The woman, the man, and the monster

Foreword

The plot of this novel is surprisingly unique. Some of the situations are so startling as fairly to take away the breath. The incident of the motor car in the first chapter does not seem to be anything unusual until the last paragraph of that chapter is reached. The difficult situation in which the Man finds the Woman is only the fore-runner of a series of such dramatic denouements as make the intrigue which is the main thread of the story interesting to an intense degree. The beauty of the heroine, her delightful mentality, her quickness of wit and perception, are all charming features of the story. And there are romantic hillside love scenes, with kisses colored by the sunset, and the daintiest of wooings and cooings with always a mystery and a fearsome shadow in the background. F. F.

BOOK I PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA i

The car had stopped on the hillside for its owner to admire the fine view offered by a wide wooded valley, dotted here and there with patches of green field, which stretched away on his left until brought up sharp against the skyline by a high range of distant hills. Up this valley, stirring the grasses ever so lightly, came the softest of southerly breezes, warm with the sun which sailed through a cloudless sky. No sign was there of man or beast. Just then the world was all his own.

He opened wide his mouth and filled his lungs with a deep draught of the delicious air. He was a man of some thirty-five years of age, dark of complexion, straight of feature, with the wide, serious eyes of a poet.

“What do you think of it, Ixion?” he asked, addressing the man at the wheel.

The Woman, the Man, arid the Monster

“She took it like butter, sir,” replied Ixion, otherwise John Smales.

Carey Vermont heaved a portentous sigh and straightway collapsed.

“Go on,” he moaned. “Oh, Lord, go on!”

Then a curious thing happened. There was a sudden crash, the engine raced like mad, making a grinding noise; but instead of going forward, the car began to run backward until pulled up by the brake. Ixion at once shut off his engine and sprang to the ground.

“What’s the matter now?” inquired the owner in a resigned voice, peering over the side of the car.

“Just what I’m wondering, sir. Something serious, I’m afraid.”

Carey Vermont shook his head and smiled. He thanked Heaven that he was a philosopher. No man has a right to go motoring in a motor-car who is not.

Smales opened the bonnet and peered in, but was quickly convinced that the trouble was not there. In the meantime, his master had alighted from the car and joined him.

“It seemed to me,” he said deferentially, as 2 became a tyro in these matters, “that the grinding noise came from somewhere underneath.”

“Yes, sir, I think you’re right,” admitted Ixion.

Without more ado he crawled under the car, remaining for some ten minutes or so on the broad of his back. When he crawled out again his face reflected much perturbation.

“Yes, sir,” he announced gravely, “I’m afraid it is serious. The bevelled wheel is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Cracked!”

“How the deuce could that have happened?”

Smales shook his head.

“Must have been sprung, sir.”

He did not think it necessary to inform his master that the fault was probably his, through slipping the clutch in too quickly. Such confessions merely complicate matters and lead to no practical results.

“What are we to do?”

Ixion ’s face lengthened perceptibly. It was not by nature a long face, but the dropped jaw added considerably to its significance.

“Can’t you mend it?” added the owner a little irritably. “Patch it up, or something?”

“I’m afraid not. It will require a new wheel.”

Mr. Vermont’s philosophy was likely to prove of service to him now. It was one thing to feel gloriously alone on the hilltop with a perfect twenty-horse-power car at his service, but another to find that car suddenly become no more useful than a scrap-heap, and the nearest town some dusty miles distant.

“How far off is Guildford?”

“About five miles, sir.”

“Well, John” — it was always “John” when he was serious — “there’s nothing before you but a tramp. Cut along, like a good fellow. I suppose we shall have to tow this derelict into port?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. You know what to do. Be as quick as you can. I’ll sit amid the ruins of Carthage and ruminate on the mutability of — motor cars.”

Ixion swung away up the hill and disappeared over the brow of it. There was a humorous twinkle in Vermont’s eyes as he contemplated the ineffable car. But a short time ago they had dashed through Dorking in all the glory of whirring wheels, throbbing engine and odorous petrol. Hill or level had come alike to her; gluttonously, insatiably, she had eaten up the brown miles of roadway. This last hill she had taken “like butter,” as Ixion so admirably described it. Over in Aldershot, whither he was dashing, they might have to wait for dinner. Well, that could not be helped, either. The man who entrusts his destiny to the modern spirit of speed is putting a premium on delay.

He lit a pipe and sat by the roadside, his feet buried in the rank grasses which grew profusely hereabouts. It was summer, summer in all its abandoned glory. The earth teemed with sweet grasses and sweet smells; there was no room for another leaf on tree or shrub. Now it was a breath of the pines that reached him; occasionally the sweet, cloying taste of clover clung to lip and nostril. The pipe was a sacrilege on such a day. He knocked out the ashes and rose to his feet.

With mock seriousness he apostrophised the car. She was a beautiful creature, the perfec- 5 tion of graceful symmetry, her complexion red and gold. The unimaginative would have spoken of the latter as brass; but he was not of that kind. He had no need to be practical, for fortune had not been unkind to him. She did not harass him over the taxes, or constrain him to dream incessantly of butcher and baker — vulgar but most potent factors of destiny. In youth he had stuffed his head with the poets ; now that a few grey hairs were beginning to show above the ears he occasionally thought of more serious things. Even a poet cannot for ever bathe in the sacred rills of Parnassus.

Moreover, there was no doubt that the car had broken down. That was the plain, unvarnished English of the situation. Pegasus had damaged a wing; Icarus had touched the _<Egean. But she was still beautiful in the sun, and showed no sign of wear, tear or damage.

“It’s the canker in the rose,” he muttered. “What a pity!”

He knew that Smales, the ever-worthy, might be trusted to use all despatch; also he knew that circumstances arise over which even an indomitable Smales has no authority. Especially do these occur where the irreverent 6 passer-by can make a mock of suffering. Solitude seems to have been created for the misfortunes of motor-cars.

The hilltop was not more than a hundred yards away, and insensibly he gravitated towards it. That point reached, he looked round at the wonderful stretch of hill and vale that faded away in the infinite blue. Only a few yards off, the road taken by Ixion dropped sheer into the valley beneath him, where it lost itself in a wilderness of foliage. He pictured that practical one trudging onward in heavy boots, and smiled rather curiously to himself. Then he looked back at his beauty as she lay dozing in the sun, her brasswork all ablaze, her complexion flawless.

“I understand now why they call you ‘she,’ ” he mused.

On his right a path opened across the summit of the hill, and almost without thinking he entered it. For a little distance it twisted through various shades of undergrowth. Summer was revelling here in all her wild luxuriance. As from the shore the sea always seems fuller when the tide is in, so to him just then did the world seem full of leaves and grasses 7 and the smell of sweet things. Somewhere in the blue distance a lark was singing; between the pauses he caught the hum of multitudinous life.

Just here the path began to dip a little, growing wilder and more tangled as it went; but still pursuing it in the same aimless, objectless fashion, he presently found himself on the edge of a small plantation of silver beeches. Here he paused for a while. The track might lead to the other end of the county, for all he knew, and just then he recollected that he had left his beautiful one standing unguarded by the wayside. However, he would' enter that clump yonder and then return.

He stepped out, carelessly glancing to right and left of him, when on turning a sharp bend he came to a sudden standstill, and fairly gasped for breath.

Before him, not a dozen yards away, was a woman, stark naked, bound to a smooth, straight sapling! Her hair, long and yellow, hung across her shoulders and partly hid her breasts. But she was looking at him, intensely, eagerly, with eyes that gleamed curiously from under heavy, level brows.

II

He stood as one transfixed, then let his glance drop before hers. Usually he reckoned himself a man of resource, but in a situation of this nature he lost all power of initiative, almost of thought. Her voice recalled him to his senses.

“Please set me free,” she said.

The voice was clear, cold almost, with a suspicion of irritability. He started like one awaking from a dream; then the blood rushed to his brain, his eyes, and almost blinded him.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered.

It was odd how the commonplaces of life bubbled to the tongue. It seemed to him that had he searched for a year he could not have lighted on a phrase more inept.

Without looking at her, though Heaven knows she seemed to fill the whole orbit of his vision, he stole round to the back of the sapling, opening his pocketknife with fingers that 9

The Woman , the Man , and the Monster.

trembled excessively. Her arms had been put round the slender trunk of the young tree, and the wrists bound together with a silken cord, probably some fastening of cloak or cape. At this he sawed nervously. Also he noticed that her wrists were swollen and bruised, due, no doubt, to violent efforts at freedom. Her shoulders looked red and angry where they had come in contact with the trunk.

As he cut through the last strand he heard her utter a cry of relief, and a sudden, terrifying thought flashed through his brain. Was she going to faint? Happily, she was not of the fainting kind. He turned his back on her as he spoke.

“Where are your clothes?”

“I haven’t any.”

“Haven’t any!” he echoed, aghast.

“No; they took them away.”

“They?”

“The men who did this.”

“The villains!”

She gave a low, contemptuous laugh.

“Can’t you get me something — somewhere?”

“Wait a minute. My car’s over there.”

“Your car?”

The Woman , the Man , and the Monster.

“We had a breakdown. My man has gone into Guildford for help. I won’t be a second.”

He made an oblique move for the pathway, still keeping his back to her. Then he positively flew on his errand.

In the car was a portmanteau containing a complete change of gear. This he hauled out excitedly, dashed up the hill again and along the path. As he neared the point once more he slackened his pace and looked carefully round. There was neither sight nor sign of her; but from the bushes on his right her voice came to him:

“Leave it there. I’ll see what I can do.” He set it down. “Is it open?” she asked again. He stooped down and opened it.

“Yes.”

“Very well. Thanks, so much.”

Swiftly he retreated towards the roadway, his mind whirling with conjecture. Below him his red and gold beauty still glistened in the sun. But he saw her only with his eyes. This new white and gold beauty now obsessed his vision. Who was she? How did she come to be in such a horrible predicament? In these 11 days, too! It was monstrous, absurd! He almost wondered if he had been dreaming.

He sat on the bank by the roadway and lit a cigarette. Phew! this was an anachronism! Such things did not really happen in these days; they could not. Surely he had been dreaming of wicked knights and maidens in distress? Dreaming! But there was no dream about it. There was the car, sure enough, and Smales — Smales was no mediaeval dream. Honest Ixion, with his honest, blunt face and his round, dog-like eyes. What a blessing he had not lighted on this discovery. How inexpressibly shocked he would have been!

What was she doing now? Getting into his things, no doubt. The thought caused a humorous line to form round the corner of his mouth. There was a complete outfit in the portmanteau. Would she know how to put the things on? Good heavens! if he had only known! But of course he didn’t. How should he?

The sound of dragging footsteps caused him to spring hastily to his feet and as quickly glance round. A singular and most grotesque figure came slowly towards him through the 12 leaves ; a quaint, white-faced, yellow-haired boy in clothes many sizes too large for him. The coat hung low in the neck and shoulders and seemed as though it could easily hold two of her; the trousers were unspeakable! Though she had carefully turned up the extremities, they still sagged and hung about her in the < most revolting fashion. Even as it was, she was holding up the horrible garment with both hands. Seeing the excruciating look of wonder on his face, she smiled.

“You forgot the braces,” she said.

“So I did. How absurd of me! A thousand pardons.” But as he only had one pair, which he was wearing at the time, he forbore a fuller explanation.

“The shoes are rather large,” she said plaintively, looking down at them with a sad shake of the head.

He confessed it. They did look monstrous, absurd. Yet he had once thought them rather smart. They were something special in the way of patent-leather, something of which his Bond Street bootmaker had been inordinately proud. Certainly, they looked grotesque 13

The Woman J the Man , and the Monster enough on those little feet, encircling those slim ankles.

“They’re horrible,” he said seriously. “I apologise.”

“But better than nothing.”

He would not say so. That, however, was a matter of opinion. She had certainly chosen his prettiest socks.

“Is that your car?” she asked, pointing down the road, where the Spirit of Speed, her wings folded, lay dozing in the sun.

“Yes. Do you think you can walk so far?”

“Of course.”

He gave her his .hand and helped her down the embankment to the road. Then she toddled along beside him, the loose shoes making a curious, scraping sound as they trailed over the gravelled road, yet beating a fantastic rhythm in his whirl of thought. Neither spoke. Certainly, she may not have wished to, and as certainly he was thinking of too many things to make commonplace enquiries. Just then any question might have sounded impertinent. All the same, he was fairly bubbling with curiosity.

“What a handsome car!” she said.

If this was not an effort to put him at his ease he was indeed a dolt. And all the time he had been wondering how he could best mitigate the situation, render it least unpleasant for her. Duly admiring her tact, he at once plunged into the merits and demerits of motor-cars. She listened amiably, and upon occasion interpolated an illuminating remark. Evidently, she knew something of the subject. His amazement deepened.

He helped her aboard, saw her comfortably seated, and spread a rug across her knees. She smiled her thanks, but said nothing. Yet her eyes — deep, dark-blue eyes — seemed intently to watch his every movement. To him they looked curiously dark in so fair a face. At a little distance they appeared almost black. At first he thought they were brightly humorous, then it seemed to him that they were mocking. The mouth, too — a full, red, mocking mouth — was it also laughing, or was it merely his fancy? He could not be sure. A longer look assured him that the eyes were clear and frank. And then he discovered, or thought he discovered, the cause of that strange concentration of gaze. Her brows, in curious contrast with her hair, 15 were dark and heavy, and instead of being delicately arched, ran almost straight.

“I’m afraid I can offer you no tea,” he said, opening a light luncheon basket; “but if a weak whiskey and soda ”

“Admirable!” she said. “You are very kind.”

He handed her a plate of sweet biscuits, and then mixed the whiskey and soda. Without waiting to say grace, she immediately began to munch.

“I’m literally starving.”

“How long were you — there?” he ventured to ask.

“I don’t know. An hour, I think; perhaps two — three. It seemed like eternity.”

He looked at her with eyes that questioned — begged; but she gave no sign of understanding that look, nor did she make further confession. Her little white teeth bit into the biscuits and cracked them with gusto.

“I wish I could do more for you,” he said.

“I don’t see how you could really do more. I dread to think what might have happened

if ”

“Oh, well, it didn’t, so we needn’t discuss it. You have mixed this whiskey and soda to perfection. It tastes like champagne.”

“You must permit me to drive you home,” he said stolidly.

“Home!” she echoed. “That’s a long way off. And, in any case, I thought you told me the car had broken down?”

“True; but I am expecting my man back with help.” He looked at his watch. “He ought to be near Guildford now, if he hasn’t gone to sleep on the way.”

She laughed. Somehow he thought it strange that she should laugh. Also, she may have observed that look of respectful interrogation, for the corners of her mouth dropped suddenly, and her heavy white lids drooped languidly.

“Of course, you want to know all about me?”

“I am entirely at your service,” he answered.

“What if I cannot tell you?”

“I am still entirely at your service.”

“Polite, but perfunctory.”

“On the contrary, I am deeply interested.”

Slowly the heavy lids rose, and she looked at him with eyes that had neither fear nor 17 shame. But there was a deep, searching light in them of which he suddenly became vaguely aware.

“You do not know who I am?”

“In a way — yes.”

“In a way?” The glance grew instantly acute.

“I have read of you.”

“Read of me?”

“It happened in Ethiopia.”

“In Ethiopia?”

He was smiling. Her straight brows compressed in a vain endeavour to read his meaning.

“I don’t understand.”

“Andromeda.”

“O-o-h! Are you a poet, Mr.——-”

“Vermont — Carey Vermont. No, I dare not hope so.”

“Was it not Perseus who saved Andromeda from the monster?”

“Yes.”

“The parallel is perfect. You, also, have saved me from a monster.”

“It is iniquitous — — ” he began hotly.

“Perfectly — in every detail. But what can you do with a monster — hut kill him?”

The little teeth came together; dark flashes of hate shot out of the slumbrous eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered apologetically.

“It is a natural curiosity, Mr. Vermont. I only regret that I cannot satisfy it.”

“I hope you do not think so ill of me?”

“Naturally, I would think well of men. No! forgive me. I did not mean that.”

“I admit justification.”

“It was my misfortune to meet with a monster.”

“It will be my pleasure to help you, if you will permit me. Tell me how I can be of service.”

“Tell me what Perseus did with Andromeda.”

He smiled. “I suppose he took her home.”

“Exceedingly prosaic,” she remarked.

“But natural.”

“I wonder.”

He rather liked the native wit of her. Such a woman might be very strong upon occasion.

“It is a little awkward, this accident to the 19 car,” he said; “but if Ixion returns with another ”

“Ixion?”

“His name is not really Ixion, but Smales — John Smales. It may not be classic, but it’s most respectable.”

“A man with a name like John Smales ought to be the pink of propriety.”

“He is.”

“Do you think it would do for him to know?”

“I don’t. John has round, serious eyes and a quite suburban intelligence. He ought to be in the City and leave at Ealing.”

“What will he say if he sees me like this?” ! She spread out her hands in protest. He noticed that they were small, very white, and beautifully modelled. Also, that they seemed whiter by contrast with the cruel weals round the wrists.

“He will say nothing, being much too well bred; but what he will think!”

“We must circumvent this dragon of propriety.”

The eyes were lazily laughing now; also, a delicate colour had come to her cheeks. And 20 this coupling of herself with him was the one touch needed to remove mountainous obstructions.

“I am in your hands — Andromeda.”

She smiled — perhaps prophetically. But he saw only the bewildering curve of lip, the faint flush that, as he gazed, deepened the wonder of her skin.

“Then we must prepare to receive him. Not for worlds would I cause a blush to darken the pure brow of British respectability.”

This jarred on him; he would rather she had not said it. But he was glad she could not plumb the profundities of his philistinism. Philistinism! He, Carey Vermont, a private in the great Suburban Army! A private — ■* nay, a colonel, at least, a veritable major-general! Herein was the vast superiority of woman. She had no petty prejudices, and not the shadow of a scruple.

“Do you know,” she said, “I think you ought to fetch that portmanteau. He might miss it.”

Colloquial commonplaces lost all their vulgarity on pretty lips. He thought it a suggestion of superabundant wisdom. The conjunc- 21 tion of the practical with the transcendental is one of woman’s most bewitching charms.

“I will,” he said. “And, oh, by the way, if you should feel cold you might get into that fur coat.”

She smiled a due appreciation of his foresight. He turned away and walked up the hill.

Ill

In all the tales of rescue that he had ever read he could not remember one in which the hero, in spite of direful stress, had found his heroine anything but a delightful and felicitous charge. In books the most amazing situations seemed to right themselves automatically ; all trifles were ignored, and only the broad issues thought worthy of consideration. But in reality trifles have a pernicious habit of sprouting until they assume a monstrous growth. The fungus that grows in a night is as nothing to the situation that grows in a moment. Man, and incidentally woman, is still the most bewildering product of nature.

Who was she, and how did she come to be in such a plight? If she would not tell him it was obvious he could not ask; but what in the name of conjecture was he to do with her? A lady, too; of that there could be no question. Not, perhaps, a lady as one understands the modern application of the word, with its cringing affectations and false modesties, but something bigger, bolder — as Cleopatra might have been a lady, or Marguerite de Valois. Certainly there was no pretence either of glory or of shame. Life was a play in which the situations were arranged with exquisite cruelty, and men and women but a set of mimes who obeyed the rules set down for them by the Great Author. Sometimes the drama was comic, but oftener tragic. Men and women were forced into comicalities by the sheer brutality of life. It was the only thing that saved them from despair.

There was that in this situation, however, which appealed both to his philosophy and his sense of humour; nor could he accept as a tragedy that in which she appeared to see the chief elements of the comic. Of the two the occasion seemed to cause her the less concern. And if she, the chief sufferer, should approach the incident with such apparent nonchalance, how could he play the part of the heavy father? Moreover, he was supremely conscious of not being suitable to such a role, and it always had painful associations.

But your true dreamer is always the most practical of persons, else he would never shape his dreams* This adventure had stepped down from the realms of fancy into the bright sunlight of reality, and of a truth it seemed the better for so doing. If a little bewildered, he was not quarrelling with fate; but the sensation of novelty was a trifle disconcerting.

Also, she was a quaintly beautiful creature. He was not sure that she would take life too seriously. Those mocking lips were as yet merely a suggestion of an infinitely singular nature; the mocking glance, was it not indicative of a subtle and keen intelligence? Nevertheless, those eyes were wonderful. He had always been a student of woman’s eyes, and a great lover of them. Not alone were they the lamps of the soul, the leaves of intelligence, but they were something more than this — the epitome and essence of that subtle distinction of sex which embraces all and more than is expressed by the term feminine. Women have wonderful eyes, nor would he admit that the least prepossessing of them was wholly without significance. For someone there is always a ray of light.

And Andromeda — for so in his mind he called her — had eyes that might have bewildered even the unresponsive monster. Unconsciously he found himself sighing for the simpler classic days. Such adventures should not befall a hero in these times. They unmanned one. Perseus, gazing, grew instantly enamoured of her loveliness: Carey Vermont, ungallantly, had to turn his back on her. What a century!

Thinking thus, he approached the slender sapling to which she had been bound, and stood for quite a little time in contemplation before it. Then suddenly he leant forward and kissed the place against which her body had rested. Contact with the smooth bole thrilled him inconceivably. He looked up, and there was laughter in his eyes.

The cord with which she had been bound lay where he had dropped it. Stooping down, he picked it up and slipped it into his breast pocket. Odd that he should be trembling so! What will-o’-the-wisp was this that fluttered like fire through his brain?

Andromeda!

Not until he turned to go did he remember 26 the real object of this journey. Eagerly he looked round, but the portmanteau was nowhere to be seen. Then suddenly he recollected that her voice had come to him from the bushes yonder, and thither he went, curiously aglow with a singularly inexplicable sensation.

Screened by the clump of bushes was a little grass plot, and there he found the portmanteau, open, its contents scattered all over the place —here a discarded coat, there a shirt, while socks and other necessary garments lay exposed to the view. He smiled slowly to himself as he gathered them up. Tidiness was evidently one of the dull virtues at whose shrine she did not worship. Yet it was not without some amusement that he conjured up the picture of her arraying. All things considered, she had done remarkably well — though he had left her neither braces nor hairpins. And what wonderful hair she had!

When he returned to the car he found that she had arrayed herself in the fur coat as he had suggested, and a quaint little figure she looked in its voluminous folds. She saw the smile on his face and greeted him with a serious shake of the head.

“Like charity,” she said, “it covers a multitude of sins. You are so large, Perseus.”

“I’m so sorry ” he began.

“Please don’t apologise; it’s a good fault. I hate little men. But I did look a hideous fright. Besides, I was afraid of shocking Smales. You’ve no idea how the thought of him appalls me. But with this coat on, and a cap and goggles ” She looked at him ap-

pealingly, making a quaint little mouth.

“Excellent,” he answered, and forthwith produced both goggles and cap. The latter, like all his other things, was much too large for her, but it confined admirably her wealth of hair. The huge goggles effectually concealed her identity.

“Now tell me,” she asked, “what do I look like? Positively hideous, eh?”

“On the contrary, more delightfully mysterious than ever.”

“Ah, so it is the mystery that still seems of such preponderating importance? I thought men were not curious.”

“You will admit that the circumstances are a little unusual.”

“Is that a fault?”

“On the contrary, it is that which makes the occasion so infinitely charming.”

“What if I should be a reincarnation of her whom you rescued so long ago?”