks, and tossed in awful sport, and swallowed up. There was no life-boat at that point ; a man had ridden off to the nearest, and a gun boomed out at intervals from the little whitewashed coast-guard station, in the hope of attracting attention.

Once, a boat had been put out — and hurled back on shore, with its crew clinging breathlessly to rocks and stones, and crawl ing back, half-dead, to safety. Once, too, a gigantic fellow had stood up among them all, with a rope girded about him, and with the wind ruffling his uncovered hair; a woman, young and pretty, near him, with her face hidden on an older woman's breast, and the older woman's arms tight about her. But he had been drawn back through the surf, and had staggered up through them blindly, and fallen spent upon the shore, with a group about him. As the dawn came up more clearly, it was seen that the sharp outline of a mast was blurred by something which clung to it — something that the winds fluttered, and the waters leapt to reach ; there was a shout presently that a man held on desperately there, and then that he clasped something in his arms — something smaller than himself.

And a woman, with the instinct of her sex, cried that it was a child he held. It had been thought that every living thing had been swept from the wreck; but now the murmuring groups broke up afresh, and crowded nearer down to the water. Some ran to the little coast-guard station; and presently a report, and a long, thin line flung across the lightening sky, showed that the rocket apparatus was again at work. But the wind was terrific, and no fiery-pointed line touched the shaking, swaying wreck. The three children had looked on, white-faced, through it all; the boy and Eve still hand-in-hand — Lucy clinging to the man. They tried to speak sometimes, but the wind swept away their words, and left them breathless ; when anything momentous was afoot, the boy moved restlessly, and was for breaking away, and dashing into it.

But the firm grip of Eve the dark-haired on his fingers restrained him, although she never looked at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the wreck unfalteringly. A sudden, almost imperceptible increase in the fury of the storm, and the yacht trembled, and lurched heavily, and slowly and horribly began to break up. A little group of grave-faced Methodists — mostly women - further up on the shore, had knelt calmly in a circle, with clasped hands, and their voices were rising and falling in the slow cadences of a hymn. Lucy had turned swiftly, and hidden her face against the man's side, and his arm was round her head, hiding her from the sight of it all; the tears were dropping slowly down his kindly old face, while he watched the wreck. A hoarse cry went up from the watchers, as the mast to which those figures clung fell crashing over the side; then a sudden silence, while men and women bent forward, as if for a race.

The hymn swelled louder; there was a confused roar of many voices, drowning it ; and the groups broke up hur riedly, and men and women went plunging and scrambling through the surf, battling against the wind, with their eyes fixed on something which was driving swiftly on towards a line of rocks further down the shore — something shown only by a white line of surf, save at one point, where a confused dark heap clung tenaciously. It was hurled against the rocks with a crash, and hurled back again ; and, then, as it drove headlong on again, the foremost of the crowd had it, and men were plunging in the water to their waists, with shouts and cries ; they staggered out silently, bearing something in their arms. The boy and girl had raced off, hand in hand, without a word, with the hurrying crowd, leaving the others to follow ; the girl stood there now, and the men laid their burden almost at her feet.

It was a man and a boy — the boy so enfolded by the man's arms, and even by his legs, which were doubled and twisted about the smaller figure, that it was difficult to separate them ; the boy's face was hidden on the man's breast, and the man's head was bent above him, with his chin almost touching the hair of the other. In a moment, however, the man opened his eyes slowly, and his hold relaxed; and, while they bent over him, he flung out his arms suddenly, with a gasp, and rolled over on his back, and died while they looked. They saw then that he was horribly shattered and broken — that one side of his head was crushed, as though from contact with the rocks. But the boy, who had slipped from the arms of the man, although he lay there unconscious, yet had his heart faintly beating, and was unhurt ; the doctor from the village was bending over him, and doing his best to restore him to consciousness.

The arms of the man who lay dead had so closely enwrapped him that he — probably the weakest of all who had been on the yacht — was the sole survivor. The man who held Lucy clasped to him came forward hurriedly, with a quick nod to the doctor. "If some of you can carry the little lad up to my place, perhaps it would be better. It's not far — and " " Thank you, Professor, " said the doctor, without looking up, or ceasing his continuous, rhythmic movement of the boy's arms — "I think he's coming round, and I'll get some of these good men to carry him up directly. Can you send someone on to see they have a fire ready, and some hot blankets ; I've no doubt Miss Jecks will see to that." The Professor looked round somewhat helplessly on the group of faces, with a sudden remembrance of his night escapade ; his eye lighted on Paddy, and brightened.

"Paddy," he said, putting a per suasive hand on the boy's shoulder — "run along home, and — and wake up Miss Susie, and — and tell her what the doctor says. You — you know what to say ; it's a matter of life and death. I — I'd go myself, but you'll run faster." This was a blinking of the real danger, and the Professor knew it, and Paddy knew it ; but the latter set off with a rush through the half-light, without a word. The doctor rose from his knees presently, with a grunt of satisfaction; and some of the men lifted the limp little figure, and laid it on a rough litter formed of coats, and marched slowly and steadily away in the direction of the Professor's house. Lucy still held the Professor's hand; the other girl watlked beside the semi-conscious boy, looking at him gravely. And, as she walked, she let her hand rest — partly in compassion, partly with the proprie tary feeling in this strange event which was natural to a child — on the side of the swaying thing on which he lay.

One of his hands, moving restlessly, fell upon her own, and held it ; the girl's hand was warm, and soft, and he needed something to hold to then, in those first moments of strange dawning conscious ness. She clasped his fingers slightly, and met the glance of his half-opened eyes compassionately. As the men drew near to the house with their light. burden, the boy still held fast to the girl's hand.

Chapter II. Which Takes Leaps Over History

— AND SUG- GESTS A RACIAL SUPERIORITY. " But — my dear Susie " Susannah, if you please, brother Barlow. This is not an hour for endearments." Miss Jecks was a lady with hair straightly parted on her forehead, and breaking into little curls about the region of her ears, after passing the boundary line of restrain ing tortoiseshell combs. The face between the curls was thin, and sharp, with an unbroken line, dented at either end, for the mouth ; the dress of the woman — grey, without one superfluous curve or full ness anywhere, was indicative of the feminine thing it enclosed. The silence that reigned about her, and the furtive looks of the others, supplied a com mentary upon her, too, easily read. It was the morning following the wreck, and breakfast was an hour late — a circumstance suf ficiently disturbing, in a household presided over by that grim goddess — Susannah Jecks.

That lady had been up for hours — ever since Paddy had tremblingly beaten at her door, and is cried the news that a stranger was being carried to her for succour; she had superintended every thing, guiding the startled maids by a look, a gesture ; had set aside the doctor's grateful comments on her promptitude with a frown, and a wave of the hand; and sat now, as grimly neat and undis turbed, with every curl in place, as though the hours had brought no smallest change. Professor Barlow Jecks, for his part, had the unmistakable appearance of a man of sober habits who had been kept from his bed; the two girls, on the one side of the table, and the boy Paddy on the other, were obviously labouring under sup pressed excitement. "I say nothing of the initial circumstances," went on Susannah, gazing down the length of the table at her brother, and clipping her words off sharply, almost without parting her lips.

" To lead the innocent and thoughtless on such an expedition — to draw them from their slumbers, in order that they might prowl about secretly at night with you — I say nothing of all that " She had raised her head, and closed her eyes, and was smoothing out the table cloth softly with her hands, preparing to continue the indictment, after a sufficiently impressive pause, when the boy, with a quick look at the Professor, who sat with raised eyebrows, and hands gently straying through his grey hair, burst in hurriedly. "It wasn't the Professor at all, Miss Jecks; we— that is, I rushed down first, and woke him up, and " His voice trailed off, and he glanced across at Eve. "Arthur Paddison," said Miss Susannah, severely ignoring him with her eyes, which she kept fixed upon the luckless man at the end of the table, " my brother requires no helping hand from you ; he is responsible for the escapade.

Do not join in any conversation between your elders; it is in delicate." The girl Eve flung herself into the front of the battle — speaking with a little quick flush on her face, and a rapid glance round the table. " I think — I am sure — I was the first, Aunt Susie " " Susannah, if you please, Evelyn, " corrected that lady, freezingly. There was a curious little fiction about the use of this name; if its owner insisted — as on this occasion — on its use in full, it was a species of challenge to the household that she had been ruffled, and was to be feared, and approached with caution accordingly; if, with a wintry smile, the diminutive were permitted, it was suggestive of a laying down of arms, if only for the breathing space of a few hours. Evelyn accepted the correction with becoming meekness.

" I was the first, Aunt Susannah ; I had been awake a long time — and I woke up Lucy and Paddy — and then we all dragged Uncle Barlow into it." She looked at the Professor, with a quick re-assuring smile of protection, as she mentioned his name. " A totally unnecessary explanation, " was Miss Susannah's comment. " Again I must remind you H prince of flDtscbance. 18 that this is a matter for your elders. Barlow," — he sat up with a start at the sharp pronouncement of his name, and. blinked his eyelids— " we may resume our conversation. I was about to observe that I am disturbed, long before my usual hour, by Arthur Paddison, who is fully dressed, and very wet; that rough men tramp into the house, and into the spare bedroom; and that I am called upon, at a moment's notice, to tend a stranger, about whom I am told nothing."

" We know nothing of him, my dear Su—Susan nah," replied Barlow Jecks, feebly. " Exactly," exclaimed the lady, triumphantly—" I rejoice that you have at last grasped my meaning. You dash out in the middle ofthe night, at a moment's notice— or with no notice at all— and return with — with a boy, and a crowd of people." " My dear — a — a mere act of charity. I — I offered to let them bring him here." " Of course — one might expect that you would do that. What do you know of him — how can you tell what contamination — moral or otherwise —you bring here? The first common creature washed on shore, and " " My dear — common creatures don't sail about on yachts, and are not usually dressed in velvet," urged the Professor. This seemed unanswerable, but Miss Susannah flashed a contemptuous answer, nevertheless.

" Bah ! a man's blindness. Arthur Paddison — grace ! " The boy started, and bent his head, and mumbled the words; Miss Susannah got up, and pushed her chair under the table, and stalked from the room, the girls meekly following. The boy, relieved from restraint, smiled at the Professor, who smiled again, and walked across to the window, softly whistling. " Now, Paddy, " exclaimed Barlow Jecks, with as much of sternness as he could command — a sternness he discounted at once by laying his hand affection ately on the boy's shoulder — " this will not do, you know. Idleness is a pernicious thing — a very per nicious thing. Time was not made to be wasted; there is work to be done in the world — work — work! Come along, Paddy." Master and pupil went out arm in arm, on the best possible terms. This was almost another fiction in the house of Barlow Jecks.

Years before — when Arthur Paddi son had been but a little trembling fellow, scarcely more than seven years of age, sitting on a big box in a dreary country station, with a big porter eyeing him distrustfully, the Professor had first made his acquaintance. Mrs. Paddison had heard of Barlow Jecks, and country air was good for the child; and, obversely, town — without encumbrance — was good for Mrs. Paddison. Mr. Paddison — who was chiefly remarkable for his cough, and was altogether a weak but unwieldy encumbrance — had been removed by Providence and a timely East wind; pathetically leaving the child to the care of his wife, and her own fortune — with which she had originally endowed him — undisturbed. After a necessary year of decent contemplation of that page of her life, she resolutely folded it down — sent the child into the country to Barlow Jecks — and set out smilingly alone through pleasant ways, as she understood them.

Periodically, at the prompting of conscience, she sent alarming letters to the Professor — alarming, in the sense that they threatened severance ; she wrote that she really must take the matter of the boy's future more seriously in hand, and that he had better be sent to her at the earliest moment; she even suggested trains by which he might travel, and added a postscript that she would telegraph when ready to receive him. So, for a week or two, Paddy held a new importance, and the Professor daily examinations — tremblingly conducted, and ending in disaster. Then, in a month's time, or so, a letter would arrive — generally dated from some place on the Continent — suggesting that the boy had better remain where he was until the Spring, at least, when definite arrangements might be made. Seven years had passed in this way, and the boy had gleaned something of an education, in a desul tory fashion — scraps of this, and scraps of that, with a bed-rock of elementary things.