Chapter XIII…

Chapter XIII

The sun went down an hour ago, I wonder if I face towards home; If I lost my way in the light of day How shall I find it now night is come? --Old Song

“Maisie, come to bed.”

“It's so hot I can't sleep. Don't worry.”

Maisie put her elbows on the window-sill and looked at the moonlight on the straight, poplar-flanked road. Summer had come upon Vitry-sur-Marne and parched it to the bone. The grass was dry-burnt in the meadows, the clay by the bank of the river was caked to brick, the roadside flowers were long since dead, and the roses in the garden hung withered on their stalks. The heat in the little low bedroom under the eaves was almost intolerable. The very moonlight on the wall of Kami's studio across the road seemed to make the night hotter, and the shadow of the big bell-handle by the closed gate cast a bar of inky black that caught Maisie's eye and annoyed her.

“Horrid thing! It should be all white,” she murmured. “And the gate isn't in the middle of the wall, either. I never noticed that before.”

Maisie was hard to please at that hour. First, the heat of the past few weeks had worn her down; secondly, her work, and particularly the study of a female head intended to represent the Melancolia and not finished in time for the Salon, was unsatisfactory; thirdly, Kami had said as much two days before; fourthly,--but so completely fourthly that it was hardly worth thinking about,--Dick, her property, had not written to her for more than six weeks. She was angry with the heat, with Kami, and with her work, but she was exceedingly angry with Dick.

She had written to him three times,--each time proposing a fresh treatment of her Melancolia. Dick had taken no notice of these communications. She had resolved to write no more. When she returned to England in the autumn--for her pride's sake she could not return earlier--she would speak to him. She missed the Sunday afternoon conferences more than she cared to admit. All that Kami said was, “Continuez, mademoiselle, continuez toujours,” and he had been repeating the wearisome counsel through the hot summer, exactly like a cicada,--an old gray cicada in a black alpaca coat, white trousers, and a huge felt hat.

But Dick had tramped masterfully up and down her little studio north of the cool green London park, and had said things ten times worse than continuez, before he snatched the brush out of her hand and showed her where the error lay. His last letter, Maisie remembered, contained some trivial advice about not sketching in the sun or drinking water at wayside farmhouses; and he had said that not once, but three times,--as if he did not know that Maisie could take care of herself.

But what was he doing, that he could not trouble to write? A murmur of voices in the road made her lean from the window. A cavalryman of the little garrison in the town was talking to Kami's cook. The moonlight glittered on the scabbard of his sabre, which he was holding in his hand lest it should clank inopportunely. The cook's cap cast deep shadows on her face, which was close to the conscript's. He slid his arm round her waist, and there followed the sound of a kiss.

“Faugh!” said Maisie, stepping back.

“What's that?” said the red-haired girl, who was tossing uneasily outside her bed.

“Only a conscript kissing the cook,” said Maisie.

“They've gone away now.” She leaned out of the window again, and put a shawl over her nightgown to guard against chills. There was a very small night-breeze abroad, and a sun-baked rose below nodded its head as one who knew unutterable secrets. Was it possible that Dick should turn his thoughts from her work and his own and descend to the degradation of Suzanne and the conscript? He could not! The rose nodded its head and one leaf therewith. It looked like a naughty little devil scratching its ear.

Dick could not, “because,” thought Maisie, “he is mine,--mine,--mine. He said he was. I'm sure I don't care what he does. It will only spoil his work if he does; and it will spoil mine too.”

The rose continued to nod in the futile way peculiar to flowers. There was no earthly reason why Dick should not disport himself as he chose, except that he was called by Providence, which was Maisie, to assist Maisie in her work. And her work was the preparation of pictures that went sometimes to English provincial exhibitions, as the notices in the scrap-book proved, and that were invariably rejected by the Salon when Kami was plagued into allowing her to send them up. Her work in the future, it seemed, would be the preparation of pictures on exactly similar lines which would be rejected in exactly the same way----The red-haired girl threshed distressfully across the sheets. “It's too hot to sleep,” she moaned; and the interruption jarred.

Exactly the same way. Then she would divide her years between the little studio in England and Kami's big studio at Vitry-sur-Marne. No, she would go to another master, who should force her into the success that was her right, if patient toil and desperate endeavour gave one a right to anything. Dick had told her that he had worked ten years to understand his craft. She had worked ten years, and ten years were nothing. Dick had said that ten years were nothing,--but that was in regard to herself only. He had said--this very man who could not find time to write--that he would wait ten years for her, and that she was bound to come back to him sooner or later. He had said this in the absurd letter about sunstroke and diphtheria; and then he had stopped writing. He was wandering up and down moonlit streets, kissing cooks. She would like to lecture him now,--not in her nightgown, of course, but properly dressed, severely and from a height. Yet if he was kissing other girls he certainly would not care whether she lecture him or not. He would laugh at her. Very good.

She would go back to her studio and prepare pictures that went, etc., etc.

The mill-wheel of thought swung round slowly, that no section of it might be slurred over, and the red-haired girl tossed and turned behind her.

Maisie put her chin in her hands and decided that there could be no doubt whatever of the villainy of Dick. To justify herself, she began, unwomanly, to weigh the evidence. There was a boy, and he had said he loved her. And he kissed her,--kissed her on the cheek,--by a yellow sea-poppy that nodded its head exactly like the maddening dry rose in the garden. Then there was an interval, and men had told her that they loved her--just when she was busiest with her work. Then the boy came back, and at their very second meeting had told her that he loved her. Then he had----But there was no end to the things he had done. He had given her his time and his powers. He had spoken to her of Art, housekeeping, technique, teacups, the abuse of pickles as a stimulant,--that was rude,--sable hair-brushes,--he had given her the best in her stock,--she used them daily; he had given her advice that she profited by, and now and again--a look. Such a look! The look of a beaten hound waiting for the word to crawl to his mistress's feet. In return she had given him nothing whatever, except--here she brushed her mouth against the open-work sleeve of her nightgown--the privilege of kissing her once. And on the mouth, too. Disgraceful! Was that not enough, and more than enough? and if it was not, had he not cancelled the debt by not writing and--probably kissing other girls? “Maisie, you'll catch a chill. Do go and lie down,” said the wearied voice of her companion. “I can't sleep a wink with you at the window.”

Maisie shrugged her shoulders and did not answer. She was reflecting on the meannesses of Dick, and on other meannesses with which he had nothing to do. The moonlight would not let her sleep. It lay on the skylight of the studio across the road in cold silver; she stared at it intently and her thoughts began to slide one into the other. The shadow of the big bell-handle in the wall grew short, lengthened again, and faded out as the moon went down behind the pasture and a hare came limping home across the road. Then the dawn-wind washed through the upland grasses, and brought coolness with it, and the cattle lowed by the drought-shrunk river. Maisie's head fell forward on the window-sill, and the tangle of black hair covered her arms.

“Maisie, wake up. You'll catch a chill.”

“Yes, dear; yes, dear.” She staggered to her bed like a wearied child, and as she buried her face in the pillows she muttered, “I think--I think--But he ought to have written.”

Day brought the routine of the studio, the smell of paint and turpentine, and the monotone wisdom of Kami, who was a leaden artist, but a golden teacher if the pupil were only in sympathy with him. Maisie was not in sympathy that day, and she waited impatiently for the end of the work.

She knew when it was coming; for Kami would gather his black alpaca coat into a bunch behind him, and, with faded flue eyes that saw neither pupils nor canvas, look back into the past to recall the history of one Binat. “You have all done not so badly,” he would say. “But you shall remember that it is not enough to have the method, and the art, and the power, nor even that which is touch, but you shall have also the conviction that nails the work to the wall. Of the so many I taught,”--here the students would begin to unfix drawing-pins or get their tubes together,--“the very so many that I have taught, the best was Binat. All that comes of the study and the work and the knowledge was to him even when he came. After he left me he should have done all that could be done with the colour, the form, and the knowledge. Only, he had not the conviction. So today I hear no more of Binat,--the best of my pupils,--and that is long ago. So today, too, you will be glad to hear no more of me. Continuez, mesdemoiselles, and, above all, with conviction.”

He went into the garden to smoke and mourn over the lost Binat as the pupils dispersed to their several cottages or loitered in the studio to make plans for the cool of the afternoon.

Maisie looked at her very unhappy Melancolia, restrained a desire to grimace before it, and was hurrying across the road to write a letter to Dick, when she was aware of a large man on a white troop-horse. How Torpenhow had managed in the course of twenty hours to find his way to the hearts of the cavalry officers in quarters at Vitry-sur-Marne, to discuss with them the certainty of a glorious revenge for France, to reduce the colonel to tears of pure affability, and to borrow the best horse in the squadron for the journey to Kami's studio, is a mystery that only special correspondents can unravel.

“I beg your pardon,” said he. “It seems an absurd question to ask, but the fact is that I don't know her by any other name: Is there any young lady here that is called Maisie?”

“I am Maisie,” was the answer from the depths of a great sun-hat.

“I ought to introduce myself,” he said, as the horse capered in the blinding white dust. “My name is Torpenhow. Dick Heldar is my best friend, and--and--the fact is that he has gone blind.”

“Blind!” said Maisie, stupidly. “He can't be blind.”

“He has been stone-blind for nearly two months.”

Maisie lifted up her face, and it was pearly white. “No! No! Not blind! I won't have him blind!”

“Would you care to see for yourself?” said Torpenhow.

“Now,--at once?”

“Oh, no! The Paris train doesn't go through this place till tonight. There will be ample time.”

“Did Mr. Heldar send you to me?”

“Certainly not. Dick wouldn't do that sort of thing. He's sitting in his studio, turning over some letters that he can't read because he's blind.”

There was a sound of choking from the sun-hat. Maisie bowed her head and went into the cottage, where the red-haired girl was on a sofa, complaining of a headache.

“Dick's blind!” said Maisie, taking her breath quickly as she steadied herself against a chair-back. “My Dick's blind!”

“What?” The girl was on the sofa no longer.

“A man has come from England to tell me. He hasn't written to me for six weeks.”

“Are you going to him?”

“I must think.”

“Think! I should go back to London and see him and I should kiss his eyes and kiss them and kiss them until they got well again! If you don't go I shall. Oh, what am I talking about? You wicked little idiot! Go to him at once. Go!”

Torpenhow's neck was blistering, but he preserved a smile of infinite patience as Maisie's appeared bareheaded in the sunshine.

“I am coming,” said she, her eyes on the ground.

“You will be at Vitry Station, then, at seven this evening.” This was an order delivered by one who was used to being obeyed. Maisie said nothing, but she felt grateful that there was no chance of disputing with this big man who took everything for granted and managed a squealing horse with one hand. She returned to the red-haired girl, who was weeping bitterly, and between tears, kisses,--very few of those,--menthol, packing, and an interview with Kami, the sultry afternoon wore away.

Thought might come afterwards. Her present duty was to go to Dick,--Dick who owned the wondrous friend and sat in the dark playing with her unopened letters.

“But what will you do,” she said to her companion.

“I? Oh, I shall stay here and--finish your Melancolia,” she said, smiling pitifully. “Write to me afterwards.”

That night there ran a legend through Vitry-sur-Marne of a mad Englishman, doubtless suffering from sunstroke, who had drunk all the officers of the garrison under the table, had borrowed a horse from the lines, and had then and there eloped, after the English custom, with one of those more mad English girls who drew pictures down there under the care of that good Monsieur Kami.

“They are very droll,” said Suzanne to the conscript in the moonlight by the studio wall. “She walked always with those big eyes that saw nothing, and yet she kisses me on both cheeks as though she were my sister, and gives me--see--ten francs!”

The conscript levied a contribution on both gifts; for he prided himself on being a good soldier.

Torpenhow spoke very little to Maisie during the journey to Calais; but he was careful to attend to all her wants, to get her a compartment entirely to herself, and to leave her alone. He was amazed of the ease with which the matter had been accomplished.

“The safest thing would be to let her think things out. By Dick's showing,--when he was off his head,--she must have ordered him about very thoroughly. Wonder how she likes being under orders.”

Maisie never told. She sat in the empty compartment often with her eyes shut, that she might realise the sensation of blindness. It was an order that she should return to London swiftly, and she found herself at last almost beginning to enjoy the situation. This was better than looking after luggage and a red-haired friend who never took any interest in her surroundings. But there appeared to be a feeling in the air that she, Maisie,--of all people,--was in disgrace. Therefore she justified her conduct to herself with great success, till Torpenhow came up to her on the steamer and without preface began to tell the story of Dick's blindness, suppressing a few details, but dwelling at length on the miseries of delirium. He stopped before he reached the end, as though he had lost interest in the subject, and went forward to smoke. Maisie was furious with him and with herself.

She was hurried on from Dover to London almost before she could ask for breakfast, and--she was past any feeling of indignation now--was bidden curtly to wait in a hall at the foot of some lead-covered stairs while Torpenhow went up to make inquiries. Again the knowledge that she was being treated like a naughty little girl made her pale cheeks flame. It was all Dick's fault for being so stupid as to go blind.

Torpenhow led her up to a shut door, which he opened very softly. Dick was sitting by the window, with his chin on his chest. There were three envelopes in his hand, and he turned them over and over. The big man who gave orders was no longer by her side, and the studio door snapped behind her.

Dick thrust the letters into his pocket as he heard the sound. “Hullo, Torp! Is that you? I've been so lonely.”

His voice had taken the peculiar flatness of the blind. Maisie pressed herself up into a corner of the room. Her heart was beating furiously, and she put one hand on her breast to keep it quiet. Dick was staring directly at her, and she realised for the first time that he was blind.

Shutting her eyes in a rail-way carriage to open them when she pleased was child's play. This man was blind though his eyes were wide open.

“Torp, is that you? They said you were coming.” Dick looked puzzled and a little irritated at the silence.

“No; it's only me,” was the answer, in a strained little whisper. Maisie could hardly move her lips.

“H'm!” said Dick, composedly, without moving. “This is a new phenomenon. Darkness I'm getting used to; but I object to hearing voices.”

Was he mad, then, as well as blind, that he talked to himself? Maisie's heart beat more wildly, and she breathed in gasps. Dick rose and began to feel his way across the room, touching each table and chair as he passed. Once he caught his foot on a rug, and swore, dropping on his knees to feel what the obstruction might be. Maisie remembered him walking in the Park as though all the earth belonged to him, tramping up and down her studio two months ago, and flying up the gangway of the Channel steamer. The beating of her heart was making her sick, and Dick was coming nearer, guided by the sound of her breathing. She put out a hand mechanically to ward him off or to draw him to herself, she did not know which. It touched his chest, and he stepped back as though he had been shot.

“It's Maisie!” said he, with a dry sob. “What are you doing here?”

“I came--I came--to see you, please.”

Dick's lips closed firmly.

“Won't you sit down, then? You see, I've had some bother with my eyes, and----”

“I know. I know. Why didn't you tell me?”

“I couldn't write.”

“You might have told Mr. Torpenhow.”

“What has he to do with my affairs?”

“He--he brought me from Vitry-sur-Marne. He thought I ought to see you.”

“Why, what has happened? Can I do anything for you? No, I can't. I forgot.”

“Oh, Dick, I'm so sorry! I've come to tell you, and----Let me take you back to your chair.”

“Don't! I'm not a child. You only do that out of pity. I never meant to tell you anything about it. I'm no good now. I'm down and done for. Let me alone!”

He groped back to his chair, his chest labouring as he sat down.

Maisie watched him, and the fear went out of her heart, to be followed by a very bitter shame. He had spoken a truth that had been hidden from the girl through every step of the impetuous flight to London; for he was, indeed, down and done for--masterful no longer but rather a little abject; neither an artist stronger than she, nor a man to be looked up to--only some blind one that sat in a chair and seemed on the point of crying. She was immensely and unfeignedly sorry for him--more sorry than she had ever been for any one in her life, but not sorry enough to deny his words.

So she stood still and felt ashamed and a little hurt, because she had honestly intended that her journey should end triumphantly; and now she was only filled with pity most startlingly distinct from love.

“Well?” said Dick, his face steadily turned away. “I never meant to worry you any more. What's the matter?”

He was conscious that Maisie was catching her breath, but was as unprepared as herself for the torrent of emotion that followed. She had dropped into a chair and was sobbing with her face hidden in her hands.

“I can't--I can't!” she cried desperately. “Indeed, I can't. It isn't my fault. I'm so sorry. Oh, Dickie, I'm so sorry.”

Dick's shoulders straightened again, for the words lashed like a whip.

Still the sobbing continued. It is not good to realise that you have failed in the hour of trial or flinched before the mere possibility of making sacrifices.

“I do despise myself--indeed I do. But I can't. Oh, Dickie, you wouldn't ask me--would you?” wailed Maisie.

She looked up for a minute, and by chance it happened that Dick's eyes fell on hers. The unshaven face was very white and set, and the lips were trying to force themselves into a smile. But it was the worn-out eyes that Maisie feared. Her Dick had gone blind and left in his place some one that she could hardly recognise till he spoke.

“Who is asking you to do anything, Maisie? I told you how it would be. What's the use of worrying? For pity's sake don't cry like that; it isn't worth it.”

“You don't know how I hate myself. Oh, Dick, help me--help me!” The passion of tears had grown beyond her control and was beginning to alarm the man. He stumbled forward and put his arm round her, and her head fell on his shoulder.

“Hush, dear, hush! Don't cry. You're quite right, and you've nothing to reproach yourself with--you never had. You're only a little upset by the journey, and I don't suppose you've had any breakfast. What a brute Torp was to bring you over.”

“I wanted to come. I did indeed,” she protested.

“Very well. And now you've come and seen, and I'm--immensely grateful. When you're better you shall go away and get something to eat. What sort of a passage did you have coming over?”

Maisie was crying more subduedly, for the first time in her life glad that she had something to lean against. Dick patted her on the shoulder tenderly but clumsily, for he was not quite sure where her shoulder might be.

She drew herself out of his arms at last and waited, trembling and most unhappy. He had felt his way to the window to put the width of the room between them, and to quiet a little the tumult in his heart.

“Are you better now?” he said.

“Yes, but--don't you hate me?”

“I hate you? My God! I?”

“Isn't--isn't there anything I could do for you, then? I'll stay here in England to do it, if you like. Perhaps I could come and see you sometimes.”

“I think not, dear. It would be kindest not to see me any more, please. I don't want to seem rude, but--don't you think--perhaps you had almost better go now.”

He was conscious that he could not bear himself as a man if the strain continued much longer.

“I don't deserve anything else. I'll go, Dick. Oh, I'm so miserable.”

“Nonsense. You've nothing to worry about; I'd tell you if you had. Wait a moment, dear. I've got something to give you first. I meant it for you ever since this little trouble began. It's my Melancolia; she was a beauty when I last saw her. You can keep her for me, and if ever you're poor you can sell her. She's worth a few hundreds at any state of the market.” He groped among his canvases. “She's framed in black. Is this a black frame that I have my hand on? There she is. What do you think of her?”

He turned a scarred formless muddle of paint towards Maisie, and the eyes strained as though they would catch her wonder and surprise. One thing and one thing only could she do for him.

“Well?”

The voice was fuller and more rounded, because the man knew he was speaking of his best work. Maisie looked at the blur, and a lunatic desire to laugh caught her by the throat. But for Dick's sake--whatever this mad blankness might mean--she must make no sign. Her voice choked with hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the wreck--“Oh, Dick, it is good!”

He heard the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. “Won't you have it, then? I'll send it over to your house if you will.”

“I? Oh yes--thank you. Ha! ha!” If she did not fly at once the laughter that was worse than tears would kill her. She turned and ran, choking and blinded, down the staircases that were empty of life to take refuge in a cab and go to her house across the Parks. There she sat down in the dismantled drawing-room and thought of Dick in his blindness, useless till the end of life, and of herself in her own eyes. Behind the sorrow, the shame, and the humiliation, lay fear of the cold wrath of the red-haired girl when Maisie should return. Maisie had never feared her companion before. Not until she found herself saying, “Well, he never asked me,” did she realise her scorn of herself. And that is the end of Maisie.

* * * * *

For Dick was reserved more searching torment. He could not realise at first that Maisie, whom he had ordered to go had left him without a word of farewell. He was savagely angry against Torpenhow, who had brought upon him this humiliation and troubled his miserable peace. Then his dark hour came and he was alone with himself and his desires to get what help he could from the darkness. The queen could do no wrong, but in following the right, so far as it served her work, she had wounded her one subject more than his own brain would let him know.

“It's all I had and I've lost it,” he said, as soon as the misery permitted clear thinking. “And Torp will think that he has been so infernally clever that I shan't have the heart to tell him. I must think this out quietly.”

“Hullo!” said Torpenhow, entering the studio after Dick had enjoyed two hours of thought. “I'm back. Are you feeling any better?”

“Torp, I don't know what to say. Come here.” Dick coughed huskily, wondering, indeed, what he should say, and how to say it temperately.

“What's the need for saying anything? Get up and tramp.” Torpenhow was perfectly satisfied.

They walked up and down as of custom, Torpenhow's hand on Dick's shoulder, and Dick buried in his own thoughts.

“How in the world did you find it all out?” said Dick, at last.

“You shouldn't go off your head if you want to keep secrets, Dickie. It was absolutely impertinent on my part; but if you'd seen me rocketing about on a half-trained French troop-horse under a blazing sun you'd have laughed. There will be a charivari in my rooms tonight. Seven other devils----”

“I know--the row in the Southern Soudan. I surprised their councils the other day, and it made me unhappy. Have you fixed your flint to go? Who d'you work for?”

“Haven't signed any contracts yet. I wanted to see how your business would turn out.”

“Would you have stayed with me, then, if--things had gone wrong?” He put his question cautiously.

“Don't ask me too much. I'm only a man.”

“You've tried to be an angel very successfully.”

“Oh ye--es!... Well, do you attend the function tonight? We shall be half screwed before the morning. All the men believe the war's a certainty.”

“I don't think I will, old man, if it's all the same to you. I'll stay quiet here.”

“And meditate? I don't blame you. You observe a good time if ever a man did.”

That night there was a tumult on the stairs. The correspondents poured in from theatre, dinner, and music-hall to Torpenhow's room that they might discuss their plan of campaign in the event of military operations becoming a certainty. Torpenhow, the Keneu, and the Nilghai had bidden all the men they had worked with to the orgy; and Mr. Beeton, the housekeeper, declared that never before in his checkered experience had he seen quite such a fancy lot of gentlemen. They waked the chambers with shoutings and song; and the elder men were quite as bad as the younger. For the chances of war were in front of them, and all knew what those meant.

Sitting in his own room a little perplexed by the noise across the landing, Dick suddenly began to laugh to himself.

“When one comes to think of it the situation is intensely comic. Maisie's quite right--poor little thing. I didn't know she could cry like that before; but now I know what Torp thinks, I'm sure he'd be quite fool enough to stay at home and try to console me--if he knew. Besides, it isn't nice to own that you've been thrown over like a broken chair. I must carry this business through alone--as usual. If there isn't a war, and Torp finds out, I shall look foolish, that's all. If there is a way I mustn't interfere with another man's chances. Business is business, and I want to be alone--I want to be alone. What a row they're making!”

Somebody hammered at the studio door.

“Come out and frolic, Dickie,” said the Nilghai.

“I should like to, but I can't. I'm not feeling frolicsome.”

“Then, I'll tell the boys and they'll drag you like a badger.”

“Please not, old man. On my word, I'd sooner be left alone just now.”

“Very good. Can we send anything in to you? Fizz, for instance. Cassavetti is beginning to sing songs of the Sunny South already.”

For one minute Dick considered the proposition seriously.

“No, thanks, I've a headache already.”

“Virtuous child. That's the effect of emotion on the young. All my congratulations, Dick. I also was concerned in the conspiracy for your welfare.”

“Go to the devil--oh, send Binkie in here.”

The little dog entered on elastic feet, riotous from having been made much of all the evening. He had helped to sing the choruses; but scarcely inside the studio he realised that this was no place for tail-wagging, and settled himself on Dick's lap till it was bedtime. Then he went to bed with Dick, who counted every hour as it struck, and rose in the morning with a painfully clear head to receive Torpenhow's more formal congratulations and a particular account of the last night's revels.

“You aren't looking very happy for a newly accepted man,” said Torpenhow.

“Never mind that--it's my own affair, and I'm all right. Do you really go?”

“Yes. With the old Central Southern as usual. They wired, and I accepted on better terms than before.”

“When do you start?”

“The day after tomorrow--for Brindisi.”

“Thank God.” Dick spoke from the bottom of his heart.

“Well, that's not a pretty way of saying you're glad to get rid of me. But men in your condition are allowed to be selfish.”

“I didn't mean that. Will you get a hundred pounds cashed for me before you leave?”

“That's a slender amount for housekeeping, isn't it?”

“Oh, it's only for--marriage expenses.”

Torpenhow brought him the money, counted it out in fives and tens, and carefully put it away in the writing table.

“Now I suppose I shall have to listen to his ravings about his girl until I go. Heaven send us patience with a man in love!” he said to himself.

But never a word did Dick say of Maisie or marriage. He hung in the doorway of Torpenhow's room when the latter was packing and asked innumerable questions about the coming campaign, till Torpenhow began to feel annoyed.

“You're a secretive animal, Dickie, and you consume your own smoke, don't you?” he said on the last evening.

“I--I suppose so. By the way, how long do you think this war will last?”

“Days, weeks, or months. One can never tell. It may go on for years.”

“I wish I were going.”

“Good Heavens! You're the most unaccountable creature! Hasn't it occurred to you that you're going to be married--thanks to me?”

“Of course, yes. I'm going to be married--so I am. Going to be married. I'm awfully grateful to you. Haven't I told you that?”

“You might be going to be hanged by the look of you,” said Torpenhow.

And the next day Torpenhow bade him good-bye and left him to the loneliness he had so much desired.

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Chapter XIV

Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him, Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save, Yet at the last, with his masters around him, He of the Faith spoke as master to slave; Yet at the last, tho' the Kafirs had maimed him, Broken by bondage and wrecked by the reiver,-- Yet at the last, tho' the darkness had claimed him, He called upon Allah and died a believer.--Kizzilbashi.

“Beg your pardon, Mr. Heldar, but--but isn't nothin' going to happen?” said Mr. Beeton.

“No!” Dick had just waked to another morning of blank despair and his temper was of the shortest.

“'Tain't my regular business, 'o course, sir; and what I say is, 'Mind your own business and let other people mind theirs;' but just before Mr. Torpenhow went away he give me to understand, like, that you might be moving into a house of your own, so to speak--a sort of house with rooms upstairs and downstairs where you'd be better attended to, though I try to act just by all our tenants. Don't I?”

“Ah! That must have been a mad-house. I shan't trouble you to take me there yet. Get me my breakfast, please, and leave me alone.”

“I hope I haven't done anything wrong, sir, but you know I hope that as far as a man can I tries to do the proper thing by all the gentlemen in chambers--and more particular those whose lot is hard--such as you, for instance, Mr. Heldar. You likes soft-roe bloater, don't you? Soft-roe bloaters is scarcer than hard-roe, but what I says is, 'Never mind a little extra trouble so long as you give satisfaction to the tenants.'”

Mr. Beeton withdrew and left Dick to himself. Torpenhow had been long away; there was no more rioting in the chambers, and Dick had settled down to his new life, which he was weak enough to consider nothing better than death.

It is hard to live alone in the dark, confusing the day and night; dropping to sleep through sheer weariness at mid-day, and rising restless in the chill of the dawn. At first Dick, on his awakenings, would grope along the corridors of the chambers till he heard some one snore. Then he would know that the day had not yet come, and return wearily to his bedroom.

Later he learned not to stir till there was a noise and movement in the house and Mr. Beeton advised him to get up. Once dressed--and dressing, now that Torpenhow was away, was a lengthy business, because collars, ties, and the like hid themselves in far corners of the room, and search meant head-beating against chairs and trunks--once dressed, there was nothing whatever to do except to sit still and brood till the three daily meals came. Centuries separated breakfast from lunch and lunch from dinner, and though a man prayed for hundreds of years that his mind might be taken from him, God would never hear. Rather the mind was quickened and the revolving thoughts ground against each other as millstones grind when there is no corn between; and yet the brain would not wear out and give him rest. It continued to think, at length, with imagery and all manner of reminiscences. It recalled Maisie and past success, reckless travels by land and sea, the glory of doing work and feeling that it was good, and suggested all that might have happened had the eyes only been faithful to their duty. When thinking ceased through sheer weariness, there poured into Dick's soul tide on tide of overwhelming, purposeless fear--dread of starvation always, terror lest the unseen ceiling should crush down upon him, fear of fire in the chambers and a louse's death in red flame, and agonies of fiercer horror that had nothing to do with any fear of death. Then Dick bowed his head, and clutching the arms of his chair fought with his sweating self till the tinkle of plates told him that something to eat was being set before him.

Mr. Beeton would bring the meal when he had time to spare, and Dick learned to hang upon his speech, which dealt with badly fitted gas-plugs, waste-pipes out of repair, little tricks for driving picture-nails into walls, and the sins of the charwoman or the housemaids. In the lack of better things the small gossip of a servants' hall becomes immensely interesting, and the screwing of a washer on a tap an event to be talked over for days.

Once or twice a week, too, Mr. Beeton would take Dick out with him when he went marketing in the morning to haggle with tradesmen over fish, lamp-wicks, mustard, tapioca, and so forth, while Dick rested his weight first on one foot and then on the other and played aimlessly with the tins and string-ball on the counter. Then they would perhaps meet one of Mr. Beeton's friends, and Dick, standing aside a little, would hold his peace till Mr. Beeton was willing to go on again.

The life did not increase his self-respect. He abandoned shaving as a dangerous exercise, and being shaved in a barber's shop meant exposure of his infirmity. He could not see that his clothes were properly brushed, and since he had never taken any care of his personal appearance he became every known variety of sloven. A blind man cannot deal with cleanliness till he has been some months used to the darkness. If he demand attendance and grow angry at the want of it, he must assert himself and stand upright. Then the meanest menial can see that he is blind and, therefore, of no consequence. A wise man will keep his eyes on the floor and sit still. For amusement he may pick coal lump by lump out of the scuttle with the tongs and pile it in a little heap in the fender, keeping count of the lumps, which must all be put back again, one by one and very carefully. He may set himself sums if he cares to work them out; he may talk to himself or to the cat if she chooses to visit him; and if his trade has been that of an artist, he may sketch in the air with his forefinger; but that is too much like drawing a pig with the eyes shut. He may go to his bookshelves and count his books, ranging them in order of their size; or to his wardrobe and count his shirts, laying them in piles of two or three on the bed, as they suffer from frayed cuffs or lost buttons.

Even this entertainment wearies after a time; and all the times are very, very long.

Dick was allowed to sort a tool-chest where Mr. Beeton kept hammers, taps and nuts, lengths of gas-pipes, oil-bottles, and string.

“If I don't have everything just where I know where to look for it, why, then, I can't find anything when I do want it. You've no idea, sir, the amount of little things that these chambers uses up,” said Mr. Beeton.

Fumbling at the handle of the door as he went out: “It's hard on you, sir, I do think it's hard on you. Ain't you going to do anything, sir?”

“I'll pay my rent and messing. Isn't that enough?”

“I wasn't doubting for a moment that you couldn't pay your way, sir; but I 'ave often said to my wife, 'It's 'ard on 'im because it isn't as if he was an old man, nor yet a middle-aged one, but quite a young gentleman. That's where it comes so 'ard.'”

“I suppose so,” said Dick, absently. This particular nerve through long battering had ceased to feel--much.

“I was thinking,” continued Mr. Beeton, still making as if to go, “that you might like to hear my boy Alf read you the papers sometimes of an evening. He do read beautiful, seeing he's only nine.”

“I should be very grateful,” said Dick. “Only let me make it worth his while.”

“We wasn't thinking of that, sir, but of course it's in your own 'ands; but only to 'ear Alf sing 'A Boy's best Friend is 'is Mother!' Ah!”

“I'll hear him sing that too. Let him come this evening with the newspapers.”

Alf was not a nice child, being puffed up with many school-board certificates for good conduct, and inordinately proud of his singing. Mr. Beeton remained, beaming, while the child wailed his way through a song of some eight eight-line verses in the usual whine of a young Cockney, and, after compliments, left him to read Dick the foreign telegrams. Ten minutes later Alf returned to his parents rather pale and scared.

“'E said 'e couldn't stand it no more,” he explained.

“He never said you read badly, Alf?” Mrs. Beeton spoke.

“No. 'E said I read beautiful. Said 'e never 'eard any one read like that, but 'e said 'e couldn't abide the stuff in the papers.”

“P'raps he's lost some money in the Stocks. Were you readin' him about Stocks, Alf?”

“No; it was all about fightin' out there where the soldiers is gone--a great long piece with all the lines close together and very hard words in it. 'E give me 'arf a crown because I read so well. And 'e says the next time there's anything 'e wants read 'e'll send for me.”

“That's good hearing, but I do think for all the half-crown--put it into the kicking-donkey money-box, Alf, and let me see you do it--he might have kept you longer. Why, he couldn't have begun to understand how beautiful you read.”

“He's best left to hisself--gentlemen always are when they're downhearted,” said Mr. Beeton.

Alf's rigorously limited powers of comprehending Torpenhow's special correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could hear, through the boy's nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares behind the soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and chaffing across the cooking pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke as it drifted over camp before the wind of the desert.

That night he prayed to God that his mind might be taken from him, offering for proof that he was worthy of this favour the fact that he had not shot himself long ago. That prayer was not answered, and indeed Dick knew in his heart of hearts that only a lingering sense of humour and no special virtue had kept him alive. Suicide, he had persuaded himself, would be a ludicrous insult to the gravity of the situation as well as a weak-kneed confession of fear.

“Just for the fun of the thing,” he said to the cat, who had taken Binkie's place in his establishment, “I should like to know how long this is going to last. I can live for a year on the hundred pounds Torp cashed for me. I must have two or three thousand at least in the Bank--twenty or thirty years more provided for, that is to say. Then I fall back on my hundred and twenty a year, which will be more by that time. Let's consider.

“Twenty-five--thirty-five--a man's in his prime then, they say--forty-five--a middle-aged man just entering politics--fifty-five 'died at the comparatively early age of fifty-five,' according to the newspapers. Bah! How these Christians funk death! Sixty-five--we're only getting on in years. Seventy-five is just possible, though. Great hell, cat O! fifty years more of solitary confinement in the dark! You'll die, and Beeton will die, and Torp will die, and Mai--everybody else will die, but I shall be alive and kicking with nothing to do. I'm very sorry for myself. I should like some one else to be sorry for me. Evidently I'm not going mad before I die, but the pain's just as bad as ever. Some day when you're vivisected, cat O! they'll tie you down on a little table and cut you open--but don't be afraid; they'll take precious good care that you don't die. You'll live, and you'll be very sorry then that you weren't sorry for me. Perhaps Torp will come back or... I wish I could go to Torp and the Nilghai, even though I were in their way.”

Pussy left the room before the speech was ended, and Alf, as he entered, found Dick addressing the empty hearth-rug.

“There's a letter for you, sir,” he said. “Perhaps you'd like me to read it.”

“Lend it to me for a minute and I'll tell you.”

The outstretched hand shook just a little and the voice was not over-steady. It was within the limits of human possibility that--that was no letter from Maisie. He knew the heft of three closed envelopes only too well. It was a foolish hope that the girl should write to him, for he did not realise that there is a wrong which admits of no reparation though the evildoer may with tears and the heart's best love strive to mend all. It is best to forget that wrong whether it be caused or endured, since it is as remediless as bad work once put forward.

“Read it, then,” said Dick, and Alf began intoning according to the rules of the Board School--“'I could have given you love, I could have given you loyalty, such as you never dreamed of. Do you suppose I cared what you were? But you chose to whistle everything down the wind for nothing. My only excuse for you is that you are so young.' That's all,” he said, returning the paper to be dropped into the fire.

“What was in the letter?” asked Mrs. Beeton, when Alf returned.

“I don't know. I think it was a circular or a tract about not whistlin' at everything when you're young.”

“I must have stepped on something when I was alive and walking about and it has bounced up and hit me. God help it, whatever it is--unless it was all a joke. But I don't know any one who'd take the trouble to play a joke on me--Love and loyalty for nothing. It sounds tempting enough. I wonder whether I have lost anything really?”

Dick considered for a long time but could not remember when or how he had put himself in the way of winning these trifles at a woman's hands.

Still, the letter as touching on matters that he preferred not to think about stung him into a fit of frenzy that lasted for a day and night. When his heart was so full of despair that it would hold no more, body and soul together seemed to be dropping without check through the darkness.

Then came fear of darkness and desperate attempts to reach the light again. But there was no light to be reached. When that agony had left him sweating and breathless, the downward flight would recommence till the gathering torture of it spurred him into another fight as hopeless as the first. Followed some few minutes of sleep in which he dreamed that he saw. Then the procession of events would repeat itself till he was utterly worn out and the brain took up its everlasting consideration of Maisie and might-have-beens.

At the end of everything Mr. Beeton came to his room and volunteered to take him out. “Not marketing this time, but we'll go into the Parks if you like.”

“Be damned if I do,” quoth Dick. “Keep to the streets and walk up and down. I like to hear the people round me.”

This was not altogether true. The blind in the first stages of their infirmity dislike those who can move with a free stride and unlifted arms--but Dick had no earthly desire to go to the Parks. Once and only once since Maisie had shut her door he had gone there under Alf's charge. Alf forgot him and fished for minnows in the Serpentine with some companions. After half an hour's waiting Dick, almost weeping with rage and wrath, caught a passer-by, who introduced him to a friendly policeman, who led him to a four-wheeler opposite the Albert Hall. He never told Mr. Beeton of Alf's forgetfulness, but... this was not the manner in which he was used to walk the Parks aforetime.

“What streets would you like to walk down, then?” said Mr. Beeton, sympathetically. His own ideas of a riotous holiday meant picnicking on the grass of Green Park with his family, and half a dozen paper bags full of food.

“Keep to the river,” said Dick, and they kept to the river, and the rush of it was in his ears till they came to Blackfriars Bridge and struck thence on to the Waterloo Road, Mr. Beeton explaining the beauties of the scenery as he went on.

“And walking on the other side of the pavement,” said he, “unless I'm much mistaken, is the young woman that used to come to your rooms to be drawed. I never forgets a face and I never remembers a name, except paying tenants, 'o course!”

“Stop her,” said Dick. “It's Bessie Broke. Tell her I'd like to speak to her again. Quick, man!”

Mr. Beeton crossed the road under the noses of the omnibuses and arrested Bessie then on her way northward. She recognised him as the man in authority who used to glare at her when she passed up Dick's staircase, and her first impulse was to run.

“Wasn't you Mr. Heldar's model?” said Mr. Beeton, planting himself in front of her. “You was. He's on the other side of the road and he'd like to see you.”

“Why?” said Bessie, faintly. She remembered--indeed had never for long forgotten--an affair connected with a newly finished picture.

“Because he has asked me to do so, and because he's most particular blind.”

“Drunk?”

“No. 'Orspital blind. He can't see. That's him over there.”

Dick was leaning against the parapet of the bridge as Mr. Beeton pointed him out--a stub-bearded, bowed creature wearing a dirty magenta-coloured neckcloth outside an unbrushed coat. There was nothing to fear from such an one. Even if he chased her, Bessie thought, he could not follow far. She crossed over, and Dick's face lighted up. It was long since a woman of any kind had taken the trouble to speak to him.

“I hope you're well, Mr. Heldar?” said Bessie, a little puzzled. Mr. Beeton stood by with the air of an ambassador and breathed responsibly.

“I'm very well indeed, and, by Jove! I'm glad to see--hear you, I mean, Bess. You never thought it worth while to turn up and see us again after you got your money. I don't know why you should. Are you going anywhere in particular just now?”

“I was going for a walk,” said Bessie.

“Not the old business?” Dick spoke under his breath.

“Lor, no! I paid my premium”--Bessie was very proud of that word--“for a barmaid, sleeping in, and I'm at the bar now quite respectable. Indeed I am.”

Mr. Beeton had no special reason to believe in the loftiness of human nature. Therefore he dissolved himself like a mist and returned to his gas-plugs without a word of apology. Bessie watched the flight with a certain uneasiness; but so long as Dick appeared to be ignorant of the harm that had been done to him...

“It's hard work pulling the beer-handles,” she went on, “and they've got one of them penny-in-the-slot cash-machines, so if you get wrong by a penny at the end of the day--but then I don't believe the machinery is right. Do you?”

“I've only seen it work. Mr. Beeton.”

“He's gone.

“I'm afraid I must ask you to help me home, then. I'll make it worth your while. You see.” The sightless eyes turned towards her and Bessie saw.

“It isn't taking you out of your way?” he said hesitatingly. “I can ask a policeman if it is.”

“Not at all. I come on at seven and I'm off at four. That's easy hours.”

“Good God!--but I'm on all the time. I wish I had some work to do too. Let's go home, Bess.”

He turned and cannoned into a man on the sidewalk, recoiling with an oath. Bessie took his arm and said nothing--as she had said nothing when he had ordered her to turn her face a little more to the light. They walked for some time in silence, the girl steering him deftly through the crowd.

“And where's--where's Mr. Torpenhow?” she inquired at last.

“He has gone away to the desert.”

“Where's that?”

Dick pointed to the right. “East--out of the mouth of the river,” said he.

“Then west, then south, and then east again, all along the under-side of Europe. Then south again, God knows how far.” The explanation did not enlighten Bessie in the least, but she held her tongue and looked to Dick's patch till they came to the chambers.

“We'll have tea and muffins,” he said joyously. “I can't tell you, Bessie, how glad I am to find you again. What made you go away so suddenly?”

“I didn't think you'd want me any more,” she said, emboldened by his ignorance.

“I didn't, as a matter of fact--but afterwards--At any rate I'm glad you've come. You know the stairs.”

So Bessie led him home to his own place--there was no one to hinder--and shut the door of the studio.

“What a mess!” was her first word. “All these things haven't been looked after for months and months.”

“No, only weeks, Bess. You can't expect them to care.”

“I don't know what you expect them to do. They ought to know what you've paid them for. The dust's just awful. It's all over the easel.”

“I don't use it much now.”

“All over the pictures and the floor, and all over your coat. I'd like to speak to them housemaids.”

“Ring for tea, then.” Dick felt his way to the one chair he used by custom.

Bessie saw the action and, as far as in her lay, was touched. But there remained always a keen sense of new-found superiority, and it was in her voice when she spoke.

“How long have you been like this?” she said wrathfully, as though the blindness were some fault of the housemaids.

“How?”

“As you are.”

“The day after you went away with the check, almost as soon as my picture was finished; I hardly saw her alive.”

“Then they've been cheating you ever since, that's all. I know their nice little ways.”

A woman may love one man and despise another, but on general feminine principles she will do her best to save the man she despises from being defrauded. Her loved one can look to himself, but the other man, being obviously an idiot, needs protection.

“I don't think Mr. Beeton cheats much,” said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and the light step between.

“Tea and muffins,” she said shortly, when the ring at the bell was answered; “two teaspoonfuls and one over for the pot. I don't want the old teapot that was here when I used to come. It don't draw. Get another.”

The housemaid went away scandalised, and Dick chuckled. Then he began to cough as Bessie banged up and down the studio disturbing the dust.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Put things straight. This is like unfurnished lodgings. How could you let it go so?”

“How could I help it? Dust away.”

She dusted furiously, and in the midst of all the pother entered Mrs. Beeton. Her husband on his return had explained the situation, winding up with the peculiarly felicitous proverb, “Do unto others as you would be done by.” She had descended to put into her place the person who demanded muffins and an uncracked teapot as though she had a right to both.

“Muffins ready yet?” said Bess, still dusting. She was no longer a drab of the streets but a young lady who, thanks to Dick's check, had paid her premium and was entitled to pull beer-handles with the best. Being neatly dressed in black she did not hesitate to face Mrs. Beeton, and there passed between the two women certain regards that Dick would have appreciated. The situation adjusted itself by eye. Bessie had won, and Mrs. Beeton returned to cook muffins and make scathing remarks about models, hussies, trollops, and the like, to her husband.

“There's nothing to be got of interfering with him, Liza,” he said. “Alf, you go along into the street to play. When he isn't crossed he's as kindly as kind, but when he's crossed he's the devil and all. We took too many little things out of his rooms since he was blind to be that particular about what he does. They ain't no objects to a blind man, of course, but if it was to come into court we'd get the sack. Yes, I did introduce him to that girl because I'm a feelin' man myself.”

“Much too feelin'!” Mrs. Beeton slapped the muffins into the dish, and thought of comely housemaids long since dismissed on suspicion.

“I ain't ashamed of it, and it isn't for us to judge him hard so long as he pays quiet and regular as he do. I know how to manage young gentlemen, you know how to cook for them, and what I says is, let each stick to his own business and then there won't be any trouble. Take them muffins down, Liza, and be sure you have no words with that young woman. His lot is cruel hard, and if he's crossed he do swear worse than any one I've ever served.”

“That's a little better,” said Bessie, sitting down to the tea. “You needn't wait, thank you, Mrs. Beeton.”

“I had no intention of doing such, I do assure you.”

Bessie made no answer whatever. This, she knew, was the way in which real ladies routed their foes, and when one is a barmaid at a first-class public-house one may become a real lady at ten minutes' notice.

Her eyes fell on Dick opposite her and she was both shocked and displeased. There were droppings of food all down the front of his coat; the mouth under the ragged ill-grown beard drooped sullenly; the forehead was lined and contracted; and on the lean temples the hair was a dusty indeterminate colour that might or might not have been called gray. The utter misery and self-abandonment of the man appealed to her, and at the bottom of her heart lay the wicked feeling that he was humbled and brought low who had once humbled her.

“Oh! it is good to hear you moving about,” said Dick, rubbing his hands. “Tell us all about your bar successes, Bessie, and the way you live now.”

“Never mind that. I'm quite respectable, as you'd see by looking at me. You don't seem to live too well. What made you go blind that sudden? Why isn't there any one to look after you?”

Dick was too thankful for the sound of her voice to resent the tone of it.

“I was cut across the head a long time ago, and that ruined my eyes. I don't suppose anybody thinks it worth while to look after me any more. Why should they?--and Mr. Beeton really does everything I want.”

“Don't you know any gentlemen and ladies, then, while you was--well?”

“A few, but I don't care to have them looking at me.”

“I suppose that's why you've growed a beard. Take it off, it don't become you.”

“Good gracious, child, do you imagine that I think of what becomes of me these days?”

“You ought. Get that taken off before I come here again. I suppose I can come, can't I?”

“I'd be only too grateful if you did. I don't think I treated you very well in the old days. I used to make you angry.”

“Very angry, you did.”

“I'm sorry for it, then. Come and see me when you can and as often as you can. God knows, there isn't a soul in the world to take that trouble except you and Mr. Beeton.”

“A lot of trouble he's taking and she too.” This with a toss of the head.

“They've let you do anyhow and they haven't done anything for you. I've only to look and see that much. I'll come, and I'll be glad to come, but you must go and be shaved, and you must get some other clothes--those ones aren't fit to be seen.”

“I have heaps somewhere,” he said helplessly.

“I know you have. Tell Mr. Beeton to give you a new suit and I'll brush it and keep it clean. You may be as blind as a barn-door, Mr. Heldar, but it doesn't excuse you looking like a sweep.”

“Do I look like a sweep, then?”

“Oh, I'm sorry for you. I'm that sorry for you!” she cried impulsively, and took Dick's hands. Mechanically, he lowered his head as if to kiss--she was the only woman who had taken pity on him, and he was not too proud for a little pity now. She stood up to go.

“Nothing 'o that kind till you look more like a gentleman. It's quite easy when you get shaved, and some clothes.”

He could hear her drawing on her gloves and rose to say good-bye. She passed behind him, kissed him audaciously on the back of the neck, and ran away as swiftly as on the day when she had destroyed the Melancolia.

“To think of me kissing Mr. Heldar,” she said to herself, “after all he's done to me and all! Well, I'm sorry for him, and if he was shaved he wouldn't be so bad to look at, but... Oh them Beetons, how shameful they've treated him! I know Beeton's wearing his shirt on his back today just as well as if I'd aired it. Tomorrow, I'll see... I wonder if he has much of his own. It might be worth more than the bar--I wouldn't have to do any work--and just as respectable as if no one knew.”

Dick was not grateful to Bessie for her parting gift. He was acutely conscious of it in the nape of his neck throughout the night, but it seemed, among very many other things, to enforce the wisdom of getting shaved.

He was shaved accordingly in the morning, and felt the better for it. A fresh suit of clothes, white linen, and the knowledge that some one in the world said that she took an interest in his personal appearance made him carry himself almost upright; for the brain was relieved for a while from thinking of Maisie, who, under other circumstances, might have given that kiss and a million others.

“Let us consider,” said he, after lunch. “The girl can't care, and it's a toss-up whether she comes again or not, but if money can buy her to look after me she shall be bought. Nobody else in the world would take the trouble, and I can make it worth her while. She's a child of the gutter holding brevet rank as a barmaid; so she shall have everything she wants if she'll only come and talk and look after me.” He rubbed his newly shorn chin and began to perplex himself with the thought of her not coming. “I suppose I did look rather a sweep,” he went on. “I had no reason to look otherwise. I knew things dropped on my clothes, but it didn't matter. It would be cruel if she didn't come. She must. Maisie came once, and that was enough for her. She was quite right. She had something to work for. This creature has only beer-handles to pull, unless she has deluded some young man into keeping company with her. Fancy being cheated for the sake of a counter-jumper! We're falling pretty low.”

Something cried aloud within him:--This will hurt more than anything that has gone before. It will recall and remind and suggest and tantalise, and in the end drive you mad.

“I know it, I know it!” Dick cried, clenching his hands despairingly; “but, good heavens! is a poor blind beggar never to get anything out of his life except three meals a day and a greasy waistcoat? I wish she'd come.”

Early in the afternoon time she came, because there was no young man in her life just then, and she thought of material advantages which would allow her to be idle for the rest of her days.

“I shouldn't have known you,” she said approvingly. “You look as you used to look--a gentleman that was proud of himself.”

“Don't you think I deserve another kiss, then?” said Dick, flushing a little.

“Maybe--but you won't get it yet. Sit down and let's see what I can do for you. I'm certain sure Mr. Beeton cheats you, now that you can't go through the housekeeping books every month. Isn't that true?”

“You'd better come and housekeep for me then, Bessie.”

“Couldn't do it in these chambers--you know that as well as I do.”

“I know, but we might go somewhere else, if you thought it worth your while.”

“I'd try to look after you, anyhow; but I shouldn't care to have to work for both of us.” This was tentative.

Dick laughed.

“Do you remember where I used to keep my bank-book?” said he. “Torp took it to be balanced just before he went away. Look and see.”

“It was generally under the tobacco-jar. Ah!”

“Well?”

“Oh! Four thousand two hundred and ten pounds nine shillings and a penny! Oh my!”

“You can have the penny. That's not bad for one year's work. Is that and a hundred and twenty pounds a year good enough?”

The idleness and the pretty clothes were almost within her reach now, but she must, by being housewifely, show that she deserved them.

“Yes; but you'd have to move, and if we took an inventory, I think we'd find that Mr. Beeton has been prigging little things out of the rooms here and there. They don't look as full as they used.”

“Never mind, we'll let him have them. The only thing I'm particularly anxious to take away is that picture I used you for--when you used to swear at me. We'll pull out of this place, Bess, and get away as far as ever we can.”

“Oh yes,” she said uneasily.

“I don't know where I can go to get away from myself, but I'll try, and you shall have all the pretty frocks that you care for. You'll like that. Give me that kiss now, Bess. Ye gods! it's good to put one's arm round a woman's waist again.”

Then came the fulfilment of the prophecy within the brain. If his arm were thus round Maisie's waist and a kiss had just been given and taken between them,--why then... He pressed the girl more closely to himself because the pain whipped him. She was wondering how to explain a little accident to the Melancolia. At any rate, if this man really desired the solace of her company--and certainly he would relapse into his original slough if she withdrew it--he would not be more than just a little vexed.

It would be delightful at least to see what would happen, and by her teachings it was good for a man to stand in certain awe of his companion.

She laughed nervously, and slipped out of his reach.

“I shouldn't worrit about that picture if I was you,” she began, in the hope of turning his attention.

“It's at the back of all my canvases somewhere. Find it, Bess; you know it as well as I do.”

“I know--but--”

“But what? You've wit enough to manage the sale of it to a dealer. Women haggle much better than men. It might be a matter of eight or nine hundred pounds to--to us. I simply didn't like to think about it for a long time. It was mixed up with my life so.--But we'll cover up our tracks and get rid of everything, eh? Make a fresh start from the beginning, Bess.”

Then she began to repent very much indeed, because she knew the value of money. Still, it was probable that the blind man was overestimating the value of his work. Gentlemen, she knew, were absurdly particular about their things. She giggled as a nervous housemaid giggles when she tries to explain the breakage of a pipe.

“I'm very sorry, but you remember I was--I was angry with you before Mr. Torpenhow went away?”

“You were very angry, child; and on my word I think you had some right to be.”

“Then I--but aren't you sure Mr. Torpenhow didn't tell you?”

“Tell me what? Good gracious, what are you making such a fuss about when you might just as well be giving me another kiss?”

He was beginning to learn, not for the first time in his experience, that kissing is a cumulative poison. The more you get of it, the more you want.

Bessie gave the kiss promptly, whispering, as she did so, “I was so angry I rubbed out that picture with the turpentine. You aren't angry, are you?”

“What? Say that again.” The man's hand had closed on her wrist.

“I rubbed it out with turps and the knife,” faltered Bessie. “I thought you'd only have to do it over again. You did do it over again, didn't you? Oh, let go of my wrist; you're hurting me.”

“Isn't there anything left of the thing?”

“N'nothing that looks like anything. I'm sorry--I didn't know you'd take on about it; I only meant to do it in fun. You aren't going to hit me?”

“Hit you! No! Let's think.”

He did not relax his hold upon her wrist but stood staring at the carpet.

Then he shook his head as a young steer shakes it when the lash of the stock-whip cross his nose warns him back to the path on to the shambles that he would escape. For weeks he had forced himself not to think of the Melancolia, because she was a part of his dead life. With Bessie's return and certain new prospects that had developed themselves, the Melancolia--lovelier in his imagination than she had ever been on canvas--reappeared. By her aid he might have procured more money wherewith to amuse Bess and to forget Maisie, as well as another taste of an almost forgotten success. Now, thanks to a vicious little housemaid's folly, there was nothing to look for--not even the hope that he might some day take an abiding interest in the housemaid. Worst of all, he had been made to appear ridiculous in Maisie's eyes. A woman will forgive the man who has ruined her life's work so long as he gives her love; a man may forgive those who ruin the love of his life, but he will never forgive the destruction of his work.

“Tck--tck--tck,” said Dick between his teeth, and then laughed softly. “It's an omen, Bessie, and--a good many things considered, it serves me right for doing what I have done. By Jove! that accounts for Maisie's running away. She must have thought me perfectly mad--small blame to her! The whole picture ruined, isn't it so? What made you do it?”

“Because I was that angry. I'm not angry now--I'm awful sorry.”

“I wonder.--It doesn't matter, anyhow. I'm to blame for making the mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“Something you wouldn't understand, dear. Great heavens! to think that a little piece of dirt like you could throw me out of stride!” Dick was talking to himself as Bessie tried to shake off his grip on her wrist.

“I ain't a piece of dirt, and you shouldn't call me so! I did it 'cause I hated you, and I'm only sorry now 'cause you're 'cause you're----”

“Exactly--because I'm blind. There's noting like tact in little things.”

Bessie began to sob. She did not like being shackled against her will; she was afraid of the blind face and the look upon it, and was sorry too that her great revenge had only made Dick laugh.

“Don't cry,” he said, and took her into his arms. “You only did what you thought right.”

“I--I ain't a little piece of dirt, and if you say that I'll never come to you again.”

“You don't know what you've done to me. I'm not angry--indeed, I'm not. Be quiet for a minute.”

Bessie remained in his arms shrinking. Dick's first thought was connected with Maisie, and it hurt him as white-hot iron hurts an open sore.

Not for nothing is a man permitted to ally himself to the wrong woman.

The first pang--the first sense of things lost is but the prelude to the play, for the very just Providence who delights in causing pain has decreed that the agony shall return, and that in the midst of keenest pleasure.

They know this pain equally who have forsaken or been forsaken by the love of their life, and in their new wives' arms are compelled to realise it.

It is better to remain alone and suffer only the misery of being alone, so long as it is possible to find distraction in daily work. When that resource goes the man is to be pitied and left alone.

These things and some others Dick considered while he was holding Bessie to his heart.

“Though you mayn't know it,” he said, raising his head, “the Lord is a just and a terrible God, Bess; with a very strong sense of humour. It serves me right--how it serves me right! Torp could understand it if he were here; he must have suffered something at your hands, child, but only for a minute or so. I saved him. Set that to my credit, some one.”

“Let me go,” said Bess, her face darkening. “Let me go.”

“All in good time. Did you ever attend Sunday school?”

“Never. Let me go, I tell you; you're making fun of me.”

“Indeed, I'm not. I'm making fun of myself.... Thus. 'He saved others, himself he cannot save.' It isn't exactly a school-board text.” He released her wrist, but since he was between her and the door, she could not escape. “What an enormous amount of mischief one little woman can do!”

“I'm sorry; I'm awful sorry about the picture.”

“I'm not. I'm grateful to you for spoiling it.... What were we talking about before you mentioned the thing?”

“About getting away--and money. Me and you going away.”

“Of course. We will get away--that is to say, I will.”

“And me?”

“You shall have fifty whole pounds for spoiling a picture.”

“Then you won't----?”

“I'm afraid not, dear. Think of fifty pounds for pretty things all to yourself.”

“You said you couldn't do anything without me.”

“That was true a little while ago. I'm better now, thank you. Get me my hat.”

“S'pose I don't?”

“Beeton will, and you'll lose fifty pounds. That's all. Get it.”

Bessie cursed under her breath. She had pitied the man sincerely, had kissed him with almost equal sincerity, for he was not unhandsome; it pleased her to be in a way and for a time his protector, and above all there were four thousand pounds to be handled by some one. Now through a slip of the tongue and a little feminine desire to give a little, not too much, pain she had lost the money, the blessed idleness and the pretty things, the companionship, and the chance of looking outwardly as respectable as a real lady.

“Now fill me a pipe. Tobacco doesn't taste, but it doesn't matter, and I'll think things out. What's the day of the week, Bess?”

“Tuesday.”

“Then Thursday's mail-day. What a fool--what a blind fool I have been! Twenty-two pounds covers my passage home again. Allow ten for additional expenses. We must put up at Madam Binat's for old time's sake. Thirty-two pounds altogether. Add a hundred for the cost of the last trip--Gad, won't Torp stare to see me!--a hundred and thirty-two leaves seventy-eight for baksheesh--I shall need it--and to play with. What are you crying for, Bess? It wasn't your fault, child; it was mine altogether. Oh, you funny little opossum, mop your eyes and take me out! I want the pass-book and the check-book. Stop a minute. Four thousand pounds at four per cent--that's safe interest--means a hundred and sixty pounds a year; one hundred and twenty pounds a year--also safe--is two eighty, and two hundred and eighty pounds added to three hundred a year means gilded luxury for a single woman. Bess, we'll go to the bank.”

Richer by two hundred and ten pounds stored in his money-belt, Dick caused Bessie, now thoroughly bewildered, to hurry from the bank to the P. and O. offices, where he explained things tersely.

“Port Said, single first; cabin as close to the baggage-hatch as possible. What ship's going?”

“The Colgong,” said the clerk.

“She's a wet little hooker. Is it Tilbury and a tender, or Galleons and the docks?”

“Galleons. Twelve-forty, Thursday.”

“Thanks. Change, please. I can't see very well--will you count it into my hand?”

“If they all took their passages like that instead of talking about their trunks, life would be worth something,” said the clerk to his neighbour, who was trying to explain to a harassed mother of many that condensed milk is just as good for babes at sea as daily dairy. Being nineteen and unmarried, he spoke with conviction.

“We are now,” quoth Dick, as they returned to the studio, patting the place where his money-belt covered ticket and money, “beyond the reach of man, or devil, or woman--which is much more important. I've had three little affairs to carry through before Thursday, but I needn't ask you to help, Bess. Come here on Thursday morning at nine. We'll breakfast, and you shall take me down to Galleons Station.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Going away, of course. What should I stay for?”

“But you can't look after yourself?”

“I can do anything. I didn't realise it before, but I can. I've done a great deal already. Resolution shall be treated to one kiss if Bessie doesn't object.” Strangely enough, Bessie objected and Dick laughed. “I suppose you're right. Well, come at nine the day after tomorrow and you'll get your money.”

“Shall I sure?”

“I don't bilk, and you won't know whether I do or not unless you come. Oh, but it's long and long to wait! Good-bye, Bessie,--send Beeton here as you go out.”

The housekeeper came.

“What are all the fittings of my rooms worth?” said Dick, imperiously.

“'Tisn't for me to say, sir. Some things is very pretty and some is wore out dreadful.”

“I'm insured for two hundred and seventy.”

“Insurance policies is no criterion, though I don't say----”

“Oh, damn your longwindedness! You've made your pickings out of me and the other tenants. Why, you talked of retiring and buying a public-house the other day. Give a straight answer to a straight question.”

“Fifty,” said Mr. Beeton, without a moment's hesitation.

“Double it; or I'll break up half my sticks and burn the rest.”

He felt his way to a bookstand that supported a pile of sketch-books, and wrenched out one of the mahogany pillars.

“That's sinful, sir,” said the housekeeper, alarmed.

“It's my own. One hundred or----”

“One hundred it is. It'll cost me three and six to get that there pilaster mended.”

“I thought so. What an out and out swindler you must have been to spring that price at once!”

“I hope I've done nothing to dissatisfy any of the tenants, least of all you, sir.”

“Never mind that. Get me the money tomorrow, and see that all my clothes are packed in the little brown bullock-trunk. I'm going.”

“But the quarter's notice?”

“I'll pay forfeit. Look after the packing and leave me alone.”

Mr. Beeton discussed this new departure with his wife, who decided that Bessie was at the bottom of it all. Her husband took a more charitable view.

“It's very sudden--but then he was always sudden in his ways. Listen to him now!”

There was a sound of chanting from Dick's room.

“We'll never come back any more, boys, We'll never come back no more; We'll go to the deuce on any excuse, And never come back no more! Oh say we're afloat or ashore, boys, Oh say we're afloat or ashore; But we'll never come back any more, boys, We'll never come back no more!”

“Mr. Beeton! Mr. Beeton! Where the deuce is my pistol?”

“Quick, he's going to shoot himself 'avin' gone mad!” said Mrs. Beeton.

Mr. Beeton addressed Dick soothingly, but it was some time before the latter, threshing up and down his bedroom, could realise the intention of the promises to 'find everything tomorrow, sir.'

“Oh, you copper-nosed old fool--you impotent Academician!” he shouted at last. “Do you suppose I want to shoot myself? Take the pistol in your silly shaking hand then. If you touch it, it will go off, because it's loaded. It's among my campaign-kit somewhere--in the parcel at the bottom of the trunk.”

Long ago Dick had carefully possessed himself of a forty-pound weight field-equipment constructed by the knowledge of his own experience. It was this put-away treasure that he was trying to find and rehandle. Mr. Beeton whipped the revolver out of its place on the top of the package, and Dick drove his hand among the khaki coat and breeches, the blue cloth leg-bands, and the heavy flannel shirts doubled over a pair of swan-neck spurs. Under these and the water-bottle lay a sketch-book and a pigskin case of stationery.

“These we don't want; you can have them, Mr. Beeton. Everything else I'll keep. Pack 'em on the top right-hand side of my trunk. When you've done that come into the studio with your wife. I want you both. Wait a minute; get me a pen and a sheet of notepaper.”

It is not an easy thing to write when you cannot see, and Dick had particular reasons for wishing that his work should be clear. So he began, following his right hand with his left: “The badness of this writing is because I am blind and cannot see my pen.” H'mph!--even a lawyer can't mistake that. It must be signed, I suppose, but it needn't be witnessed. Now an inch lower--why did I never learn to use a type-writer?--“This is the last will and testament of me, Richard Heldar. I am in sound bodily and mental health, and there is no previous will to revoke.”--That's all right. Damn the pen! Whereabouts on the paper was I?--” “I leave everything that I possess in the world, including four thousand pounds, and two thousand seven hundred and twenty eight pounds held for me--oh, I can't get this straight.” He tore off half the sheet and began again with the caution about the handwriting. Then: “I leave all the money I possess in the world to”--here followed Maisie's name, and the names of the two banks that held the money.

“It mayn't be quite regular, but no one has a shadow of a right to dispute it, and I've given Maisie's address. Come in, Mr. Beeton. This is my signature; I want you and your wife to witness it. Thanks. Tomorrow you must take me to the landlord and I'll pay forfeit for leaving without notice, and I'll lodge this paper with him in case anything happens while I'm away. Now we're going to light up the studio stove. Stay with me, and give me my papers as I want 'em.”

No one knows until he has tried how fine a blaze a year's accumulation of bills, letters, and dockets can make. Dick stuffed into the stove every document in the studio--saving only three unopened letters; destroyed sketch-books, rough note-books, new and half-finished canvases alike.

“What a lot of rubbish a tenant gets about him if he stays long enough in one place, to be sure,” said Mr. Beeton, at last.

“He does. Is there anything more left?” Dick felt round the walls.

“Not a thing, and the stove's nigh red-hot.”

“Excellent, and you've lost about a thousand pounds' worth of sketches. Ho! ho! Quite a thousand pounds' worth, if I can remember what I used to be.”

“Yes, sir,” politely. Mr. Beeton was quite sure that Dick had gone mad, otherwise he would have never parted with his excellent furniture for a song. The canvas things took up storage room and were much better out of the way.

There remained only to leave the little will in safe hands: that could not be accomplished til tomorrow. Dick groped about the floor picking up the last pieces of paper, assured himself again and again that there remained no written word or sign of his past life in drawer or desk, and sat down before the stove till the fire died out and the contracting iron cracked in the silence of the night.

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Chapter XV

With a heart of furious fancies, Whereof I am commander; With a burning spear and a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander.

With a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney-- Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end, Methinks it is no journey. --Tom o' Bedlam's Song

“Goodbye, Bess; I promised you fifty. Here's a hundred--all that I got for my furniture from Beeton. That will keep you in pretty frocks for some time. You've been a good little girl, all things considered, but you've given me and Torpenhow a fair amount of trouble.”

“Give Mr. Torpenhow my love if you see him, won't you?”

“Of course I will, dear. Now take me up the gang-plank and into the cabin. Once aboard the lugger and the maid is--and I am free, I mean.”

“Who'll look after you on this ship?”

“The head-steward, if there's any use in money. The doctor when we come to Port Said, if I know anything of P. and O. doctors. After that, the Lord will provide, as He used to do.”

Bess found Dick his cabin in the wild turmoil of a ship full of leavetakers and weeping relatives. Then he kissed her, and laid himself down in his bunk until the decks should be clear. He who had taken so long to move about his own darkened rooms well understood the geography of a ship, and the necessity of seeing to his own comforts was as wine to him.

Before the screw began to thrash the ship along the Docks he had been introduced to the head-steward, had royally tipped him, secured a good place at table, opened out his baggage, and settled himself down with joy in the cabin. It was scarcely necessary to feel his way as he moved about, for he knew everything so well. Then God was very kind: a deep sleep of weariness came upon him just as he would have thought of Maisie, and he slept till the steamer had cleared the mouth of the Thames and was lifting to the pulse of the Channel.

The rattle of the engines, the reek of oil and paint, and a very familiar sound in the next cabin roused him to his new inheritance.

“Oh, it's good to be alive again!” He yawned, stretched himself vigorously, and went on deck to be told that they were almost abreast of the lights of Brighton. This is no more open water than Trafalgar Square is a common; the free levels begin at Ushant; but none the less Dick could feel the healing of the sea at work upon him already. A boisterous little cross-swell swung the steamer disrespectfully by the nose; and one wave breaking far aft spattered the quarterdeck and the pile of new deck-chairs. He heard the foam fall with the clash of broken glass, was stung in the face by a cupful, and sniffing luxuriously, felt his way to the smoking-room by the wheel. There a strong breeze found him, blew his cap off and left him bareheaded in the doorway, and the smoking-room steward, understanding that he was a voyager of experience, said that the weather would be stiff in the chops off the Channel and more than half a gale in the Bay. These things fell as they were foretold, and Dick enjoyed himself to the utmost. It is allowable and even necessary at sea to lay firm hold upon tables, stanchions, and ropes in moving from place to place. On land the man who feels with his hands is patently blind. At sea even a blind man who is not sea-sick can jest with the doctor over the weakness of his fellows. Dick told the doctor many tales--and these are coin of more value than silver if properly handled--smoked with him till unholy hours of the night, and so won his short-lived regard that he promised Dick a few hours of his time when they came to Port Said.

And the sea roared or was still as the winds blew, and the engines sang their song day and night, and the sun grew stronger day by day, and Tom the Lascar barber shaved Dick of a morning under the opened hatch-grating where the cool winds blew, and the awnings were spread and the passengers made merry, and at last they came to Port Said.

“Take me,” said Dick, to the doctor, “to Madame Binat's--if you know where that is.”

“Whew!” said the doctor, “I do. There's not much to choose between 'em; but I suppose you're aware that that's one of the worst houses in the place. They'll rob you to begin with, and knife you later.”

“Not they. Take me there, and I can look after myself.”

So he was brought to Madame Binat's and filled his nostrils with the well-remembered smell of the East, that runs without a change from the Canal head to Hong-Kong, and his mouth with the villainous Lingua Franca of the Levant. The heat smote him between the shoulder-blades with the buffet of an old friend, his feet slipped on the sand, and his coat-sleeve was warm as new-baked bread when he lifted it to his nose.

Madame Binat smiled with the smile that knows no astonishment when Dick entered the drinking-shop which was one source of her gains. But for a little accident of complete darkness he could hardly realise that he had ever quitted the old life that hummed in his ears. Somebody opened a bottle of peculiarly strong Schiedam. The smell reminded Dick of Monsieur Binat, who, by the way, had spoken of art and degradation.

Binat was dead; Madame said as much when the doctor departed, scandalised, so far as a ship's doctor can be, at the warmth of Dick's reception. Dick was delighted at it. “They remember me here after a year. They have forgotten me across the water by this time. Madame, I want a long talk with you when you're at liberty. It is good to be back again.”

In the evening she set an iron-topped cafe-table out on the sands, and Dick and she sat by it, while the house behind them filled with riot, merriment, oaths, and threats. The stars came out and the lights of the shipping in the harbour twinkled by the head of the Canal.

“Yes. The war is good for trade, my friend; but what dost thou do here? We have not forgotten thee.”

“I was over there in England and I went blind.”

“But there was the glory first. We heard of it here, even here--I and Binat; and thou hast used the head of Yellow 'Tina--she is still alive--so often and so well that 'Tina laughed when the papers arrived by the mail-boats. It was always something that we here could recognise in the paintings. And then there was always the glory and the money for thee.”

“I am not poor--I shall pay you well.”

“Not to me. Thou hast paid for everything.” Under her breath, “Mon Dieu, to be blind and so young! What horror!”

Dick could not see her face with the pity on it, or his own with the discoloured hair at the temples. He did not feel the need of pity; he was too anxious to get to the front once more, and explained his desire.

“And where? The Canal is full of the English ships. Sometimes they fire as they used to do when the war was here--ten years ago. Beyond Cairo there is fighting, but how canst thou go there without a correspondent's passport? And in the desert there is always fighting, but that is impossible also,” said she.

“I must go to Suakin.” He knew, thanks to Alf's readings, that Torpenhow was at work with the column that was protecting the construction of the Suakin-Berber line. P. and O. steamers do not touch at that port, and, besides, Madame Binat knew everybody whose help or advice was worth anything. They were not respectable folk, but they could cause things to be accomplished, which is much more important when there is work toward.

“But at Suakin they are always fighting. That desert breeds men always--and always more men. And they are so bold! Why to Suakin?”

“My friend is there.

“Thy friend! Chtt! Thy friend is death, then.”

Madame Binat dropped a fat arm on the table-top, filled Dick's glass anew, and looked at him closely under the stars. There was no need that he should bow his head in assent and say--“No. He is a man, but--if it should arrive... blamest thou?”

“I blame?” she laughed shrilly. “Who am I that I should blame any one--except those who try to cheat me over their consommations. But it is very terrible.”

“I must go to Suakin. Think for me. A great deal has changed within the year, and the men I knew are not here. The Egyptian lighthouse steamer goes down the Canal to Suakin--and the post-boats--But even then----”

“Do not think any longer. I know, and it is for me to think. Thou shalt go--thou shalt go and see thy friend. Be wise. Sit here until the house is a little quiet--I must attend to my guests--and afterwards go to bed. Thou shalt go, in truth, thou shalt go.”

“Tomorrow?”

“As soon as may be.” She was talking as though he were a child.

He sat at the table listening to the voices in the harbour and the streets, and wondering how soon the end would come, till Madame Binat carried him off to bed and ordered him to sleep. The house shouted and sang and danced and revelled, Madame Binat moving through it with one eye on the liquor payments and the girls and the other on Dick's interests. To this latter end she smiled upon scowling and furtive Turkish officers of fellaheen regiments, and was more than kind to camel agents of no nationality whatever.

In the early morning, being then appropriately dressed in a flaming red silk ball-dress, with a front of tarnished gold embroidery and a necklace of plate-glass diamonds, she made chocolate and carried it in to Dick.

“It is only I, and I am of discreet age, eh? Drink and eat the roll too. Thus in France mothers bring their sons, when those behave wisely, the morning chocolate.” She sat down on the side of the bed whispering:--“It is all arranged. Thou wilt go by the lighthouse boat. That is a bribe of ten pounds English. The captain is never paid by the Government. The boat comes to Suakin in four days. There will go with thee George, a Greek muleteer. Another bribe of ten pounds. I will pay; they must not know of thy money. George will go with thee as far as he goes with his mules. Then he comes back to me, for his well-beloved is here, and if I do not receive a telegram from Suakin saying that thou art well, the girl answers for George.”

“Thank you.” He reached out sleepily for the cup. “You are much too kind, Madame.”

“If there were anything that I might do I would say, stay here and be wise; but I do not think that would be best for thee.” She looked at her liquor-stained dress with a sad smile. “Nay, thou shalt go, in truth, thou shalt go. It is best so. My boy, it is best so.”

She stooped and kissed Dick between the eyes. “That is for good-morning,” she said, going away. “When thou art dressed we will speak to George and make everything ready. But first we must open the little trunk. Give me the keys.”

“The amount of kissing lately has been simply scandalous. I shall expect Torp to kiss me next. He is more likely to swear at me for getting in his way, though. Well, it won't last long.--Ohe, Madame, help me to my toilette of the guillotine! There will be no chance of dressing properly out yonder.”

He was rummaging among his new campaign-kit, and rowelling his hands with the spurs. There are two ways of wearing well-oiled ankle-jacks, spotless blue bands, khaki coat and breeches, and a perfectly pipeclayed helmet. The right way is the way of the untired man, master of himself, setting out upon an expedition, well pleased.

“Everything must be very correct,” Dick explained. “It will become dirty afterwards, but now it is good to feel well dressed. Is everything as it should be?”

He patted the revolver neatly hidden under the fulness of the blouse on the right hip and fingered his collar.

“I can do no more,” Madame said, between laughing and crying. “Look at thyself--but I forgot.”

“I am very content.” He stroked the creaseless spirals of his leggings.

“Now let us go and see the captain and George and the lighthouse boat. Be quick, Madame.”

“But thou canst not be seen by the harbour walking with me in the daylight. Figure to yourself if some English ladies----”

“There are no English ladies; and if there are, I have forgotten them. Take me there.”

In spite of this burning impatience it was nearly evening ere the lighthouse boat began to move. Madame had said a great deal both to George and the captain touching the arrangements that were to be made for Dick's benefit. Very few men who had the honour of her acquaintance cared to disregard Madame's advice. That sort of contempt might end in being knifed by a stranger in a gambling hell upon surprisingly short provocation.

For six days--two of them were wasted in the crowded Canal--the little steamer worked her way to Suakin, where she was to pick up the superintendent of the lighthouse; and Dick made it his business to propitiate George, who was distracted with fears for the safety of his light-of-love and half inclined to make Dick responsible for his own discomfort. When they arrived George took him under his wing, and together they entered the red-hot seaport, encumbered with the material and wastage of the Suakin-Berger line, from locomotives in disconsolate fragments to mounds of chairs and pot-sleepers.

“If you keep with me,” said George, “nobody will ask for passports or what you do. They are all very busy.”

“Yes; but I should like to hear some of the Englishmen talk. They might remember me. I was known here a long time ago--when I was some one indeed.”

“A long time ago is a very long time ago here. The graveyards are full. Now listen. This new railway runs out so far as Tanai-el-Hassan--that is seven miles. Then there is a camp. They say that beyond Tanai-el-Hassan the English troops go forward, and everything that they require will be brought to them by this line.”

“Ah! Base camp. I see. That's a better business than fighting Fuzzies in the open.”

“For this reason even the mules go up in the iron-train.”

“Iron what?”

“It is all covered with iron, because it is still being shot at.”

“An armoured train. Better and better! Go on, faithful George.”

“And I go up with my mules tonight. Only those who particularly require to go to the camp go out with the train. They begin to shoot not far from the city.”

“The dears--they always used to!” Dick snuffed the smell of parched dust, heated iron, and flaking paint with delight. Certainly the old life was welcoming him back most generously.

“When I have got my mules together I go up tonight, but you must first send a telegram of Port Said, declaring that I have done you no harm.”

“Madame has you well in hand. Would you stick a knife into me if you had the chance?”

“I have no chance,” said the Greek. “She is there with that woman.”

“I see. It's a bad thing to be divided between love of woman and the chance of loot. I sympathise with you, George.”

They went to the telegraph-office unquestioned, for all the world was desperately busy and had scarcely time to turn its head, and Suakin was the last place under sky that would be chosen for holiday-ground. On their return the voice of an English subaltern asked Dick what he was doing. The blue goggles were over his eyes and he walked with his hand on George's elbow as he replied--“Egyptian Government--mules. My orders are to give them over to the A. C. G. at Tanai-el-Hassan. Any occasion to show my papers?”

“Oh, certainly not. I beg your pardon. I'd no right to ask, but not seeing your face before I----”

“I go out in the train tonight, I suppose,” said Dick, boldly. “There will be no difficulty in loading up the mules, will there?”

“You can see the horse-platforms from here. You must have them loaded up early.” The young man went away wondering what sort of broken-down waif this might be who talked like a gentleman and consorted with Greek muleteers. Dick felt unhappy. To outface an English officer is no small thing, but the bluff loses relish when one plays it from the utter dark, and stumbles up and down rough ways, thinking and eternally thinking of what might have been if things had fallen out otherwise, and all had been as it was not.

George shared his meal with Dick and went off to the mule-lines. His charge sat alone in a shed with his face in his hands. Before his tight-shut eyes danced the face of Maisie, laughing, with parted lips. There was a great bustle and clamour about him. He grew afraid and almost called for George.

“I say, have you got your mules ready?” It was the voice of the subaltern over his shoulder.

“My man's looking after them. The--the fact is I've a touch of ophthalmia and can't see very well.

“By Jove! that's bad. You ought to lie up in hospital for a while. I've had a turn of it myself. It's as bad as being blind.”

“So I find it. When does this armoured train go?”

“At six o'clock. It takes an hour to cover the seven miles.”

“Are the Fuzzies on the rampage--eh?”

“About three nights a week. Fact is I'm in acting command of the night-train. It generally runs back empty to Tanai for the night.”

“Big camp at Tanai, I suppose?”

“Pretty big. It has to feed our desert-column somehow.”

“Is that far off?”

“Between thirty and forty miles--in an infernal thirsty country.”

“Is the country quiet between Tanai and our men?”

“More or less. I shouldn't care to cross it alone, or with a subaltern's command for the matter of that, but the scouts get through it in some extraordinary fashion.”

“They always did.”

“Have you been here before, then?”

“I was through most of the trouble when it first broke out.”

“In the service and cashiered,” was the subaltern's first thought, so he refrained from putting any questions.

“There's your man coming up with the mules. It seems rather queer----”

“That I should be mule-leading?” said Dick.

“I didn't mean to say so, but it is. Forgive me--it's beastly impertinence I know, but you speak like a man who has been at a public school. There's no mistaking the tone.”

“I am a public school man.”

“I thought so. I say, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but you're a little down on your luck, aren't you? I saw you sitting with your head in your hands, and that's why I spoke.”

“Thanks. I am about as thoroughly and completely broke as a man need be.”

“Suppose--I mean I'm a public school man myself. Couldn't I perhaps--take it as a loan y'know and----”

“You're much too good, but on my honour I've as much money as I want. ... I tell you what you could do for me, though, and put me under an everlasting obligation. Let me come into the bogie truck of the train. There is a fore-truck, isn't there?”

“Yes. How d'you know?”

“I've been in an armoured train before. Only let me see--hear some of the fun I mean, and I'll be grateful. I go at my own risk as a non-combatant.”

The young man thought for a minute. “All right,” he said. “We're supposed to be an empty train, and there's no one to blow me up at the other end.”

George and a horde of yelling amateur assistants had loaded up the mules, and the narrow-gauge armoured train, plated with three-eighths inch boiler-plate till it looked like one long coffin, stood ready to start.

Two bogie trucks running before the locomotive were completely covered in with plating, except that the leading one was pierced in front for the muzzle of a machine-gun, and the second at either side for lateral fire.

The trucks together made one long iron-vaulted chamber in which a score of artillerymen were rioting.

“Whitechapel--last train! Ah, I see yer kissin' in the first class there!” somebody shouted, just as Dick was clamouring into the forward truck.

“Lordy! 'Ere's a real live passenger for the Kew, Tanai, Acton, and Ealin' train. Echo, sir. Speshul edition! Star, sir.”--“Shall I get you a foot-warmer?” said another.

“Thanks. I'll pay my footing,” said Dick, and relations of the most amiable were established ere silence came with the arrival of the subaltern, and the train jolted out over the rough track.

“This is an immense improvement on shooting the unimpressionable Fuzzy in the open,” said Dick, from his place in the corner.

“Oh, but he's still unimpressed. There he goes!” said the subaltern, as a bullet struck the outside of the truck. “We always have at least one demonstration against the night-train. Generally they attack the rear-truck, where my junior commands. He gets all the fun of the fair.”

“Not tonight though! Listen!” said Dick. A flight of heavy-handed bullets was succeeded by yelling and shouts. The children of the desert valued their nightly amusement, and the train was an excellent mark.

“Is it worth giving them half a hopper full?” the subaltern asked of the engine, which was driven by a Lieutenant of Sappers.

“I should think so! This is my section of the line. They'll be playing old Harry with my permanent way if we don't stop 'em.”

“Right O!”

“Hrrmph!” said the machine gun through all its five noses as the subaltern drew the lever home. The empty cartridges clashed on the floor and the smoke blew back through the truck. There was indiscriminate firing at the rear of the train, and return fire from the darkness without and unlimited howling. Dick stretched himself on the floor, wild with delight at the sounds and the smells.

“God is very good--I never thought I'd hear this again. Give 'em hell, men. Oh, give 'em hell!” he cried.

The train stopped for some obstruction on the line ahead and a party went out to reconnoitre, but came back, cursing, for spades. The children of the desert had piled sand and gravel on the rails, and twenty minutes were lost in clearing it away. Then the slow progress recommenced, to be varied with more shots, more shoutings, the steady clack and kick of the machine guns, and a final difficulty with a half-lifted rail ere the train came under the protection of the roaring camp at Tanai-el-Hassan.

“Now, you see why it takes an hour and a half to fetch her through,” said the subaltern, unshipping the cartridge-hopper above his pet gun.

“It was a lark, though. I only wish it had lasted twice as long. How superb it must have looked from outside!” said Dick, sighing regretfully.

“It palls after the first few nights. By the way, when you've settled about your mules, come and see what we can find to eat in my tent. I'm Bennil of the Gunners--in the artillery lines--and mind you don't fall over my tent-ropes in the dark.”

But it was all dark to Dick. He could only smell the camels, the hay-bales, the cooking, the smoky fires, and the tanned canvas of the tents as he stood, where he had dropped from the train, shouting for George. There was a sound of light-hearted kicking on the iron skin of the rear trucks, with squealing and grunting. George was unloading the mules.

The engine was blowing off steam nearly in Dick's ear; a cold wind of the desert danced between his legs; he was hungry, and felt tired and dirty--so dirty that he tried to brush his coat with his hands. That was a hopeless job; he thrust his hands into his pockets and began to count over the many times that he had waited in strange or remote places for trains or camels, mules or horses, to carry him to his business. In those days he could see--few men more clearly--and the spectacle of an armed camp at dinner under the stare was an ever fresh pleasure to the eye. There was colour, light, and motion, without which no man has much pleasure in living. This night there remained for him only one more journey through the darkness that never lifts to tell a man how far he has travelled. Then he would grip Torpenhow's hand again--Torpenhow, who was alive and strong, and lived in the midst of the action that had once made the reputation of a man called Dick Heldar: not in the least to be confused with the blind, bewildered vagabond who seemed to answer to the same name. Yes, he would find Torpenhow, and come as near to the old life as might be. Afterwards he would forget everything: Bessie, who had wrecked the Melancolia and so nearly wrecked his life; Beeton, who lived in a strange unreal city full of tin-tacks and gas-plugs and matters that no men needed; that irrational being who had offered him love and loyalty for nothing, but had not signed her name; and most of all Maisie, who, from her own point of view, was undeniably right in all she did, but oh, at this distance, so tantalisingly fair.

George's hand on his arm pulled him back to the situation.

“And what now?” said George.

“Oh yes of course. What now? Take me to the camel-men. Take me to where the scouts sit when they come in from the desert. They sit by their camels, and the camels eat grain out of a black blanket held up at the corners, and the men eat by their side just like camels. Take me there!”

The camp was rough and rutty, and Dick stumbled many times over the stumps of scrub. The scouts were sitting by their beasts, as Dick knew they would. The light of the dung-fires flickered on their bearded faces, and the camels bubbled and mumbled beside them at rest. It was no part of Dick's policy to go into the desert with a convoy of supplies. That would lead to impertinent questions, and since a blind non-combatant is not needed at the front, he would probably be forced to return to Suakin.

He must go up alone, and go immediately.

“Now for one last bluff--the biggest of all,” he said. “Peace be with you, brethren!” The watchful George steered him to the circle of the nearest fire. The heads of the camel-sheiks bowed gravely, and the camels, scenting a European, looked sideways curiously like brooding hens, half ready to get to their feet.

“A beast and a driver to go to the fighting line tonight,” said Dick.

“A Mulaid?” said a voice, scornfully naming the best baggage-breed that he knew.

“A Bisharin,” returned Dick, with perfect gravity. “A Bisharin without saddle-galls. Therefore no charge of thine, shock-head.”

Two or three minutes passed. Then--“We be knee-haltered for the night. There is no going out from the camp.”

“Not for money?”

“H'm! Ah! English money?”

Another depressing interval of silence.

“How much?”

“Twenty-five pounds English paid into the hand of the driver at my journey's end, and as much more into the hand of the camel-sheik here, to be paid when the driver returns.”

This was royal payment, and the sheik, who knew that he would get his commission on this deposit, stirred in Dick's behalf.

“For scarcely one night's journey--fifty pounds. Land and wells and good trees and wives to make a man content for the rest of his days. Who speaks?” said Dick.

“I,” said a voice. “I will go--but there is no going from the camp.”

“Fool! I know that a camel can break his knee-halter, and the sentries do not fire if one goes in chase. Twenty-five pounds and another twenty-five pounds. But the beast must be a good Bisharin; I will take no baggage-camel.”

Then the bargaining began, and at the end of half an hour the first deposit was paid over to the sheik, who talked in low tones to the driver.

Dick heard the latter say: “A little way out only. Any baggage-beast will serve. Am I a fool to waste my cattle for a blind man?”

“And though I cannot see”--Dick lifted his voice a little--“yet I carry that which has six eyes, and the driver will sit before me. If we do not reach the English troops in the dawn he will be dead.”

“But where, in God's name, are the troops?”

“Unless thou knowest let another man ride. Dost thou know? Remember it will be life or death to thee.”

“I know,” said the driver, sullenly. “Stand back from my beast. I am going to slip him.”

“Not so swiftly. George, hold the camel's head a moment. I want to feel his cheek.” The hands wandered over the hide till they found the branded half-circle that is the mark of the Biharin, the light-built riding-camel.

“That is well. Cut this one loose. Remember no blessing of God comes on those who try to cheat the blind.”

The men chuckled by the fires at the camel-driver's discomfiture. He had intended to substitute a slow, saddle-galled baggage-colt.

“Stand back!” one shouted, lashing the Biharin under the belly with a quirt. Dick obeyed as soon as he felt the nose-string tighten in his hand,--and a cry went up, “Illaha! Aho! He is loose.”

With a roar and a grunt the Biharin rose to his feet and plunged forward toward the desert, his driver following with shouts and lamentation.

George caught Dick's arm and hurried him stumbling and tripping past a disgusted sentry who was used to stampeding camels.

“What's the row now?” he cried.

“Every stitch of my kit on that blasted dromedary,” Dick answered, after the manner of a common soldier.

“Go on, and take care your throat's not cut outside--you and your dromedary's.”

The outcries ceased when the camel had disappeared behind a hillock, and his driver had called him back and made him kneel down.

“Mount first,” said Dick. Then climbing into the second seat and gently screwing the pistol muzzle into the small of his companion's back, “Go on in God's name, and swiftly. Goodbye, George. Remember me to Madame, and have a good time with your girl. Get forward, child of the Pit!”

A few minutes later he was shut up in a great silence, hardly broken by the creaking of the saddle and the soft pad of the tireless feet. Dick adjusted himself comfortably to the rock and pitch of the pace, girthed his belt tighter, and felt the darkness slide past. For an hour he was conscious only of the sense of rapid progress.

“A good camel,” he said at last.

“He was never underfed. He is my own and clean bred,” the driver replied.

“Go on.”

His head dropped on his chest and he tried to think, but the tenor of his thoughts was broken because he was very sleepy. In the half doze in seemed that he was learning a punishment hymn at Mrs. Jennett's. He had committed some crime as bad as Sabbath-breaking, and she had locked him up in his bedroom. But he could never repeat more than the first two lines of the hymn--

When Israel of the Lord believed Out of the land of bondage came.

He said them over and over thousands of times. The driver turned in the saddle to see if there were any chance of capturing the revolver and ending the ride. Dick roused, struck him over the head with the butt, and stormed himself wide awake. Somebody hidden in a clump of camel-thorn shouted as the camel toiled up rising ground. A shot was fired, and the silence shut down again, bringing the desire to sleep. Dick could think no longer. He was too tired and stiff and cramped to do more than nod uneasily from time to time, waking with a start and punching the driver with the pistol.

“Is there a moon?” he asked drowsily.

“She is near her setting.”

“I wish that I could see her. Halt the camel. At least let me hear the desert talk.”

The man obeyed. Out of the utter stillness came one breath of wind. It rattled the dead leaves of a shrub some distance away and ceased. A handful of dry earth detached itself from the edge of a rail trench and crumbled softly to the bottom.

“Go on. The night is very cold.”

Those who have watched till the morning know how the last hour before the light lengthens itself into many eternities. It seemed to Dick that he had never since the beginning of original darkness done anything at all save jolt through the air. Once in a thousand years he would finger the nailheads on the saddle-front and count them all carefully. Centuries later he would shift his revolver from his right hand to his left and allow the eased arm to drop down at his side. From the safe distance of London he was watching himself thus employed,--watching critically. Yet whenever he put out his hand to the canvas that he might paint the tawny yellow desert under the glare of the sinking moon, the black shadow of a camel and the two bowed figures atop, that hand held a revolver and the arm was numbed from wrist to collar-bone. Moreover, he was in the dark, and could see no canvas of any kind whatever.

The driver grunted, and Dick was conscious of a change in the air.

“I smell the dawn,” he whispered.

“It is here, and yonder are the troops. Have I done well?”

The camel stretched out its neck and roared as there came down wind the pungent reek of camels in the square.

“Go on. We must get there swiftly. Go on.”

“They are moving in their camp. There is so much dust that I cannot see what they do.”

“Am I in better case? Go forward.”

They could hear the hum of voices ahead, the howling and the bubbling of the beasts and the hoarse cries of the soldiers girthing up for the day.

Two or three shots were fired.

“Is that at us? Surely they can see that I am English,” Dick spoke angrily.

“Nay, it is from the desert,” the driver answered, cowering in his saddle.

“Go forward, my child! Well it is that the dawn did not uncover us an hour ago.”

The camel headed straight for the column and the shots behind multiplied. The children of the desert had arranged that most uncomfortable of surprises, a dawn attack for the English troops, and were getting their distance by snap-shots at the only moving object without the square.

“What luck! What stupendous and imperial luck!” said Dick. “It's 'just before the battle, mother.' Oh, God has been most good to me! Only”--the agony of the thought made him screw up his eyes for an instant--“Maisie...”

“Allahu! We are in,” said the man, as he drove into the rearguard and the camel knelt.

“Who the deuce are you? Despatches or what? What's the strength of the enemy behind that ridge? How did you get through?” asked a dozen voices. For all answer Dick took a long breath, unbuckled his belt, and shouted from the saddle at the top of a wearied and dusty voice, “Torpenhow! Ohe, Torp! Coo-ee, Tor-pen-how.”

A bearded man raking in the ashes of a fire for a light to his pipe moved very swiftly towards that cry, as the rearguard, facing about, began to fire at the puffs of smoke from the hillocks around. Gradually the scattered white cloudlets drew out into the long lines of banked white that hung heavily in the stillness of the dawn before they turned over wave-like and glided into the valleys. The soldiers in the square were coughing and swearing as their own smoke obstructed their view, and they edged forward to get beyond it. A wounded camel leaped to its feet and roared aloud, the cry ending in a bubbling grunt. Some one had cut its throat to prevent confusion. Then came the thick sob of a man receiving his death-wound from a bullet; then a yell of agony and redoubled firing.

There was no time to ask any questions.

“Get down, man! Get down behind the camel!”

“No. Put me, I pray, in the forefront of the battle.” Dick turned his face to Torpenhow and raised his hand to set his helmet straight, but, miscalculating the distance, knocked it off. Torpenhow saw that his hair was gray on the temples, and that his face was the face of an old man.

“Come down, you damned fool! Dickie, come off!”

And Dick came obediently, but as a tree falls, pitching sideways from the Bisharin's saddle at Torpenhow's feet. His luck had held to the last, even to the crowning mercy of a kindly bullet through his head.

Torpenhow knelt under the lee of the camel, with Dick's body in his arms.

THE END

VOLUME VII THE STORY OF THE GADSBYS

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Preface

To THE ADDRESS OF

CAPTAIN J. MAFFLIN,

Duke of Derry's (Pink) Hussars.

DEAR MAFFLIN,--You will remember that I wrote this story as an Awful Warning. None the less you have seen fit to disregard it and have followed Gadsby's example--as I betted you would. I acknowledge that you paid the money at once, but you have prejudiced the mind of Mrs. Mafflin against myself, for though I am almost the only respectable friend of your bachelor days, she has been darwaza band to me throughout the season. Further, she caused you to invite me to dinner at the Club, where you called me “a wild ass of the desert,” and went home at half-past ten, after discoursing for twenty minutes on the responsibilities of housekeeping. You now drive a mail-phaeton and sit under a Church of England clergyman. I am not angry, Jack. It is your kismet, as it was Gaddy's, and his kismet who can avoid? Do not think that I am moved by a spirit of revenge as I write, thus publicly, that you and you alone are responsible for this book. In other and more expansive days, when you could look at a magnum without flushing and at a cheroot without turning white, you supplied me with most of the material. Take it back again--would that I could have preserved your fetterless speech in the telling--take it back, and by your slippered hearth read it to the late Miss Deercourt. She will not be any the more willing to receive my cards, but she will admire you immensely, and you, I feel sure, will love me. You may even invite me to another very bad dinner--at the Club, which, as you and your wife know, is a safe neutral ground for the entertainment of wild asses. Then, my very dear hypocrite, we shall be quits.

Yours always,

RUDYARD KIPLING.

P. S.--On second thoughts I should recommend you to keep the book away from Mrs. Mafflin.

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POOR DEAR MAMMA

The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, The deer to the wholesome wold, And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid, As it was in the days of old. --Gypsy Song.

SCENE. Interior of Miss MINNIE THREEGAN'S Bedroom at Simla. Miss THREEGAN, in window-seat, turning over a drawerful of things. Miss EMMA DEERCOURT, bosom--friend, who has come to spend the day, sitting on the bed, manipulating the bodice of a ballroom frock, and a bunch of artificial lilies of the valley. Time, 5:30 P. M. on a hot May afternoon.

Miss DEERCOURT. And he said: “I shall never forget this dance,” and, of course, I said: “Oh, how can you be so silly!” Do you think he meant anything, dear?

Miss THREEGAN. (Extracting long lavender silk stocking from the rubbish.) You know him better than I do.

Miss D. Oh, do be sympathetic, Minnie! I'm sure he does. At least I would be sure if he wasn't always riding with that odious Mrs. Hagan.

Miss T. I suppose so. How does one manage to dance through one's heels first? Look at this--isn't it shameful? (Spreads stocking-heel on open hand for inspection.)

Miss D. Never mind that! You can't mend it. Help me with this hateful bodice. I've run the string so, and I've run the string so, and I can't make the fulness come right. Where would you put this? (Waves lilies of the valley.)

Miss T. As high up on the shoulder as possible.

Miss D. Am I quite tall enough? I know it makes May Older look lopsided.

Miss T. Yes, but May hasn't your shoulders. Hers are like a hock-bottle.

BEARER. (Rapping at door.) Captain Sahib aya.

Miss D. (Jumping up wildly, and hunting for bodice, which she has discarded owing to the heat of the day.) Captain Sahib! What Captain Sahib? Oh, good gracious, and I'm only half dressed! Well, I sha'n't bother.

Miss T. (Calmly.) You needn't. It isn't for us. That's Captain Gadsby. He is going for a ride with Mamma. He generally comes five days out of the seven.

AGONIZED VOICE. (Prom an inner apartment.) Minnie, run out and give Captain Gadsby some tea, and tell him I shall be ready in ten minutes; and, O Minnie, come to me an instant, there's a dear girl!

Miss T. Oh, bother! (Aloud.) Very well, Mamma.

Exit, and reappears, after five minutes, flushed, and rubbing her fingers.

Miss D. You look pink. What has happened?

Miss T. (In a stage whisper.) A twenty-four-inch waist, and she won't let it out. Where are my bangles? (Rummages on the toilet-table, and dabs at her hair with a brush in the interval.)

Miss D. Who is this Captain Gadsby? I don't think I've met him.

Miss T. You must have. He belongs to the Harrar set. I've danced with him, but I've never talked to him. He's a big yellow man, just like a newly-hatched chicken, with an enormous moustache. He walks like this (imitates Cavalry swagger), and he goes “Ha-Hmmm!” deep down in his throat when he can't think of anything to say. Mamma likes him. I don't.

Miss D. (Abstractedly.) Does he wax that moustache?

Miss T. (Busy with Powder-puff.) Yes, I think so. Why?

Miss D. (Bending over the bodice and sewing furiously.) Oh, nothing--only--

Miss T. (Sternly.) Only what? Out with it, Emma.

Miss D. Well, May Olger--she's engaged to Mr. Charteris, you know--said--Promise you won't repeat this?

Miss T. Yes, I promise. What did she say?

Miss D. That--that being kissed (with a rush) with a man who didn't wax his moustache was--like eating an egg without salt.

Miss T. (At her full height, with crushing scorn.) May Olger is a horrid, nasty Thing, and you can tell her I said so. I'm glad she doesn't belong to my set--I must go and feed this man! Do I look presentable?

Miss D. Yes, perfectly. Be quick and hand him over to your Mother, and then we can talk. I shall listen at the door to hear what you say to him.

Miss T. 'Sure I don't care. I'm not afraid of Captain Gadsby.

In proof of this swings into the drawing-room with a mannish stride followed by two short steps, which produces the effect of a restive horse entering. Misses CAPTAIN GADSBY, who is sitting in the shadow of the window-curtain, and gazes round helplessly.

CAPTAIN GADSBY. (Aside.) The filly, by Jove! 'Must ha' picked up that action from the sire. (Aloud, rising.) Good evening, Miss Threegan.

Miss T. (Conscious that she is flushing.) Good evening, Captain Gadsby. Mamma told me to say that she will be ready in a few minutes. Won't you have some tea? (Aside.) I hope Mamma will be quick. What am I to say to the creature? (Aloud and abruptly.) Milk and sugar?

Capt. G. No sugar, tha-anks, and very little milk. Ha-Hmmm.

Miss T. (Aside.) If he's going to do that, I'm lost. I shall laugh. I know I shall!

Capt. G. (Pulling at his moustache and watching it sideways down his nose.) Ha-Hmmm. (Aside.) 'Wonder what the little beast can talk about. 'Must make a shot at it.

Miss T. (Aside.) Oh, this is agonizing. I must say something.

Both Together. Have you Been--

Capt. G. I beg your pardon. You were going to say--

Miss T. (Who has been watching the moustache with awed fascination.) Won't you have some eggs?

Capt. G. (Looking bewilderedly at the tea-table.) Eggs! (Aside.) O Hades! She must have a nursery-tea at this hour. S'pose they've wiped her mouth and sent her to me while the Mother is getting on her duds. (Aloud.) No, thanks.

Miss T. (Crimson with confusion.) Oh! I didn't mean that. I wasn't thinking of mou--eggs for an instant. I mean salt. Won't you have some sa--sweets? (Aside.) He'll think me a raving lunatic. I wish Mamma would come.

Capt. G. (Aside.) It was a nursery-tea and she's ashamed of it. By Jove! She doesn't look half bad when she colors up like that. (Aloud, helping himself from the dish.) Have you seen those new chocolates at Peliti's?

Miss T. No, I made these myself. What are they like?

Capt. G. These! De-licious. (Aside.) And that's a fact.

Miss T. (Aside.) Oh, bother! he'll think I'm fishing for compliments. (Aloud.) No, Peliti's of course.

Capt. G. (Enthusiastically.) Not to compare with these. How d'you make them? I can't get my khansamah to understand the simplest thing beyond mutton and fowl.

Miss T. Yes? I'm not a khansamah, you know. Perhaps you frighten him. You should never frighten a servant. He loses his head. It's very bad policy.

Capt. G. He's so awf'ly stupid.

Miss T. (Folding her hands in her lap.) You should call him quietly and say: 'O khansamah jee!'

Capt. G. (Getting interested.) Yes? (Aside.) Fancy that little featherweight saying, 'O khansamah jee' to my bloodthirsty Mir Khan!

Miss T Then you should explain the dinner, dish by dish.

Capt. G. But I can't speak the vernacular.

Miss T. (Patronizingly.) You should pass the Higher Standard and try.

Capt. G. I have, but I don't seem to be any the wiser. Are you?

Miss T. I never passed the Higher Standard. But the khansamah is very patient with me. He doesn't get angry when I talk about sheep's topees, or order maunds of grain when I mean seers.

Capt. G. (Aside with intense indignation.) I'd like to see Mir Khan being rude to that girl! Hullo! Steady the Buffs! (Aloud.) And do you understand about horses, too?

Miss T. A little--not very much. I can't doctor them, but I know what they ought to eat, and I am in charge of our stable.

Capt. G. Indeed! You might help me then. What ought a man to give his sais in the Hills? My ruffian says eight rupees, because everything is so dear.

Miss T. Six rupees a month, and one rupee Simla allowance--neither more nor less. And a grass-cut gets six rupees. That's better than buying grass in the bazar.

Capt. G. (Admiringly.) How do you know?

Miss T. I have tried both ways.

Capt. G. Do you ride much, then? I've never seen you on the Mall.

Miss T. (Aside.) I haven't passed him more than fifty times. (Aloud.) Nearly every day.

Capt. G. By Jove! I didn't know that. Ha-Hmmm (Pulls at his moustache and is silent for forty seconds.)

Miss T. (Desperately, and wondering what will happen next.) It looks beautiful. I shouldn't touch it if I were you. (Aside.) It's all Mamma's fault for not coming before. I will be rude!

Capt. G. (Bronzing under the tan and bringing down his hand very quickly.) Eh! Wha-at! Oh, yes! Ha! Ha! (Laughs uneasily.) (Aside.) Well, of all the dashed cheek! I never had a woman say that to me yet. She must be a cool hand or else--Ah! that nursery-tea!

VOICE PROM THE UNKNOWN. Tchk! Tchk! Tchk!

Capt. G. Good gracious! What's that?

Miss T. The dog, I think. (Aside.) Emma has been listening, and I'll never forgive her!

Capt. G. (Aside.) They don't keep dogs here. (Aloud.) Didn't sound like a dog, did it?

Miss T. Then it must have been the cat. Let's go into the veranda. What a lovely evening it is!

Steps into veranda and looks out across the hills into sunset. The CAPTAIN follows.

Capt. G. (Aside.) Superb eyes! I wonder that I never noticed them before! (Aloud.) There's going to be a dance at Viceregal Lodge on Wednesday. Can you spare me one?

Miss T. (Shortly.) No! I don't want any of your charity-dances. You only ask me because Mamma told you to. I hop and I bump. You know I do!

Capt. G. (Aside.) That's true, but little girls shouldn't understand these things. (Aloud.) No, on my word, I don't. You dance beautifully.

Miss T. Then why do you always stand out after half a dozen turns? I thought officers in the Army didn't tell fibs.

Capt. G. It wasn't a fib, believe me. I really do want the pleasure of a dance with you.

Miss T. (Wickedly.) Why? Won't Mamma dance with you any more?

Capt. G. (More earnestly than the necessity demands.) I wasn't thinking of your Mother. (Aside.) You little vixen!

Miss T. (Still looking out of the window.) Eh? Oh, I beg your pardon. I was thinking of something else.

Capt. G. (Aside.) Well! I wonder what she'll say next. I've never known a woman treat me like this before. I might b--Dash it, I might be an Infantry subaltern! (Aloud.) Oh, please don't trouble. I'm not worth thinking about. Isn't your Mother ready yet?

Miss T. I should think so; but promise me, Captain Gamsby, you won't take poor dear Mamma twice round Jakko any more. It tires her so.

Capt. G. She says that no exercise tires her.

Miss T. Yes, but she suffers afterward. You don't know what rheumatism is, and you oughtn't to keep her out so late, when it gets chill in the evenings.

Capt. G. (Aside.) Rheumatism. I thought she came off her horse rather in a bunch. Whew! One lives and learns. (Aloud.) I'm sorry to hear that. She hasn't mentioned it to me.

Miss T. (Flurried.) Of course not! Poor dear Mamma never would. And you mustn't say that I told you either. Promise me that you won't. Oh, Captain Gamsby, promise me you won't!

Capt. G. I am dumb, or--I shall be as soon as you've given me that dance, and another--if you can trouble yourself to think about me for a minute.

Miss T. But you won't like it one little bit. You'll be awfully sorry afterward.

Capt. G. I shall like it above all things, and I shall only be sorry that I didn't get more. (Aside.) Now what in the world am I saying?

Miss T. Very well. You will have only yourself to thank if your toes are trodden on. Shall we say Seven?

Capt. G. And Eleven. (Aside.) She can't be more than eight stone, but, even then, it's an absurdly small foot. (Looks at his own riding boots.)

Miss T. They're beautifully shiny. I can almost see my face in them.

Capt. G. I was thinking whether I should have to go on crutches for the rest of my life if you trod on my toes.

Miss T. Very likely. Why not change Eleven for a square?

Capt. G. No, please! I want them both waltzes. Won't you write them down?

Miss T. I don't get so many dances that I shall confuse them. You will be the offender.

Capt. G. Wait and see! (Aside.) She doesn't dance perfectly, perhaps, but--

Miss T. Your tea must have got cold by this time. Won't you have another cup?

Capt. G. No, thanks. Don't you think it's pleasanter out in the veranda? (Aside.) I never saw hair take that color in the sunshine before. (Aloud.) It's like one of Dicksee's pictures.

Miss T. Yes I It's a wonderful sunset, isn't it? (Bluntly.) But what do you know about Dicksee's pictures?

Capt. G. I go Home occasionally. And I used to know the Galleries. (Nervously.) You mustn't think me only a Philistine with a moustache.

Miss T. Don't! Please don't. I'm so sorry for what I said then. I was horribly rude. It slipped out before j thought. Don't you know the temptation to say frightful and shocking things just for the mere sake of saying them? I'm afraid I gave way to it.

Capt. G. (Watching the girl as she flushes.) I think I know the feeling. It would be terrible if we all yielded to it, wouldn't it? For instance, I might say--

POOR DEAR MAMMA. (Entering, habited, hatted, and booted.) Ah, Captain Gamsby? 'Sorry to keep you waiting. 'Hope you haven't been bored. 'My little girl been talking to you?

Miss T. (Aside.) I'm not sorry I spoke about the rheumatism. I'm not! I'm NOT! I only wished I'd mentioned the corns too.

Capt. G. (Aside.) What a shame! I wonder how old she is. It never occurred to me before. (Aloud.) We've been discussing 'Shakespeare and the musical glasses' in the veranda.

Miss T. (Aside.) Nice man! He knows that quotation. He isn't a Philistine with a moustache. (Aloud.) Goodbye, Captain Gadsby. (Aside.) What a huge hand and what a squeeze! I don't suppose he meant it, but he has driven the rings into my fingers.

Poor Dear Mamma. Has Vermillion come round yet? Oh, yes! Captain Gadsby, don't you think that the saddle is too far forward? (They pass into the front veranda.)

Capt. G. (Aside.) How the dickens should I know what she prefers? She told me that she doted on horses. (Aloud.) I think it is.

Miss T. (Coming out into front veranda.) Oh! Bad Buldoo! I must speak to him for this. He has taken up the curb two links, and Vermillion bates that. (Passes out and to horse's head.)

Capt. G. Let me do it!

Miss. T. No, Vermillion understands me. Don't you, old man? (Loosens curb-chain skilfully, and pats horse on nose and throttle.) Poor Vermillion! Did they want to cut his chin off? There!

Captain Gadsby watches the interlude with undisguised admiration.

Poor Dear Mamma. (Tartly to Miss T.) You've forgotten your guest, I think, dear.

Miss T. Good gracious! So I have! Goodbye. (Retreats indoors hastily.)

Poor Dear Mamma. (Bunching reins in fingers hampered by too tight gauntlets.) CAPTAIN Gadsby!

CAPTAIN GADSBY stoops and makes the foot-rest. Poor Dear Mamma blunders, halts too long, and breaks through it.

Capt. G. (Aside.) Can't hold up seven stone forever. It's all your rheumatism. (Aloud.) Can't imagine why I was so clumsy. (Aside.) Now Little Featherweight would have gone up like a bird.

They ride out of the garden. The Captain falls back.

Capt. G. (Aside.) How that habit catches her under the arms! Ugh!

Poor Dear Mamma. (With the worn smile of sixteen seasons, the worse for exchange.) You're dull this afternoon, Captain Gadsby.

Capt. G. (Spurring up wearily.) Why did you keep me waiting so long?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

(AN INTERVAL OF THREE WEEKS.)

GILDED YOUTH. (Sitting on railings opposite Town Hall.) Hullo, Gadsby! 'Been trotting out the Gorgonzola! We all thought it was the Gorgon you're mashing.

Capt. G. (With withering emphasis.) You young cub! What the--does it matter to you?

Proceeds to read GILDED YOUTH a lecture on discretion and deportment, which crumbles latter like a Chinese Lantern. Departs fuming.

(FURTHER INTERVAL OF FIVE WEEKS.) SCENE. Exterior of New Simla Library on a foggy evening. Miss THREEGAN and Miss DEERCOURT meet among the 'rickshaws. Miss T. is carrying a bundle of books under her left arm.

Miss D. (Level intonation.) Well?

Miss T. (Ascending intonation.) Well?

Miss D. (Capturing her friend's left arm, taking away all the books, placing books in 'rickshaw, returning to arm, securing hand by third finger and investigating.) Well! You bad girl! And you never told me.

Miss T. (Demurely.) He--he--he only spoke yesterday afternoon.

Miss D. Bless you, dear! And I'm to be bridesmaid, aren't I? You know you promised ever so long ago.

Miss T. Of course. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. (Gets into 'rickshaw.) O Emma!

Miss D. (With intense interest.) Yes, dear?

Miss T. (Piano.) It's quite true--about-the-egg.

Miss D. What egg?

Miss T. (Pianissimo prestissimo.) The egg without the salt. (Forte.) Chalo ghar ko jaldi, jhampani! (Go home, jhampani.)

THE WORLD WITHOUT

Certain people of importance.

SCENE. Smoking-room of the Degchi Club. Time, 10.30 P. M. of a stuffy night in the Rains. Four men dispersed in picturesque attitudes and easy-chairs. To these enter BLAYNE of the Irregular Moguls, in evening dress.

BLAYNE. Phew! The Judge ought to be hanged in his own store-godown. Hi, khitmatgar! Pour a whiskey-peg, to take the taste out of my mouth.

CURTISS. (Royal Artillery.) That's it, is it? What the deuce made you dine at the Judge's? You know his bandobust.

Blayne. 'Thought it couldn't be worse than the Club, but I'll swear he buys ullaged liquor and doctors it with gin and ink (looking round the room.) Is this all of you tonight?

DOONE. (P.W.D.) Anthony was called out at dinner. Mingle had a pain in his tummy.

Curtiss. Miggy dies of cholera once a week in the Rains, and gets drunk on chlorodyne in between. Good little chap, though. Any one at the Judge's, Blayne?

Blayne. Cockley and his memsahib looking awfully white and fagged. Female girl--couldn'tcatch the name--on her way to the Hills, under the Cockleys' charge--the Judge, and Markyn fresh from Simla--disgustingly fit.

Curtiss. Good Lord, how truly magnificent! Was there enough ice? When I mangled garbage there I got one whole lump--nearly as big as a walnut. What had Markyn to say for himself?

Blayne. Seems that every one is having a fairly good time up there in spite of the rain. By Jove, that reminds me! I know I hadn'tcome across just for the pleasure of your society. News! Great news! Markyn told me.

DOONE. Who's dead now?

Blayne. No one that I know of; but Gadsby's hooked at last!

DROPPING CHORUS. How much? The Devil! Markyn was pulling your leg. Not GADSBY!

Blayne. (Humming.) “Yea, verily, verily, verily! Verily, verily, I say unto thee.” Theodore, the gift 'o God! Our Phillup! It's been given out up above.

MACKESY. (Barrister-at-Law.) Huh! Women will give out anything. What does accused say?

Blayne. Markyn told me that he congratulated him warily--one hand held out, t'other ready to guard. Gadsby turned pink and said it was so.

Curtiss. Poor old Caddy! They all do it. Who's she? Let's hear the details.

Blayne. She's a girl--daughter of a Colonel Somebody.

Doone. Simla's stiff with Colonels' daughters. Be more explicit.

Blayne. Wait a shake. What was her name? Thresomething. Three--

Curtiss. Stars, perhaps. Caddy knows that brand.

Blayne. Threegan--Minnie Threegan.

Mackesy. Threegan Isn't she a little bit of a girl with red hair?

Blayne. 'Bout that--from what from what Markyn said.

Mackesy. Then I've met her. She was at Lucknow last season. 'Owned a permanently juvenile Mamma, and danced damnably. I say, Jervoise, you knew the Threegans, didn't you?

JERVOISE. (Civilian of twenty-five years' service, waking up from his doze.) Eh? What's that? Knew who? How? I thought I was at Home, confound you!

Mackesy. The Threegan girl's engaged, so Blayne says.

Jervoise. (Slowly.) Engaged--en-gaged! Bless my soul! I'm getting an old man! Little Minnie Threegan engaged. It was only the other day I went home with them in the Surat--no, the Massilia--and she was crawling about on her hands and knees among the ayahs. 'Used to call me the “Tick Tack Sahib” because I showed her my watch. And that was in Sixty-Seven--no, Seventy. Good God, how time flies! I'm an old man. I remember when Threegan married Miss Derwent--daughter of old Hooky Derwent--but that was before your time. And so the little baby's engaged to have a little baby of her own! Who's the other fool?

Mackesy. Gadsby of the Pink Hussars.

Jervoise. 'Never met him. Threegan lived in debt, married in debt, and'll die in debt. 'Must be glad to get the girl off his hands.

Blayne. Caddy has money--lucky devil. Place at Home, too.

Doone. He comes of first-class stock. 'Can't quite understand his being caught by a Colonel's daughter, and (looking cautiously round room.) Black Infantry at that! No offence to you, Blayne.

Blayne. (Stiffly.) Not much, thaanks.

Curtiss. (Quoting motto of Irregular Moguls.) “We are what we are,” eh, old man? But Gadsby was such a superior animal as a rule. Why didn't he go Home and pick his wife there?

Mackesy. They are all alike when they come to the turn into the straight. About thirty a man begins to get sick of living alone.

Curtiss. And of the eternal mutton--chop in the morning.

Doone. It's a dead goat as a rule, but go on, Mackesy.

Mackesy. If a man's once taken that way nothing will hold him, Do you remember Benoit of your service, Doone? They transferred him to Tharanda when his time came, and he married a platelayer's daughter, or something of that kind. She was the only female about the place.

Doone. Yes, poor brute. That smashed Benoit's chances of promotion altogether. Mrs. Benoit used to ask “Was you goin' to the dance this evenin'?”

Curtiss. Hang it all! Gadsby hasn't married beneath him. There's no tar-brush in the family, I suppose.

Jervoise. Tar-brush! Not an anna. You young fellows talk as though the man was doing the girl an honor in marrying her. You're all too conceited--nothing's good enough for you.

Blayne. Not even an empty Club, a dam' bad dinner at the Judge's, and a Station as sickly as a hospital. You're quite right. We're a set of Sybarites.

Doone. Luxurious dogs, wallowing in--

Curtiss. Prickly heat between the shoulders. I'm covered with it. Let's hope Beora will be cooler.

Blayne. Whew! Are you ordered into camp, too? I thought the Gunners had a clean sheet.

Curtiss. No, worse luck. Two cases yesterday--one died--and if we have a third, out we go. Is there any shooting at Beora, Doone?

Doone. The country's under water, except the patch by the Grand Trunk Road. I was there yesterday, looking at a bund, and came across four poor devils in their last stage. It's rather bad from here to Kuchara.

Curtiss. Then we're pretty certain to have a heavy go of it. Heigho! I shouldn't mind changing places with Gaddy for a while. 'Sport with Amaryllis in the shade of the Town Hall, and all that. Oh, why doesn't somebody come and marry me, instead of letting me go into cholera-camp?

Mackesy. Ask the Committee.

Curtiss. You ruffian! You'll stand me another peg for that. Blayne, what will you take? Mackesy is fine on moral grounds. Done, have you any preference?

Doone. Small glass Kummel, please. Excellent carminative, these days. Anthony told me so.

Mackesy. (Signing voucher for four drinks.) Most unfair punishment. I only thought of Curtiss as Actaeon being chivied round the billiard tables by the nymphs of Diana.

Blayne. Curtiss would have to import his nymphs by train. Mrs. Cockley's the only woman in the Station. She won't leave Cockley, and he's doing his best to get her to go.

Curtiss. Good, indeed! Here's Mrs. Cockley's health. To the only wife in the Station and a damned brave woman!

OMNES. (Drinking.) A damned brave woman

Blayne. I suppose Gadsby will bring his wife here at the end of the cold weather. They are going to be married almost immediately, I believe.

Curtiss. Gadsby may thank his luck that the Pink Hussars are all detachment and no headquarters this hot weather, or he'd be torn from the arms of his love as sure as death. Have you ever noticed the thorough-minded way British Cavalry take to cholera? It's because they are so expensive. If the Pinks had stood fast here, they would have been out in camp a month ago. Yes, I should decidedly like to be Gadsby.

Mackesy. He'll go Home after he's married, and send in his papers--see if he doesn't.

Blayne. Why shouldn't he? Hasn't he money? Would any one of us be here if we weren't paupers?

Doone. Poor old pauper! What has become of the six hundred you rooked from our table last month?

Blayne. It took unto itself wings. I think an enterprising tradesman got some of it, and a shroff gobbled the rest--or else I spent it.

Curtiss. Gadsby never had dealings with a shroff in his life.

Doone. Virtuous Gadsby! If I had three thousand a month, paid from England, I don't think I'd deal with a shroff either.

Mackesy. (Yawning.) Oh, it's a sweet life! I wonder whether matrimony would make it sweeter.

Curtiss. Ask Cockley--with his wife dying by inches!

Blayne. Go home and get a fool of a girl to come out to--what is it Thackeray says?--“the splendid palace of an Indian pro-consul.”

Doone. Which reminds me. My quarters leak like a sieve. I had fever last night from sleeping in a swamp. And the worst of it is, one can't do anything to a roof till the Rains are over.

Curtiss. What's wrong with you? You haven't eighty rotting Tommies to take into a running stream.

Doone. No: but I'm mixed boils and bad language. I'm a regular Job all over my body. It's sheer poverty of blood, and I don't see any chance of getting richer--either way.

Blayne. Can't you take leave?

Doone. That's the pull you Army men have over us. Ten days are nothing in your sight. I'm so important that Government can't find a substitute if I go away. Ye-es, I'd like to be Gadsby, whoever his wife may be.

Curtiss. You've passed the turn of life that Mackesy was speaking of.

Doone. Indeed I have, but I never yet had the brutality to ask a woman to share my life out here.

Blayne. On my soul I believe you're right. I'm thinking of Mrs. Cockley. The woman's an absolute wreck.

Doone. Exactly. Because she stays down here. The only way to keep her fit would be to send her to the Hills for eight months--and the same with any woman. I fancy I see myself taking a wife on those terms.

Mackesy. With the rupee at one and sixpence. The little Doones would be little Debra Doones, with a fine Mussoorie @chi-chi anent to bring home for the holidays.

Curtiss. And a pair of be-ewtiful sambhur--horns for Doone to wear, free of expense, presented by--Doone. Yes, it's an enchanting prospect. By the way, the rupee hasn't done falling yet. The time will come when we shall think ourselves lucky if we only lose half our pay.

Curtiss. Surely a third's loss enough. Who gains by the arrangement? That's what I want to know.

Blayne. The Silver Question! I'm going to bed if you begin squabbling Thank Goodness, here's Anthony--looking like a ghost.

Enter ANTHONY, Indian Medical Staff, very white and tired.

Anthony. 'Evening, Blayne. It's raining in sheets. Whiskey peg lao, khitmatgar. The roads are something ghastly.

Curtiss. How's Mingle?

Anthony. Very bad, and more frightened. I handed him over to Fewton. Mingle might just as well have called him in the first place, instead of bothering me.

Blayne. He's a nervous little chap. What has he got, this time?

Anthony. 'Can't quite say. A very bad tummy and a blue funk so far. He asked me at once if it was cholera, and I told him not to be a fool. That soothed him.

Curtiss. Poor devil! The funk does half the business in a man of that build.

Anthony. (Lighting a cheroot.) I firmly believe the funk will kill him if he stays down. You know the amount of trouble he's been giving Fewton for the last three weeks. He's doing his very best to frighten himself into the grave.

GENERAL CHORUS. Poor little devil! Why doesn't he get away?

Anthony. 'Can't. He has his leave all right, but he's so dipped he can't take it, and I don't think his name on paper would raise four annas. That's in confidence, though.

Mackesy. All the Station knows it.

Anthony. “I suppose I shall have to die here,” he said, squirming all across the bed. He's quite made up his mind to Kingdom Come. And I know he has nothing more than a wet-weather tummy if he could only keep a hand on himself.

Blayne. That's bad. That's very bad. Poor little Miggy. Good little chap, too. I say--

Anthony. What do you say?

Blayne. Well, look here--anyhow. If it's like that--as you say--I say fifty.

Curtiss. I say fifty.

Mackesy. I go twenty better.

Doone. Bloated Croesus of the Bar! I say fifty. Jervoise, what do you say? Hi! Wake up!

Jervoise. Eh? What's that? What's that?

Curtiss. We want a hundred rupees from you. You're a bachelor drawing a gigantic income, and there's a man in a hole.

Jervoise. What man? Any one dead?

Blayne. No, but he'll die if you don't--give the hundred. Here! Here's a peg-voucher. You can see what we've signed for, and Anthony's man will come round tomorrow to collect it. So there will be no trouble.

Jervoise. (Signing.) One hundred, E. M. J. There you are (feebly). It isn't one of your jokes, is it?

Blayne. No, it really is wanted. Anthony, you were the biggest poker-winner last week, and you've defrauded the tax-collector too long. Sign!

Anthony. Let's see. Three fifties and a seventy-two twenty-three twenty--say four hundred and twenty. That'll give him a month clear at the Hills. Many thanks, you men. I'll send round the chaprassi tomorrow.

Curtiss. You must engineer his taking the stuff, and of course you mustn't--

Anthony. Of course. It would never do. He'd weep with gratitude over his evening drink.

Blayne. That's just what he would do, damn him. Oh! I say, Anthony, you pretend to know everything. Have you heard about Gadsby?

Anthony. No. Divorce Court at last?

Blayne. Worse. He's engaged!

Anthony. How much? He can't be!

Blayne. He is. He's going to be married in a few weeks. Markyn told me at the Judge's this evening. It's pukka.

Anthony. You don't say so? Holy Moses! There'll be a shine in the tents of Kedar.

Curtiss. 'Regiment cut up rough, think you?

Anthony. 'Don't know anything about the Regiment.

Mackesy. It is bigamy, then?

Anthony. Maybe. Do you mean to say that you men have forgotten, or is there more charity in the world than I thought?

Doone. You don't look pretty when you are trying to keep a secret. You bloat. Explain.

Anthony. Mrs. Herriott!

Blayne. (After a long pause, to the room generally.) It's my notion that we are a set of fools.

Mackesy. Nonsense. That business was knocked on the head last season. Why, young Mallard--

Anthony. Mallard was a candlestick, paraded as such. Think awhile. Recollect last season and the talk then. Mallard or no Mallard, did Gadsby ever talk to any other woman?

Curtiss. There's something in that. It was slightly noticeable now you come to mention it. But she's at Naini Tal and he's at Simla.

Anthony. He had to go to Simla to look after a globe-trotter relative of his--a person with a title. Uncle or aunt.

Blayne And there he got engaged. No law prevents a man growing tired of a woman.

Anthony. Except that he mustn't do it till the woman is tired of him. And the Herriott woman was not that.

Curtiss. She may be now. Two months of Naini Tal works wonders.

Doone. Curious thing how some women carry a Fate with them. There was a Mrs. Deegie in the Central Provinces whose men invariably fell away and got married. It became a regular proverb with us when I was down there. I remember three men desperately devoted to her, and they all, one after another, took wives.

Curtiss. That's odd. Now I should have thought that Mrs. Deegie's influence would have led them to take other men's wives. It ought to have made them afraid of the judgment of Providence.

Anthony. Mrs. Herriott will make Gadsby afraid of something more than the judgment of Providence, I fancy.

Blayne. Supposing things are as you say, he'll be a fool to face her. He'll sit tight at Simla.

Anthony. Shouldn't be a bit surprised if he went off to Naini to explain. He's an unaccountable sort of man, and she's likely to be a more than unaccountable woman.

Doone. What makes you take her character away so confidently?

Anthony. Primum tempus. Caddy was her first and a woman doesn't allow her first man to drop away without expostulation. She justifies the first transfer of affection to herself by swearing that it is forever and ever. Consequently--

Blayne. Consequently, we are sitting here till past one o'clock, talking scandal like a set of Station cats. Anthony, it's all your fault. We were perfectly respectable till you came in. Go to bed. I'm off, Good night all.

Curtiss. Past one! It's past two by Jove, and here's the khit coming for the late charge. Just Heavens! One, two, three, four, five rupees to pay for the pleasure of saying that a poor little beast of a woman is no better than she should be. I'm ashamed of myself. Go to bed, you slanderous villains, and if I'm sent to Beora tomorrow, be prepared to hear I'm dead before paying my card account!

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THE TENTS OF KEDAR

Only why should it be with pain at all? Why must I 'twixt the leaves of coronal Put any kiss of pardon on thy brow? Why should the other women know so much, And talk together-- Such the look and such The smile he used to love with, then as now.

--Any Wife to any Husband.

SCENE. A Naini Tal dinner for thirty-four. Plate, wines, crockery, and khitmatgars carefully calculated to scale of Rs. 6000 per mensem, less Exchange. Table split lengthways by bank of flowers.

MRS. HERRIOTT. (After conversation has risen to proper pitch.) Ah! 'Didn't see you in the crush in the drawing-room. (Sotto voce.) Where have you been all this while, Pip?

CAPTAIN GADSBY. (Turning from regularly ordained dinner partner and settling hock glasses.) Good evening. (Sotto voce.) Not quite so loud another time. You've no notion how your voice carries. (Aside.) So much for shirking the written explanation. It'll have to be a verbal one now. Sweet prospect! How on earth am I to tell her that I am a respectable, engaged member of society and it's all over between us?

MRS. H. I've a heavy score against you. Where were you at the Monday Pop? Where were you on Tuesday? Where were you at the Lamonts' tennis? I was looking everywhere.

Capt. G. For me! Oh, I was alive somewhere, I suppose. (Aside.) It's for Minnie's sake, but it's going to be dashed unpleasant.

Mrs. H. Have I done anything to offend you? I never meant it if I have. I couldn't help going for a ride with the Vaynor man. It was promised a week before you came up.

Capt. G. I didn't know--

Mrs. H. It really was.

Capt. G. Anything about it, I mean.

Mrs. H. What has upset you today? All these days? You haven't been near me for four whole days--nearly one hundred hours. Was it kind of you, Pip? And I've been looking forward so much to your coming.

Capt. G. Have you?

Mrs. H. You know I have! I've been as foolish as a schoolgirl about it. I made a little calendar and put it in my card-case, and every time the twelve o'clock gun went off I scratched out a square and said: “That brings me nearer to Pip. My Pip!”

Capt. G. (With an uneasy laugh). What will Mackler think if you neglect him so?

Mrs. H. And it hasn't brought you nearer. You seem farther away than ever. Are you sulking about something? I know your temper.

Capt. G. No.

Mrs. H. Have I grown old in the last few months, then? (Reaches forward to bank of flowers for menu-card.)

PARTNER ON LEFT. Allow me. (Hands menu-card. Mrs. H. keeps her arm at full stretch for three seconds.)

Mrs. H. (To partner.) Oh, thanks. I didn't see. (Turns right again.) Is anything in me changed at all?

Capt. G. For Goodness's sake go on with your dinner! You must eat something. Try one of those cutlet arrangements. (Aside.) And I fancied she had good shoulders, once upon a time! What an ass a man can make of himself!

Mrs. H. (Helping herself to a paper frill, seven peas, some stamped carrots and a spoonful of gravy.) That isn't an answer. Tell me whether I have done anything.

Capt. G. (Aside.) If it isn't ended here there will be a ghastly scene some-where else. If only I'd written to her and stood the racket at long range! (To Khitmatgar.) Han! Simpkin do. (Aloud.) I'll tell you later on.

Mrs. H. Tell me now. It must be some foolish misunderstanding, and you know that there was to be nothing of that sort between us. We, of all people in the world, can't afford it. Is it the Vaynor man, and don't you like to say so? On my honor--

Capt. G. I haven't given the Vaynor man a thought.

Mrs. H. But how d'you know that I haven't?

Capt. G. (Aside.) Here's my chance and may the Devil help me through with it. (Aloud and measuredly.) Believe me, I do not care how often or how tenderly you think of the Vaynor man.

Mrs. H. I wonder if you mean that! Oh, what is the good of squabbling and pretending to misunderstand when you are only up for so short a time? Pip, don't be a stupid!

Follows a pause, during which he crosses his left leg over his right and continues his dinner.

Capt. G. (In answer to the thunderstorm in her eyes.) Corns--my worst.

Mrs. H. Upon my word, you are the very rudest man in the world! I'll never do it again.

Capt. G. (Aside.) No, I don't think you will; but I wonder what you will do before it's all over. (To Khitmatgar.) Thorah ur Simpkin do.

Mrs. H. Well! Haven't you the grace to apologize, bad man?

Capt. G. (Aside.) I mustn't let it drift back now. Trust a woman for being as blind as a bat when she won't see.

Mrs. H. I'm waiting; or would you like me to dictate a form of apology?

Capt. G. (Desperately.) By all means dictate.

Mrs. H. (Lightly.) Very well. Rehearse your several Christian names after me and go on: “Profess my sincere repentance.”

Capt. G. “Sincere repentance.”

Mrs. H. “For having behaved”--

Capt. G. (Aside.) At last! I wish to Goodness she'd look away. “For having behaved”--as I have behaved, and declare that I am thoroughly and heartily sick of the whole business, and take this opportunity of making clear my intention of ending it, now, henceforward, and forever. (Aside.) If any one had told me I should be such a blackguard!--

Mrs. H. (Shaking a spoonful of potato chips into her plate.) That's not a pretty joke.

Capt. G. No. It's a reality. (Aside.) I wonder if smashes of this kind are always so raw.

Mrs. H. Really, Pip, you're getting more absurd every day.

Capt. G. I don't think you quite understand me. Shall I repeat it?

Mrs. H. No! For pity's sake don't do that. It's too terrible, even in fur.

Capt. G. I'll let her think it over for a while. But I ought to be horsewhipped.

Mrs. H. I want to know what you meant by what you said just now.

Capt. G. Exactly what I said. No less.

Mrs. H. But what have I done to deserve it? What have I done?

Capt. G. (Aside.) If she only wouldn't look at me. (Aloud and very slowly, his eyes on his plate.) D'you remember that evening in July, before the Rains broke, when you said that the end would have to come sooner or later--and you wondered for which of US it would come first?

Mrs. H. Yes! I was only joking. And you swore that, as long as there was breath in your body, it should never come. And I believed you.

Capt. G. (Fingering menu-card.) Well, it has. That's all.

A long pause, during which Mrs. H. bows her head and rolls the bread-twist into little pellets; G. stares at the oleanders.

Mrs. H. (Throwing back her head and laughing naturally.) They train us women well, don't they, Pip?

Capt. G. (Brutally, touching shirt-stud.) So far as the expression goes. (Aside.) It isn't in her nature to take things quietly. There'll be an explosion yet.

Mrs. H. (With a shudder.) Thank you. B-but even Red Indians allow people to wriggle when they're being tortured, I believe. (Slips fan from girdle and fans slowly: rim of fan level with chin.)

PARTNER ON LEFT. Very close tonight, isn't it? 'You find it too much for you?

Mrs. H. Oh, no, not in the least. But they really ought to have punkahs, even in your cool Naini Tal, oughtn't they? (Turns, dropping fan and raising eyebrows.)

Capt. G. It's all right. (Aside.) Here comes the storm!

Mrs. H. (Her eyes on the tablecloth: fan ready in right hand.) It was very cleverly managed, Pip, and I congratulate you. You swore--you never contented yourself with merely Saying a thing--you swore that, as far as lay in your power, you'd make my wretched life pleasant for me. And you've denied me the consolation of breaking down. I should have done it--indeed I should. A woman would hardly have thought of this refinement, my kind, considerate friend. (Fan-guard as before.) You have explained things so tenderly and truthfully, too! You haven't spoken or written a word of warning, and you have let me believe in you till the last minute. You haven't condescended to give me your reason yet. No! A woman could not have managed it half so well. Are there many men like you in the world?

Capt. G. I'm sure I don't know. (To Khitmatgar.) Ohe! Simpkin do.

Mrs. H. You call yourself a man of the world, don't you? Do men of the world behave like Devils when they do a woman the honor to get tired of her?

Capt. G. I'm sure I don't know. Don't speak so loud!

Mrs. H. Keep us respectable, O Lord, whatever happens. Don't be afraid of my compromising you. You've chosen your ground far too well, and I've been properly brought up. (Lowering fan.) Haven't you any pity, Pip, except for yourself?

Capt. G. Wouldn't it be rather impertinent of me to say that I'm sorry for you?

Mrs. H. I think you have said it once or twice before. You're growing very careful of my feelings. My God, Pip, I was a good woman once! You said I was. You've made me what I am. What are you going to do with me? What are you going to do with me? Won't you say that you are sorry? (Helps herself to iced asparagus.)

Capt. G. I am sorry for you, if you WANT the pity of such a brute as I am. I'm awf'ly sorry for you.

Mrs. H. Rather tame for a man of the world. Do you think that that admission clears you?

Capt. G. What can I do? I can only tell you what I think of myself. You can't think worse than that?

Mrs. H. Oh, yes, I can! And now, will you tell me the reason of all this? Remorse? Has Bayard been suddenly conscience-stricken?

Capt. G. (Angrily, his eyes still lowered.) No! The thing has come to an end on my side. That's all. Mafisch!

Mrs. H. “That's all. Mafisch!” As though I were a Cairene Dragoman. You used to make prettier speeches. D'you remember when you said?--

Capt. G. For Heaven's sake don't bring that back! Call me anything you like and I'll admit it--

Mrs. H. But you don't care to be reminded of old lies? If I could hope to hurt you one-tenth as much as you have hurt me tonight--No, I wouldn't--I couldn't do it--liar though you are.

Capt. G. I've spoken the truth.

Mrs. H. My dear Sir, you flatter yourself. You have lied over the reason. Pip, remember that I know you as you don't know yourself. You have been everything to me, though you are--(Fan-guard.) Oh, what a contemptible Thing it is! And so you are merely tired of me?

Capt. G. Since you insist upon my repeating it--Yes.

Mrs. H. Lie the first. I wish I knew a coarser word. Lie seems so ineffectual in your case. The fire has just died out and there is no fresh one? Think for a minute, Pip, if you care whether I despise you more than I do. Simply Mafisch, is it?

Capt. G. Yes. (Aside.) I think I deserve this.

Mrs. H. Lie number two. Before the next glass chokes you, tell me her name.

Capt. G. (Aside.) I'll make her pay for dragging Minnie into the business! (Aloud.) Is it likely?

Mrs. H. Very likely if you thought that it would flatter your vanity. You'd cry my name on the house-tops to make people turn round.

Capt. G. I wish I had. There would have been an end to this business.

Mrs. H. Oh, no, there would not--And so you were going to be virtuous and blase', were you? To come to me and say: “I've done with you. The incident is clo-osed.” I ought to be proud of having kept such a man so long.

Capt. G. (Aside.) It only remains to pray for the end of the dinner. (Aloud.) You know what I think of myself.

Mrs. H. As it's the only person in he world you ever do think of, and as I know your mind thoroughly, I do. You want to get it all over and--Oh, I can't keep you back! And you're going--think of it, Pip--to throw me over for another woman. And you swore that all other women were--Pip, my Pip! She can't care for you as I do. Believe me, she can't. Is it any one that I know?

Capt. G. Thank Goodness it isn't. (Aside.) I expected a cyclone, but not an earthquake.

Mrs. H. She can't! Is there anything that I wouldn't do for you--or haven't done? And to think that I should take this trouble over you, knowing what you are! Do you despise me for it?

Capt. G. (Wiping his mouth to hide a smile.) Again? It's entirely a work of charity on your part.

Mrs. H. Ahhh! But I have no right to resent it.--Is she better-looking than I? Who was it said?--

Capt. G. No--not that!

Mrs. H. I'll be more merciful than you were. Don't you know that all women are alike?

Capt. G. (Aside.) Then this is the exception that proves the rule.

Mrs. H. All of them! I'll tell you anything you like. I will, upon my word! They only want the admiration--from anybody--no matter who--anybody! But there is always one man that they care for more than any one else in the world, and would sacrifice all the others to. Oh, do listen! I've kept the Vaynor man trotting after me like a poodle, and he believes that he is the only man I am interested in. I'll tell you what he said to me.

Capt. G. Spare him. (Aside.) I wonder what his version is.

Mrs. H. He's been waiting for me to look at him all through dinner. Shall I do it, and you can see what an idiot he looks?

Capt. G. “But what imports the nomination of this gentleman?”

Mrs. H. Watch! (Sends a glance to the Vaynor man, who tries vainly to combine a mouthful of ice pudding, a smirk of self-satisfaction, a glare of intense devotion, and the stolidity of a British dining countenance.)

Capt. G. (Critically.) He doesn't look pretty. Why didn't you wait till the spoon was out of his mouth?

Mrs. H. To amuse you. She'll make an exhibition of you as I've made of him; and people will laugh at you. Oh, Pip, can't you see that? It's as plain as the noonday Sun. You'll be trotted about and told lies, and made a fool of like the others. I never made a fool of you, did I?

Capt. G. (Aside.) What a clever little woman it is!

Mrs. H. Well, what have you to say?

Capt. G. I feel better.

Mrs. H. Yes, I suppose so, after I have come down to your level. I couldn't have done it if I hadn't cared for you so much. I have spoken the truth.

Capt. G. It doesn't alter the situation.

Mrs. H. (Passionately.) Then she has said that she cares for you! Don't believe her, Pip. It's a lie--as bad as yours to me!

Capt. G. Ssssteady! I've a notion that a friend of yours is looking at you.

Mrs. H. He! I hate him. He introduced you to me.

Capt. G. (Aside.) And some people would like women to assist in making the laws. Introduction to imply condonement. (Aloud.) Well, you see, if you can remember so far back as that, I couldn't, in common politeness, refuse the offer.

Mrs. H. In common politeness I--We have got beyond that!

Capt. G. (Aside.) Old ground means fresh trouble. (Aloud.) On my honor--

Mrs. H. Your what? Ha, ha!

Capt. G. Dishonor, then. She's not what you imagine. I meant to--

Mrs. H. Don't tell me anything about her! She won't care for you, and when you come back, after having made an exhibition of yourself, you'll find me occupied with--

Capt. G. (Insolently.) You couldn't while I am alive. (Aside.) If that doesn't bring her pride to her rescue, nothing will.

Mrs. H. (Drawing herself up.) Couldn't do it? I--(Softening.) You're right. I don't believe I could--though you are what you are--a coward and a liar in grain.

Capt. G. It doesn't hurt so much after your little lecture--with demonstrations.

Mrs. H. One mass of vanity! Will nothing ever touch you in this life? There must be a Hereafter if it's only for the benefit of--But you will have it all to yourself.

Capt. G. (Under his eyebrows.) Are you certain of that?

Mrs. H. I shall have had mine in this life; and it will serve me right,

Capt. G. But the admiration that you insisted on so strongly a moment ago? (Aside.) Oh, I am a brute!

Mrs. H. (Fiercely.) Will that console me for knowing that you will go to her with the same words, the same arguments, and the--the same pet names you used to me? And if she cares for you, you two will laugh over my story. Won't that be punishment heavy enough even for me--even for me?--And it's all useless. That's another punishment.

Capt. G. (Feebly.) Oh, come! I'm not so low as you think.

Mrs. H. Not now, perhaps, but you will be. Oh, Pip, if a woman flatters your vanity, there's nothing on earth that you would not tell her; and no meanness that you would not do. Have I known you so long without knowing that?

Capt. G. If you can trust me in nothing else--and I don't see why I should be trusted--you can count upon my holding my tongue.

Mrs. H. If you denied everything you've said this evening and declared it was all in fun (a long pause), I'd trust you. Not otherwise. All I ask is, don't tell her my name. Please don't. A man might forget: a woman never would. (Looks up table and sees hostess beginning to collect eyes.) So it's all ended, through no fault of mine--Haven't I behaved beautifully? I've accepted your dismissal, and you managed it as cruelly as you could, and I have made you respect my sex, haven't I? (Arranging gloves and fan.) I only pray that she'll know you some day as I know you now. I wouldn't be you then, for I think even your conceit will be hurt. I hope she'll pay you back the humiliation you've brought on me. I hope--No. I don't! I can't give you up! I must have something to look forward to or I shall go crazy. When it's all over, come back to me, come back to me, and you'll find that you're my Pip still!

Capt. G. (Very clearly.) False move, and you pay for it. It's a girl!

Mrs. H. (Rising.) Then it was true! They said--but I wouldn't insult you by asking. A girl! I was a girl not very long ago. Be good to her, Pip. I daresay she believes in you.

Goes out with an uncertain smile. He watches her through the door, and settles into a chair as the men redistribute themselves.

Capt. G. Now, if there is any Power who looks after this world, will He kindly tell me what I have done? (Reaching out for the claret, and half aloud.) What have I done?

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WITH ANY AMAZEMENT

And are not afraid with any amazement. --Marriage Service.

SCENE. bachelor's bedroom-toilet-table arranged with unnatural neatness.

CAPTAIN GADSBY asleep and snoring heavily. Time, 10:30 A. M.--a glorious autumn day at Simla. Enter delicately Captain MAFFLIN of GADSBY's regiment. Looks at sleeper, and shakes his head murmuring “Poor Gaddy.” Performs violent fantasia with hair-brushes on chairback.

Capt. M. Wake up, my sleeping beauty! (Roars.)

“Uprouse ye, then, my merry merry men! It is our opening day! It is our opening da-ay!”

Gaddy, the little dicky-birds have been billing and cooing for ever so long; and I'm here!

Capt. G. (Sitting up and yawning.) Mornin'. This is awf'ly good of you, old fellow. Most awf'ly good of you. Don't know what I should do without you. 'Pon my soul, I don't. 'Haven't slept a wink all night.

Capt. M. I didn't get in till half-past eleven. 'Had a look at you then, and you seemed to be sleeping as soundly as a condemned criminal.

Capt. G. Jack, if you want to make those disgustingly worn-out jokes, you'd better go away. (With portentous gravity.) It's the happiest day in my life.

Capt. M. (Chuckling grimly.) Not by a very long chalk, my son. You're going through some of the most refined torture you've ever known. But be calm. I am with you. 'Shun! Dress!

Capt. G. Eh! Wha-at?

Capt. M. Do you suppose that you are your own master for the next twelve hours? If you do, of course--(Makes for the door.)

Capt. G. No! For Goodness' sake, old man, don't do that! You'll see me through, won't you? I've been mugging up that beastly drill, and can't remember a line of it.

Capt. M. (Overturning G.'s uniform.) Go and tub. Don't bother me. I'll give you ten minutes to dress in.

INTERVAL, filled by the noise as of one splashing in the bath-room..

Capt. G. (Emerging from dressing-room.) What time is it?

Capt. M. Nearly eleven.

Capt. G. Five hours more. O Lord!

Capt. M. (Aside.) 'First sign of funk, that. 'Wonder if it's going to spread. (Aloud.) Come along to breakfast.

Capt. G. I can't eat anything. I don't want any breakfast.

Capt. M. (Aside.) So early! (Aloud) CAPTAIN Gadsby, I order you to eat breakfast, and a dashed good breakfast, too. None of your bridal airs and graces with me!

Leads G. downstairs and stands over him while he eats two chops.

Capt. G. (Who has looked at his watch thrice in the last five minutes.) What time is it?

Capt. M. Time to come for a walk. Light up.

Capt. G. I haven't smoked for ten days, and I won't now. (Takes cheroot which M. has cut for him, and blows smoke through his nose luxuriously.) We aren't going down the Mall, are we?

Capt. M. (Aside.) They're all alike in these stages. (Aloud.) No, my Vestal. We're going along the quietest road we can find.

Capt. G. Any chance of seeing Her?

Capt. M. Innocent! No! Come along, and, if you want me for the final obsequies, don't cut my eye out with your stick.

Capt. G. (Spinning round.) I say, isn't She the dearest creature that ever walked? What's the time? What comes after “wilt thou take this woman”?

Capt. M. You go for the ring. R'c'lect it'll be on the top of my right-hand little finger, and just be careful how you draw it off, because I shall have the Verger's fees somewhere in my glove.

Capt. G. (Walking forward hastily.) D--the Verger! Come along! It's past twelve and I haven't seen Her since yesterday evening. (Spinning round again.) She's an absolute angel, Jack, and She's a dashed deal too good for me. Look here, does She come up the aisle on my arm, or how?

Capt. M. If I thought that there was the least chance of your remembering anything for two consecutive minutes, I'd tell you. Stop passaging about like that!

Capt. G. (Halting in the middle of the road.) I say, Jack.

Capt. M. Keep quiet for another ten minutes if you can, you lunatic; and walk!

The two tramp at five miles an hour for fifteen minutes.

Capt. G. What's the time? How about the cursed wedding-cake and the slippers? They don't throw 'em about in church, do they?

Capt. M. Invariably. The Padre leads off with his boots.

Capt. G. Confound your silly soul! Don't make fun of me. I can't stand it, and I won't!

Capt. M. (Untroubled.) So-ooo, old horse You'll have to sleep for a couple of hours this afternoon.

Capt. G. (Spinning round.) I'm not going to be treated like a dashed child, understand that.

Capt. M. (Aside.) Nerves gone to fiddle-strings. What a day we're having! (Tenderly putting his hand on G.'s shoulder.) My David, how long have you known this Jonathan? Would I come up here to make a fool of you--after all these years?

Capt. G. (Penitently.) I know, I know, Jack--but I'm as upset as I can be. Don't mind what I say. Just hear me run through the drill and see if I've got it all right:--“To have and to hold for better or worse, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, so help me God. Amen.”

Capt. M. (Suffocating with suppressed laughter.) Yes. That's about the gist of it. I'll prompt if you get into a hat.

Capt. G. (Earnestly.) Yes, you'll stick by me, Jack, won't you? I'm awfully happy, but I don't mind telling you that I'm in a blue funk!

Capt. M. (Gravely.) Are you? I should never have noticed it. You don't look like it.

Capt. G. Don't I? That's all right. (Spinning round.) On my soul and honor, Jack, She's the sweetest little angel that ever came down from the sky. There isn't a woman on earth fit to speak to Her.

Capt. M. (Aside.) And this is old Gadsby! (Aloud.) Go on if it relieves you.

Capt. G. You can laugh! That's all you wild asses of bachelors are fit for.

Capt. M. (Drawling.) You never would wait for the troop to come up. You aren't quite married yet, y'know.

Capt. G. Ugh! That reminds me. I don't believe I shall be able to get into any boots Let's go home and try 'em on (Hurries forward.)

Capt. M. 'Wouldn't be in your shoes for anything that Asia has to offer.

Capt. G. (Spinning round.) That just shows your hideous blackness of soul--your dense stupidity--your brutal narrow-mindedness. There's only one fault about you. You're the best of good fellows, and I don't know what I should have done without you, but--you aren't married. (Wags his head gravely.) Take a wife, Jack.

Capt. M. (With a face like a wall.) Ya-as. Whose for choice?

Capt. G. If you're going to be a blackguard, I'm going on--What's the time?

Capt. M. (Hums.) An' since 'twas very clear we drank only ginger-beer, Faith, there must ha' been some stingo in the ginger. Come back, you maniac. I'm going to take you home, and you're going to lie down.

Capt. G. What on earth do I want to lie down for?

Capt. M. Give me a light from your cheroot and see.

Capt. G. (Watching cheroot-butt quiver like a tuning-fork.) Sweet state I'm in!

Capt. M. You are. I'll get you a peg and you'll go to sleep.

They return and M. compounds a four-finger peg.

Capt. G. O bus! bus! It'll make me as drunk as an owl.

Capt. M. 'Curious thing, 'twon't have the slightest effect on you. Drink it off, chuck yourself down there, and go to bye-bye.

Capt. G. It's absurd. I sha'n't sleep, I know I sha'n't!

Falls into heavy doze at end of seven minutes. Capt. M. watches him tenderly.

Capt. M. Poor old Gadsby! I've seen a few turned off before, but never one who went to the gallows in this condition. 'Can't tell how it affects 'em, though. It's the thoroughbreds that sweat when they're backed into double-harness.--And that's the man who went through the guns at Amdheran like a devil possessed of devils. (Leans over G.) But this is worse than the guns, old pal--worse than the guns, isn't it? (G. turns in his sleep, and M. touches him clumsily on the forehead.) Poor, dear old Gaddy! Going like the rest of 'em--going like the rest of 'em--Friend that sticketh closer than a brother--eight years. Dashed bit of a slip of a girl--eight weeks! And--where's your friend? (Smokes disconsolately till church clock strikes three.)

Capt. M. Up with you! Get into your kit.

Capt. C. Already? Isn't it too soon? Hadn't I better have a shave?

Capt. M. No! You're all right. (Aside.) He'd chip his chin to pieces.

Capt. C. What's the hurry?

Capt. M. You've got to be there first.

Capt. C. To be stared at?

Capt. M. Exactly. You're part of the show. Where's the burnisher? Your spurs are in a shameful state.

Capt. G. (Gruffly.) Jack, I be damned if you shall do that for me.

Capt. M. (More gruffly.) Dry up and get dressed! If I choose to clean your spurs, you're under my orders.

Capt. G. dresses. M. follows suit.

Capt. M. (Critically, walking round.) M'--yes, you'll do. Only don't look so like a criminal. Ring, gloves, fees--that's all right for me. Let your moustache alone. Now, if the ponies are ready, we'll go.

Capt. G. (Nervously.) It's much too soon. Let's light up! Let's have a peg! Let's--

Capt. M. Let's make bally asses of ourselves!

BELLS. (Without.)--“Good-peo-ple-all To prayers-we call.”

Capt. M. There go the bells! Come on--unless you'd rather not. (They ride off.)

BELLS.--“We honor the King And Brides joy do bring--Good tidings we tell, And ring the Dead's knell.”

Capt. G. (Dismounting at the door of the Church.) I say, aren't we much too soon? There are no end of people inside. I say, aren't we much too late? Stick by me, Jack! What the devil do I do?

Capt. M. Strike an attitude at the head of the aisle and wait for Her. (G. groans as M. wheels him into position before three hundred eyes.)

Capt. M. (Imploringly.) Gaddy, if you love me, for pity's sake, for the Honor of the Regiment, stand up! Chuck yourself into your uniform! Look like a man! I've got to speak to the Padre a minute. (G. breaks into a gentle Perspiration.) If you wipe your face I'll never be your best man again. Stand up! (G. trembles visibly.)

Capt. M. (Returning.) She's coming now. Look out when the music starts. There's the organ beginning to clack.

Bride steps out of 'rickshaw at Church door. G. catches a glimpse of her and takes heart.

ORGAN.--“The Voice that breathed o'er Eden, That earliest marriage day, The primal marriage-blessing, It hath not passed away.”

Capt. M. (Watching G.) By Jove! He is looking well. 'Didn't think he had it in him.

Capt. G. How long does this hymn go on for?

Capt. M. It will be over directly. (Anxiously.) (Beginning to bleach and gulp.) Hold on, Gabby, and think 'o the Regiment.

Capt. G. (Measuredly.) I say, there's a big brown lizard crawling up that wall.

Capt. M. My Sainted Mother! The last stage of collapse!

Bride comes up to left of altar, lifts her eyes once to G., who is suddenly smitten mad.

Capt. G. (To himself again and again.) Little Featherweight's a woman--a woman! And I thought she was a little girl.

Capt. M. (In a whisper.) Form the halt--inward wheel.

Capt. G. obeys mechanically and the ceremony proceeds.

PADRE.... only unto her as ye both shall live?

Capt. G. (His throat useless.) Ha-hmmm!

Capt. M. Say you will or you won't. There's no second deal here.

Bride gives response with perfect coolness, and is given away by the father.

Capt. G. (Thinking to show his learning.) Jack give me away now, quick!

Capt. M. You've given yourself away quite enough. Her right hand, man! Repeat! Repeat! “Theodore Philip.” Have you forgotten your own name?

Capt. G. stumbles through Affirmation, which Bride repeats without a tremor.

Capt. M. Now the ring! Follow the Padre! Don't pull off my glove! Here it is! Great Cupid, he's found his voice.

Capt. G. repeats Troth in a voice to be heard to the end of the Church and turns on his heel.

Capt. M. (Desperately.) Rein back! Back to your troop! 'Tisn't half legal yet.

PADRE.... joined together let no man put asunder.

Capt. G. paralyzed with fear jibs after Blessing.

Capt. M. (Quickly.) On your own front--one length. Take her with you. I don't come. You've nothing to say. (Capt. G. jingles up to altar.)

Capt. M. (In a piercing rattle meant to be a whisper.) Kneel, you stiff-necked ruffian! Kneel!

PADRE... whose daughters are ye so long as ye do well and are not afraid with any amazement.

Capt. M. Dismiss! Break off! Left wheel!

All troop to vestry. They sign.

Capt. M. Kiss Her, Gaddy.

Capt. G. (Rubbing the ink into his glove.) Eh! Wha-at?

Capt. M. (Taking one pace to Bride.) If you don't, I shall.

Capt. G. (Interposing an arm.) Not this journey!

General kissing, in which Capt. G. is pursued by unknown female.

Capt. G. (Faintly to M.) This is Hades! Can I wipe my face now?

Capt. M. My responsibility has ended. Better ask Misses GADSBY.

Capt. G. winces as though shot and procession is Mendelssohned out of Church to house, where usual tortures take place over the wedding-cake.

Capt. M. (At table.) Up with you, Gaddy. They expect a speech.

Capt. G. (After three minutes' agony.) Ha-hmmm. (Thunders Of applause.)

Capt. M. Doocid good, for a first attempt. Now go and change your kit while Mamma is weeping over “the Missus.” (Capt. G. disappears. Capt. M. starts up tearing his hair.) It's not half legal. Where are the shoes? Get an ayah.

AYAH. Missie Captain Sahib done gone band karo all the jutis.

Capt. M. (Brandishing scab larded sword.) Woman, produce those shoes! Some one lend me a bread-knife. We mustn't crack Gaddy's head more than it is. (Slices heel off white satin slipper and puts slipper up his sleeve.)

Where is the Bride? (To the company at large.) Be tender with that rice. It's a heathen custom. Give me the big bag.

* * * * *

Bride slips out quietly into 'rickshaw and departs toward the sunset.

Capt. M. (In the open.) Stole away, by Jove! So much the worse for Gaddy! Here he is. Now Gaddy, this'll be livelier than Amdberan! Where's your horse?

Capt. G. (Furiously, seeing that the women are out of an earshot.) Where the d----'s my Wife?

Capt. M. Half-way to Mahasu by this time. You'll have to ride like Young Lochinvar.

Horse comes round on his hind legs; refuses to let G. handle him.

Capt. G. Oh you will, will you? Get 'round, you brute--you hog--you beast! Get round!

Wrenches horse's head over, nearly breaking lower jaw: swings himself into saddle, and sends home both spurs in the midst of a spattering gale of Best Patna.

Capt. M. For your life and your love--ride, Gaddy--And God bless you!

Throws half a pound of rice at G. who disappears, bowed forward on the saddle, in a cloud of sunlit dust.

Capt. M. I've lost old Gaddy. (Lights cigarette and strolls off, singing absently):--“You may carve it on his tombstone, you may cut it on his card, That a young man married is a young man marred!”

Miss DEERCOURT. (From her horse.) Really, Captain Mafflin! You are more plain spoken than polite!

Capt. M. (Aside.) They say marriage is like cholera. 'Wonder who'll be the next victim.

White satin slipper slides from his sleeve and falls at his feet. Left wondering.

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THE GARDEN OF EDEN

And ye shall be as--Gods!

SCENE. Thymy grass-plot at back of the Mahasu dak-bungalow, overlooking little wooded valley. On the left, glimpse of the Dead Forest of Fagoo; on the right, Simla Hills. In background, line of the Snows. CAPTAIN GADSBY, now three weeks a husband, is smoking the pipe of peace on a rug in the sunshine. Banjo and tobacco-pouch on rug. Overhead the Fagoo eagles. Mrs. G. comes out of bungalow.

Mrs. G. My husband!

Capt. G. (Lazily, with intense enjoyment.) Eh, wha-at? Say that again.

Mrs. G. I've written to Mamma and told her that we shall be back on the 17th.

Capt. G. Did you give her my love?

Mrs. G. No, I kept all that for myself. (Sitting down by his side.) I thought you wouldn't mind.

Capt. G. (With mock sternness.) I object awf'ly. How did you know that it was yours to keep?

Mrs. G. I guessed, Phil.

Capt. G. (Rapturously.) Lit-tle Featherweight!

Mrs. G. I won' t be called those sporting pet names, bad boy.

Capt. G. You'll be called anything I choose. Has it ever occurred to you, Madam, that you are my Wife?

Mrs. G. It has. I haven't ceased wondering at it yet.

Capt. G. Nor I. It seems so strange; and yet, somehow, it doesn't. (Confidently.) You see, it could have been no one else.

Mrs. G. (Softly.) No. No one else--for me or for you. It must have been all arranged from the beginning. Phil, tell me again what made you care for me.

Capt. G. How could I help it? You were you, you know.

Mrs. G. Did you ever want to help it? Speak the truth!

Capt. G. (A twinkle in his eye.) I did, darling, just at the first. Rut only at the very first. (Chuckles.) I called you--stoop low and I'll whisper--“a little beast.” Ho! Ho! Ho!

Mrs. G. (Taking him by the moustache and making him sit up.) “A-little-beast!” Stop laughing over your crime! And yet you had the--the--awful cheek to propose to me!

Capt. C. I'd changed my mind then. And you weren't a little beast any more.

Mrs. G. Thank you, sir! And when was I ever?

Capt. G. Never! But that first day, when you gave me tea in that peach-colored muslin gown thing, you looked--you did indeed, dear--such an absurd little mite. And I didn't know what to say to you.

Mrs. G. (Twisting moustache.) So you said “little beast.” Upon my word, Sir! I called you a “Crrrreature,” but I wish now I had called you something worse.

Capt. G. (Very meekly.) I apologize, but you're hurting me awf'ly. (Interlude.) You're welcome to torture me again on those terms.

Mrs. G. Oh, why did you let me do it?

Capt. G. (Looking across valley.) No reason in particular, but--if it amused you or did you any good--you might--wipe those dear little boots of yours on me.

Mrs. G. (Stretching out her hands.) Don't! Oh, don't! Philip, my King, please don't talk like that. It's how I feel. You're so much too good for me. So much too good!

Capt. G. Me! I'm not fit to put my arm around you. (Puts it round.)

Mrs. C. Yes, you are. But I--what have I ever done?

Capt. G. Given me a wee bit of your heart, haven't you, my Queen!

Mrs. G. That's nothing. Any one would do that. They cou--couldn'thelp it.

Capt. G. Pussy, you'll make me horribly conceited. Just when I was beginning to feel so humble, too.

Mrs. G. Humble! I don't believe it's in your character.

Capt. G. What do you know of my character, Impertinence?

Mrs. G. Ah, but I shall, shan't I, Phil? I shall have time in all the years and years to come, to know everything about you; and there will be no secrets between us.

Capt. G. Little witch! I believe you know me thoroughly already.

Mrs. G. I think I can guess. You're selfish?

Capt. G. Yes.

Mrs. G. Foolish?

Capt. G. Very.

Mrs. G. And a dear?

Capt. G. That is as my lady pleases.

Mrs. G. Then your lady is pleased. (A pause.) D'you know that we're two solemn, serious, grown-up people--

Capt. G. (Tilting her straw hat over her eyes.) You grown-up! Pooh! You're a baby.

Mrs. G. And we're talking nonsense.

Capt. G. Then let's go on talking nonsense. I rather like it. Pussy, I'll tell you a secret. Promise not to repeat?

Mrs. G. Ye-es. Only to you.

Capt. G. I love you.

Mrs. G. Re-ally! For how long?

Capt. G. Forever and ever.

Mrs. G. That's a long time.

Capt. G. 'Think so? It's the shortest I can do with.

Mrs. G. You're getting quite clever.

Capt. G. I'm talking to you.

Mrs. G. Prettily turned. Hold up your stupid old head and I'll pay you for it.

Capt. G. (Affecting supreme contempt.) Take it yourself if you want it.

Mrs. G. I've a great mind to--and I will! (Takes it and is repaid with interest.)

Capt. G, Little Featherweight, it's my opinion that we are a couple of idiots.

Mrs. G. We're the only two sensible people in the world. Ask the eagle. He's coming by.

Capt. G. Ah! I dare say he's seen a good many sensible people at Mahasu. They say that those birds live for ever so long.

Mrs. G. How long?

Capt. G. A hundred and twenty years.

Mrs. G. A hundred and twenty years! O-oh! And in a hundred and twenty years where will these two sensible people be?

Capt. G. What does it matter so long as we are together now?

Mrs. G. (Looking round the horizon.) Yes. Only you and I--I and you--in the whole wide, wide world until the end. (Sees the line of the Snows.) How big and quiet the hills look! D'you think they care for us?

Capt. G. 'Can't say I've consulted 'em particularly. I care, and that's enough for me.

Mrs. G. (Drawing nearer to him.) Yes, now--but afterward. What's that little black blur on the Snows?

Capt. G. A snowstorm, forty miles away. You'll see it move, as the wind carries it across the face of that spur and then it will be all gone.

Mrs. G. And then it will be all gone. (Shivers.)

Capt. G. (Anxiously.) 'Not chilled, pet, are you? 'Better let me get your cloak.

Mrs. G. No. Don't leave me, Phil. Stay here. I believe I am afraid. Oh, why are the hills so horrid! Phil, promise me that you'll always love me.

Capt. G. What's the trouble, darling? I can't promise any more than I have; but I'll promise that again and again if you like.

Mrs. G. (Her head on his shoulder.) Say it, then--say it! N-no--don't! The--the--eagles would laugh. (Recovering.) My husband, you've married a little goose.

Capt. G. (Very tenderly.) Have I? I am content whatever she is, so long as she is mine.

Mrs. G. (Quickly.) Because she is yours or because she is me mineself?

Capt. G. Because she is both. (Piteously.) I'm not clever, dear, and I don't think I can make myself understood properly.

Mrs. G. I understand. Pip, will you tell me something?

Capt. G. Anything you like. (Aside.) I wonder what's coming now.

Mrs. G. (Haltingly, her eyes lowered.) You told me once in the old days--centuries and centuries ago--that you had been engaged before. I didn't say anything--then.

Capt. G. (Innocently.) Why not?

Mrs. G. (Raising her eyes to his.) Because--because I was afraid of losing you, my heart. But now--tell about it--please.

Capt. G. There's nothing to tell. I was awf'ly old then--nearly two and twenty--and she was quite that.

Mrs. G. That means she was older than you. I shouldn't like her to have been younger. Well?

Capt. G. Well, I fancied myself in love and raved about a bit, and--oh, yes, by Jove! I made up poetry. Ha! Ha!

Mrs. G. You never wrote any for me! What happened?

Capt. G. I came out here, and the whole thing went phut. She wrote to say that there had been a mistake, and then she married.

Mrs. G. Did she care for you much?

Capt. G. No. At least she didn't show it as far as I remember.

Mrs. G. As far as you remember! Do you remember her name? (Hears it and bows her head.) Thank you, my husband.

Capt. G. Who but you had the right? Now, Little Featherweight, have you ever been mixed up in any dark and dismal tragedy?

Mrs. G. If you call me Mrs. Gadsby, p'raps I'll tell.

Capt. G. (Throwing Parade rasp into his voice.) Mrs. Gadsby, confess!

Mrs. G. Good Heavens, Phil! I never knew that you could speak in that terrible voice.

Capt. G. You don't know half my accomplishments yet. Wait till we are settled in the Plains, and I'll show you how I bark at my troop. You were going to say, darling?

Mrs. G. I--I don't like to, after that voice. (Tremulously.) Phil, never you dare to speak to me in that tone, whatever I may do!

Capt. G. My poor little love! Why, you're shaking all over. I am so sorry. Of course I never meant to upset you Don't tell me anything, I'm a brute.

Mrs. G. No, you aren't, and I will tell--There was a man.

Capt. G. (Lightly.) Was there? Lucky man!

Mrs. G. (In a whisper.) And I thought I cared for him.

Capt. G. Still luckier man! Well?

Mrs. G. And I thought I cared for him--and I didn't--and then you came--and I cared for you very, very much indeed. That's all. (Face hidden.) You aren't angry, are you?

Capt. G. Angry? Not in the least. (Aside.) Good Lord, what have I done to deserve this angel?

Mrs. G. (Aside.) And he never asked for the name! How funny men are! But perhaps it's as well.

Capt. G. That man will go to heaven because you once thought you cared for him. 'Wonder if you'll ever drag me up there?

Mrs. G. (Firmly.) 'Sha'n't go if you don't.

Capt. G. Thanks. I say, Pussy, I don't know much about your religious beliefs. You were brought up to believe in a heaven and all that, weren't you?

Mrs. G. Yes. But it was a pincushion heaven, with hymn-books in all the pews.

Capt. G. (Wagging his head with intense conviction.) Never mind. There is a pukka heaven.

Mrs. G. Where do you bring that message from, my prophet?

Capt. G. Here! Because we care for each other. So it's all right.

Mrs. G. (As a troop of langurs crash through the branches.) So it's all right. But Darwin says that we came from those!

Capt. G. (Placidly.) Ah! Darwin was never in love with an angel. That settles it. Sstt, you brutes! Monkeys, indeed! You shouldn't read those books.

Mrs. G. (Folding her hands.) If it pleases my Lord the King to issue proclamation.

Capt. G. Don't, dear one. There are no orders between us. Only I'd rather you didn't. They lead to nothing, and bother people's heads.

Mrs. G. Like your first engagement.

Capt. G. (With an immense calm.) That was a necessary evil and led to you. Are you nothing?

Mrs. G. Not so very much, am I?

Capt. G. All this world and the next to me.

Mrs. G. (Very softly.) My boy of boys! Shall I tell you something?

Capt. G. Yes, if it's not dreadful--about other men.

Mrs. G. It's about my own bad little self.

Capt. G. Then it must be good. Go on, dear.

Mrs. G. (Slowly.) I don't know why I'm telling you, Pip; but if ever you marry again--(Interlude.) Take your hand from my mouth or I'll bite! In the future, then remember--I don't know quite how to put it!

Capt. G. (Snorting indignantly.) Don't try. “Marry again,” indeed!

Mrs. G. I must. Listen, my husband. Never, never, never tell your wife anything that you do not wish her to remember and think over all her life. Because a woman--yes, I am a woman--can't forget.

Capt. G. By Jove, how do you know that?

Mrs. G. (Confusedly.) I don't. I'm only guessing. I am--I was--a silly little girl; but I feel that I know so much, oh, so very much more than you, dearest. To begin with, I'm your wife.

Capt. G. So I have been led to believe.

Mrs. G. And I shall want to know every one of your secrets--to share everything you know with you. (Stares round desperately.)

Capt. G. So you shall, dear, so you shall--but don't look like that.

Mrs. G. For your own sake don't stop me, Phil. I shall never talk to you in this way again. You must not tell me! At least, not now. Later on, when I'm an old matron it won't matter, but if you love me, be very good to me now; for this part of my life I shall never forget! Have I made you understand?

Capt. G. I think so, child. Have I said anything yet that you disapprove of?

Mrs. G. Will you be very angry? That--that voice, and what you said about the engagement--

Capt. G. But you asked to be told that, darling.

Mrs. G. And that's why you shouldn't have told me! You must be the Judge, and, oh, Pip, dearly as I love you, I shan't be able to help you! I shall hinder you, and you must judge in spite of me!

Capt. G. (Meditatively.) We have a great many things to find out together, God help us both--say so, Pussy--but we shall understand each other better every day; and I think I'm beginning to see now. How in the world did you come to know just the importance of giving me just that lead?

Mrs. G. I've told you that I don't know. Only somehow it seemed that, in all this new life, I was being guided for your sake as well as my own.

Capt. G. (Aside.) Then Mafflin was right! They know, and we--we're blind all of us. (Lightly.) 'Getting a little beyond our depth, dear, aren't we? I'll remember, and, if I fail, let me be punished as I deserve.

Mrs. G. There shall be no punishment. We'll start into life together from here--you and I--and no one else.

Capt. G. And no one else. (A pause.) Your eyelashes are all wet, Sweet? Was there ever such a quaint little Absurdity?

Mrs. G. Was there ever such nonsense talked before?

Capt. G. (Knocking the ashes out of his pipe.) 'Tisn't what we say, it's what we don't say, that helps. And it's all the profoundest philosophy. But no one would understand--even if it were put into a book.

Mrs. G. The idea! No--only we ourselves, or people like ourselves--if there are any people like us.

Capt. G. (Magisterially.) All people, not like ourselves, are blind idiots.

Mrs. G. (Wiping her eyes.) Do you think, then, that there are any people as happy as we are?

Capt. G. 'Must be--unless we've appropriated all the happiness in the world.

Mrs. G. (Looking toward Simla.) Poor dears! Just fancy if we have!

Capt. G. Then we'll hang on to the whole show, for it's a great deal too jolly to lose--eh, wife 'o mine?

Mrs. G. O Pip! Pip! How much of you is a solemn, married man and how much a horrid slangy schoolboy?

Capt. G. When you tell me how much of you was eighteen last birthday and how much is as old as the Sphinx and twice as mysterious, perhaps I'll attend to you. Lend me that banjo. The spirit moveth me to yowl at the sunset.

Mrs. G. Mind! It's not tuned. Ah! How that jars!

Capt. G. (Turning pegs.) It's amazingly different to keep a banjo to proper pitch.

Mrs. G. It's the same with all musical instruments, What shall it be?

Capt. G. “Vanity,” and let the hills hear. (Sings through the first and half of the second verse. Turning to Mrs. G.) Now, chorus! Sing, Pussy!

BOTH TOGETHER. (Con brio, to the horror of the monkeys who are settling for the night.)--

“Vanity, all is Vanity,” said Wisdom, scorning me--I clasped my true Love's tender hand and answered frank and free-ee “If this be Vanity who'd be wise? If this be Vanity who'd be wise? If this be Vanity who'd be wi-ise (Crescendo.) Vanity let it be!”

Mrs. G. (Defiantly to the grey of the evening sky.) “Vanity let it be!”

ECHO. (Prom the Fagoo spur.) Let it be!

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