Odd Stories

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ODD STORIES ODD STORIES By FRANCES FORBES-ROBERTSON A'-'TIIOR of "the devil's pronoun" etc WESTMINSTER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO 2 WHITEHALL GARDENS i897 Butler & Tanner, The Shlwood Printing Works, Fkome, and London, TO PORA CAZALET The Author has to thank the Editors of the Westminster Gazette, the Pall Mall Magazine, and the English Illustrated for the permission to reprint some ofthe stories in this volume. "Princess," "As it Happened," and "Eric of Tolquhon," have not before been printed. Contents PAGE Monsieur Paul 3 The Decree of the Anti-Grundy Club . . 35 " Princess Cesarini " 45 " Those Other People "...... 55 Princess 65 The Legend of St. Aphilon's Dome . . .121 A Sentimental Philosopher . . . -131 In an Idle Hour 141 "As it Happened" CONTENTS PAGE The Green Cloak J95 The Impediment 2°3 What Counts 213 Eric of Tolquhon 221 Jotchie 231 Reply Paid 255 The Misdemeanours of the Lady Gertrude . 265 A Way Out 285 Theo 293 The Death of the Profligate ....

Monsieur Paul I B O.S. Monsieur Paul i She sat on the edge of her narrow little bed, and pressed her hands one in the other in childish excitement as Adele looked at the presents and dis cussed the coming ceremony. Her face was oddly expressive of the woman and the child commingled, of youthful inconsequence and thoughtful woman hood — of one to whom knowledge of right and wrong had come so early that the understanding was reached before the senses, and evil could not thrive through want of soil. " All the same, I shall not marry Monsieur Paul," she exclaimed suddenly. " You'll do it when the time comes, Mademoiselle," the serving-woman answered indifferently. She had evidently heard the statement before. " That's what every one says. I begin to think it will come true, though I do nothing but explain that I simply won't." "You made the mistake by once saying you would."

"Only once. Won't all the other times count — all the times I have said no ? How I dislike him ! Have you ever noticed his ears ? They are like mushrooms." The little rebel was interrupted by the noisy en trance of Marie, who bounded unceremoniously into the room, clutching a brown-paper parcel in her hand. " Another present ! " she explained. Jeanne flushed. " Quick, quick, give it to me," she said. "Oh! the string. Goodness gracious, Adele, haven't you any scissors ? " " You like the presents if you don't like the wedding," returned the good Adele, slowly producing scissors which were attached to a black tape slung under her apron. " Ah ! that's it — I simply adore the presents ! Look ! it's a fan — an ostrich-feather fan. I shall be stuck up. Marie, don't you wish you were going to be married ?

Part I

I PRINCESS had golden hair that covered her shoulders like a yellow shawl, and she was delightfully, childish ly beautiful. She lived with her father, Dr. Wells, and Boo, a little old lady, in a tall, solitary, crooked house on the edge of the moor. It had been written of her father that when he was not drunk he was asleep. The epigrammatic biography was descriptive without being wholly accurate. Wells had sober moments, moments when he received his patients, visited them, or shut himself up in a laboratory, and either cut up live creatures, so it was rumoured, or counted his money ; for the weakness of the miser was no insignificant appetite with this crooked-souled man. He practised economy with a feminine nicety, and begrudged the smallest expenditure for the em bellishment of his surroundings.

The basement of his cheerless abode, however, was as charming and enlivening as the upper part was solitary and grue some. Janet, a cheerful imp — a child of all work, perhaps sixteen in years — whose cheeks shone as the fire in the old-fashioned grate, and whose opinion O.S. 65 F PRINCESS on all matters was regarded with infinite respect by the household, presided there. She wore elastic side boots and a very stiff little print gown of im maculate cleanness. From the kitchen a passage led into a sitting-room, the chairs and sofas of which were covered with shiny chintz patterned in ivy leaves. The carpet was florid, largely florid, and bunches of rose-buds decorated the wall paper up and down in diamond-shaped symmetry. A bow window to the ground opened immediately on an apple orchard of dwarf angular trees that threw shadows across the long grass.

When this grass was cut by Jim, a lad, who worked in slavish fear of Janet, qualified by a secret admiration for her person, Princess was unhappy, whereat Janet, to make life smooth again, would come out be tween work times and erect wonderful thrones and couches and tombs of the grass, and with wreaths of cut daisies crown her young mistress, and throne her or bury her according to her whim. A low hedge, broken here and there, divided the orchard from the moor which stretched away on all sides in still undulating lines to the horizon, interrupted only on one side by a dark belt of fir trees, the confines of a dense wood. Boo said there was no more beautiful view in the world than that from the orchard in autumn time, when the sun was setting and the distant trees formed a purple streak across the moor ; and Princess would gaze into the old eyes, that had a way of looking awry, and wonder if Boo weren't a fairy, and knew what all the other views in the world were like.

Boo was a little old lady Dr. Wells had in- PRINCESS geniously procured, on the death of his young wife, as housekeeper, and governess to his daughter for the return of a " home." The little lady, who had at the time found herself penniless, through the unexpected liquidation of a company in which her small fortune had been invested, snatched at the advertisement, and in a refined diffidence omitted to allude to salary ; in fact, to the amazement of the practitioner, she seemed to assume the attitude of " pray don't mention it " — and he appreciated her delicacy. — His child, then, would be brought up after all by a lady ! His wife had been a lady ; the consciousness of this fact always recalled to him his own station ; recollection of certain butcher shops in Manchester never failed to accompany the thought His mother had not been a lady, and his wife's relations cut him consequently.

At her death they had offered to take the little girl, and the irate man had laughed in their faces. " She is a Wells ! " he remarked with malice, and they had departed in high dudgeon. That the son of a butcher should not be honoured by the patronage of the county was preposterous. They had disturbed themselves in the child's behalf as was their duty, but the matter was now ended. She might go to the bad — the only destination the good ladies could imagine attainable by one they themselves had discarded. Such a misalliance had never before occurred in the family. The result would be inevitable. " She will certainly go to the bad," asserted Lady Henrietta. "Most positively," echoed the Hon. Mrs. Cleversdale. Lady Susan hesitated a moment and looked meditative. " Really I don't see what else she can do," she said at last.

PRINCESS " If she doesn't do worse," said a sprightly mondaine. " Worse?" questioned the old ladies. " Why, yes ! She might marry a butcher !" " Such a vagary is not likely to repeat itself in our family." " But there's his family." " His family will make her a snob. Conscious of butcher blood, she will hate butchers." " I am afraid there's no hope for her, then." " I think not," said Lady Henrietta. The doctor, however, swore an inward oath to rear the little girl in spite of them, as the daughter of her mother. He as studiously shut her off from the society of his own equals and relatives as he debarred her from communication with theirs. Miss Westoby was given absolute control, and the good lady had theories of education not to be despised. She spent wakeful nights on the consideration of a system for the bringing up of her new charge — she hurried to the future, stumbled on thoughts of literature, and determined in great haste that Princess should be reared on folk lore.

She should be taught no cog nisance of evil other than that described in those fat volumes where the unselfish are rewarded with lifelong felicity and the wicked with all the ills that could best teach the miscreants a wiser way of living. On learning that the starry eyed child was called Sarah she seemed distressed. " Sarah means Princess," she murmured, after a moment's reflection. " I think we might call her Princess ! " " By all means ! " grinned the amenable parent, and as she looked up to thank him she caught an ugly expression on his already ugly enough countenance PRINCESS that filled her with inward qualms as to the possibility of remaining under so gruesome a person's authority : he looked like a wizard, she thought, and inwardly dubbed him the wizard practitioner. II Thurston pulled up the white mare suddenly as he emerged from the wood on to the open moor, and breathed in the keener air that swept past from the far-stretching horizon.

He had cantered through the interminable thicket with the idea of riding himself down — of escaping from the inner man. The sense of actual physical flight suggested a possible mental one, and his uncertainty whither this straggling path would lead him, intensified the feeling of eluding for the time an atmosphere that had sickened body and soul together. The house party at Hansdale had succeeded in being detestable only, and yet he had consented to remain another week. Mrs. Clive had promised to be interesting — she had seemed dif ferent to the others ; but was it, as Lady Helen had suggested, because At any rate, Lady Helen was spiteful. He had found himself hating her and avoiding Mrs. Clive. Were there no honest women, then ? No simple-hearted, straight women ? He drew rein and laughed at his own bitterness.

She had told him that such a medieval tempera ment as he possessed redeemed him from the commonplace. " Now a days one must either be twelfth century or twentieth ; anything else was in tolerably dull," she had insisted, and he had asked the distinction. PRINCESS " One kills his faithless mistress and the other kisses her ! You know we like sometimes to think we are worth killing." A rabbit started from under the mare's very hoofs, and scampered across the open. He watched the little furred creature till it had disappeared, then found his eyes were resting on a tall building that stood up against the horizon like a grey tower. He walked his horse leisurely across the uneven ground, and approached the hedge that divided him from the queer-looking house — a hedge covered with a briar rose in full rich flower.

Beyond was an apple orchard. He peered through the low branches to obtain a view of the dwelling place, that had so solitary an aspect, when a strange grassy mound diverted his attention. It was decked with wild flowers in stiff rows, and had the look of a recently formed grave. He slipped off his horse, attached the bridle to a branch, and stole through the gap in the hedge up to it. Lying on a soft bed of freshly-cut grass was a young girl fast asleep ; she had yellow hair that covered her like a shawl, and was clad in a muslin gown, sprigged with blossoms. Her pose was stiff as an entombed Assyrian, but she was asleep, fast asleep nevertheless, her lips parted just in the centre and her bosom rising almost imperceptibly with her breathing. She seemed to Thurston the freshest, loveliest, most living thing he had ever seen, and he smiled down upon her in incredulous wonder, when a voice near startled him by the astound ing command — " Harise, Princess, a hundred years has passed — your true knight is here — he erwaits to take you in his arms," and the girl before him PRINCESS scrambled to her feet, dazed and sleepy -eyed.

In a moment Thurston had encircled the warm little muslin-clad body in his embrace, and held her a tight prisoner. She struggled, and released herself with the funniest little oh ! of expostulation, and then, as she eyed the stranger up and down for a moment, a flush of conscious maidenhood swept over her sweet little countenance. She threw up her golden head and marched off to a hillock of grass, on which she sat herself down. Thurston followed her with as much meekness as he could assume, and endeavoured to explain that he could not resist taking part in the little comedy. " You know," he pleaded eagerly, " the scene was set and my cue was given. Surely I am not to blame ?" " You were trespassing," she said, unappeased. " Your hedge- " Of course it is broken — we — we — broke it, but " " Ah ! you won't forgive me — only you know when I saw the briar rose and the hedge, and the tall castle beyond, and the Princess stretched in enchantment, I thought the old story after all had come true " Janet's eyes brightened : she had been standing a little way off, frightened at Princess's continued atti tude of offence.

" Oh, mister ! " she said excitedly, " it was the beautifulist, realist, extraordinaryist Sleep ing Beauty we have hever, hever done." " I thought it was very nice," he said ; " but I don't think the real Princess would tell her knight he was trespassing." " But it's over now ! " " Surely there was a wedding in the story I knew?" PRINCESS he hazarded. The little serving-maid became meditative. "We might have that another time," she answered, with an appealing glance at her com panion. " Why, of course ! When shall I come for the marriage ? " But Janet had to bethink herself of certain pies baking in the oven, so that she suddenly scampered off into the house. Then Thurston looked quite seriously at this strange, lovely, little lady he had found near the confines of the great wood, like a princess in a fairy tale, golden-haired and starry-eyed, and bedecked with wild flowers.

" You will forgive me, won't you ? " he said. She stood up, and raised her chin as she spoke with a very sweet arrogance : " I will forgive you, certainly — Janet is very fond of her games. She left me with instructions to sleep for a hundred years whilst she went to see after the cooking ; when she came back I had really fallen asleep. It was so very comfortable, and she was so long. It is quite natural you should not have understood." Her little speech was quaintly formal, and Thurston wondered where she could have learnt to explain herself in such pretty English, though he still felt a tone of hostility. He watched her for some moments, and noticed that she, on her part, was gazing intently at his mare, whose white nose had as audaciously trespassed this side of the briar hedge as had her master, and the girl had a look in her eyes of hospitable appreciation of the offence.

" I do not feel forgiven at all," he stammered. " What can I do ? " PRINCESS " Would you do anything ? " she asked suddenly. " Anything." " Would you let me ride on your horse just a little way ? " " I am honoured," he said, with great gravity. " Can you ride ? " " No." " Then I must hold you, or you will fall off." She went eagerly to the side of the horse. He hesitated for a moment, then lifted her into the saddle and led the horse gently across the orchard. " You sit beautifully," he said. She flushed with pleasure. " What is your name ? " " Princess Wells," she answered simply. ■■■■ " I dislike Oswald Thurston," said Lady Helen, as the few remaining guests gathered round the tea-table at Hansdale, all a little conscious that the most inter esting male visitor had deserted them for the afternoon.

" He has a way of chaperoning himself." " It is an idiosyncrasy of the modern man," asserted their hostess. " It is his ideals he chaperons," said Mrs. Clive ; " he is vulnerable on all other sides." " Oswald, or the modern man ? " queried Lady Helen. " Oh, Oswald ! The modern man has no ideals, and is quite invulnerable." " You are in excellent spirits ! Where have you been all the afternoon ? " said Mrs. Clive at dinner to Lord Thurston. PRINCESS " I rode away to the end of the world." " And what did you find there ? " " An enchanted place ! " " Over the edge ? " He laughed. " Just over the edge ! " " Then you had to come back without " Without my illusions." " Your illusions ? " " Yes ; I dropped them in the chasm between.' " The loss of your illusions seems to have cheered you." " They were so ugly — selfish, morbid, disbelieving illusions.

Illusions about the shallowness of the world, and the crookedness and heartlessness and artificiality of one's fellow-creatures." " I should like to lose those illusions," she said, with something of a sad note in her mellow voice. " So you found the world was very deep there at the edge — that you had only known the surface of things— the extraneous matter that rises to the too, such as " " Lady Helen," he interrupted " A name for the world we live in here ? " she answered. " That some of you are drawn into. " You qualify your censure ! Well, you know I like superficiality : it saves one from the mires of feel ing where tragedy is apt to have its abode." " That's an illusion you must lose." " Only by rising to the surface." She laughed. " And was your enchanted place inhabited ? " " Enchanted places are never inhabited."

" Did you leave us all in the chasm between ? " PRINCESS " Not you. Only something I had heard of you. I let it sink to the depths for ever." " Ah ! that was a pity. You know things said of one are not necessarily untrue because they are un kind. You know," she continued, " I think all the same your enchanted place was inhabited." " What can I say ? " " Tell me her name ? " "Janet." "Janet?" " Yes, she cooks and washes and dreams about royal weddings." " That's enough ! She's plebeian and a snob, an intolerable compound " "Without the mixture Lady Helen could receive no homage." " You are flippant. Your good humour lasts." " With you " " What is she like ? " " She has a dear little shiny face, a dear little nose that disdains the earth, and teeth like new milk, they are so white." " Her hair ?

" " As black as yours, and braided." " You are infatuated with a barmaid ! " " Not a barmaid — but infatuated." " I won't allow it." " Will you come and see her ? " he said. " Don't ask me to call till after the ceremony." Thurston laughed, and warmed at the thought of a ceremony. The golden-haired little stranger as a bride would surprise even Mrs. Clive to a bending of the knee. PRINCESS But on the morrow something of his vision had faded. Surely his senses had befooled him ? He had seen a wondrously pretty girl — that was all — in an orchard behind a briar hedge. The briar hedge had pricked his imagination. Moreover, he had been overdosed with the refined vulgarity of Lady Helen. An appetite for simple girlhood had enwrapped an ordinary little person, possessed of a sweet voice and an old-world manner, with attributes it desired.

Undoubtedly on closer observation he would find the little Princess — whoever she was — as ordinary as the rest of the world. As to marrying her, well, that was ridiculous. He had surely not thought of matrimony ! It would be amusing to see her again, nevertheless, if only to disillusion him from the absurd idea that He hesitated in his medi tations, and found himself dwelling more keenly on the recollection of the scene in the little orchard. Yes ; the absurd idea that she was purer, fairer, rarer than any woman he had ever seen in the world — the most desirable, the most adorable. He trampled on the superlatives with the sneer of the morning man awakened to the commonplaces of life by the neces sity of having to shave. Thurston remained three days at the mercy of those of the house party who had not left.

He thrust the vision of the little girl beyond the wood into the background of his thoughts, where she kept him constant though unsubstantial company, and gave himself up to their pleasures with an amount of good temper that was unusual in him. He found it possible to be amiable even to Lady Helen. He sat under the fire of Mrs. Clive's witticisms with a PRINCESS lazy appreciation that struck that good lady as ominous of some inward gratification that outward things had no power to reach. " What is it ? " she questioned. " You are in an abnormally good temper." " I am always in a good temper. " Naturally you are the most violent-tempered man I know." " I'll be violent if you wish it." " The offer is too good-natured to assure any result. I think I prefer you volcanic. You had better go back and fetch those ' illusions ' ; they made you disagreeable, but amusing."

" I'll go, though I can't promise to bring anything back, unless I find she's an illusion," he said to him self. Accordingly, next day Mrs. Clive watched him mount the white mare and ride away — " to the end of the world," she mused, which, had she known it, was just as far as the briar hedge. Ill One morning Boo was summoned to the laboratory. What had happened that she should be asked to go into that dreadful place ? She put down her book with a slight tremor of the old hands, and hurried away. It was a long climb to the top of the tall house, so that when Miss Westoby reached the hateful door she stopped to take breath and settle such scattered thoughts as had, on the surprising message, gone off on a tangent ; but the door was immediately flung open by Doctor Wells himself. " Come in," PRINCESS he said hastily, and retreated to the window.

She followed in meek submission, not daring to look either to the right or to the left. Might she not see poor live things stretched in agony, which she could not succour ? There were no live things : nevertheless the might be was as substantial as a were to the imaginative little woman, and she suffered accord ingly. On raising her eyes at last she found that his were averted, and an expression in them of strange gloating greed. The look shocked her : she followed hurriedly the direction of his glance ; then the little woman turned pale and trembled. "Doctor," she exclaimed, " I assure you I know nothing of this ! " " I believe you," he said, showing his teeth with something of a grin. " I have called you up to beg you to continue to know nothing of it, but to keep your eyes open and report to me how matters proceed."

Miss Westoby was stunned. " I don't understand," she stammered ; " you surely do not wish " " I certainly do wish — with proper supervision — I shall interfere at the right time. This is the third occasion. Of course they may have met before." " The third time ! But anything may happen if it is allowed to continue without my warning her. We cannot control things should they choose to go out of our sight," she pleaded. " Madam, you have brought up my daughter." " She is so innocent." " That will be her safeguard." " Good gracious me ! but the man ! " gasped the amazed little woman. " I know my man," he said, and again showed his PRINCESS teeth in a grim smile. Miss Westoby found herself, in spite of the terrible situation, pitying the trans gressor. " I will watch," .she said in horrified acquiescence.

" Might I venture to ask your purpose ? " He laughed. " You shall know my purpose in time. . . . She is coming in. Not a word to her ! " Boo was dismissed sorely conscience-stricken. She mitigated the pangs by a self-assurance that if things proceeded much further she would rescue Princess in spite of orders. The man should be challenged for an explanation of such clandestine proceedings. He was known to the doctor — that baffled her com prehension. How much did the wizard practitioner know of " his man " ? Again she was inclined to pity. Nevertheless it was abominable behaviour on the stranger's part. She would certainly be on the alert, an untired sentinel. Never in the long years of this good little lady's administration of the doctor's household had she experienced such a shock to her sensibilities.

The whole affair seemed incomprehen sible. Her little charge was doing wrong, innocently enough, of course, but wrong, and she was not to be allowed to stretch a hand to warn her. That seemed dreadful. She selected a window in an upper room, and day after day from her vantage point she saw Princess stroll out to a secluded end of the orchard and pass an hour, or half an hour, talking and walking under the briar hedge with a strange man. The practitioner she knew was watching from the laboratory overhead. The situation struck her as ridiculous, and then anew as grave. A sense of humour balanced PRINCESS a somewhat stifling feeling of apprehension. She stretched an eager eye, whilst a smile at the girl's audacity twitched at the corner of the old mouth. Princess had not yet strayed from the line of vision.

Thus far things went well, if things so ill could be called well. The two wandered about and talked and laughed, and the man seemed to take no advan tage of their little girl presumably in his power. " Oh ! you strange, impossible girl ! How often have I been here ? " " Seventeen times ! " Princess said deliberately. They were sitting under the hawthorn hedge in a little hollow, perhaps several feet deep. Banks of grass were on three sides of them ; on the fourth the declivity continued down to a miniature valley in the orchard, where a tiny streamlet made a blue vein in the lap of the green ; beyond, the verdure rose high, again relapsing into moorland as the trees grew sparse a little before reaching the straggling fence. Princess, if she looked upwards just behind her golden head, could see only a line of waving, monster grass, where now and then winged and crawling inhabitants would spy down in surprise at the human giants below.

A butterfly would beat a wing sud denly against her cheek, or a big humming beetle flop on her lap to investigate the unusual phenomenon. " And you won't let me come any more ? " he said. " No more," she said, and pulled off the head of a daisy. She seemed sorry about the decapitation, and caressed the white starry remains in her hand. " You treat me like your daisy ! " he complained. " I hope not," she said, and dropped it hurriedly. PRINCESS " You have not cut off my head yet, but you have done everything else, and now you propose to throw me away just as you have your poor little flower. Why mayn't I come any more ? " " You always wish me to come without telling Boo." " You know there is no harm in that. We started in a game, we were acting a fairy tale. I, according to Janet, was your knight who came to the castle to see — to see — and then we both thought it was — was — was so much nicer that our friendship should be a secret.

Our secret ! You used to say yourself it was such fun escaping from Boo." " I know — I know," said Princess hurriedly, and then hesitated. Her fairy folk lore had told her that the humble maid, or royal princess, should meet a friendly knight on the castle wall, or in the woods, with no discredit to her maidenliness. She had thrilled with pleasure at the importance of such a secret acquaintanceship. It had been a childish custom with herself and Janet always to have a secret from Boo. Boo was generally informed that such was in the air, and had always paid great respect to these affairs, showing occasionally a timely curiosity to keep alive the flame of interest. Princess's relations with Thurston had started in this way. Boo had been informed that there was a secret on hand : but now a new sense had awakened in the girl that made her shrink from publishing the thing that had grown sacred to her.