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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson -

Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25), by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Title: The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25)

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Other: Andrew Lang

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Language: English

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THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

SWANSTON EDITION
 VOLUME V

Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five

Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
Copies are for sale.

This is No. ............

8 HOWARD PLACE, EDINBURGH, BIRTHPLACE OF R. L. S. IN 1850

THE WORKS OF

ROBERT LOUIS
STEVENSON
 VOLUME FIVE

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND

WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
AND COMPANY MDCCCCXI

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

THE DYNAMITER

PAGE

PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR D IVAN 7

CHALLONER’S ADVENTURE
THE SQUIRE OF DAMES 15
STORY OF THE D ESTROYING ANGEL 24
THE SQUIRE OF DAMES (concluded) 57

SOMERSET’S ADVENTURE

THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION 73

NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY 78
THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (continued) 104
ZERO’S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB 130
THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (continued) 139

DESBOROUGH’S ADVENTURE

THE BROWN BOX 149

STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN 155
THE BROWN BOX (concluded) 190
THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (concluded) 202
EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR D IVAN 212

STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

STORY OF THE D OOR 227

SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE 234
D R. J EKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE 243
THE CAREW MURDER CASE 246
I NCIDENT OF THE LETTER 251
REMARKABLE I NCIDENT OF DR. LANYON 256
I NCIDENT AT THE WINDOW 261
THE LAST NIGHT 263
D R. LANYON’S NARRATIVE 276
HENRY J EKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE 284

THRAWN JANET 305

 MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS
THE DYNAMITER

WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH MRS. STEVENSON

TO

MESSRS. COLE AND COX

POLICE OFFICERS

Gentlemen,

In the volume now in your hands, the authors have touched upon that
ugly devil of crime, with which it is your glory to have contended. It were a waste of
ink to do so in a serious spirit. Let us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled
strain, where crime preserves some features of nobility, and where reason and
humanity can still relish the temptation. Horror, in this case, is due to Mr. Parnell:
he sits before posterity silent, Mr. Forster’s appeal echoing down the ages. Horror is
due to ourselves, in that we have so long coqueĴed with political crime; not seriously
weighing, not acutely following it from cause to consequence; but with a generous,
unfounded heat of sentiment, like the schoolboy with the penny tale, applauding
what was specious. When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile shape), we proved
false to these imaginations; discovered, in a clap, that crime was no less cruel and
no less ugly under sounding names; and recoiled from our false deities.

But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of our defenders.
Whoever be in the right in this great and confused war of politics; whatever elements
of greed, whatever traits of the bully, dishonour both parties in this inhuman
contest;—your side, your part, is at least pure of doubt. Yours is the side of the child,
of the breeding woman, of individual pity and public trust. If our society were the
mere kingdom of the devil (as indeed it wears some of his colours), it yet embraces
many precious elements and many innocent persons whom it is a glory to defend.
Courage and devotion, so common in the ranks of the police, so liĴle recognised, so
meagrely rewarded, have at length found their commemoration in an historical act.
History, which will represent Mr. Parnell siĴing silent under the appeal of Mr.
Forster, and Gordon seĴing forth upon his tragic enterprise, will not forget Mr. Cole
carrying the dynamite in his defenceless hands, nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to his
aid.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

FANNY VAN DE GRIFT STEVENSON.

A NOTE FOR THE READER

It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this volume, and yet be
unacquainted with its predecessor: the first series of NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS. The
loss is yours—and mine; or, to be more exact, my publishers’. But if you are thus
unlucky, the least I can do is to pass you a hint. When you shall find a reference in
the following pages to one Theophilus Godall of the Bohemian Cigar Divan in
Rupert Street, Soho, you must be prepared to recognise under his features no less a
person than Prince Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the magnates of Europe,
now dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.

R. L. S.

MORE NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

THE DYNAMITER

PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN

IN the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more precise, on
the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two young men of five- or
six-and-twenty met aĞer years of separation. The first, who was of a very
smooth address, and clothed in the best fashion, hesitated to recognise the
pinched and shabby air of his companion.

“What!” he cried, “Paul Somerset!”

“I am indeed Paul Somerset,” returned the other, “or what remains of him
aĞer a well-deserved experience of poverty and law. But in you, Challoner, I
can perceive no change; and time may be said, without hyperbole, to write no
wrinkle on your azure brow.”

“All,” replied Challoner, “is not gold that gliĴers. But we are here in an ill
posture for confidences, and interrupt the movement of these ladies. Let us, if
you please, find a more private corner.”

“If you will allow me to guide you,” replied Somerset, “I will offer you the
best cigar in London.”

And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence and at a brisk
pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert Street, Soho. The entrance
was adorned with one of those gigantic Highlanders of wood which have
almost risen to the standing of antiquities; and across the window-glass, which
sheltered the usual display of pipes, tobacco, and cigars, there ran the gilded
legend: “Bohemian Cigar Divan, by T. Godall.” The interior of the shop was
small, but commodious and ornate; the salesman grave, smiling, and urbane;
and the two young men, each puffing a select regalia, had soon taken their
places on a sofa of mouse-coloured plush, and proceeded to exchange their
stories.

“I am now,” said Somerset, “a barrister; but Providence and the aĴorneys

have hitherto denied me the opportunity to shine. A select society at the
Cheshire Cheese engaged my evenings; my aĞernoons, as Mr. Godall could
testify, have been generally passed in this divan; and my mornings, I have
taken the precaution to abbreviate by not rising before twelve. At this rate, my
liĴle patrimony was very rapidly and, I am proud to remember, most agreeably
expended. Since then a gentleman, who has really nothing else to recommend
him beyond the fact of being my maternal uncle, deals me the small sum of ten
shillings a week; and if you behold me once more revisiting the glimpses of the
street lamps in my favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I have come
into a fortune.”

“I should not have supposed so,” replied Challoner. “But doubtless I met
you on the way to your tailors.”
 “It is a visit that I purpose to delay,” returned Somerset, with a smile. “My
fortune has definite limits. It consists, or rather this morning it consisted, of
one hundred pounds.”

“That is certainly odd,” said Challoner; “yes, certainly the coincidence is

strange. I am myself reduced to the same margin.”

“You!” cried Somerset. “And yet Solomon in all his glory——”

“Such is the fact. I am, dear boy, on my last legs,” said Challoner. “Besides
the clothes in which you see me, I have scarcely a decent trouser in my
wardrobe; and if I knew how, I would this instant set about some sort of work
or commerce. With a hundred pounds for capital, a man should push his way.”

“It may be,” returned Somerset; “but what to do with mine is more than I
can fancy.—Mr. Godall,” he added, addressing the salesman, “you are a man
who knows the world: what can a young fellow of reasonable education do
with a hundred pounds?”

“It depends,” replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot. “The power of
money is an article of faith in which I profess myself a sceptic. A hundred
pounds will with difficulty support you for a year; with somewhat more
difficulty you may spend it in a night; and without any difficulty at all you may
lose it in five minutes on the Stock Exchange. If you are of that stamp of man
that rises, a penny would be as useful; if you belong to those that fall, a penny
would be no more useless. When I was myself thrown unexpectedly upon the
world, it was my fortune to possess an art: I knew a good cigar. Do you know
nothing, Mr. Somerset?”

“Not even law,” was the reply.

“The answer is worthy of a sage,” returned Mr. Godall.—“And you, sir,” he

continued, turning to Challoner, “as the friend of Mr. Somerset, may I be
allowed to address you the same question?”

“Well,” replied Challoner, “I play a fair hand at whist.”

“How many persons are there in London,” returned the salesman, “who
have two-and-thirty teeth? Believe me, young gentleman, there are more still
who play a fair hand at whist. Whist, sir, is wide as the world; ’tis an
accomplishment like breathing. I once knew a youth who announced that he
was studying to be Chancellor of England; the design was certainly ambitious;
but I find it less excessive than that of the man who aspires to make a
livelihood by whist.”

“Dear me,” said Challoner, “I am afraid I shall have to fall to be a working

man.”
 “Fall to be a working man?” echoed Mr. Godall. “Suppose a rural dean to be
unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a captain were cashiered,
would he fall to be a puisne judge? The ignorance of your middle class
surprises me. Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie quite ignorant and equal,
sunk in a common degradation; but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are
seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular
aptitudes and knowledge. By the defects of your education you are more
disqualified to be a working man than to be the ruler of an empire. The gulf,
sir, is below; and the true learned arts—those which alone are safe from the
competition of insurgent laymen—are those which give his title to the artisan.”

“This is a very pompous fellow,” said Challoner in the ear of his companion.

“He is immense,” said Somerset.

Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young fellow made
his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some tobacco. He was younger
than the others; and, in a somewhat meaningless and altogether English way,
he was a handsome lad. When he had been served, and had lighted his pipe
and taken his place upon the sofa, he recalled himself to Challoner by the
name of Desborough.

“Desborough, to be sure,” cried Challoner. “Well, Desborough, and what do

you do?”

“The fact is,” said Desborough, “that I am doing nothing.”

“A private fortune, possibly?” inquired the other.

“Well, no,” replied Desborough, rather sulkily. “The fact is that I am waiting
for something to turn up.”

“All in the same boat!” cried Somerset. “And have you, too, one hundred
pounds?”

“Worse luck,” said Mr. Desborough.

“This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,” said Somerset: “three futiles.”

“A character of this crowded age,” returned the salesman.

“Sir,” said Somerset, “I deny that the age is crowded; I will admit one fact,
and one fact only: that I am futile, that he is futile, and that we are all three as
futile as the devil. What am I? I have smaĴered law, smaĴered leĴers,
smaĴered geography, smaĴered mathematics; I have even a working
knowledge of judicial astrology; and here I stand, all London roaring by at the
street’s end, as impotent as any baby. I have a prodigious contempt for my
maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should simply resolve
into my elements like an unstable mixture. I begin to perceive that it is
necessary to know some one thing to the boĴom—were it only literature. And
yet, sir, the man of the world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of an
extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere at home; he
has seen life in all its phases; and it is impossible but that this great habit of
existence should bear fruit. I count myself a man of the world, accomplished,
cap-à-pie. So do you, Challoner. And you, Mr. Desborough?”

“Oh yes,” returned the young man.

“Well, then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world, without a
trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of the universe (for so you
will allow me to call Rupert Street), in the midst of the chief mass of people,
and within earshot of the most continuous chink of money on the surface of
the globe. Sir, as civilised men, what do we do? I will show you. You take in a
paper?”

“I take,” said Mr. Godall solemnly, “the best paper in the world, the
Standard.”

“Good,” resumed Somerset. “I now hold it in my hand, the voice of the

world, a telephone repeating all men’s wants. I open it, and where my eye first
falls—well, no, not Morrison’s Pills—but here, sure enough, and but a liĴle
above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour of
society. Here is a want, a plaint, an offer of substantial gratitude: ’Two Hundred
Pounds Reward.—The above reward will be paid to any person giving
information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in
the neighbourhood of the Green Park. He was over six feet in height, with
shoulders disproportionately broad, close shaved, with black moustaches, and
wearing a sealskin great-coat.’ There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is
founded.”

“Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?” inquired
Challoner.

“Do I propose it? No, sir,” cried Somerset. “It is reason, destiny, the plain
face of the world, that commands and imposes it. Here all our merits tell; our
manners, habit of the world, powers of conversation, vast stores of
unconnected knowledge, all that we are and have builds up the character of
the complete detective. It is, in short, the only profession for a gentleman.”

“The proposition is perhaps excessive,” replied Challoner; “for hitherto I

own I have regarded it as of all dirty, sneaking, and ungentlemanly trades, the
least and lowest.”

“To defend society?” asked Somerset; “to stake one’s life for others? to
deracinate occult and powerful evil? I appeal to Mr. Godall. He, at least, as a
philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine opinions. He knows
that the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and
that both worse equipped and for a beĴer cause, is in form and essence a more
noble hero than the soldier. Do you, by any chance, deceive yourself into
supposing that a general would either ask or expect, from the best army ever
marshalled, and on the most momentous baĴlefield, the conduct of a common
constable at Peckham Rye?”1

“I did not understand we were to join the force,” said Challoner.

“Nor shall we. These are the hands; but here—here, sir, is the head,” cried
Somerset. “Enough; it is decreed. We shall hunt down this miscreant in the
sealskin coat.”

“Suppose that we agreed,” retorted Challoner, “you have no plan, no

knowledge; you know not where to seek for a beginning.”

“Challoner!” cried Somerset, “is it possible that you hold the doctrine of
Free Will? And are you devoid of any tincture of philosophy, that you should
harp on such exploded fallacies? Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan,
rules this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole reliance. Chance has
brought us three together; when we next separate and go forth our several
ways, Chance will continually drag before our careless eyes a thousand
eloquent clues, not to this mystery only, but to the countless mysteries by
which we live surrounded. Then comes the part of the man of the world, of
the detective born and bred. This clue, which the whole town beholds without
comprehension, swiĞ as a cat, he leaps upon it, makes it his, follows it with
craĞ and passion, and from one trifling circumstance divines a world.”

“Just so,” said Challoner; “and I am delighted that you should recognise
these virtues in yourself. But in the meanwhile, dear boy, I own myself
incapable of joining. I was neither born nor bred as a detective, but as a
placable and very thirsty gentleman; and, for my part, I begin to weary for a
drink. As for clues and adventures, the only adventure that is ever likely to
occur to me will be an adventure with a bailiff.”

“Now there is the fallacy,” cried Somerset. “There I catch the secret of your
futility in life. The world teems and bubbles with adventure; it besieges you
along the streets; hands waving out of windows, swindlers coming up and
swearing they knew you when you were abroad, affable and doubtful people
of all sorts and conditions begging and truckling for your notice. But not you:
you turn away, you walk your seedy mill round, you must go the dullest way.
Now here, I beg of you, the next adventure that offers itself, embrace it in with
both your arms; whatever it looks, grimy or romantic, grasp it. I will do the like;
the devil is in it, but at least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall
narrate the story of our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the divan, the
great Godall, now hearing me with inward joy. Come, is it a bargain? Will you,
indeed, both promise to welcome every chance that offers, to plunge boldly
into every opening, and, keeping the eye wary and the head composed, to
study and piece together all that happens? Come, promise: let me open to you
the doors of the great profession of intrigue.”

“It is not much in my way,” said Challoner, “but, since you make a point of
it, amen.”

“I don’t mind promising,” said Desborough, “but nothing will happen to

me.”

“O faithless ones!” cried Somerset. “But at least I have your promises; and
Godall, I perceive, is transported with delight.”

“I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various narratives,” said
the salesman, with the customary calm polish of his manner.

“And now, gentlemen,” concluded Somerset, “let us separate. I hasten to

put myself in fortune’s way. Hark how, in this quiet corner, London roars like
the noise of baĴle; four million destinies are here concentred; and in the strong
panoply of one hundred pounds, payable to the bearer, I am about to plunge
into that web.”

Hereupon the Arabian author enters on one of his digressions. Fearing,

apparently, that the somewhat eccentric views of Mr. Somerset should
throw discredit on a part of truth, he calls upon the English people to
remember with more gratitude the services of the police; to what
unobserved and solitary acts of heroism they are called; against what odds
of numbers and of arms, and for how small a reward, either in fame or
money: maĴer, it has appeared to the translators, too serious for this
place.

CHALLONER’S ADVENTURE:

THE SQUIRE OF DAMES

MR. EDWARD CHALLONER had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney, where
he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of the people of the
house. To this remote home he found himself, at a very early hour in the
morning of the next day, condemned to set forth on foot. He was a young man
of a portly habit; no lover of the exercises of the body; bland, sedentary, patient
of delay, a prop of omnibuses. In happier days he would have chartered a cab;
but these luxuries were now denied him; and with what courage he could
muster he addressed himself to walk.

It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather was
serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses and along the
vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and some of the warmth and all
the brightness of the July day already shone upon the city. He walked at first in
a profound abstraction, biĴerly reviewing and repenting his performances at
whist; but as he advanced into the labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was
gradually mastered by the silence. Street aĞer street looked down upon his
solitary figure, house aĞer house echoed upon his passage with a ghostly jar,
shop aĞer shop displayed its shuĴered front and its commercial legend; and
meanwhile he steered his course, under day’s effulgent dome and through this
encampment of diurnal sleepers, lonely as a ship.

“Here,” he reflected, “if I were like my scaĴer-brained companion, here

were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure. Here, in broad
day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night of January, and in the midst
of some four million sleepers, solitary as the woods of Yucatan. If I but raise my
voice I could summon up the number of an army, and yet the grave is not more
silent than this city of sleep.”

He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he came into a
street of more mingled ingredients than was common in the quarter. Here, on
the one hand, framed in walls and the green tops of trees, were several of
those discreet, bijou residences on which propriety is apt to look askance.
Here, too, were many of the brick-fronted barracks of the poor; a plaster cow,
perhaps, serving as ensign to a dairy, or a ticket announcing the business of the
mangler. Before one such house, that stood a liĴle separate among walled
gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and Challoner paused a moment,
looking on this sleek and solitary creature, who seemed an emblem of the
neighbouring peace. With the cessation of the sound of his own steps the
silence fell dead; the house stood smokeless; the blinds down, the whole
machinery of life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the
breathing of the sleepers.

As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from within.

This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering as from a keĴle of the
bigness of St. Paul’s; and at the same time from every chink of door and
window spurted an ill-smelling vapour. The cat disappeared with a cry. Within
the lodging-house feet pounded on the stairs; the door flew back, emiĴing
clouds of smoke; and two men and an elegantly dressed young lady tumbled
forth into the street and fled without a word. The hissing had already ceased,
the smoke was melting in the air, the whole event had come and gone as in a
dream, and still Challoner was rooted to the spot. At last his reason and his
fear awoke together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to running.

LiĴle by liĴle this first dash relaxed, and presently he had resumed his sober
gait and begun to piece together, out of the confused report of his senses,
some theory of the occurrence. But the occasion of the sounds and stench that
had so suddenly assailed him, and the strange conjunction of fugitives whom
he had seen to issue from the house, were mysteries beyond his plummet.
With an obscure awe he considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile,
to thread the web of streets, and once more alone in morning sunshine.

In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering vaguely west,
it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street, which presently widened
so as to admit a strip of gardens in the midst. Here was quite a stir of birds;
even at that hour, the shadow of the leaves was grateful; instead of the burnt
atmosphere of cities, there was something brisk and rural in the air; and
Challoner paced forward, his eyes upon the pavement and his mind running
upon distant scenes, till he was recalled, upon a sudden, by a wall that blocked
his further progress. This street, whose name I have forgoĴen, is no
thoroughfare.

He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for, as he raised
his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they alighted on the figure of a girl, in
whom he was struck to recognise the third of the incongruous fugitives. She
had run there, seemingly, blindfold; the wall had checked her career; and being
entirely wearied, she had sunk upon the ground beside the garden railings,
soiling her dress among the summer dust. Each saw the other in the same
instant of time; and she, with one wild look, sprang to her feet and began to
hurry from the scene.

Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of his
adventure and to observe the fear with which she shunned him. Pity and
alarm, in nearly equal forces, contested the possession of his mind; and yet, in
spite of both, he saw himself condemned to follow in the lady’s wake. He did
so gingerly, as fearing to increase her terrors; but, tread as lightly as he might,
his footfalls eloquently echoed in the empty street. Their sound appeared to
strike in her some strong emotion; for scarce had he begun to follow ere she
paused. A second time she addressed herself to flight; and a second time she
paused. Then she turned about, and, with doubtful steps and the most
aĴractive appearance of timidity, drew near to the young man. He on his side
continued to advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness. At
length, when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim over, and
she reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.

“Are you an English gentleman?” she cried.

The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation. He was the spirit
of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his devoirs to any lady; but,
in the other scale, he was a man averse from amorous adventures. He looked
east and west; but the houses that looked down upon this interview remained
inexorably shut; and he saw himself, though in the full glare of the day’s eye,
cut off from any human intervention. His looks returned at last upon the
suppliant. He remarked with irritation that she was charming both in face and
figure, elegantly dressed and gloved: a lady undeniable; the picture of distress
and innocence; weeping and lost in the city of diurnal sleep.

“Madam,” he said, “I protest you have no cause to fear intrusion; and if I

have appeared to follow you, the fault is in this street, which has deceived us
both.”

An unmistakable relief appeared upon the lady’s face. “I might have guessed
it!” she exclaimed. “Thank you a thousand times! But at this hour, in this
appalling silence, and among all these staring windows, I am lost in
terrors—oh, lost in them!” she cried, her face blanching at the words. “I beg
you to lend me your arm,” she added with the loveliest, suppliant inflection. “I
dare not go alone; my nerve is gone—I had a shock, O what a shock! I beg of
you to be my escort.”

“My dear madam,” responded Challoner heavily, “my arm is at your

service.”

She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her sobs; and the
next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the direction of the city. One
thing was plain, among so much that was obscure: it was plain her fears were
genuine. Still, as she went, she spied around as if for dangers; and now she
would shiver like a person in a chill, and now clutch his arm in hers. To
Challoner her terror was at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and
mastered, while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and longed for
release.

“Madam,” he said at last, “I am, of course, charmed to be of use to any lady;

but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite to that you follow, and a
word of explanation——”

“Hush!” she sobbed, “not here—not here!”

The blood of Challoner ran cold. He might have thought the lady mad; but
his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in view of the
detonation, the smoke, and the flight of the ill-assorted trio, his mind was lost
among mysteries. So they continued to thread the maze of streets in silence,
with the speed of a guilty flight, and both thrilling with incommunicable
terrors. In time, however, and above all by their quick pace of walking, the pair
began to rise to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about the corners; and
Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and distant figure of a constable,
returned to the charge with more of spirit and directness.

“I thought,” he said, in the tone of conversation, “that I had indistinctly

perceived you leaving a villa in the company of two gentlemen.”

“Oh!” she said, “you need not fear to wound me by the truth. You saw me
flee from a common lodging-house, and my companions were not gentlemen.
In such a case, the best of compliments is to be frank.”

“I thought,” resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was surprised

by the spirit of her reply, “to have perceived, besides, a certain odour. A noise,
too—I do not know to what I should compare it——”

“Silence!” she cried. “You do not know the danger you invoke. Wait, only
wait; and as soon as we have leĞ those streets and got beyond the reach of
listeners, all shall be explained. Meanwhile, avoid the topic. What a sight is this
sleeping city!” she exclaimed; and then, with a most thrilling voice, “’Dear
God,’” she quoted, “’the very houses seem asleep, and all that mighty heart is
lying still.’”

“I perceive, madam,” said he, “you are a reader.”

“I am more than that,” she answered, with a sigh. “I am a girl condemned to

thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is my fate, that this walk upon the
arm of a stranger is like an interlude of peace.”

They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the Victoria Station;
and here, at a street corner, the young lady paused, withdrew her arm from
Challoner’s, and looked up and down as though in pain or indecision. Then,
with a lovely change of countenance, and laying her gloved hand upon his
arm:

“What you already think of me,” she said, “I tremble to conceive; yet I must
here condemn myself still further. Here I must leave you, and here I beseech
you to wait for my return. Do not aĴempt to follow me or spy upon my
actions. Suspend yet awhile your judgment of a girl as innocent as your own
sister; and do not, above all, desert me. Stranger as you are, I have none else to
look to. You see me in sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman, courteous
and kind; and when I beg for a few minutes’ patience, I make sure beforehand
you will not deny me.”

Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a grateful eye-shot,
vanished round the corner. But the force of her appeal had been a liĴle
blunted; for the young man was not only destitute of sisters, but of any female
relative nearer than a great-aunt in Wales. Now he was alone, besides, the
spell that he had hitherto obeyed began to weaken; he considered his
behaviour with a sneer; and plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in
pursuit. The reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the
noctambulist, will not be unaware that, in the neighbourhood of the great
railway centres, certain early taverns inaugurate the business of the day. It was
into one of these that Challoner, coming round the corner of the block, beheld
his charming companion disappear. To say he was surprised were inexact, for
he had long since leĞ that sentiment behind him. Acute disgust and
disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths he damned this
commonplace enchantress. She had scarce been gone a second ere the
swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in company with a young man
of mean and slouching aĴire. For some five or six exchanges they conversed
together with an animated air; then the fellow shouldered again into the tap;
and the young lady, with something swiĞer than a walk, retraced her steps
towards Challoner. He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; her ankle, as she
hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements eloquent of speed and youth;
and though he still entertained some thoughts of flight, they grew miserably
fainter as the distance lessened. Against mere beauty he was proof: it was her
unmistakable gentility that now robbed him of the courage of his cowardice.
With a proved adventuress he had acted strictly on his right; with one whom,
in spite of all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he found himself disarmed.
At the very corner from whence he had spied upon her interview, she came
upon him, still transfixed, and—“Ah!” she cried, with a bright flush of colour.
“Ah! Ungenerous!”

The sharpness of the aĴack somewhat restored the Squire of Dames to the
possession of himself.

“Madam,” he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, “I do not think that

hitherto you can complain of any lack of generosity; I have suffered myself to
be led over a considerable portion of the metropolis; and if I now request you
to discharge me of my office of protector, you have friends at hand who will be
glad of the succession.”

She stood a moment dumb.

“It is well,” she said. “Go! go, and may God help me! You have seen
me—me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and haunted by
sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour move you to await my
explanation or to help in my distress. Go!” she repeated. “I am lost indeed.”
And with a passionate gesture she turned and fled along the street.

Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable sense of

guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being gulled. She was no
sooner gone than the first of these feelings took the upper hand; he felt, if he
had done her less than justice, that his conduct was a perfect model of the
ungracious; the cultured tone of her voice, her choice of language, and the
elegant decorum of her movements, cried out aloud against a harsh
construction; and between penitence and curiosity he began slowly to follow
in her wake. At the corner he had her once more full in view. Her speed was
failing like a stricken bird’s. Even as he looked, she threw her arm out
gropingly, and fell and leaned against the wall. At the spectacle, Challoner’s
fortitude gave way. In a few strides he overtook her, and, for the first time
removing his hat, assured her in the most moving terms of his entire respect
and firm desire to help her. He spoke at first unheeded; but gradually it
appeared that she began to comprehend his words; she moved a liĴle, and
drew herself upright; and finally, as with a sudden movement of forgiveness,
turned on the young man a countenance in which reproach and gratitude
were mingled. “Ah, madam,” he cried, “use me as you will!” And once more,
but now with a great air of deference, he offered her the conduct of his arm.
She took it with a sigh that struck him to the heart; and they began once more
to trace the deserted streets. But now her steps, as though exhausted by
emotion, began to linger on the way; she leaned the more heavily upon his
arm; and he, like the parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.
Her physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of her spirits; and
hearing her strike so soon into a playful and charming vein of talk, Challoner
could not sufficiently admire the elasticity of his companion’s nature. “Let me
forget,” she had said, “for one half-hour, let me forget“; and sure enough, with
the very word, her sorrows appeared to be forgoĴen. Before every house she
paused, invented a name for the proprietor, and sketched his character: here
lived the old general whom she was to marry on the fiĞh of the next month,
there was the mansion of the rich widow who had set her heart on Challoner;
and though she still hung wearily on the young man’s arm, her laughter
sounded low and pleasant in his ears. “Ah,” she sighed, by way of
commentary, “in such a life as mine I must seize tight hold of any happiness
that I can find.”

When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of Grosvenor Place,
the gates of the park were opening, and the bedraggled company of night-
walkers were being at last admiĴed into that paradise of lawns. Challoner and
his companion followed the movement, and walked for awhile in silence in
that taĴerdemalion crowd; but as one aĞer another, weary with the night’s
patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the benches or wandered into
separate paths, the vast extent of the park had soon uĴerly swallowed up the
last of these intruders; and the pair proceeded on their way alone in the
grateful quiet of the morning.

Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on a mound of

turf. The young lady looked about her with relief.

“Here,” she said, “here at last we are secure from listeners. Here, then, you
shall learn and judge my history. I could not bear that we should part, and that
you should still suppose your kindness squandered upon one who was
unworthy.”

Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to take a
place immediately beside her, began in the following words, and with the
greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story of her life.

STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL

MY father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great ancient but

untitled family; and by some event, fault, or misfortune he was driven to flee
from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name of his ancestors. He sought
the States; and instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed at once into the
Far West with an exploring party of frontiersmen. He was no ordinary
traveller; for he was not only brave and impetuous by character, but learned in
many sciences, and above all in botany, which he particularly loved. Thus it fell
that, before many months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop,
courted and bowed to his opinion.

They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of the West.
For some time they followed the track of Mormon caravans, guiding
themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by the skeletons of men and
animals. Then they inclined their route a liĴle to the north, and, losing even
these dire memorials, came into a country of forbidding stillness. I have oĞen
heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride: rock, cliff, and barren
moor alternated; the streams were very far between; and neither beast nor bird
disturbed the solitude. On the fortieth day they had already run so short of
food that it was judged advisable to call a halt and scaĴer upon all sides to
hunt. A great fire was built, that its smoke might serve to rally them; and each
man of the party mounted and struck off at a venture into the surrounding
desert.
 My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the one
hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered vale doĴed
with boulders like the site of some subverted city. At length he found the slot
of a great animal, and from the claw-marks and the hair among the brush,
judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear of most unusual size. He
quickened the pace of his steed, and, still following the quarry, came at last to
the division of two watersheds. On the far side the country was exceeding
intricate and difficult, heaped with boulders, and doĴed here and there with a
few pines, which seemed to indicate the neighbourhood of water. Here, then,
he picketed his horse, and, relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into that
wilderness.

Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the sound of
running water to his right; and leaning in that direction, was rewarded by a
scene of natural wonder and human pathos strangely intermixed. The stream
ran at the boĴom of a narrow and winding passage, whose wall-like sides of
rock were sometimes for miles together unscalable by man. The water, when
the stream was swelled with rains, must have filled it from side to side; the
sun’s rays only plumbed it in the hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and
damp funnel, blew tempestuously. And yet, in the boĴom of this den,
immediately below my father’s eyes as he leaned over the margin of the cliff, a
party of some half a hundred men, women, and children lay scaĴered uneasily
among the rocks. They lay, some upon their backs, some prone, and not one
stirring; their upturned faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness and
emaciation; and from time to time, above the washing of the stream, a faint
sound of moaning mounted to my father’s ears.

While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet, unwound his
blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young girl who sat hard by
propped against a rock. The girl did not seem to be conscious of the act; and
the old man, aĞer having looked upon her with the most engaging pity,
returned to his former bed and lay down again uncovered on the turf. But the
scene had not passed without observation even in that starving camp. From
the very outskirts of the party, a man with a white beard and seemingly of
venerable years, rose up on his knees and came crawling stealthily among the
sleepers towards the girl; and judge of my father’s indignation, when he
beheld this cowardly miscreant strip from her both the coverings and return
with them to his original position. Here he lay down for a while below his
spoils, and, as my father imagined, feigned to be asleep; but presently he had
raised himself again upon one elbow, looked with sharp scrutiny at his
companions, and then swiĞly carried his hand into his bosom and thence to
his mouth. By the movement of his jaws he must be eating; in that camp of
famine he had reserved a store of nourishment; and, while his companions lay
in the stupor of approaching death, secretly restored his powers.
 My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his rifle; and but
for an accident, he has oĞen declared, he would have shot the fellow dead
upon the spot. How different would then have been my history! But it was not
to be: even as he raised the barrel, his eye lighted on the bear, as it crawled
along a ledge some way below him; and ceding to the hunter’s instinct, it was
at the brute, not at the man, that he discharged his piece. The bear leaped and
fell into a pool of the river; the cañon re-echoed the report; and in a moment
the camp was afoot. With cries that were scarce human, stumbling, falling, and
throwing each other down, these starving people rushed upon the quarry; and
before my father, climbing down by the ledge, had time to reach the level of
the stream, many were already satisfying their hunger on the raw flesh, and a
fire was being built by the more dainty.

His arrival was for some time unremarked. He stood in the midst of these
toĴering and clay-faced marioneĴes; he was surrounded by their cries; but
their whole soul was fixed on the dead carcase; even those who were too weak
to move, lay, half-turned over, with their eyes riveted upon the bear; and my
father, seeing himself stand as though invisible in the thick of this dreary
hubbub, was seized with a desire to weep. A touch upon the arm restrained
him. Turning about, he found himself face to face with the old man he had so
nearly killed; and yet, at the second glance, recognised him for no old man at
all, but one in the full strength of his years, and of a strong, speaking, and
intellectual countenance stigmatised by weariness and famine. He beckoned
my father near the cliff, and there, in the most private whisper, begged for
brandy. My father looked at him with scorn: “You remind me,” he said, “of a
neglected duty. Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to revive the
women of your party; and I will begin with her whom I saw you robbing of her
blankets.” And with that, not heeding his appeals, my father turned his back
upon the egoist.

The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far sunk in the first
stage of death to have observed the bustle round her couch; but when my
father had raised her head, put the flask to her lips, and forced or aided her to
swallow some drops of the restorative, she opened her languid eyes and smiled
upon him faintly. Never was there a smile of a more touching sweetness; never
were eyes more deeply violet, more honestly eloquent of the soul! I speak with
knowledge, for these were the same eyes that smiled upon me in the cradle.
From her who was to be his wife, my father, still jealously watched and
followed by the man with the grey beard, carried his aĴentions to all the
women of the party, and gave the last drainings of his flask to those among the
men who seemed in the most need.

“Is there none leĞ? not a drop for me?” said the man with the beard.
 “Not one drop,” replied my father; “and if you find yourself in want, let me
counsel you to put your hand into the pocket of your coat.”

“Ah!” cried the other, “you misjudge me. You think me one who clings to life
for selfish and commonplace considerations. But let me tell you, that were all
this caravan to perish, the world would but be lightened of a weight. These are
but human insects, pullulating, thick as may-flies, in the slums of European
cities, whom I myself have plucked from degradation and misery, from the
dung-heap and gin-palace door. And you compare their lives with mine!”

“You are then a Mormon missionary?” asked my father.

“Oh!” cried the man, with a strange smile, “a Mormon missionary if you
will! I value not the title. Were I no more than that, I could have died without a
murmur. But with my life as a physician is bound up the knowledge of great
secrets and the future of man. This it was, when we missed the caravan, tried
for a short cut and wandered to this desolate ravine, that ate into my soul and,
in five days, has changed my beard from ebony to silver.”

“And you are a physician,” mused my father, looking on his face, “bound by
oath to succour man in his distresses.”

“Sir,” returned the Mormon, “my name is Grierson: you will hear that name
again; and you will then understand that my duty was not to this caravan of
paupers, but to mankind at large.”

My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now sufficiently
revived to hear; told them that he would set off at once to bring help from his
own party; “and,” he added, “if you be again reduced to such extremities, look
round you, and you will see the earth strewn with assistance. Here, for
instance, growing on the underside of fissures in this cliff, you will perceive a
yellow moss. Trust me, it is both edible and excellent.”

“Ha!” said Dr. Grierson, “you know botany!”

“Not I alone,” returned my father, lowering his voice; “for see where these
have been scraped away. Am I right? Was that your secret store?”

My father’s comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-fire, had

made a good day’s hunting. They were thus the more easily persuaded to
extend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and the next day beheld both
parties on the march for the frontiers of Utah. The distance to be traversed
was not great; but the nature of the country and the difficulty of procuring
food extended the time to nearly three weeks; and my father had thus ample
leisure to know and appreciate the girl whom he had succoured. I will call my
mother Lucy. Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is one you
would know well. By what series of undeserved calamities this innocent flower
of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education, ennobled by the finest taste, was
thus cast among the horrors of a Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.
Let it suffice, that even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart
worthy of her own. The ardour of aĴachment which united my father and
mother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their meeting; it
knew, at least, no bounds, either divine or human; my father, for her sake,
determined to renounce his ambition and abjure his faith; and a week had not
passed upon the march before he had resigned from his party, accepted the
Mormon doctrine, and received the promise of my mother’s hand on the
arrival of the party at Salt Lake.

The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring. My father prospered
exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my mother; and, though you
may wonder to hear it, I believe there were few happier homes in any country
than that in which I saw the light and grew to girlhood. We were, indeed, and
in spite of all our wealth, avoided as heretics and half-believers by the more
precise and pious of the faithful: Young himself, that formidable tyrant, was
known to look askance upon my father’s riches; but of this I had no guess. I
dwelt, indeed, under the Mormon system, with perfect innocence and faith.
Some of our friends had many wives; but such was the custom; and why
should it surprise me more than marriage itself? From time to time one of our
rich acquaintances would disappear, his family be broken up, his wives and
houses shared among the elders of the church, and his memory only recalled
with bated breath and dreadful head-shakings. When I had been very still, and
my presence perhaps was forgoĴen, some such topic would arise among my
elders by the evening fire; I would see them draw the closer together and look
behind them with scared eyes; and I might gather from their whisperings how
some one, rich, honoured, healthy, and in the prime of his days, some one,
perhaps, who had taken me on his knees a week before, had in one hour been
spirited from home and family, and vanished like an image from a mirror,
leaving not a print behind. It was terrible, indeed; but so was death, the
universal law. And even if the talk should wax still bolder, full of ominous
silences and nods, and I should hear named in a whisper the Destroying
Angels, how was a child to understand these mysteries? I heard of a
Destroying Angel as some more happy child might hear in England of a bishop
or a rural dean, with vague respect and without the wish for further
information. Life anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread
foundations; I beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the desert, pious people
crowding to worship; I was aware of my parents’ tenderness and all the
harmless luxuries of my existence; and why should I pry beneath this honest
seeming surface for the mysteries on which it stood?

We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to a beautiful

house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water, and surrounded on
almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous and rocky desert. The city was
thirty miles away; there was but one road, which went no farther than my
father’s door; the rest were bridle-tracks impassable in winter; and we thus
dwelt in a solitude inconceivable to the European. Our only neighbour was Dr.
Grierson. To my young eyes, aĞer the hair-oiled, chin-bearded elders of the
city, and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women of their harems, there
was something agreeable in the correct manner, the fine bearing, the thin
white hair and beard, and the piercing looks of the old doctor. Yet, though he
was almost our only visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense of fear in his
presence; and this disquietude was rather fed by the awful solitude in which
he lived and the obscurity that hung about his occupations. His house was but
a mile or two from ours, but very differently placed. It stood overlooking the
road on the summit of a steep slope, and planted close against a range of
overhanging bluffs. Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate the
works of man; for the slope was even, like the glacis of a fort, and the cliffs of a
constant height, like the ramparts of a city. Not even spring could change one
feature of that desolate scene; and the windows looked down across a plain,
snowy with alkali, to ranges of cold stone sierras on the north. Twice or thrice I
remember passing within view of this forbidding residence; and seeing it
always shuĴered, smokeless, and deserted, I remarked to my parents that
some day it would certainly be robbed.

“Ah, no,” said my father, “never robbed“; and I observed a strange

conviction in his tone.

At last, and not long before the blow fell on my unhappy family, I chanced to
see the doctor’s house in a new light. My father was ill; my mother confined to
his bedside; and I was suffered to go, under the charge of our driver, to the
lonely house some twenty miles away, where our packages were leĞ for us.
The horse cast a shoe; night overtook us half-way home; and it was well on for
three in the morning when the driver and I, alone in a light waggon, came to
that part of the road which ran below the doctor’s house. The moon swam
clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong light lay uĴerly deserted; but the
house, from its station on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff,
not only shone abroad from every window like a place of festival, but from the
great chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick and so
voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night-air, and its shadow
lay far abroad in the moonlight upon the gliĴering alkali. As we continued to
draw near, besides, a regular and panting throb began to divide the silence.
First it seemed to me like the beating of a heart; and next it put into my mind
the thought of some giant, smothered under mountains, and still, with
incalculable effort, fetching breath. I had heard of the railway, though I had not
seen it, and I turned to ask the driver if this resembled it. But some look in his
eye, some pallor, whether of fear or moonlight on his face, caused the words to
die upon my lips. We continued, therefore, to advance in silence, till we were
close below the lighted house; when suddenly, without premonitory rustle,
there burst forth a report of such a bigness that it shook the earth and set the
echoes of the mountains thundering from cliff to cliff. A pillar of amber flame
leaped from the chimney-top and fell in multitudes of sparks; and at the same
time the lights in the windows turned for one instant ruby red and then
expired. The driver had checked his horse instinctively, and the echoes were
still rumbling farther off among the mountains, when there broke from the
now darkened interior a series of yells—whether of man or woman it was
impossible to guess—the door flew open, and there ran forth into the
moonlight, at the top of the long slope, a figure clad in white, which began to
dance and leap and throw itself down, and roll as if in agony, before the house.
I could no more restrain my cries; the driver laid his lash about the horse’s
flank, and we fled up the rough track at the peril of our lives; and did not draw
rein till, turning the corner of the mountain, we beheld my father’s ranch and
deep, green groves and gardens, sleeping in the tranquil light.

This was the one adventure of my life, until my father had climbed to the
very topmost point of material prosperity, and I myself had reached the age of
seventeen. I was still innocent and merry like a child; tended my garden or ran
upon the hills in glad simplicity; gave not a thought to coquetry or to material
cares; and if my eye rested on my own image in a mirror or some sylvan spring,
it was to seek and recognise the features of my parents. But the fears which
had long pressed on others were now to be laid on my youth. I had thrown
myself, one sultry, cloudy aĞernoon, on a divan; the windows stood open on
the verandah, where my mother sat with her embroidery; and when my father
joined her from the garden, their conversation, clearly audible to me, was of so
startling a nature that it held me enthralled where I lay.

“The blow has come,” my father said, aĞer a long pause.

I could hear my mother start and turn, but in words she made no reply.

“Yes,” continued my father, “I have received to-day a list of all that I

possess; of all, I say; of what I have lent privately to men whose lips are sealed
with terror; of what I have buried with my own hand on the bare mountain,
when there was not a bird in heaven. Does the air, then, carry secrets? Are the
hills of glass? Do the stones we tread upon preserve the footprint to betray us?
Oh, Lucy, Lucy, that we should have come to such a country!”

“But this,” returned my mother, “is no very new or very threatening event.
You are accused of some concealment. You will pay more taxes in the future,
and be mulcted in a fine. It is disquieting, indeed, to find our acts so spied
upon, and the most private known. But is this new? Have we not long feared
and suspected every blade of grass?”
 “Ay, and our shadows!” cried my father. “But all this is nothing. Here is the
leĴer that accompanied the list.”

I heard my mother turn the pages; and she was some time silent.

“I see,” she said at last; and then, with the tone of one reading; “’From a
believer so largely blessed by Providence with this world’s goods,’” she
continued, “’the Church awaits in confidence some signal mark of piety.’ There
lies the sting. Am I not right? These are the words you fear?”

“These are the words,” replied my father. “Lucy, you remember Priestley?
Two days before he disappeared, he carried me to the summit of an isolated
buĴe; we could see around us for ten miles; sure, if in any quarter of this land
a man were safe from spies, it were in such a station; but it was in the very
ague-fit of terror that he told me, and that I heard, his story. He had received a
leĴer such as this; and he submiĴed to my approval an answer in which he
offered to resign a third of his possessions. I conjured him, as he valued life, to
raise his offering; and, before we parted, he had doubled the amount. Well,
two days later he was gone—gone from the chief street of the city in the hour
of noon—and gone for ever. O God!” cried my father, “by what art do they
thus spirit out of life the solid body? What death do they command that leaves
no traces? that this material structure, these strong arms, this skeleton that can
resist the grave for centuries, should be thus reĞ in a moment from the world
of sense? A horror dwells in that thought more awful than mere death.”

“Is there no hope in Grierson?” asked my mother.

“Dismiss the thought,” replied my father. “He now knows all that I can
teach, and will do naught to save me. His power, besides, is small, his own
danger not improbably more imminent than mine; for he, too, lives apart; he
leaves his wives neglected and unwatched; he is openly cited for an unbeliever;
and unless he buys security at a more awful price—but no; I will not believe it:
I have no love for him, but I will not believe it.”

“Believe what?” asked my mother; and then, with a change of note, “But oh,
what maĴers it?” she cried. “Abimelech, there is but one way open: we must
fly!”

“It is in vain,” returned my father. “I should but involve you in my fate. To

leave this land is hopeless: we are closed in it as men are closed in life; and
there is no issue but the grave.”

“We can but die then,” replied my mother. “Let us at least die together. Let
not Asenath2 and myself survive you. Think to what a fate we should be
doomed!”

My father was unable to resist her tender violence; and though I could see
he nourished not one spark of hope, he consented to desert his whole estate,
beyond some hundreds of dollars that he had by him at the moment, and to
flee that night, which promised to be dark and cloudy. As soon as the servants
were asleep, he was to load two mules with provisions; two others were to
carry my mother and myself; and, striking through the mountains by an
unfrequented trail, we were to make a fair stroke for liberty and life. As soon
as they had thus decided, I showed myself at the window, and, owning that I
had heard all, assured them that they could rely on my prudence and
devotion. I had no fear, indeed, but to show myself unworthy of my birth; I
held my life in my hand without alarm; and when my father, weeping upon my
neck, had blessed Heaven for the courage of his child, it was with a sentiment
of pride and some of the joy that warriors take in war, that I began to look
forward to the perils of our flight.

Before midnight, under an obscure and starless heaven, we had leĞ far
behind us the plantations of the valley, and were mounting a certain cañon in
the hills, narrow, encumbered with great rocks, and echoing with the roar of a
tumultuous torrent. Cascade aĞer cascade thundered and hung up its flag of
whiteness in the night, or fanned our faces with the wet wind of its descent.
The trail was break-neck, and led to famine-guarded deserts; it had been long
since deserted for more practicable routes; and it was now a part of the world
untrod from year to year by human footing. Judge of our dismay when, turning
suddenly an angle of the cliffs, we found a bright bonfire blazing by itself
under an impending rock; and on the face of the rock, drawn very rudely with
charred wood, the great Open Eye which is the emblem of the Mormon faith.
We looked upon each other in the firelight; my mother broke into a passion of
tears; but not a word was said. The mules were turned about; and leaving that
great eye to guard the lonely cañon, we retraced our steps in silence. Day had
not yet broken ere we were once more at home, condemned beyond reprieve.

What answer my father sent I was not told; but two days later, a liĴle before
sundown, I saw a plain, honest-looking man ride slowly up the road in a great
pother of dust. He was clad in homespun, with a broad straw hat; wore a
patriarchal beard; and had an air of a simple rustic farmer, that was, in my
eyes, very reassuring. He was, indeed, a very honest man and pious Mormon;
with no liking for his errand, though neither he nor any one in Utah dared to
disobey; and it was with every mark of diffidence that he had had himself
announced as Mr. Aspinwall, and entered the room where our unhappy family
was gathered. My mother and me he awkwardly enough dismissed; and as
soon as he was alone with my father laid before him a blank signature of
President Young’s, and offered him a choice of services: either to set out as a
missionary to the tribes about the White Sea, or to join the next day, with a
party of Destroying Angels, in the massacre of sixty German immigrants. The
last, of course, my father could not entertain, and the first he regarded as a
pretext: even if he could consent to leave his wife defenceless, and to collect
fresh victims for the tyranny under which he was himself oppressed, he felt
sure he would never be suffered to return. He refused both; and Aspinwall, he
said, betrayed sincere emotion, part religious, as the spectacle of such
disobedience, but part human, in pity for my father and his family. He
besought him to reconsider his decision; and at length, finding he could not
prevail, gave him till the moon rose to seĴle his affairs, and say farewell to wife
and daughter. “For,” said he, “then, at the latest, you must ride with me.”

I dare not dwell upon the hours that followed: they fled all too fast; and
presently the moon out-topped the eastern range, and my father and Mr.
Aspinwall set forth, side by side, on their nocturnal journey. My mother,
though still bearing an heroic countenance, had hastened to shut herself in her
apartment, thenceforward solitary; and I, alone in the dark house, and
consumed by grief and apprehension, made haste to saddle my Indian pony, to
ride up to the corner of the mountain, and to enjoy one farewell sight of my
departing father. The two men had set forth at a deliberate pace; nor was I
long behind them, when I reached the point of view. I was the more amazed to
see no moving creature in the landscape. The moon, as the saying is, shone
bright as day; and nowhere, under the whole arch of night, was there a
growing tree, a bush, a farm, a patch of tillage, or any evidence of man, but
one. From the corner where I stood, a rugged bastion of the line of bluffs
concealed the doctor’s house; and across the top of that projection the soĞ
night wind carried and unwound about the hills a coil of sable smoke. What
fuel could produce a vapour so sluggish to dissipate in that dry air, or what
furnace pour it forth so copiously, I was unable to conceive; but I knew well
enough that it came from the doctor’s chimney; I saw well enough that my
father had already disappeared; and in despite of reason, I connected in my
mind the loss of that dear protector with the ribbon of foul smoke that trailed
along the mountains.

Days passed, and still my mother and I waited in vain for news; a week went
by, a second followed, but we heard no word of the father and husband. As
smoke dissipates, as the image glides from the mirror, so in the ten or twenty
minutes that I had spent in geĴing my horse and following upon his trail, had
that strong and brave man vanished out of life. Hope, if any hope we had, fled
with every hour; the worst was now certain for my father, the worst was to be
dreaded for his defenceless family. Without weakness, with a desperate calm
at which I marvel when I look back upon it, the widow and the orphan awaited
the event. On the last day of the third week we rose in the morning to find
ourselves alone in the house, alone, so far as we searched, on the estate; all our
aĴendants, with one accord, had fled, and as we knew them to be gratefully
devoted, we drew the darkest intimations from their flight. The day passed,
indeed, without event; but in the fall of the evening we were called at last into
the verandah by the approaching clink of horse’s hoofs.

The doctor, mounted on an Indian pony, rode into the garden, dismounted,
and saluted us. He seemed much more bent, and his hair more silvery than
ever; but his demeanour was composed, serious, and not unkind.

“Madam,” said he, “I am come upon a weighty errand; and I would have
you recognise it as an effect of kindness in the President, that he should send
as his ambassador your only neighbour and your husband’s oldest friend in
Utah.”

“Sir,” said my mother, “I have but one concern, one thought. You know well
what it is. Speak: my husband?”

“Madam,” returned the doctor, taking a chair on the verandah, “if you were
a silly child my position would now be painfully embarrassing. You are, on the
other hand, a woman of great intelligence and fortitude: you have, by my
forethought, been allowed three weeks to draw your own conclusions and to
accept the inevitable. Further words from me are, I conceive, superfluous.”

My mother was as pale as death, and trembled like a reed; I gave her my
hand, and she kept it in the folds of her dress and wrung it till I could have
cried aloud. “Then, sir,” said she at last, “you speak to deaf ears. If this be
indeed so, what have I to do with errands? what do I ask of Heaven but to
die?”

“Come,” said the doctor, “command yourself. I bid you dismiss all thoughts
of your late husband, and bring a clear mind to bear upon your own future
and the fate of that young girl.”

“You bid me dismiss——” began my mother. “Then you know!” she cried.

“I know,” replied the doctor.

“You know?” broke out the poor woman. “Then it was you who did the
deed! I tear off the mask, and with dread and loathing see you as you
are—you, whom the poor fugitive beholds in nightmares, and awakes
raving—you, the Destroying Angel!”

“Well, madam, and what then?” returned the doctor. “Have not my fate and
yours been similar? Are we not both immured in this strong prison of Utah?
Have you not tried to flee, and did not the Open Eye confront you in the
cañon? Who can escape the watch of that unsleeping eye of Utah? Not I, at
least. Horrible tasks have, indeed, been laid upon me; and the most ungrateful
was the last; but had I refused my offices, would that have spared your
husband? You know well it would not. I, too, had perished along with him; nor
would I have been able to alleviate his last moments, nor could I to-day have
stood between his family and the hand of Brigham Young.”

“Ah!” cried I, “and could you purchase life by such concessions?”

“Young lady,” answered the doctor, “I both could and did; and you will live
to thank me for that baseness. You have a spirit, Asenath, that it pleases me to
recognise. But we waste time. Mr. Fonblanque’s estate reverts, as you
doubtless imagine, to the church; but some part of it has been reserved for him
who is to marry the family; and that person, I should perhaps tell you without
more delay, is no other than myself.”

At this odious proposal my mother and I cried out aloud, and clung together
like lost souls.

“It is as I supposed,” resumed the doctor, with the same measured

uĴerance. “You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me to convince
you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view of women.
Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have leĞ the slaĴerns whom they call
my wives to scratch and quarrel among themselves; of me, they have had
nothing but my purse; such was not the union I desired, even if I had the
leisure to pursue it. No, you need not, madam, and my old friend—” and here
the doctor rose and bowed with something of gallantry—“you need not
apprehend my importunities. On the contrary, I am rejoiced to read in you a
Roman spirit; and if I am obliged to bid you follow me at once, and that in the
name, not of my wish, but of my orders, I hope it will be found that we are of a
common mind.”

So, bidding us dress for the road, he took a lamp (for the night had now
fallen) and set off to the stable to prepare our horses.

“What does it mean?—what will become of us?” I cried.

“Not that, at least,” replied my mother, shuddering. “So far we can trust
him. I seem to read among his words a certain tragic promise. Asenath, if I
leave you, if I die, you will not forget your miserable parents?”

Thereupon we fell to cross-purposes: I beseeching her to explain her words;

she puĴing me by, and continuing to recommend the doctor for a friend. “The
doctor!” I cried at last; “the man who killed my father?”

“Nay,” said she, “let us be just. I do believe, before Heaven, he played the
friendliest part. And he alone, Asenath, can protect you in this land of death.”

At this the doctor returned, leading our two horses; and when we were all
in the saddle, he bade me ride on before, as he had maĴer to discuss with Mrs.
Fonblanque. They came at a foot’s-pace, eagerly conversing in a whisper; and
presently aĞer the moon rose and showed them looking eagerly into each
other’s faces as they went, my mother laying her hand upon the doctor’s arm,
and the doctor himself, against his usual custom, making vigorous gestures of
protest or asseveration.

At the foot of the track which ascended the talus of the mountain to his
door, the doctor overtook me at a trot.

“Here,” he said, “we shall dismount; and as your mother prefers to be alone,
you and I shall walk together to my house.”

“Shall I see her again?” I asked.

“I give you my word,” he said, and helped me to alight. “We leave the horses
here,” he added. “There are no thieves in this stone wilderness.”

The track mounted gradually, keeping the house in view. The windows were
once more bright; the chimney once more vomited smoke; but the most
absolute silence reigned, and, but for the figure of my mother very slowly
following in our wake, I felt convinced there was no human soul within a range
of miles. At the thought, I looked upon the doctor, gravely walking by my side,
with his bowed shoulders and white hair, and then once more at his house, lit
up and pouring smoke like some industrious factory. And then my curiosity
broke forth. “In Heaven’s name,” I cried, “what do you make in this inhuman
desert?”

He looked at me with a peculiar smile, and answered with an evasion:

“This is not the first time,” said he, “that you have seen my furnaces alight.
One morning, in the small hours, I saw you driving past; a delicate experiment
miscarried; and I cannot acquit myself of having startled either your driver or
the horse that drew you.”

“What!” cried I, beholding again in fancy the antics of the figure, “could that
be you?”

“It was I,” he replied; “but do not fancy that I was mad. I was in agony. I had
been scalded cruelly.”

We were now near the house, which, unlike the ordinary houses of the
country, was built of hewn stone and very solid. Stone, too, was its foundation,
stone its background. Not a blade of grass sprouted among the broken mineral
about the walls, not a flower adorned the windows. Over the door, by way of
sole adornment, the Mormon Eye was rudely sculptured; I had been brought
up to view that emblem from my childhood; but since the night of our escape,
it had acquired a new significance, and set me shrinking. The smoke rolled
voluminously from the chimney-top, its edges ruddy with the fire; and from
the far corner of the building, near the ground, angry puffs of steam shone
snow-white in the moon and vanished.

The doctor opened the door and paused upon the threshold. “You ask me
what I make here,” he observed: “Two things: Life and Death.” And he
motioned me to enter.

“I shall await my mother,” said I.

“Child,” he replied, “look at me: am I not old and broken? Of us two, which
is the stronger, the young maiden or the withered man?”

I bowed and, passing by him, entered a vestibule or kitchen, lit by a good fire
and a shaded reading-lamp. It was furnished only with a dresser, a rude table,
and some wooden benches; and on one of these the doctor motioned me to
take a seat; and passing by another door into the interior of the house, he leĞ
me to myself. Presently I heard the jar of iron from the far end of the building;
and this was followed by the same throbbing noise that had startled me in the
valley, but now so near at hand as to be menacing by loudness, and even to
shake the house with every recurrence of the stroke. I had scarce time to
master my alarm when the doctor returned, and almost in the same moment
my mother appeared upon the threshold. But how am I to describe to you the
peace and ravishment of that face? Years seemed to have passed over her
head during that brief ride, and leĞ her younger and fairer; her eyes shone, her
smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman, but the angel of
ecstatic tenderness. I ran to her in a kind of terror; but she shrank a liĴle back
and laid her finger on her lips, with something arch and yet unearthly. To the
doctor, on the contrary, she reached out her hand as to a friend and helper;
and so strange was the scene that I forgot to be offended.

“Lucy,” said the doctor, “all is prepared. Will you go alone, or shall your
daughter follow us?”

“Let Asenath come,” she answered, “dear Asenath! At this hour when I am
purified of fear and sorrow, and already survive myself and my affections, it is
for your sake, and not for mine, that I desire her presence. Were she shut out,
dear friend, it is to be feared she might misjudge your kindness.”

“Mother,” I cried wildly, “mother, what is this?”

But my mother, with her radiant smile, said only “Hush!” as though I were a
child again, and tossing in some fever-fit; and the doctor bade me be silent and
trouble her no more. “You have made a choice,” he continued, addressing my
mother, “that has oĞen strangely tempted me. The two extremes: all, or else
nothing; never, or this very hour upon the clock—these have been my
incongruous desires. But to accept the middle term, to be content with a
half-giĞ, to flicker awhile and to burn out—never for an hour, never since I
was born, has satisfied the appetite of my ambition.” He looked upon my
mother fixedly, much of admiration and some touch of envy in his eyes; then,
with a profound sigh, he led the way into the inner room.

It was very long. From end to end it was lit up by many lamps, which by the
changeful colour of their light, and by the incessant snapping sounds with
which they burned, I have since divined to be electric. At the extreme end an
open door gave us a glimpse into what must have been a lean-to shed beside
the chimney; and this, in strong contrast to the room, was painted with a red
reverberation as from furnace-doors. The walls were lined with books and
glazed cases, the tables crowded with the implements of chemical research;
great glass accumulators gliĴered in the light; and through a hole in the gable
near the shed door a heavy driving-belt entered the apartment and ran
overhead upon steel pulleys, with clumsy activity and many ghostly and
fluĴering sounds. In one corner I perceived a chair resting upon crystal feet,
and curiously wreathed with wire. To this my mother advanced with a decisive
swiĞness.

“Is this it?” she asked.

The doctor bowed in silence.

“Asenath,” said my mother, “in this sad end of my life I have found one
helper. Look upon him: it is Doctor Grierson. Be not, O my daughter, be not
ungrateful to that friend!”

She sat upon the chair, and took in her hands the globes that terminated the
arms.

“Am I right?” she asked, and looked upon the doctor with such a radiancy of
face that I trembled for her reason. Once more the doctor bowed, but this time
leaning hard against the wall. He must have touched a spring. The least shock
agitated my mother where she sat; the least passing jar appeared to cross her
features; and she sank back in the chair like one resigned to weariness. I was at
her knees that moment; but her hands fell loosely in my grasp; her face, still
beatified with the same touching smile, sank forward on her bosom: her spirit
had for ever fled.

I do not know how long may have elapsed before, raising for a moment my
tearful face, I met the doctor’s eyes. They rested upon mine with such a depth
of scrutiny, pity, and interest, that even from the freshness of my sorrow I was
startled into aĴention.

“Enough,” he said, “to lamentation. Your mother went to death as to a

bridal, dying where her husband died. It is time, Asenath, to think of the
survivors. Follow me to the next room.”
 I followed him, like a person in a dream; he made me sit by the fire, he gave
me wine to drink; and then, pacing the stone floor, he thus began to address
me:

“You are now, my child, alone in the world, and under the immediate watch
of Brigham Young. It would be your lot, in ordinary circumstances, to become
the fiĞieth bride of some ignoble elder, or by particular fortune, as fortune is
counted in this land, to find favour in the eyes of the President himself. Such a
fate for a girl like you were worse than death; beĴer to die as your mother died
than to sink daily deeper in the mire of this pit of woman’s degradation. But is
escape conceivable? Your father tried; and you beheld yourself with what
security his jailers acted, and how a dumb drawing on a rock was counted a
sufficient sentry over the avenues of freedom. Where your father failed, will
you be wiser or more fortunate? or are you, too, helpless in the toils?”

I had followed his words with changing emotion, but now I believed I
understood.

“I see,” I cried; “you judge me rightly. I must follow where my parents led;
and oh! I am not only willing, I am eager!”

“No,” replied the doctor, “not death for you. The flawed vessel we may
break, but not the perfect. No, your mother cherished a different hope, and so
do I. I see,” he cried, “the girl develop to the completed woman, the plan reach
fulfilment, the promise—ay, outdone! I could not bear to arrest so lively, so
comely a process. It was your mother’s thought,” he added, with a change of
tone, “that I should marry you myself.” I fear I must have shown a perfect
horror of aversion from this fate, for he made haste to quiet me. “Reassure
yourself, Asenath,” he resumed. “Old as I am, I have not forgoĴen the
tumultuous fancies of youth. I have passed my days, indeed, in laboratories;
but in all my vigils I have not forgoĴen the tune of a young pulse. Age asks
with timidity to be spared intolerable pain; youth, taking fortune by the beard,
demands joy like a right. These things I have not forgoĴen; none, rather, has
more keenly felt, none more jealously considered them; I have but postponed
them to their day. See, then: you stand without support; the only friend leĞ to
you, this old investigator, old in cunning, young in sympathy. Answer me but
one question: Are you free from the entanglement of what the world calls
love? Do you still command your heart and purposes? or are you fallen in
some bond-slavery of the eye and ear?”

I answered him in broken words; my heart, I think I must have told him, lay
with my dead parents.

“It is enough,” he said. “It has been my fate to be called on oĞen, too oĞen,
for those services of which we spoke to-night; none in Utah could carry them
so well to a conclusion; hence there has fallen into my hands a certain share of
influence which I now lay at your service, partly for the sake of my dead
friends, your parents; partly for the interest I bear you in your own right. I shall
send you to England, to the great city of London, there to await the
bridegroom I have selected. He shall be a son of mine, a young man suitable in
age, and not grossly deficient in that quality of beauty that your years demand.
Since your heart is free, you may well pledge me the sole promise that I ask in
return for much expense and still more danger: to await the arrival of that
bridegroom with the delicacy of a wife.”

I sat awhile stunned. The doctor’s marriages, I remembered to have heard,

had been unfruitful; and this added perplexity to my distress. But I was alone,
as he had said, alone in that dark land; the thought of escape, of any equal
marriage, was already enough to revive in me some dawn of hope; and, in
what words I know not, I accepted the proposal.

He seemed more moved by my consent than I could reasonably have looked

for. “You shall see,” he cried; “you shall judge for yourself.” And hurrying to
the next room he returned with a small portrait somewhat coarsely done in
oils. It showed a man in the dress of nearly forty years before, young indeed,
but still recognisable to be the doctor. “Do you like it?” he asked. “That is
myself when I was young. My—my boy will be like that, like, but nobler; with
such health as angels might condescend to envy; and a man of mind, Asenath,
of commanding mind. That should be a man, I think; that should be one
among ten thousand. A man like that—one to combine the passions of youth
with the restraint, the force, the dignity of age—one to fill all the parts and
faculties, one to be man’s epitome—say, will that not satisfy the needs of an
ambitious girl? Say, is not that enough?” And as he held the picture close
before my eyes, his hand shook.

I told him briefly I would ask no beĴer, for I was transpierced with this
display of fatherly emotion; but even as I said the words, the most insolent
revolt surged through my arteries. I held him in horror, him, his portrait, and
his son; and had there been any choice but death or a Mormon marriage, I
declare before Heaven I had embraced it.

“It is well,” he replied, “and I had rightly counted on your spirit. Eat, then,
for you have far to go.” So saying, he set meat before me; and while I was
endeavouring to obey, he leĞ the room and returned with an armful of coarse
raiment. “There,” said he, “is your disguise. I leave you to your toilet.”

The clothes had probably belonged to a somewhat lubberly boy of fiĞeen;

and they hung about me like a sack, and cruelly hampered my movements. But
what filled me with uncontrollable shudderings was the problem of their origin
and the fate of the lad to whom they had belonged. I had scarcely effected the
exchange when the doctor returned, opened a back window, helped me out
into the narrow space between the house and the overhanging bluffs, and
showed me a ladder of iron foot-holds mortised in the rock. “Mount,” he said,
“swiĞly. When you are at the summit, walk, so far as you are able, in the
shadow of the smoke. The smoke will bring you, sooner or later, to a cañon;
follow that down, and you will find a man with two horses. Him you will
implicitly obey. And remember, silence! That machinery which I now put in
motion for your service may by one word be turned against you. Go; Heaven
prosper you!”

The ascent was easy. Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me on the
other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to the moon and the
surrounding mountains. Nowhere was any vantage or concealment; and
knowing how these deserts were beset with spies, I made haste to veil my
movements under the blowing trail of smoke. Sometimes it swam high, rising
on the night wind, and I had no more substantial curtain than its
moon-thrown shadow; sometimes again it crawled upon the earth, and I
would walk in it, no higher than to my shoulders, like some mountain fog. But,
one way or another, the smoke of that ill-omened furnace protected the first
steps of my escape, and led me unobserved to the cañon.

There, sure enough, I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of
saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence by
the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains. A liĴle before the
dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the boĴom of a gorge;
lay there all day concealed; and the next night, before the glow had faded out
of the west, resumed our wanderings. About noon we stopped again, in a lawn
upon a liĴle river, where was a screen of bushes; and here my guide, handing
me a bundle from his pack, bade me change my dress once more. The bundle
contained clothing of my own, taken from our house, with such necessaries as
a comb and soap. I made my toilet by the mirror of a quiet pool; and as I was
so doing and smiling with some complacency to see myself restored to my own
image, the mountains rang with a scream of far more than human
piercingness; and where I still stood astonished, there sprang up and swiĞly
increased a storm of the most awful and earth-rending sounds. Shall I own to
you that I fell upon my face and shrieked? And yet this was but the overland
train winding among the near mountains: the very means of my salvation: the
strong wings that were to carry me from Utah!

When I was dressed the guide gave me a bag, which contained, he said, both
money and papers; and, telling me that I was already over the borders in the
territory of Wyoming, bade me follow the stream until I reached the railway
station, half a mile below. “Here,” he added, “is your ticket as far as Council
Bluffs. The East express will pass in a few hours.” With that, he took both
horses and, without further words or any salutation, rode off by the way that
we had come.

Three hours aĞerwards, I was seated on the end platform of the train as it
swept eastward through the gorges and thundered in tunnels of the
mountains. The change of scene, the sense of escape, the still throbbing terror
of pursuit—above all the astounding magic of my new conveyance, kept me
from any logical or melancholy thought. I had gone to the doctor’s house two
nights before prepared to die, prepared for worse than death; what had
passed, terrible although it was, looked almost bright compared to my
anticipations; and it was not till I had slept a full night in the flying palace car
that I awoke to the sense of my irreparable loss and to some reasonable alarm
about the future. In this mood I examined the contents of the bag. It was well
supplied with gold; it contained tickets and complete directions for my journey
as far as Liverpool, and a long leĴer from the doctor, supplying me with a
fictitious name and story, recommending the most guarded silence, and
bidding me to await faithfully the coming of his son. All then had been
arranged beforehand: he had counted upon my consent, and, what was
tenfold worse, upon my mother’s voluntary death. My horror of my only
friend, my aversion for this son who was to marry me, my revolt against the
whole current and conditions of my life, were now complete. I was siĴing
stupefied by my distress and helplessness, when, to my joy, a very pleasant
lady offered me her conversation. I clutched at the relief; and I was soon glibly
telling her the story in the doctor’s leĴer: how I was a Miss Gould, of Nevada
City, going to England to an uncle, what money I had, what family, my age, and
so forth, until I had exhausted my instructions, and, as the lady still continued
to ply me with questions, began to embroider on my own account. This soon
carried one of my inexperience beyond her depth; and I had already remarked
a shadow on the lady’s face, when a gentleman drew near and very civilly
addressed me:

“Miss Gould, I believe?” said he; and then, excusing himself to the lady by
the authority of my guardian, drew me to the fore platform of the Pullman car.
“Miss Gould,” he said in my ear, “is it possible that you suppose yourself in
safety? Let me completely undeceive you. One more such indiscretion and you
return to Utah. And, in the meanwhile, if this woman should again address
you, you are to reply with these words:‘Madam, I do not like you, and I will be
obliged if you will suffer me to choose my own associates.’”

Alas, I had to do as I was bid; this lady, to whom I already felt myself drawn
with the strongest cords of sympathy, I dismissed with insult; and
thenceforward, through all that day I sat in silence, gazing on the bare plains
and swallowing my tears. Let that suffice: it was the paĴern of my journey.
Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on board the ocean steamer, I never
exchanged a friendly word with any fellow-traveller but I was certain to be
interrupted. In every place, on every side, the most unlikely persons, man or
woman, rich or poor, became protectors to forward me upon my journey or
spies to observe and regulate my conduct. Thus I crossed the States, thus
passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still following my movements; and when at
length a cab had set me down before that London lodging-house from which
you saw me flee this morning, I had already ceased to struggle and ceased to
hope.

The landlady, like every one else through all that journey, was expecting my
arrival. A fire was lighted in my room, which looked upon the garden; there
were books on the table, clothes in the drawers; and there (I had almost said
with contentment, and certainly with resignation) I saw month follow month
over my head. At times my landlady took me for a walk or an excursion, but
she would never suffer me to leave the house alone; and I, seeing that she also
lived under the shadow of that widespread Mormon terror, felt too much pity
to resist. To the child born on Mormon soil, as to the man who accepts the
engagements of a secret order, no escape is possible; so I had clearly read, and
I was thankful even for this respite. Meanwhile, I tried honestly to prepare my
mind for my approaching nuptials. The day drew near when my bridegroom
was to visit me, and gratitude and fear alike obliged me to consent. A son of
Dr. Grierson’s be he what he pleased, must still be young, and it was even
probable he should be handsome; on more than that I felt I dared not reckon;
and in moulding my mind towards consent I dwelt the more carefully on these
physical aĴractions which I felt I might expect, and averted my eyes from
moral or intellectual considerations. We have a great power upon our spirits;
and as time passed I worked myself into a frame of acquiescence, nay, and I
began to grow impatient for the hour. At night sleep forsook me; I sat all day
by the fire, absorbed in dreams, conjuring up the features of my husband, and
anticipating in fancy the touch of his hand and the sound of his voice. In the
dead level and solitude of my existence, this was the one eastern window and
the one door of hope. At last I had so cultivated and prepared my will, that I
began to be besieged with fears upon the other side. How if it was I that did
not please? How if this unseen lover should turn from me with disaffection?
And now I spent hours before the glass, studying and judging my aĴractions,
and was never weary of changing my dress or ordering my hair.

When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort of
hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must now
stand or fall by nature. My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most
sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling rumour of
the streets, and at each change of sound or silence, starting, shrinking, and
colouring to the brow. Love is not to be prepared, I know, without some
knowledge of the object; and yet, when the cab at last raĴled to the door, and I
heard my visitor mount the stairs, such was the tumult of hopes in my poor
bosom that love itself might have been proud to own their parentage. The door
opened, and it was Dr. Grierson that appeared. I believe I must have screamed
aloud, and I know, at least, that I fell fainting to the floor.

When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse. “I have
startled you,” he said. “A difficulty unforeseen—the impossibility of obtaining
a certain drug in its full purity—has forced me to resort to London
unprepared. I regret that I should have shown myself once more without those
poor aĴractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to me are no more
considerable than rain that falls into the sea. Youth is but a state, as passing as
that syncope from which you are but just awakened, and, if there be truth in
science, as easy to recall; for I find, Asenath, that I must now take you for my
confidant. Since my first years I have devoted every hour and act of life to one
ambitious task; and the time of my success is at hand. In these new countries,
where I was so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; I
have fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error; what was a
dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a son of
mine I did so in a figure. That son—that husband, Asenath, is myself—not as
you now behold me, but restored to the first energy of youth. You think me
mad? It is the customary aĴitude of ignorance. I will not argue; I will leave
facts to speak. When you behold me purified, invigorated, renewed,
restamped in the original image—when you recognise in me (what I shall be)
the first perfect expression of the powers of mankind—I shall be able to laugh
with a beĴer grace at your passing and natural incredulity. To what can you
aspire—fame, riches, power, the charm of youth, the dear-bought wisdom of
age—that I shall not be able to afford you in perfection? Do not deceive
yourself. I already excel you in every human giĞ but one: when that giĞ also
has been restored to me you will recognise your master.”

Hereupon, consulting his watch, he told me he must now leave me to

myself; and bidding me consult reason, and not girlish fancies, he withdrew. I
had not the courage to move; the night fell, and found me still where he had
laid me during my faint, my face buried in my hands, my soul drowned in the
darkest apprehensions. Late in the evening he returned, carrying a candle,
and, with a certain irritable tremor, bade me rise and sup. “Is it possible,” he
added, “that I have been deceived in your courage? A cowardly girl is no fit
mate for me.”

I flung myself before him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought
him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice was
abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was his hopeless and
derisible inferior.
 “Why, certainly,” he replied. “I know you beĴer than yourself; and I am well
enough acquainted with human nature to understand this scene. It is
addressed to me,” he added with a smile, “in my character of the still
untransformed. But do not alarm yourself about the future. Let me but aĴain
my end, and not you only, Asenath, but every woman on the face of the earth
becomes my willing slave.”

Thereupon he obliged me to rise and eat; sat down with me to table; helped
and entertained me with the aĴentions of a fashionable host; and it was not till
a late hour that, bidding me courteously good-night, he once more leĞ me
alone to my misery.

In all this talk of an elixir and the restoration of his youth, I scarce knew
from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil. If his hopes reposed
on any base of fact, if, indeed, by some abhorrent miracle, he should discard
his age, death were my only refuge from that most unnatural, that most
ungodly union. If, on the other hand, these dreams were merely lunatic, the
madness of a life waxed suddenly acute, my pity would become a load almost
as heavy to bear as my revolt against the marriage. So passed the night, in
alternations of rebellion and despair, of hate and pity; and with the next
morning I was only to comprehend more fully my enslaved position. For
though he appeared with a very tranquil countenance, he had no sooner
observed the marks of grief upon my brow than an answering darkness
gathered on his own. “Asenath,” he said, “you owe me much already; with one
finger I still hold you suspended over death; my life is full of labour and
anxiety; and I choose,” said he, with a remarkable accent of command, “that
you shall greet me with a pleasant face.” He never needed to repeat the
recommendation: from that day forward I was always ready to receive him
with apparent cheerfulness; and he rewarded me with a good deal of his
company, and almost more than I could bear of his confidence. He had set up
a laboratory in the back part of the house, where he toiled day and night at his
elixir, and he would come thence to visit me in my parlour: now with passing
humours of discouragement; now, and far more oĞen, radiant with hope. It
was impossible to see so much of him, and not to recognise that the sands of
his life were running low; and yet all the time he would be laying out vast
fields of future, and planning, with all the confidence of youth, the most
unbounded schemes of pleasure and ambition. How I replied I know not; but I
found a voice and words to answer, even while I wept and raged to hear him.

A week ago the doctor entered my room with the marks of great
exhilaration contending with pitiful bodily weakness. “Asenath,” said he, “I
have now obtained the last ingredient. In one week from now the perilous
moment of the last projection will draw nigh. You have once before assisted,
although unconsciously, at the failure of a similar experiment. It was the elixir
which so terribly exploded one night when you were passing my house; and it
is idle to deny that the conduct of so delicate a process, among the million jars
and trepidations of so great a city, presents a certain element of danger. From
this point of view, I cannot but regret the perfect stillness of my house among
the deserts; but, on the other hand, I have succeeded in proving that the
singularly unstable equilibrium of the elixir, at the moment of projection, is due
rather to the impurity than to the nature of the ingredients; and as all are now
of an equal and exquisite nicety, I have liĴle fear for the result. In a week then
from to-day, my dear Asenath, this period of trial will be ended.” And he
smiled upon me in a manner unusually paternal.

I smiled back with my lips, but at my heart there raged the blackest and most
unbridled terror. What if he failed? And oh, tenfold worse! what if he
succeeded? What detested and unnatural changeling would appear before me
to claim my hand? And could there, I asked myself with a dreadful sinking, be
any truth in his boasts of an assured victory over my reluctance? I knew him,
indeed, to be masterful, to lead my life at a sign. Suppose, then, this
experiment to succeed; suppose him to return to me, hideously restored, like a
vampire in a legend; and suppose that, by some devilish fascination.... My head
turned; all former fears deserted me; and I felt I could embrace the worst in
preference to this.

My mind was instantly made up. The doctor’s presence in London was
justified by the affairs of the Mormon polity. OĞen, in our conversation, he
would gloat over the details of that great organisation, which he feared even
while yet he wielded it; and would remind me that, even in the humming
labyrinth of London, we were still visible to that unsleeping eye in Utah. His
visitors, indeed, who were of every sort, from the missionary to the destroying
angel, and seemed to belong to every rank of life, had, up to that moment,
filled me with unmixed repulsion and alarm. I knew that if my secret were to
reach the ear of any leader my fate were sealed beyond redemption; and yet in
my present pass of horror and despair, it was to these very men that I turned
for help. I waylaid upon the stair one of the Mormon missionaries, a man of a
low class, but not inaccessible to pity; told him I scarce remember what
elaborate fable to explain my application; and by his intermediacy entered into
correspondence with my father’s family. They recognised my claim for help,
and on this very day I was to begin my escape.

Last night I sat up fully dressed, awaiting the result of the doctor’s labours,
and prepared against the worst. The nights at this season and in this northern
latitude are short; and I had soon the company of the returning daylight. The
silence in and around the house was only broken by the movements of the
doctor in the laboratory; to these I listened, watch in hand, awaiting the hour
of my escape, and yet consumed by anxiety about the strange experiment that
was going forward overhead. Indeed, now that I was conscious of some
protection for myself, my sympathies had turned more directly to the doctor’s
side; I caught myself even praying for his success; and when some hours ago a
low, peculiar cry reached my ears from the laboratory, I could no longer control
my impatience, but mounted the stairs and opened the door.

The doctor was standing in the middle of the room; in his hand a large,
round-bellied, crystal flask, some three parts full of a bright amber-coloured
liquid; on his face a rapture of gratitude and joy unspeakable. As he saw me he
raised the flask at arm’s-length. “Victory!” he cried. “Victory, Asenath!” And
then—whether the flask escaped his trembling fingers, or whether the
explosion was spontaneous, I cannot tell—enough that we were thrown, I
against the door-post, the doctor into the corner of the room; enough that we
were shaken to the soul by the same explosion that must have startled you
upon the street; and that, in the brief space of an indistinguishable instant,
there remained nothing of the labours of the doctor’s lifetime but a few shards
of broken crystal and those voluminous and ill-smelling vapours that pursued
me in my flight.

In this name the accent falls upon the e; the s is sibilant.

THE SQUIRE OF DAMES (concluded)

WHAT with the lady’s animated manner and dramatic conduct of her voice,
Challoner had thrilled to every incident with genuine emotion. His fancy,
which was not perhaps of a very lively character, applauded both the maĴer
and the style; but the more judicial functions of his mind refused assent. It was
an excellent story; and it might be true, but he believed it was not. Miss
Fonblanque was a lady, and it was doubtless possible for a lady to wander from
the truth; but how was a gentleman to tell her so? His spirits for some time had
been sinking, but they now fell to zero; and long aĞer her voice had died away
he still sat with a troubled and averted countenance, and could find no form of
words to thank her for her narrative. His mind, indeed, was empty of
everything beyond a dull longing for escape. From this pause, which grew the
more embarrassing with every second, he was roused by the sudden laughter
of the lady. His vanity was alarmed; he turned and faced her; their eyes met;
and he caught from hers a spark of such frank merriment as put him instantly
at ease.
 “You certainly,” he said, “appear to bear your calamities with excellent
spirit.”

“Do I not?” she cried, and fell once more into delicious laughter. But from
this access she more speedily recovered. “This is all very well,” said she,
nodding at him gravely, “but I am still in a most distressing situation, from
which, if you deny me your help, I shall find it difficult indeed to free myself.”

At this mention of help Challoner fell back to his original gloom.

“My sympathies are much engaged with you,” he said, “and I should be
delighted, I am sure. But our position is most unusual; and circumstances over
which I have, I can assure you, no control, deprive me of the power—the
pleasure——Unless, indeed,” he added, somewhat brightening at the thought,
“I were to recommend you to the care of the police?”

She laid her hand upon his arm and looked hard into his eyes; and he saw
with wonder that, for the first time since the moment of their meeting, every
trace of colour had faded from her cheek.

“Do so,” she said, “and—weigh my words well—you kill me as certainly as

with a knife.”

“God bless me!” exclaimed Challoner.

“Oh,” she cried, “I can see you disbelieve my story, and make light of the
perils that surround me; but who are you to judge? My family share my
apprehensions; they help me in secret; and you saw yourself by what an
emissary, and in what a place, they have chosen to supply me with the funds
for my escape. I admit that you are brave and clever, and have impressed me
most favourably; but how are you to prefer your opinion before that of my
uncle, an ex-minister of State, a man with the ear of the Queen, and of a long
political experience? If I am mad, is he? And you must allow me, besides, a
special claim upon your help. Strange as you may think my story, you know
that much of it is true; and if you who heard the explosion, and saw the
Mormon at Victoria, refuse to credit and assist me, to whom am I to turn?”

“He gave you money then?” asked Challoner, who had been dwelling singly
on that fact.

“I begin to interest you,” she cried. “But, frankly, you are condemned to help
me. If the service I had to ask of you were serious, were suspicious, were even
unusual, I should say no more. But what is it? To take a pleasure trip (for
which, if you will suffer me, I propose to pay) and to carry from one lady to
another a sum of money! What can be more simple?”

“Is the sum,” asked Challoner, “considerable?”

 She produced a packet from her bosom; and observing that she had not yet
found time to make the count, tore open the cover and spread upon her knees
a considerable number of Bank of England notes. It took some time to make
the reckoning, for the notes were of every degree of value; but at last, and
counting a few loose sovereigns, she made out the sum to be a liĴle under £710
sterling. The sight of so much money worked an immediate revolution in the
mind of Challoner.

“And you propose, madam,” he cried, “to intrust that money to a perfect
stranger?”

“Ah!” said she, with a charming smile, “but I no longer regard you as a
stranger.”

“Madam,” said Challoner, “I perceive I must make you a confession.

Although of a very good family—through my mother, indeed, a lineal
descendant of the patriot Bruce—I dare not conceal from you that my affairs
are deeply, very deeply, involved. I am in debt; my pockets are practically
empty; and, in short, I am fallen to that state when a considerable sum of
money would prove to many men an irresistible temptation.”

“Do you not see,” returned the young lady, “that by these words you have
removed my last hesitation? Take them.” And she thrust the notes into the
young man’s hand.

He sat so long, holding them, like a baby at the font, that Miss Fonblanque
once more bubbled into laughter.

“Pray,” she said, “hesitate no further; put them in your pocket; and to
relieve our position of any shadow of embarrassment, tell me by what name I
am to address my knight-errant, for I find myself reduced to the awkwardness
of the pronoun.”

Had borrowing been in question, the wisdom of our ancestors had come
lightly to the young man’s aid; but upon what pretext could he refuse so
generous a trust? Upon none, he saw, that was not unpardonably wounding;
and the bright eyes and the high spirits of his companion had already made a
breach in the rampart of Challoner’s caution. The whole thing, he reasoned,
might be a mere mystification, which it were the height of solemn folly to
resent. On the other hand, the explosion, the interview at the public-house,
and the very money in his hands, seemed to prove beyond denial the existence
of some serious danger; and if that were so, could he desert her? There was a
choice of risks: the risk of behaving with extraordinary incivility and
unhandsomeness to a lady, and the risk of going on a fool’s errand. The story
seemed false; but then the money was undeniable. The whole circumstances
were questionable and obscure; but the lady was charming, and had the
speech and manners of society. While he still hung in the wind, a recollection
returned upon his mind with some of the dignity of prophecy. Had he not
promised Somerset to break with the traditions of the commonplace, and to
accept the first adventure offered? Well, here was the adventure.

He thrust the money into his pocket.

“My name is Challoner,” said he.

“Mr. Challoner,” she replied, “you have come very generously to my aid
when all was against me. Though I am myself a very humble person, my family
commands great interest; and I do not think you will repent this handsome
action.”

Challoner flushed with pleasure.

“I imagine that, perhaps, a consulship,” she added, her eyes dwelling on him
with a judicial admiration, “a consulship in some great town or capital—or
else——But we waste time; let us set about the work of my delivery.”

She took his arm with a frank confidence that went to his heart; and once
more laying by all serious thoughts, she entertained him, as they crossed the
park, with her agreeable gaiety of mind. Near the Marble Arch they found a
hansom, which rapidly conveyed them to the terminus at Euston Square; and
here, in the hotel, they sat down to an excellent breakfast. The young lady’s
first step was to call for writing materials, and write, upon one corner of the
table, a hasty note; still, as she did so, glancing with smiles at her companion.
“Here,” said she, “here is the leĴer which will introduce you to my cousin.”
She began to fold the paper. “My cousin, although I have never seen her, has
the character of a very charming woman and a recognised beauty; of that I
know nothing, but at least she has been very kind to me; so has my lord her
father; so have you—kinder than all—kinder than I can bear to think of.” She
said this with unusual emotion; and, at the same time, sealed the envelope.
“Ah!” she cried, “I have shut my leĴer! It is not quite courteous; and yet, as
between friends, it is perhaps beĴer so. I introduce you, aĞer all, into a family
secret; and though you and I are already old comrades, you are still unknown
to my uncle. You go, then, to this address, Richard Street, Glasgow; go, please,
as soon as you arrive; and give this leĴer with your own hands into those of
Miss Fonblanque, for that is the name by which she is to pass. When we next
meet, you will tell me what you think of her,” she added, with a touch of the
provocative.

“Ah,” said Challoner, almost tenderly, “she can be nothing to me.”

“You do not know,” replied the young lady, with a sigh. “By the by, I had
forgoĴen—it is very childish, and I am almost ashamed to mention it—but
when you see Miss Fonblanque, you will have to make yourself a liĴle
ridiculous; and I am sure the part in no way suits you. We had agreed upon a
watchword. You will have to address an earl’s daughter in these words:‘Nigger,
nigger, never die’; but reassure yourself,” she added, laughing, “for the fair
patrician will at once finish the quotation. Come now, say your lesson.”

“’Nigger, nigger, never die,’” repeated Challoner, with undisguised

reluctance.

Miss Fonblanque went into fits of laughter. “Excellent,” said she, “it will be
the most humorous scene!” And she laughed again.

“And what will be the counterword?” asked Challoner stiffly.

“I will not tell you till the last moment,” said she; “for I perceive you are
growing too imperious.”

Breakfast over, she accompanied the young man to the platform, bought him
the Graphic, the Athenæum, and a paper-cuĴer, and stood on the step
conversing till the whistle sounded. Then she put her head into the carriage.
“Black face and shining eye!” she whispered, and instantly leaped down upon
the platform, with a trill of gay and musical laughter. As the train steamed out
of the great arch of glass, the sound of that laughter still rang in the young
man’s ears.

Challoner’s position was too unusual to be long welcome to his mind. He

found himself projected the whole length of England, on a mission beset with
obscure and ridiculous circumstances, and yet, by the trust he had accepted,
irrevocably bound to persevere. How easy it appeared, in the retrospect, to
have refused the whole proposal, returned the money, and gone forth again
upon his own affairs, a free and happy man! And it was now impossible: the
enchantress who had held him with her eye had now disappeared, taking his
honour in pledge; and as she had failed to leave him an address, he was denied
even the inglorious safety of retreat. To use the paper-knife, or even to read
the periodicals with which she had presented him, was to renew the biĴerness
of his remorse; and as he was alone in the compartment, he passed the day
staring at the landscape in impotent repentance, and long before he was
landed on the platform of St. Enoch’s, had fallen to the lowest and coldest
zones of self-contempt.

As he was hungry, and elegant in his habits, he would have preferred to dine
and to remove the stains of travel; but the words of the young lady, and his
own impatient eagerness, would suffer no delay. In the late, luminous, and
lamp-starred dusk of the summer evening he accordingly set forward with
brisk steps.
 The street to which he was directed had first seen the day in the character
of a row of small suburban villas on a hillside; but the extension of the city had,
long since and on every hand, surrounded it with miles of streets. From the top
of the hill a range of very tall buildings, densely inhabited by the poorest
classes of the population and variegated by drying-poles from every second
window, overplumbed the villas and their liĴle gardens like a sea-board cliff.
But still, under the grime of years of city smoke, these antiquated coĴages,
with their venetian blinds and rural porticoes, retained a somewhat
melancholy savour of the past.

The street, when Challoner entered it, was perfectly deserted. From hard by,
indeed, the sound of a thousand footfalls filled the ear; but in Richard Street
itself there was neither light nor sound of human habitation. The appearance
of the neighbourhood weighed heavily on the mind of the young man; once
more, as in the streets of London, he was impressed by the sense of city
deserts; and as he approached the number indicated, and somewhat
falteringly rang the bell, his heart sank within him.

The bell was ancient, like the house; it had a thin and garrulous note; and it
was some time before it ceased to sound from the rear quarters of the building.
Following upon this an inner door was stealthily opened, and careful and
catlike steps drew near along the hall. Challoner, supposing he was to be
instantly admiĴed, produced his leĴer and, as well as he was able, prepared a
smiling face. To his indescribable surprise, however, the footsteps ceased, and
then, aĞer a pause and with the like stealthiness, withdrew once more, and
died away in the interior of the house. A second time the young man rang
violently at the bell; a second time, to his keen hearkening, a certain bustle of
discreet footing moved upon the hollow boards of the old villa; and again the
faint-hearted garrison only drew near to retreat. The cup of the visitor’s
endurance was now full to overflowing; and, commiĴing the whole family of
Fonblanque to every mood and shade of condemnation, he turned upon his
heel and redescended the steps. Perhaps the mover in the house was watching
from a window, and plucked up courage at the sight of this desistance; or
perhaps, where he lurked trembling in the back parts of the villa, reason in its
own right had conquered his alarms. Challoner, at least, had scarce set foot
upon the pavement when he was arrested by the sound of the withdrawal of
an inner bolt; one followed another, raĴling in their sockets; the key turned
harshly in the lock; the door opened; and there appeared upon the threshold a
man of a very stalwart figure in his shirt sleeves. He was a person neither of
great manly beauty nor of a refined exterior; he was not the man, in ordinary
moods, to aĴract the eyes of the observer; but as he now stood in the doorway
he was marked so legibly with the extreme passion of terror that Challoner
stood wonder-struck. For a fraction of a minute they gazed upon each other in
silence; and then the man of the house, with ashen lips and gasping voice,
inquired the business of his visitor. Challoner replied, in tones from which he
strove to banish his surprise, that he was the bearer of a leĴer to a certain Miss
Fonblanque. At this name, as at a talisman, the man fell back and impatiently
invited him to enter; and no sooner had the adventurer crossed the threshold
than the door was closed behind him and his retreat cut off.

It was already long past eight at night; and though the late twilight of the
north still lingered in the streets, in the passage it was already groping dark.
The man led Challoner directly to a parlour looking on the garden to the back.
Here he had apparently been supping; for by the light of a tallow dip, the table
was seen to be covered with a napkin, and set out with a quart of boĴled ale
and the heel of a Gouda cheese. The room, on the other hand, was furnished
with faded solidity, and the walls were lined with scholarly and costly volumes
in glazed cases. The house must have been taken furnished; for it had no
congruity with this man of the shirt sleeves and the mean supper. As for the
earl’s daughter, the earl and the visionary consulships in foreign cities, they
had long ago begun to fade in Challoner’s imagination. Like Dr. Grierson and
the Mormon angels, they were plainly woven of the stuff of dreams. Not an
illusion remained to the knight-errant; not a hope was leĞ him but to be
speedily relieved from this disreputable business.

The man had continued to regard his visitor with undisguised anxiety, and
began once more to press him for his errand.

“I am here,” said Challoner, “simply to do a service between two ladies; and

I must ask you, without further delay, to summon Miss Fonblanque, into
whose hands alone I am authorised to deliver the leĴer that I bear.”

A growing wonder began to mingle on the man’s face with the lines of
solicitude. “I am Miss Fonblanque,” he said; and then, perceiving the effect of
this communication, “Good God!” he cried, “what are you staring at? I tell you
I am Miss Fonblanque.”

Seeing the speaker wore a chin-beard of considerable length, and the

remainder of his face was blue with shaving, Challoner could only suppose
himself the subject of a jest. He was no longer under the spell of the young
lady’s presence; and with men, and above all with his inferiors, he was capable
of some display of spirit.

“Sir,” said he, preĴy roundly, “I have put myself to great inconvenience for
persons of whom I know too liĴle, and I begin to be weary of the business.
Either you shall immediately summon Miss Fonblanque, or I leave this house
and put myself under the direction of the police.”

“This is horrible!” exclaimed the man. “I declare before Heaven I am the

person meant, but how shall I convince you? It must have been Clara, I
perceive, that sent you on this errand—a madwoman, who jests with the most
deadly interests; and here we are, incapable, perhaps, of an agreement, and
Heaven knows what may depend on our delay!”

He spoke with a really startling earnestness; and at the same time there
flashed upon the mind of Challoner the ridiculous jingle which was to serve as
password. “This may, perhaps, assist you,” he said; and then, with some
embarrassment: “’Nigger, nigger, never die.’”

A light of relief broke upon the troubled countenance of the man with the
chin-beard. “’Black face and shining eye’—give me the leĴer,” he panted, in
one gasp.

“Well,” said Challoner, though still with some reluctance, “I suppose I must
regard you as the proper recipient; and though I may justly complain of the
spirit in which I have been treated, I am only too glad to be done with all
responsibility. Here it is,” and he produced the envelope.

The man leaped upon it like a beast, and with hands that trembled in a
manner painful to behold, tore it open and unfolded the leĴer. As he read,
terror seemed to mount upon him to the pitch of nightmare. He struck one
hand upon his brow, while with the other, as if unconsciously, he crumpled the
paper to a ball. “My gracious powers!” he cried; and then, dashing to the
window, which stood open on the garden, he clapped forth his head and
shoulders and whistled long and shrill. Challoner fell back into a corner, and
resolutely grasping his staff, prepared for the most desperate events; but the
thoughts of the man with the chin-beard were far removed from violence.
Turning again into the room, and once more beholding his visitor, whom he
appeared to have forgoĴen, he fairly danced with trepidation. “Impossible!”
he cried. “Oh, quite impossible! O Lord, I have lost my head.” And then, once
more striking his hand upon his brow, “The money!” he exclaimed. “Give me
the money.”

“My good friend,” replied Challoner, “this is a very painful exhibition; and
until I see you reasonably master of yourself, I decline to proceed with any
business.”

“You are quite right,” said the man. “I am of a very nervous habit; a long
course of the dumb ague has undermined my constitution. But I know you
have money; it may be still the saving of me; and oh, dear young gentleman, in
pity’s name be expeditious!”

Challoner, sincerely uneasy as he was, could scarce refrain from laughter;

but he was himself in a hurry to be gone, and without more delay produced
the money. “You will find the sum, I trust, correct,” he observed; “and let me
ask you to give me a receipt.”
 But the man heeded him not. He seized the money, and disregarding the
sovereigns that rolled loose upon the floor, thrust the bundle of notes into his
pocket.

“A receipt,” repeated Challoner, with some asperity. “I insist on a receipt.”

“Receipt?” repeated the man, a liĴle wildly. “A receipt? Immediately! Await

me here.”

Challoner, in reply, begged the gentleman to lose no unnecessary time, as he

was himself desirous of catching a particular train.

“Ah, by God, and so am I!” exclaimed the man with the chin-beard; and
with that he was gone out of the room, and had raĴled upstairs, four at a time,
to the upper story of the villa.

“This is certainly a most amazing business,” thought Challoner; “certainly a

most disquieting affair; and I cannot conceal from myself that I have become
mixed up with either lunatics or malefactors. I may truly thank my stars that I
am so nearly and so creditably done with it.” Thus thinking, and perhaps
remembering the episode of the whistle, he turned to the open window. The
garden was still faintly clear; he could distinguish the stairs and terraces with
which the small domain had been adorned by former owners, and the
blackened bushes and dead trees that had once afforded shelter to the country
birds; beyond these he saw the strong retaining wall, some thirty feet in height,
which enclosed the garden to the back; and again above that, the pile of dingy
buildings rearing its frontage high into the night. A peculiar object lying
stretched upon the lawn for some time baffled his eyesight; but at length he
had made it out to be a long ladder, or series of ladders bound into one; and he
was still wondering of what service so great an instrument could be in such a
scant enclosure, when he was recalled to himself by the noise of some one
running violently down the stairs. This was followed by the sudden, clamorous
banging of the house door; and that again, by rapid and retreating footsteps in
the street.

Challoner sprang into the passage. He ran from room to room, upstairs and
downstairs; and in that old dingy and worm-eaten house, he found himself
alone. Only in one apartment looking to the front were there any traces of the
late inhabitant: a bed that had been recently slept in and not made, a chest of
drawers disordered by a hasty search and on the floor a roll of crumpled
paper. This he picked up. The light in this upper story looking to the front was
considerably brighter than in the parlour; and he was able to make out that the
paper bore the mark of the hotel at Euston, and even, by peering closely, to
decipher the following lines in a very elegant and careful female hand:
 “DEAR M’GUIRE,—It is certain your retreat is known. We have just had
another failure, clockwork thirty hours too soon, with the usual humiliating
result. Zero is quite disheartened. We are all scaĴered, and I could find no one
but the solemn ass who brings you this and the money. I would love to see your
meeting.—Ever yours,
“SHINING EYE.”

Challoner was stricken to the heart. He perceived by what facility, by what

unmanly fear of ridicule, he had been brought down to be the gull of this
intriguer; and his wrath flowed forth in almost equal measure against himself,
against the woman, and against Somerset, whose idle counsels had impelled
him to embark on that adventure. At the same time a great and troubled
curiosity, and a certain chill of fear, possessed his spirits. The conduct of the
man with the chin-beard, the terms of the leĴer, and the explosion of the early
morning, fiĴed together like parts in some obscure and mischievous imbroglio.
Evil was certainly afoot; evil, secrecy, terror, and falsehood were the conditions
and the passions of the people among whom he had begun to move, like a
blind puppet; and he who began as a puppet, his experience told him, was
oĞen doomed to perish as a victim.

From the stupor of deep thought into which he had glided with the leĴer in
his hand, he was awakened by the claĴer of the bell. He glanced from the
window; and conceive his horror and surprise when he beheld, clustered on
the steps, in the front garden and on the pavement of the street, a formidable
posse of police! He started to the full possession of his powers and courage.
Escape, and escape at any cost, was the one idea that possessed him. SwiĞly
and silently he redescended the creaking stairs; he was already in the passage
when a second and more imperious summons from the door awoke the echoes
of the empty house; nor had the bell ceased to jangle before he had bestridden
the window-sill of the parlour and was lowering himself into the garden. His
coat was hooked upon the iron flower-basket; for a moment he hung
dependent heels and head below; and then, with the noise of rending cloth
and followed by several pots, he dropped upon the sod. Once more the bell
was rung, and now with furious and repeated peals. The desperate Challoner
turned his eyes on every side. They fell upon the ladder, and he ran to it, and
with strenuous but unavailing effort sought to raise it from the ground.
Suddenly the weight, which was thus resisting his whole strength, began to
lighten in his hands; the ladder, like a thing of life, reared its bulk from off the
sod; and Challoner, leaping back with a cry of almost superstitious terror,
beheld the whole structure mount, foot by foot, against the face of the
retaining-wall. At the same time, two heads were dimly visible above the
parapet, and he was hailed by a guarded whistle. Something in its modulation
recalled, like an echo, the whistle of the man with the chin-beard.
 Had he chanced upon a means of escape prepared beforehand by those
very miscreants, whose messenger and gull he had become? Was this, indeed,
a means of safety, or but the starting-point of further complication and
disaster? He paused not to reflect. Scarce was the ladder reared to its full
length than he had sprung already on the rounds; hand over hand, swiĞ as an
ape, he scaled the toĴering stairway. Strong arms received, embraced, and
helped him; he was liĞed and set once more upon the earth; and with the
spasm of his alarm yet unsubsided, found himself, in the company of two
rough-looking men, in the paved back-yard of one of the tall houses that
crowned the summit of the hill. Meanwhile, from below, the note of the bell
had been succeeded by the sound of vigorous and redoubling blows.

“Are you all out?” asked one of his companions; and as soon as he had
babbled an answer in the affirmative, the rope was cut from the top round, and
the ladder thrust roughly back into the garden, where it fell and broke with
claĴering reverberations. Its fall was hailed with many broken cries; for the
whole of Richard Street was now in high emotion, the people crowding to the
windows or clambering on the garden walls. The same man who had already
addressed Challoner seized him by the arm; whisked him through the
basement of the house and across the street upon the other side; and before
the unfortunate adventurer had time to realise his situation, a door was
opened, and he was thrust into a low and dark compartment.

“Bedad,” observed his guide, “there was no time to lose. Is M’Guire gone, or
was it you that whistled?”

“M’Guire is gone,” said Challoner.

The guide now struck a light. “Ah,” said he, “this will never do. You dare not
go upon the streets in such a figure. Wait quietly here and I will bring you
something decent.”

With that the man was gone, and Challoner, his aĴention thus rudely
awakened, began ruefully to consider the havoc that had been worked in his
aĴire. His hat was gone; his trousers were cruelly ripped; and the best part of
one tail of his very elegant frock-coat had been leĞ hanging from the iron
crockets of the window. He had scarce had time to measure these disasters
when his host re-entered the apartment and proceeded, without a word, to
envelop the refined and urbane Challoner in a long ulster of the cheapest
material and of a paĴern so gross and vulgar that his spirit sickened at the
sight. This calumnious disguise was crowned and completed by a soĞ felt hat
of the Tyrolese design and several sizes too small. At another moment
Challoner would simply have refused to issue forth upon the world thus
travestied; but the desire to escape from Glasgow was now too strongly and
too exclusively impressed upon his mind. With one haggard glance at the
spoĴed tails of his new coat, he inquired what was to pay for this
accoutrement. The man assured him that the whole expense was easily met
from funds in his possession, and begged him, instead of wasting time, to make
his best speed out of the neighbourhood.

The young man was not loath to take the hint. True to his usual courtesy, he
thanked the speaker and complimented him upon his taste in greatcoats; and
leaving the man somewhat abashed by these remarks and the manner of their
delivery, he hurried forth into the lamp-lit city. The last train was gone ere,
aĞer many deviations, he had reached the terminus. AĴired as he was he
dared not present himself at any reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the
unassuming dignity of his demeanour would serve to aĴract aĴention, perhaps
mirth, and possibly suspicion, in any humbler hostelry. He was thus
condemned to pass the solemn and uneventful hours of a whole night in
pacing the streets of Glasgow; supperless; a figure of fun for all beholders;
waiting the dawn, with hope indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and
above all things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his
conduct. It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of the
fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all night with
damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a thought from this
chief artificer of his confusion, it was to expend his wrath on Somerset and the
career of the amateur detective. With the coming of the day, he found in a shy
milk-shop the means to appease his hunger. There were still many hours to
wait before the departure of the south express; these he passed wandering
with indescribable fatigue in the obscurer by-streets of the city; and at length
slipped quietly into the station and took his place in the darkest corner of a
third-class carriage. Here, all day long, he jolted on the bare boards, distressed
by heat and continually reawakened from uneasy slumbers. By the half return
ticket in his purse, he was entitled to make the journey on the easy cushions
and with the ample space of the first-class; but alas! in his absurd aĴire, he
durst not, for decency, commingle with his equals; and this small annoyance,
coming last in such a series of disasters, cut him to the heart.

That night, when, in his Putney lodging, he reviewed the expense, anxiety,
and weariness of his adventure; when he beheld the ruins of his last good
trousers and his last presentable coat; and above all, when his eye by any
chance alighted on the Tyrolese hat or the degrading ulster, his heart would
overflow with biĴerness, and it was only by a serious call on his philosophy
that he maintained the dignity of his demeanour.
 SOMERSET’S ADVENTURE

THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION

MR. P AUL SOMERSET was a young gentleman of a lively and fiery imagination,
with very small capacity for action. He was one who lived exclusively in
dreams and in the future: the creature of his own theories, and an actor in his
own romances. From the cigar divan he proceeded to parade the streets, still
heated with the fire of his eloquence, and scouting upon every side for the
offer of some fortunate adventure. In the continual stream of passers-by, on
the sealed fronts of houses, on the posters that covered the hoardings, and in
every lineament and throb of the great city, he saw a mysterious and hopeful
hieroglyph. But although the elements of adventure were streaming by him as
thick as drops of water in the Thames, it was in vain that, now with a
beseeching, now with something of a braggadocio air, he courted and
provoked the notice of the passengers; in vain that, puĴing fortune to the
touch, he even thrust himself into the way and came into direct collision with
those of the more promising demeanour. Persons brimful of secrets, persons
pining for affection, persons perishing for lack of help or counsel, he was sure
he could perceive on every side; but by some contrariety of fortune, each
passed upon his way without remarking the young gentleman, and went
farther (surely to fare worse!) in quest of the confidant, the friend, or the
adviser. To thousands he must have turned an appealing countenance, and yet
not one regarded him.

A light dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of his impetuous aspirations,

broke in upon the series of his aĴempts on fortune; and when he returned to
the task, the lamps were already lighted, and the nocturnal crowd was dense
upon the pavement. Before a certain restaurant, whose name will readily occur
to any student of our Babylon, people were already packed so closely that
passage had grown difficult; and Somerset, standing in the kennel, watched,
with a hope that was beginning to grow somewhat weary, the faces and the
manners of the crowd. Suddenly he was startled by a gentle touch upon the
shoulder, and facing about, he was aware of a very plain and elegant
brougham, drawn by a pair of powerful horses, and driven by a man in sober
livery. There were no arms upon the panel; the window was open, but the
interior was obscure; the driver yawned behind his palm; and the young man
was already beginning to suppose himself the dupe of his own fancy, when a
hand, no larger than a child’s and smoothly gloved in white, appeared in a
corner of the window and privily beckoned him to approach. He did so, and
looked in. The carriage was occupied by a single small and very dainty figure,
swathed head and shoulders in impenetrable folds of white lace; and a voice,
speaking low and silvery, addressed him in these words:
 “Open the door and get in.”

“It must be,” thought the young man, with an almost unbearable thrill, “it
must be that duchess at last!” Yet, although the moment was one to which he
had long looked forward, it was with a certain share of alarm that he opened
the door, and, mounting into the brougham, took his seat beside the lady of
the lace. Whether or no she had touched a spring, or given some other signal,
the young man had hardly closed the door before the carriage, with
considerable swiĞness, and with a very luxurious and easy movement on its
springs, turned and began to drive towards the west.

Somerset, as I have wriĴen, was not unprepared; it had long been his
particular pleasure to rehearse his conduct in the most unlikely situations; and
this, among others, of the patrician ravisher, was one he had familiarly studied.
Strange as it may seem, however, he could find no apposite remark; and as the
lady, on her side, vouchsafed no further sign, they continued to drive in silence
through the streets. Except for alternate flashes from the passing lamps, the
carriage was plunged in obscurity; and beyond the fact that the fiĴings were
luxurious, and that the lady was singularly small and slender in person and, all
but one gloved hand, still swathed in her costly veil, the young man could
decipher no detail of an inspiring nature. The suspense began to grow
unbearable. Twice he cleared his throat, and twice the whole resources of the
language failed him. In similar scenes, when he had forecast them on the
theatre of fancy, his presence of mind had always been complete, his
eloquence remarkable; and at this disparity between the rehearsal and the
performance, he began to be seized with a panic of apprehension. Here, on
the very threshold of adventure, suppose him ignominiously to fail; suppose
that aĞer ten, twenty, or sixty seconds of still uninterrupted silence, the lady
should touch the check-string and re-deposit him, weighed and found
wanting, on the common street! Thousands of persons of no mind at all, he
reasoned, would be found more equal to the part; could, that very instant, by
some decisive step, prove the lady’s choice to have been well inspired, and put
a stop to this intolerable silence.

His eye, at this point, lighted on the hand. It was beĴer to fall by desperate
councils than to continue as he was; and with one tremulous swoop he
pounced on the gloved fingers and drew them to himself. One overt step, it
had appeared to him, would dissolve the spell of his embarrassment; in act, he
found it otherwise: he found himself no less incapable of speech or further
progress; and, with the lady’s hand in his, sat helpless. But worse was in store.
A peculiar quivering began to agitate the form of his companion; the hand that
lay unresistingly in Somerset’s trembled as with ague; and presently there
broke forth, in the shadow of the carriage, the bubbling and musical sound of
laughter, resisted but triumphant. The young man dropped his prize; had it
been possible, he would have bounded from the carriage. The lady, meanwhile,
lying back upon the cushions, passed on from trill to trill of the most heartfelt,
high-pitched, clear, and fairy-sounding merriment.

“You must not be offended,” she said at last, catching an opportunity

between two paroxysms. “If you have been mistaken in the warmth of your
aĴentions, the fault is solely mine; it does not flow from your presumption, but
from my eccentric manner of recruiting friends; and, believe me, I am the last
person in the world to think the worse of a young man for showing spirit. As
for to-night, it is my intention to entertain you to a liĴle supper; and if I shall
continue to be as much pleased with your manners as I was taken with your
face, I may perhaps end by making you an advantageous offer.”

Somerset sought in vain to find some form of answer, but his discomfiture
had been too recent and complete.

“Come,” returned the lady, “we must have no display of temper; that is for
me the one disqualifying fault; and as I perceive we are drawing near our
destination, I shall ask you to descend and offer me your arm.”

Indeed, at that very moment the carriage drew up before a stately and
severe mansion in a spacious square; and Somerset, who was possessed of an
excellent temper, with the best grace in the world assisted the lady to alight.
The door was opened by an old woman of a grim appearance, who ushered
the pair into a dining-room somewhat dimly lighted, but already laid for
supper, and occupied by a prodigious company of large and valuable cats.
Here, as soon as they were alone, the lady divested herself of the lace in which
she was enfolded; and Somerset was relieved to find, that although still
bearing the traces of great beauty, and still distinguished by the fire and colour
of her eye, her hair was of silvery whiteness and her face lined with years.

“And now, mon preux,” said the old lady, nodding at him with a quaint gaiety,
“you perceive that I am no longer in my first youth. You will soon find that I
am all the beĴer company for that.”

As she spoke, the maid re-entered the apartment with a light but tasteful
supper. They sat down, accordingly, to table, the cats with savage pantomime
surrounding the old lady’s chair; and what with the excellence of the meal and
the gaiety of his entertainer, Somerset was soon completely at his ease. When
they had well eaten and drunk, the old lady leaned back in her chair, and
taking a cat upon her lap, subjected her guest to a prolonged but evidently
mirthful scrutiny.

“I fear, madam,” said Somerset, “that my manners have not risen to the
height of your preconceived opinion.”
 “My dear young man,” she replied, “you were never more mistaken in your
life. I find you charming, and you may very well have lighted on a fairy
godmother. I am not one of those who are given to change their opinions, and
short of substantial demerit, those who have once gained my favour continue
to enjoy it; but I have a singular swiĞness of decision, read my fellow men and
women with a glance, and have acted throughout life on first impressions.
Yours, as I tell you, has been favourable; and if, as I suppose, you are a young
fellow of somewhat idle habits, I think it not improbable that we may strike a
bargain.”

“Ah, madam,” returned Somerset, “you have divined my situation. I am a

man of birth, parts, and breeding; excellent company, or at least so I find
myself; but by a peculiar iniquity of fate, destitute alike of trade or money. I
was, indeed, this evening upon the quest of an adventure, resolved to close
with any offer of interest, emolument, or pleasure; and your summons, which I
profess I am still at some loss to understand, jumped naturally with the
inclination of my mind. Call it, if you will, impudence; I am here, at least,
prepared for any proposition you can find it in your heart to make, and
resolutely determined to accept.”

“You express yourself very well,” replied the old lady, “and are certainly a
droll and curious young man. I should not care to affirm that you were sane,
for I have never found any one entirely so besides myself; but at least the
nature of your madness entertains me, and I will reward you with some
description of my character and life.”

Thereupon the old lady, still fondling the cat upon her lap, proceeded to
narrate the following particulars.

NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRITED OLD LADY

I WAS the eldest daughter of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe, who held a
valuable living in the diocese of Bath and Wells. Our family, a very large one,
was noted for a sprightly and incisive wit, and came of a good old stock where
beauty was an heirloom. In Christian grace of character we were unhappily
deficient. From my earliest years I saw and deplored the defects of those
relatives whose age and position should have enabled them to conquer my
esteem; and while I was yet a child, my father married a second wife, in whom
(strange to say) the Fanshawe failings were exaggerated to a monstrous and
almost laughable degree. Whatever may be said against me, it cannot be
denied I was a paĴern daughter; but it was in vain that, with the most touching
patience, I submiĴed to my stepmother’s demands; and from the hour she
entered my father’s house, I may say that I met with nothing but injustice and
ingratitude.

I stood not alone, however, in the sweetness of my disposition; for one other
of the family besides myself was free from any violence of character. Before I
had reached the age of sixteen, this cousin, John by name, had conceived for
me a sincere but silent passion; and although the poor lad was too timid to hint
at the nature of his feelings, I had soon divined and begun to share them. For
some days I pondered on the odd situation created for me by the bashfulness
of my admirer; and at length, perceiving that he begun, in his distress, rather to
avoid than seek my company, I determined to take the maĴer into my own
hands. Finding him alone in a retired part of the rectory garden, I told him that
I had divined his amiable secret; that I knew with what disfavour our union
was sure to be regarded; and that, under the circumstances, I was prepared to
flee with him at once. Poor John was literally paralysed with joy; such was the
force of his emotions, that he could find no words in which to thank me; and
that I, seeing him thus helpless, was obliged to arrange, myself, the details of
our flight, and of the stolen marriage which was immediately to crown it. John
had been at that time projecting a visit to the metropolis. In this I bade him
persevere, and promised on the following day to join him at the Tavistock
Hotel.

True, on my side, to every detail of our arrangement, I arose, on the day in

question, before the servants, packed a few necessaries in a bag, took with me
the liĴle money I possessed, and bade farewell for ever to the rectory. I walked
with good spirits to a town some thirty miles from home; and was set down the
next morning in this great city of London. As I walked from the coach-office to
the hotel, I could not help exulting in the pleasant change that had befallen
me; beholding, meanwhile, with innocent delight, the traffic of the streets, and
depicting, in all the colours of fancy, the reception that awaited me from John.
But alas! when I inquired for Mr. Fanshawe, the porter assured me there was
no such gentleman among the guests. By what channel our secret had leaked
out, or what pressure had been brought to bear on the too facile John, I could
never fathom. Enough that my family had triumphed; that I found myself
alone in London, tender in years, smarting under the most sensible
mortification, and by every sentiment of pride and self-respect debarred for
ever from my father’s house.

I rose under the blow, and found lodgings in the neighbourhood of Euston
Road, where, for the first time in my life, I tasted the joys of independence.
Three days aĞerwards, an advertisement in The Times directed me to the office
of a solicitor whom I knew to be in my father’s confidence. There I was given
the promise of a very moderate allowance, and a distinct intimation that I must
never look to be received at home. I could not but resent so cruel a desertion,
and I told the lawyer it was a meeting I desired as liĴle as themselves. He
smiled at my courageous spirit, paid me the first quarter of my income, and
gave me the remainder of my personal effects, which had been sent to me,
under his care, in a couple of rather ponderous boxes. With these I returned in
triumph to my lodgings, more content with my position than I should have
thought possible a week before, and fully determined to make the best of the
future.

All went well for several months; and, indeed, it was my own fault alone
that ended this pleasant and secluded episode of life. I have, I must confess,
the fatal trick of spoiling my inferiors. My landlady, to whom I had as usual
been overkind, impertinently called me in fault for some particular too small to
mention; and I, annoyed that I had allowed her the freedom upon which she
thus presumed, ordered her to leave my presence. She stood a moment dumb,
and then, recalling her self-possession, “Your bill,” said she, “shall be ready
this evening, and to-morrow, madam, you shall leave my house. See,” she
added, “that you are able to pay what you owe me; for If I do not receive the
uĴermost farthing, no box of yours shall pass my threshold.”

I was confounded at her audacity, but, as a whole quarter’s income was due
to me, not otherwise affected by the threat. That aĞernoon, as I leĞ the
solicitor’s door, carrying in one hand, and done up in a paper parcel, the whole
amount of my fortune, there befell me one of those decisive incidents that
sometimes shape a life. The lawyer’s office was situated in a street that opened
at the upper end upon the Strand and was closed at the lower, at the time of
which I speak, by a row of iron railings looking on the Thames. Down this
street, then, I beheld my stepmother advancing to meet me, and doubtless
bound to the very house I had just leĞ. She was aĴended by a maid whose
face was new to me; but her own was too clearly printed on my memory; and
the sight of it, even from a distance, filled me with generous indignation. Flight
was impossible. There was nothing leĞ but to retreat against the railing, and
with my back turned to the street, pretend to be admiring the barges on the
river or the chimneys of transpontine London.

I was still so standing, and had not yet fully mastered the turbulence of my
emotions, when a voice at my elbow addressed me with a trivial question. It
was the maid whom my stepmother, with characteristic hardness, had leĞ to
await her on the street, while she transacted her business with the family
solicitor. The girl did not know who I was; the opportunity was too golden to
be lost; and I was soon hearing the latest news of my father’s rectory and
parish. It did not surprise me to find that she detested her employers; and yet
the terms in which she spoke of them were hard to bear, hard to let pass
unchallenged. I heard them, however, without dissent, for my self-command is
wonderful; and we might have parted as we met, had she not proceeded, in an
evil hour, to criticise the rector’s missing daughter, and with the most shocking
perversions to narrate the story of her flight. My nature is so essentially
generous that I can never pause to reason. I flung up my hand sharply, by way,
as well as I remember, of indignant protest; and, in the act, the packet slipped
from my fingers, glanced between the railings, and fell and sunk in the river. I
stood a moment petrified, and then, struck by the drollery of the incident, gave
way to peals of laughter. I was still laughing when my stepmother reappeared,
and the maid, who doubtless considered me insane, ran off to join her; nor had
I yet recovered my gravity when I presented myself before the lawyer to solicit
a fresh advance. His answer made me serious enough, for it was a flat refusal;
and it was not until I had besought him even with tears, that he consented to
lend me ten pounds from his own pocket. “I am a poor man,” said he, “and
you must look for nothing further at my hands.”

The landlady met me at the door. “Here, madam,” said she, with a curtsey
insolently low, “here is my bill. Would it inconvenience you to seĴle it at
once?”

“You shall be paid, madam,” said I, “in the morning, in the proper course.”
And I took the paper with a very high air, but inwardly quaking.

I had no sooner looked at it than I perceived myself to be lost. I had been

short of money and had allowed my debt to mount; and it had now reached
the sum, which I shall never forget, of twelve pounds thirteen and fourpence
halfpenny. All evening I sat by the fire considering my situation. I could not
pay the bill; my landlady would not suffer me to remove my boxes; and
without either baggage or money, how was I to find another lodging? For three
months, unless I could invent some remedy, I was condemned to be without a
roof and without a penny. It can surprise no one that I decided on immediate
flight; but even here I was confronted by a difficulty, for I had no sooner
packed my boxes than I found I was not strong enough to move, far less to
carry them.

In this strait I did not hesitate a moment, but throwing on a shawl and
bonnet, and covering my face with a thick veil, I betook myself to that great
bazaar of dangerous and smiling chances, the pavement of the city. It was
already late at night, and the weather being wet and windy, there were few
abroad besides policemen. These, on my present mission, I had wit enough to
know for enemies; and wherever I perceived their moving lanterns, I made
haste to turn aside and choose another thoroughfare. A few miserable women
still walked the pavement; here and there were young fellows returning drunk,
or ruffians of the lowest class lurking in the mouths of alleys; but of any one to
whom I might appeal in my distress, I began almost to despair.

At last, at the corner of a street, I ran into the arms of one who was
evidently a gentleman, and who, in all his appointments, from his furred
greatcoat to the fine cigar which he was smoking, comfortably breathed of
wealth. Much as my face has changed from its original beauty, I still retain (or
so I tell myself) some traces of the youthful lightness of my figure. Even veiled
as I then was, I could perceive the gentleman was struck by my appearance;
and this emboldened me for my adventure.

“Sir,” said I, with a quickly beating heart, “sir, are you one in whom a lady
can confide?”

“Why, my dear,” said he, removing his cigar, “that depends on

circumstances. If you will raise your veil—”

“Sir,” I interrupted, “let there be no mistake. I ask you, as a gentleman, to

serve me, but I offer no reward.”

“That is frank,” said he; “but hardly tempting. And what, may I inquire, is
the nature of the service?”

But I knew well enough it was not my interest to tell him on so short an
interview. “If you will accompany me,” said I, “to a house not far from here,
you can see for yourself.”

He looked at me awhile with hesitating eyes; and then, tossing away his
cigar, which was not yet a quarter smoked, “Here goes!” said he, and with
perfect politeness offered me his arm. I was wise enough to take it; to prolong
our walk as far as possible, by more than one excursion from the shortest line;
and to beguile the way with that sort of conversation which should prove to
him indubitably from what station in society I sprang. By the time we reached
the door of my lodging, I felt sure I had confirmed his interest, and might
venture, before I turned the pass-key, to beseech him to moderate his voice
and to tread soĞly. He promised to obey me; and I admiĴed him into the
passage, and thence into my siĴing-room, which was fortunately next the door.

“And now,” said he, when with trembling fingers I had lighted a candle,
“what is the meaning of all this?”

“I wish you,” said I, speaking with great difficulty, “to help me out with
these boxes—and I wish nobody to know.”

He took up the candle. “And I wish to see your face,” said he.

I turned back my veil without a word, and looked at him with every
appearance of resolve that I could summon up. For some time he gazed into
my face, still holding up the candle. “Well,” said he at last, “and where do you
wish them taken?”

I knew that I had gained my point; and it was with a tremor in my voice that
I replied. “I had thought we might carry them between us to the corner of
Euston Road,” said I, “where, even at this late hour, we may still find a cab.”

“Very good,” was his reply; and he immediately hoisted the heavier of my
trunks upon his shoulder, and taking one handle of the second, signed to me
to help him at the other end. In this order we made good our retreat from the
house, and without the least adventure, drew preĴy near to the corner of
Euston Road. Before a house, where there was a light still burning, my
companion paused. “Let us here,” said he, “set down our boxes, while we go
forward to the end of the street in quest of a cab. By doing so, we can still keep
an eye upon their safety; and we avoid the very extraordinary figure we should
otherwise present—a young man, a young lady, and a mass of baggage,
standing castaway at midnight on the streets of London.” So it was done, and
the event proved him to be wise; for long before there was any word of a cab, a
policeman appeared upon the scene, turned upon us the full glare of his
lantern, and hung suspiciously behind us in a doorway.

“There seem to be no cabs about, policeman,” said my champion, with

affected cheerfulness. But the constable’s answer was ungracious; and as for
the offer of a cigar, with which this rebuff was most unwisely followed up, he
refused it point-blank, and without the least civility. The young gentleman
looked at me with a warning grimace, and there we continued to stand, on the
edge of the pavement, in the beating rain, and with the policeman still silently
watching our movements from the doorway.

At last, and aĞer a delay that seemed interminable, a four-wheeler appeared

lumbering along in the mud, and was instantly hailed by my companion. “Just
pull up here, will you?” he cried. “We have some baggage up the street.”

And now came the hitch of our adventure; for when the policeman, still
closely following us, beheld my two boxes lying in the rain, he arose from mere
suspicion to a kind of certitude of something evil. The light in the house had
been extinguished; the whole frontage of the street was dark; there was
nothing to explain the presence of these unguarded trunks; and no two
innocent people were ever, I believe, detected in such questionable
circumstances.

“Where have these things come from?” asked the policeman, flashing his
light full into my champion’s face.

“Why, from that house of course,” replied the young gentleman, hastily
shouldering a trunk.
 The policeman whistled and turned to look at the dark windows; he then
took a step towards the door, as though to knock, a course which had infallibly
proved our ruin; but seeing us already hurrying down the street under our
double burthen, thought beĴer or worse of it, and followed in our wake.

“For God’s sake,” whispered my companion, “tell me where to drive to.”

“Anywhere,” I replied, with anguish. “I have no idea. Anywhere you like.”

Thus it fell that, when the boxes had been stowed and I had already entered
the cab, my deliverer called out in clear tones the address of the house in
which we are now seated. The policeman, I could see, was staggered. This
neighbourhood, so retired, so aristocratic, was far from what he had expected.
For all that, he took the number of the cab, and spoke for a few seconds and
with a decided manner, in the cabman’s ear.

“What can he have said?” I gasped, as soon as the cab had rolled away.

“I can very well imagine,” replied my champion; “and I can assure you that
you are now condemned to go where I have said; for, should we aĴempt to
change our destination by the way, the jarvey will drive us straight to a police-
office. Let me compliment you on your nerves,” he added. “I have had, I
believe, the most horrible fright of my existence.”

But my nerves, which he so much misjudged, were in so strange a disarray

that speech was now become impossible; and we made the drive
thenceforward in unbroken silence. When we arrived before the door of our
destination, the young gentleman alighted, opened it with a pass-key like one
who was at home, bade the driver carry the trunks into the hall, and dismissed
him with a handsome fee. He then led me into this dining-room, looking nearly
as you behold it, but with certain marks of bachelor occupancy, and hastened
to pour out a glass of wine, which he insisted on my drinking. As soon as I
could find my voice, “In God’s name,” I cried, “where am I?”

He told me I was in his house, where I was very welcome, and had no more
urgent business than to rest myself and recover my spirits. As he spoke he
offered me another glass of wine, of which, indeed, I stood in great want, for I
was faint, and inclined to be hysterical. Then he sat down beside the fire, lit
another cigar, and for some time observed me curiously in silence.

“And now,” said he, “that you have somewhat restored yourself, will you be
kind enough to tell me in what sort of crime I have become a partner? Are you
murderer, smuggler, thief, or only the harmless and domestic moonlight
fliĴer?”

I had been already shocked by his lighting a cigar without permission, for I
had not forgoĴen the one he threw away on our first meeting; and now, at
these explicit insults, I resolved at once to reconquer his esteem. The judgment
of the world I have consistently despised, but I had already begun to set a
certain value on the good opinion of my entertainer. Beginning with a note of
pathos, but soon brightening into my habitual vivacity and humour, I rapidly
narrated the circumstances of my birth, my flight, and subsequent misfortunes.
He heard me to an end in silence, gravely smoking. “Miss Fanshawe,” said he,
when I had done, “you are a very comical and most enchanting creature; and I
can see nothing for it but that I should return to-morrow morning and satisfy
your landlady’s demands.”

“You strangely misinterpret my confidence,” was my reply; “and if you had

at all appreciated my character, you would understand that I can take no
money at your hands.”

“Your landlady will doubtless not be so particular,” he returned; “nor do I at

all despair of persuading even your unconquerable self. I desire you to
examine me with critical indulgence. My name is Henry Luxmore, Lord
Southwark’s second son. I possess nine thousand a year, the house in which
we are now siĴing and seven others in the best neighbourhoods in town. I do
not believe I am repulsive to the eye, and as for my character, you have seen
me under trial. I think you simply the most original of created things; I need
not tell you what you know very well, that you are ravishingly preĴy; and I
have nothing more to add, except that foolish as it may appear, I am already
head over heels in love with you.”

“Sir,” said I, “I am prepared to be misjudged; but while I continue to accept

your hospitality, that fact alone should be enough to protect me from insult.”

“Pardon me,” said he: “I offer you marriage.” And leaning back in his chair
he replaced his cigar between his lips.

I own I was confounded by an offer, not only so unprepared, but couched in

terms so singular. But he knew very well how to obtain his purposes, for he
was not only handsome in person, but his very coolness had a charm; and to
make a long story short, a fortnight later I became the wife of the Honourable
Henry Luxmore.

For nearly twenty years I now led a life of almost perfect quiet. My Henry
had his weaknesses; I was twice driven to flee from his roof, but not for long;
for though he was easily over-excited, his nature was placable below the
surface, and, with all his faults, I loved him tenderly. At last he was taken from
me; and such is the power of self-deception, and so strange are the whims of
the dying, he actually assured me, with his latest breath, that he forgave the
violence of my temper!

There was but one pledge of the marriage, my daughter Clara. She had,
indeed, inherited a shadow of her father’s failing; but in all things else, unless
my partial eyes deceived me, she derived her qualities from me, and might be
called my moral image. On my side, whatever else I may have done amiss, as a
mother I was above reproach. Here, then, was surely every promise for the
future; here, at last, was a relation in which I might hope to taste repose. But it
was not to be. You will hardly credit me when I inform you that she ran away
from home; yet such was the case. Some whim about oppressed nationalities
—Ireland, Poland, and the like—has turned her brain; and if you should
anywhere encounter a young lady (I must say of remarkable aĴractions)
answering to the name of Luxmore, Lake, or Fonblanque (for I am told she
uses these indifferently, as well as many others), tell her, from me, that I forgive
her cruelty, and though I will never more behold her face, I am at any time
prepared to make her a liberal allowance.

On the death of Mr. Luxmore I sought oblivion in the details of business. I

believe I have mentioned that seven mansions, besides this, formed part of Mr.
Luxmore’s property: I have found them seven white elephants. The greed of
tenants, the dishonesty of solicitors, and the incapacity that sits upon the
bench, have combined together to make these houses the burthen of my life. I
had no sooner, indeed, begun to look into these maĴers for myself, than I
discovered so many injustices and met with so much studied incivility, that I
was plunged into a long series of lawsuits, some of which are pending to this
day. You must have heard my name already; I am the Mrs. Luxmore of the
Law Reports: a strange destiny, indeed, for one born with an almost cowardly
desire for peace! But I am of the stamp of those who, when they have once
begun a task, will rather die than leave their duty unfulfilled. I have met with
every obstacle: insolence and ingratitude from my own lawyers; in my
adversaries, that fault of obstinacy which is to me perhaps the most distasteful
in the calendar; from the bench, civility indeed—always, I must allow,
civility—but never a spark of independence, never that knowledge of the law
and love of justice which we have a right to look for in a judge, the most
august of human officers. And still, against all these odds, I have
undissuadably persevered.

It was aĞer the loss of one of my innumerable cases (a subject on which I

will not dwell) that it occurred to me to make a melancholy pilgrimage to my
various houses. Four were at that time tenantless and closed, like pillars of salt,
commemorating the corruption of the age and the decline of private virtue.
Three were occupied by persons who had wearied me by every conceivable
unjust demand and legal subterfuge—persons whom, at that very hour, I was
moving heaven and earth to turn into the streets. This was perhaps the sadder
spectacle of the two; and my heart grew hot within me to behold them
occupying, in my very teeth, and with an insolent ostentation, these handsome
structures which were as much mine as the flesh upon my body.
 One more house remained for me to visit, that in which we now are. I had
let it (for at that period I lodged in a hotel, the life that I have always preferred)
to a Colonel Geraldine, a gentleman aĴached to Prince Florizel of Bohemia,
whom you must certainly have heard of; and I had supposed, from the
character and position of my tenant, that here, at least, I was safe against
annoyance. What was my surprise to find this house also shuĴered and
apparently deserted! I will not deny that I was offended; I conceived that a
house, like a yacht, was beĴer to be kept in commission; and I promised myself
to bring the maĴer before my solicitor the following morning. Meanwhile the
sight recalled my fancy naturally to the past; and, yielding to the tender
influence of sentiment, I sat down opposite the door upon the garden parapet.
It was August and a sultry aĞernoon, but that spot is sheltered, as you may
observe by daylight, under the branches of a spreading chestnut; the square,
too, was deserted; there was a sound of distant music in the air; and all
combined to plunge me into that most agreeable of states, which is neither
happiness nor sorrow, but shares the poignancy of both.

From this I was recalled by the arrival of a large van, very handsomely
appointed, drawn by valuable horses, mounted by several men of an
appearance more than decent, and bearing on its panels, instead of a trader’s
name, a coat of arms too modest to be deciphered from where I sat. It drew up
before my house, the door of which was immediately opened by one of the
men. His companions—I counted seven of them in all—proceeded, with
disciplined activity, to take from the van and carry into the house a variety of
hampers, boĴle-baskets, and boxes, such as are designed for plate and napery.
The windows of the dining-room were thrown widely open, as though to air it;
and I saw some of those within laying the table for a meal. Plainly, I concluded,
my tenant was about to return; and while still determined to submit to no
aggression on my rights, I was gratified by the number and discipline of his
aĴendants, and the quiet profusion that appeared to reign in his
establishment. I was still so thinking when, to my extreme surprise, the
windows and shuĴers of the dining-room were once more closed; the men
began to reappear from the interior and resume their stations on the van; the
last closed the door behind his exit; the van drove away; and the house was
once more leĞ to itself, looking blindly on the square with shuĴered windows,
as though the whole affair had been a vision.

It was no vision, however; for, as I rose to my feet and thus brought my eyes
a liĴle nearer to the level of the fanlight over the door, I saw that, though the
day had still some hours to run, the hall lamps had been lighted and leĞ
burning. Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were not expected before
night. For whom, I asked myself with indignation, were such secret
preparations likely to be made? Although no prude, I am a woman of decided
views upon morality; if my house, to which my husband had brought me, was
to serve in the character of a petite maison, I saw myself forced, however
unwillingly, into a new course of litigation; and, determined to return and
know the worst, I hastened to my hotel for dinner.

I was at my post by ten. The night was clear and quiet; the moon rode very
high and put the lamps to shame; and the shadow below the chestnut was
black as ink. Here, then, I ensconced myself on the low parapet, with my back
against the railings, face to face with the moonlit front of my old home, and
ruminating gently on the past. Time fled; eleven struck on all the city clocks;
and presently aĞer I was aware of the approach of a gentleman of stately and
agreeable demeanour. He was smoking as he walked; his light paletot, which
was open, did not conceal his evening clothes; and he bore himself with a
serious grace that immediately awakened my aĴention. Before the door of this
house he took a pass-key from his pocket, quietly admiĴed himself, and
disappeared into the lamp-lit hall.

He was scarcely gone when I observed another and a much younger man
approaching hastily from the opposite side of the square. Considering the
season of the year and the genial mildness of the night, he was somewhat
closely muffled up; and as he came, for all his hurry, he kept looking nervously
behind him. Arrived before my door, he halted and set one foot upon the step,
as though about to enter; then, with a sudden change, he turned and began to
hurry away; halted a second time, as if in painful indecision; and lastly, with a
violent gesture, wheeled about, returned straight to the door, and rapped
upon the knocker. He was almost immediately admiĴed by the first arrival.

My curiosity was now broad awake. I made myself as small as I could in the
very densest of the shadow, and waited for the sequel. Nor had I long to wait.
From the same side of the square a second young man made his appearance,
walking slowly and soĞly, and like the first, muffled to the nose. Before the
house he paused; looked all about him with a swiĞ and comprehensive glance;
and seeing the square lie empty in the moon and lamp-light, leaned far across
the area railings and appeared to listen to what was passing in the house. From
the dining-room there came the report of a champagne cork, and following
upon that, the sound of rich and manly laughter. The listener took heart of
grace, produced a key, unlocked the area gate, shut it noiselessly behind him,
and descended the stair. Just when his head had reached the level of the
pavement, he turned half round and once more raked the square with a
suspicious eyeshot. The mufflings had fallen lower round his neck; the moon
shone full upon him; and I was startled to observe the pallor and passionate
agitation of his face.

I could remain no longer passive. Persuaded that something deadly was

afoot, I crossed the roadway and drew near the area railings. There was no one
below; the man must therefore have entered the house, with what purpose I
dreaded to imagine. I have at no part of my career lacked courage; and now,
finding the area gate was merely laid-to, I pushed it gently open and
descended the stairs. The kitchen door of the house, like the area gate, was
closed but not fastened. It flashed upon me that the criminal was thus
preparing his escape; and the thought, as it confirmed the worst of my
suspicions, lent me new resolve. I entered the house; and being now quite
reckless of my life, I shut and locked the door.

From the dining-room above I could hear the pleasant tones of a voice in
easy conversation. On the ground floor all was not only profoundly silent, but
the darkness seemed to weigh upon my eyes. Here, then, I stood for some
time, having thrust myself uncalled into the utmost peril, and being destitute
of any power to help or interfere. Nor will I deny that fear had begun already
to assail me, when I became aware, all at once and as though by some
immediate but silent incandescence, of a certain glimmering of light upon the
passage floor. Towards this I groped my way with infinite precaution; and
having come at length as far as the angle of the corridor, beheld the door of the
butler’s pantry standing just ajar and a narrow thread of brightness falling
from the chink. Creeping still closer, I put my eye to the aperture. The man sat
within upon a chair, listening, I could see, with the most rapt aĴention. On a
table before him he had laid a watch, a pair of steel revolvers, and a bull’s-eye
lantern. For one second many contradictory theories and projects whirled
together in my head; the next, I had slammed the door and turned the key
upon the malefactor. Surprised at my own decision, I stood and panted,
leaning on the wall. From within the pantry not a sound was to be heard; the
man, whatever he was, had accepted his fate without a struggle, and now, as I
hugged myself to fancy, sat frozen with terror and looking for the worst to
follow. I promised myself that he should not be disappointed; and the beĴer to
complete my task, I turned to ascend the stairs.

The situation, as I groped my way to the first floor, appealed to me suddenly

by my strong sense of humour. Here was I, the owner of the house,
burglariously present in its walls; and there, in the dining-room, were two
gentlemen, unknown to me, seated complacently at supper, and only saved by
my promptitude from some surprising or deadly interruption. It were strange if
I could not manage to extract the maĴer of amusement from so unusual a
situation.

Behind this dining-room there is a small apartment intended for a library. It

was to this that I cautiously groped my way; and you will see how fortune had
exactly served me. The weather, I have said, was sultry: in order to ventilate
the dining-room and yet preserve the uninhabited appearance of the mansion
to the front, the window of the library had been widely opened and the door
of communication between the two apartments leĞ ajar. To this interval I now
applied my eye.

Wax tapers, set in silver candlesticks, shed their chastened brightness on the
damask of the tablecloth and the remains of a cold collation of the rarest
delicacy. The two gentlemen had finished supper, and were now trifling with
cigars and maraschino; while in a silver spirit-lamp, coffee of the most
captivating fragrance was preparing in the fashion of the East. The elder of the
two, he who had first arrived, was placed directly facing me; the other was set
on his leĞ hand. Both, like the man in the butler’s pantry, seemed to be intently
listening; and on the face of the second I thought I could perceive the marks of
fear. Oddly enough, however, when they came to speak, the parts were found
to be reversed.

“I assure you,” said the elder gentleman, “I not only heard the slamming of
a door, but the sound of very guarded footsteps.”

“Your highness was certainly deceived,” replied the other. “I am endowed

with the acutest hearing, and I can swear that not a mouse has rustled.” Yet
the pallor and contraction of his features were in total discord with the tenor
of his words.

His highness (whom, of course, I readily divined to be Prince Florizel)

looked at his companion for the least fraction of a second; and though nothing
shook the easy quiet of his aĴitude, I could see that he was far from being
duped. “It is well,” said he: “let us dismiss the topic. And now, sir, that I have
very freely explained the sentiments by which I am directed, let me ask you,
according to your promise, to imitate my frankness.”

“I have heard you,” replied the other, “with great interest.”

“With singular patience,” said the prince politely.

“Ay, your highness, and with unlooked-for sympathy,” returned the young
man. “I know not how to tell the change that has befallen me. You have, I must
suppose, a charm, to which even your enemies are subject.” He looked at the
clock on the mantelpiece and visibly blanched. “So late!” he cried. “Your
highness—God knows I am now speaking from the heart—before it be too
late, leave this house!”

The prince glanced once more at his companion, and then very deliberately
shook the ash from his cigar. “That is a strange remark,” said he; “and à propos
de boĴes, I never continue a cigar when once the ash is fallen; the spell breaks,
the soul of the flavour flies away, and there remains but the dead body of
tobacco; and I make it a rule to throw away that husk and choose another.” He
suited the action to the words.
 “Do not trifle with my appeal,” resumed the young man, in tones that
trembled with emotion. “It is made at the price of my honour and to the peril
of my life. Go—go now! lose not a moment; and if you have any kindness for a
young man, miserably deceived indeed, but not devoid of beĴer sentiments,
look not behind you as you leave.”

“Sir,” said the prince, “I am here upon your honour; I assure you upon mine
that I shall continue to rely upon that safeguard. The coffee is ready; I must
again trouble you, I fear.” And with a courteous movement of the hand, he
seemed to invite his companion to pour out the coffee.

The unhappy young man rose from his seat. “I appeal to you,” he cried, “by
every holy sentiment, in mercy to me, if not in pity to yourself, begone before it
is too late.”

“Sir,” replied the prince, “I am not readily accessible to fear; and if there is
one defect to which I must plead guilty, it is that of a curious disposition. You
go the wrong way about to make me leave this house, in which I play the part
of your entertainer; and, suffer me to add, young man, if any peril threaten us,
it was of your contriving, not of mine.”

“Alas, you do not know to what you condemn me,” cried the other. “But I at
least will have no hand in it.” With these words he carried his hand to his
pocket, hastily swallowed the contents of a phial, and, with the very act, reeled
back and fell across his chair upon the floor. The prince leĞ his place and came
and stood above him, where he lay convulsed upon the carpet. “Poor moth!” I
heard his highness murmur. “Alas, poor moth! must we again inquire which is
the more fatal—weakness or wickedness? And can a sympathy with ideas,
surely not ignoble in themselves, conduct a man to this dishonourable death?”

By this time I had pushed the door open and walked into the room. “Your
highness,” said I, “this is no time for moralising; with a liĴle promptness we
may save this creature’s life; and as for the other, he need cause you no
concern, for I have him safely under lock and key.”

The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and regarded me certainly
with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder which almost robbed me of my
self-possession. “My dear madam,” he cried at last, “and who the devil are
you?”

I was already on the floor beside the dying man. I had, of course, no idea
with what drug he had aĴempted his life, and I was forced to try him with a
variety of antidotes. Here were both oil and vinegar, for the prince had done
the young man the honour of compounding for him one of his celebrated
salads; and of each of these I administered from a quarter to half a pint, with
no apparent efficacy. I next plied him with the hot coffee, of which there may
have been near upon a quart.

“Have you no milk?” I inquired.

“I fear, madam, that milk has been omiĴed,” returned the prince.

“Salt, then,” said I; “salt is a revulsive. Pass the salt.”

“And possibly the mustard?” asked his highness, as he offered me the

contents of the various salt-cellars poured together on a plate.

“Ah,” cried I, “the thought is excellent! Mix me about half a pint of mustard,
drinkably dilute.”

Whether it was the salt or the mustard, or the mere combination of so many
subversive agents, as soon as the last had been poured over his throat, the
young sufferer obtained relief.

“There!” I exclaimed, with natural triumph, “I have saved a life!”

“And yet, madam,” returned the prince, “your mercy may be cruelly
disguised. Where the honour is lost, it is, at least, superfluous to prolong the
life.”

“If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your highness,” I replied, “you
would hold a very different opinion. For my part, and aĞer whatever extremity
of misfortune or disgrace, I should still count to-morrow worth a trial.”

“You speak as a lady, madam,” said the prince; “and for such you speak the
truth. But to men there is permiĴed such a field of licence, and the good
behaviour asked of them is at once so easy and so liĴle, that to fail in that is to
fall beyond the reach of pardon. But will you suffer me to repeat a question,
put to you at first, I am afraid, with some defect of courtesy; and to ask you
once more, who you are and how I have the honour of your company?”

“I am the proprietor of the house in which we stand,” said I.

“And still I am at fault,” returned the prince.

But at that moment the timepiece on the mantelshelf began to strike the
hour of twelve; and the young man, raising himself upon one elbow, with an
expression of despair and horror that I have never seen excelled, cried
lamentably: “Midnight? oh, just God!” We stood frozen to our places, while
the tingling hammer of the timepiece measured the remaining strokes; nor had
we yet stirred, so tragic had been the tones of the young man, when the
various bells of London began in turn to declare the hour. The timepiece was
inaudible beyond the walls of the chamber where we stood; but the second
pulsation of Big Ben had scarcely throbbed into the night, before a sharp
detonation rang about the house. The prince sprang for the door by which I
had entered; but quick as he was, I yet contrived to intercept him.

“Are you armed?” I cried.

“No, madam,” replied he. “You remind me appositely; I will take the poker.”

“The man below,” said I, “has two revolvers. Would you confront him at
such odds?”

He paused, as though staggered in his purpose. “And yet, madam,” said he,
“we cannot continue to remain in ignorance of what has passed.”

“No!” cried I. “And who proposes it? I am as curious as yourself, but let us
rather send for the police; or, if your highness dreads a scandal, for some of
your own servants.”

“Nay, madam,” he replied, smiling, “for so brave a lady, you surprise me.
Would you have me, then, send others where I fear to go myself.”

“You are perfectly right,” said I, “and I was entirely wrong. Go, in God’s
name, and I will hold the candle!”

Together, therefore, we descended to the lower story, he carrying the poker,

I the light; and together we approached and opened the door of the butler’s
pantry. In some sort, I believe, I was prepared for the spectacle that met our
eyes; I was prepared, that is, to find the villain dead, but the rude details of
such a violent suicide I was unable to endure. The prince, unshaken by horror
as he had remained unshaken by alarm, assisted me with the most respectful
gallantry to regain the dining-room.

There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but vastly recovered
and already seated on a chair. He held out both his hands with a most pitiful
gesture of interrogation.

“He is dead,” said the prince.

“Alas!” cried the young man, “and it should be I! What do I do, thus
lingering on the stage I have disgraced, while he, my sure comrade,
blameworthy indeed for much, but yet the soul of fidelity, has judged and slain
himself for an involuntary fault? Ah, sir,” said he, “and you too, madam,
without whose cruel help I should be now beyond the reach of my accusing
conscience, you behold in me the victim equally of my own faults and virtues. I
was born a hater of injustice; from my most tender years my blood boiled
against Heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men when I witnessed the
sorrows of the poor; the pauper’s crust stuck in my throat when I sat down to
eat my dainties, and the cripple child has set me weeping. What was there in
that but what was noble? and yet observe to what a fall these thoughts have
led me! Year aĞer year this passion for the lost besieged me closer. What hope
was there in kings? what hope in these well-feathered classes that now roll in
money? I had observed the course of history; I knew the burgess, our ruler of
to-day, to be base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, in every age, combine to pull
down that which was immediately above and to prey upon those that were
below; his dulness, I knew, would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his
days were numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let the poor
child shiver in the rain? The beĴer days, indeed, were coming, but the child
would die before that. Alas, your highness, in surely no ungenerous
impatience I enrolled myself among the enemies of this unjust and doomed
society; in surely no unnatural desire to keep the fires of my philanthropy
alight, I bound myself by an irrevocable oath.

“That oath is all my history. To give freedom to posterity, I had forsworn my

own. I must aĴend upon every signal; and soon my father complained of my
irregular hours and turned me from his house. I was engaged in betrothal to an
honest girl; from her also I had to part, for she was too shrewd to credit my
inventions and too innocent to be intrusted with the truth. Behold me, then,
alone with conspirators! Alas! as the years went on, my illusions leĞ me.
Surrounded as I was by the fervent disciples and apologists of revolution, I
beheld them daily advance in confidence and desperation; I beheld myself,
upon the other hand, and with an almost equal regularity, decline in faith. I
had sacrificed all to further that cause in which I still believed; and daily I
began to grow in doubts if we were advancing it indeed. Horrible was the
society with which we warred, but our own means were not less horrible.

“I will not dwell upon my sufferings; I will not pause to tell you how, when I
beheld young men still free and happy, married, fathers of children, cheerfully
toiling at their work, my heart reproached me with the greatness and vanity of
my unhappy sacrifice. I will not describe to you how, worn by poverty, poor
lodging, scanty food, and an unquiet conscience, my health began to fail, and
in the long nights, as I wandered bedless in the rainy streets, the most cruel
sufferings of the body were added to the tortures of my mind. These things are
not personal to me; they are common to all unfortunates in my position. An
oath, so light a thing to swear, so grave a thing to break: an oath, taken in the
heat of youth, repented with what sobbings of the heart, but yet in vain
repented, as the years go on: an oath, that was once the very uĴerance of the
truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol of a meaningless and empty
slavery; such is the yoke that many young men joyfully assume, and under
whose dead weight they live to suffer worse than death.

“It is not that I was patient. I have begged to be released; but I knew too
much, and I was still refused. I have fled; ay, and for the time successfully. I
reached Paris. I found a lodging in the Rue St. Jacques, almost opposite the Val
de Grâce. My room was mean and bare, but the sun looked into it towards
evening; it commanded a peep of a green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour’s
window and made the morning beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie in bed
and rest myself: I, who was in full revolt against the principles that I had
served, was now no longer at the beck of the council, and was no longer
charged with shameful and revolting tasks. Oh! what an interval of peace was
that! I still dream, at times, that I can hear the note of my neighbour’s bird.

“My money was running out, and it became necessary that I should find
employment. Scarcely had I been three days upon the search, ere I thought
that I was being followed. I made certain of the features of the man, which
were quite strange to me, and turned into a small café, where I whiled away an
hour, pretending to read the papers, but inwardly convulsed with terror. When
I came forth again into the street, it was quite empty, and I breathed again; but
alas, I had not turned three corners, when I once more observed the human
hound pursuing me. Not an hour was to be lost; timely submission might yet
preserve a life which otherwise was forfeit and dishonoured; and I fled, with
what speed you may conceive, to the Paris agency of the society I served.

“My submission was accepted. I took up once more the hated burthen of
that life; once more I was at the call of men whom I despised and hated, while
yet I envied and admired them. They at least were whole-hearted in the things
they purposed; but I, who had once been such as they, had fallen from the
brightness of my faith, and now laboured, like a hireling, for the wages of a
loathed existence. Ay, sir, to that I was condemned; I obeyed to continue to
live, and lived but to obey.

“The last charge that was laid upon me was the one which has to-night so
tragically ended. Boldly telling who I was, I was to request from your highness,
on behalf of my society, a private audience, where it was designed to murder
you. If one thing remained to me of my old convictions, it was the hate of
kings; and when this task was offered me, I took it gladly. Alas, sir, you
triumphed. As we supped, you gained upon my heart. Your character, your
talents, your designs for our unhappy country, all had been misrepresented. I
began to forget you were a prince; I began, all too feelingly, to remember that
you were a man. As I saw the hour approach, I suffered agonies untold; and
when, at last, we heard the slamming of the door which announced in my
unwilling ears the arrival of the partner of my crime, you will bear me out with
what instancy I besought you to depart. You would not, alas! and what could
I? Kill you, I could not; my heart revolted, my hand turned back from such a
deed. Yet it was impossible that I should suffer you to stay; for when the hour
struck and my companion came, true to his appointment, and he, at least, true
to our design, I could neither suffer you to be killed nor yet him to be arrested.
From such a tragic passage, death, and death alone, could save me; and it is no
fault of mine if I continue to exist.
 “But you, madam,” continued the young man, addressing himself more
directly to myself, “were doubtless born to save the prince and to confound
our purposes. My life you have prolonged; and by turning the key on my
companion, you have made me the author of his death. He heard the hour
strike; he was impotent to help; and thinking himself forfeit to honour, thinking
that I should fall alone upon his highness and perish for lack of his support, he
has turned his pistol on himself.”

“You are right,” said Prince Florizel: “it was in no ungenerous spirit that you
brought these burthens on yourself; and when I see you so nobly to blame, so
tragically punished, I stand like one reproved. For is it not strange, madam,
that you and I, by practising accepted and inconsiderable virtues, and
commonplace but still unpardonable faults, should stand here, in the sight of
God, with what we call clean hands and quiet consciences; while this poor
youth, for an error that I could almost envy him, should be sunk beyond the
reach of hope?

“Sir,” resumed the prince, turning to the young man, “I cannot help you; my
help would but unchain the thunderbolt that overhangs you; and I can but
leave you free.”

“And, sir,” said I, “as this house belongs to me, I will ask you to have the
kindness to remove the body. You and your conspirators, it appears to me, can
hardly in civility do less.”

“It shall be done,” said the young man, with a dismal accent.

“And you, dear madam,” said the prince, “you, to whom I owe my life, how
can I serve you?”

“Your highness,” I said, “to be very plain, this is my favourite house, being
not only a valuable property, but endeared to me by various associations. I
have endless troubles with tenants of the ordinary class; and at first applauded
my good fortune when I found one of the station of your Master of the Horse.
I now begin to think otherwise; dangers set a siege about great personages;
and I do not wish my tenement to share these risks. Procure me the resiliation
of the lease, and I shall feel myself your debtor.”

“I must tell you, madam,” replied his highness, “that Colonel Geraldine is
but a cloak for myself; and I should be sorry indeed to think myself so
unacceptable a tenant.”

“Your highness,” said I, “I have conceived a sincere admiration for your

character; but on the subject of house property I cannot allow the interference
of my feelings. I will, however, to prove to you that there is nothing personal in
my request, here solemnly engage my word that I will never put another
tenant in this house.”

“Madam,” said Florizel, “you plead your cause too charmingly to be

refused.”

Thereupon we all three withdrew. The young man, still reeling in his walk,
departed by himself to seek the assistance of his fellow-conspirators; and the
prince, with the most aĴentive gallantry, lent me his escort to the door of my
hotel. The next day the lease was cancelled; nor from that hour to this, though
sometimes regreĴing my engagement, have I suffered a tenant in this house.

THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (continued)

AS soon as the old lady had finished her relation, Somerset made haste to offer
her his compliments.

“Madam,” said he, “your story is not only entertaining but instructive; and
you have told it with infinite vivacity. I was much affected towards the end, as I
held at one time very liberal opinions, and should certainly have joined a secret
society if I had been able to find one. But the whole tale came home to me; and
I was the beĴer able to feel for you in your various perplexities, as I am myself
of somewhat hasty temper.”

“I do not understand you,” said Mrs. Luxmore, with some marks of

irritation. “You must have strangely misinterpreted what I have told you. You
fill me with surprise.”

Somerset, alarmed by the old lady’s change of tone and manner, hurried to
recant.

“Dear Mrs. Luxmore,” said he, “you certainly misconstrue my remark. As a

man of somewhat fiery humour, my conscience repeatedly pricked me when I
heard what you had suffered at the hands of persons similarly constituted.”

“Oh, very well indeed,” replied the old lady; “and a very proper spirit. I
regret that I have met with it so rarely.”

“But in all this,” resumed the young man, “I perceive nothing that concerns
myself.”

“I am about to come to that,” she returned. “And you have already before
you, in the pledge I gave Prince Florizel, one of the elements of the affair. I am
a woman of the nomadic sort, and when I have no case before the courts I
make it a habit to visit continental spas: not that I have ever been ill; but then I
am no longer young, and I am always happy in a crowd. Well, to come more
shortly to the point, I am now on the wing for Evian; this incubus of a house,
which I must leave behind and dare not let, hangs heavily upon my hands; and
I propose to rid myself of that concern, and do you a very good turn into the
bargain, by lending you the mansion, with all its fiĴings, as it stands. The idea
was sudden; it appealed to me as humorous; and I am sure it will cause my
relatives, if they should ever hear of it, the keenest possible chagrin. Here,
then, is the key; and when you return at two to-morrow aĞernoon, you will
find neither me nor my cats to disturb you in your new possession.”

So saying, the old lady arose, as if to dismiss her visitor; but Somerset,
looking somewhat blankly on the key, began to protest.

“Dear Mrs. Luxmore,” said he, “this is a most unusual proposal. You know
nothing of me, beyond the fact that I displayed both impudence and timidity. I
may be the worst kind of scoundrel; I may sell your furniture—”

“You may blow up the house with gunpowder, for what I care!” cried Mrs.
Luxmore. “It is in vain to reason. Such is the force of my character that, when I
have one idea clearly in my head, I do not care two straws for any side
consideration. It amuses me to do it, and let that suffice. On your side, you
may do what you please—let apartments, or keep a private hotel; on mine, I
promise you a full month’s warning before I return, and I never fail religiously
to keep my promises.”

The young man was about to renew his protest, when he observed a sudden
and significant change in the old lady’s countenance.

“If I thought you capable of disrespect!” she cried.

“Madam,” said Somerset, with the extreme fervour of asseveration,

“madam, I accept. I beg you to understand that I accept with joy and
gratitude.”

“Ah, well,” returned Mrs. Luxmore, “if I am mistaken, let it pass. And now,
since all is comfortably seĴled, I wish you a good-night.”

Thereupon, as if to leave him no room for repentance, she hurried Somerset

out of the front door, and leĞ him standing, key in hand, upon the pavement.

The next day, about the hour appointed, the young man found his way to
the square, which I will here call Golden Square, though that was not its name.
What to expect, he knew not; for a man may live in dreams, and yet be
unprepared for their realisation. It was already with a certain pang of surprise
that he beheld the mansion, standing in the eye of day, a solid among solids.
The key, upon trial, readily opened the front door; he entered that great house,
a privileged burglar; and, escorted by the echoes of desertion, rapidly reviewed
the empty chambers. Cats, servant, old lady, the very marks of habitation, like
writing on a slate, had been in these few hours obliterated. He wandered from
floor to floor, and found the house of great extent; the kitchen offices
commodious and well appointed; the rooms many and large; and the
drawing-room, in particular, an apartment of princely size and tasteful
decoration. Although the day without was warm, genial, and sunny, with a
ruffling wind from the quarter of Torquay, a chill, as it were, of suspended
animation, inhabited the house. Dust and shadows met the eye; and but for
the ominous procession of the echoes, and the rumour of the wind among the
garden trees, the ear of the young man was stretched in vain.

Behind the dining-room, that pleasant library, referred to by the old lady in
her tale, looked upon the flat roofs and neĴed cupolas of the kitchen quarters;
and on a second visit, this room appeared to greet him with a smiling
countenance. He might as well, he thought, avoid the expense of lodging: the
library fiĴed with an iron bedstead which he had remarked, in one of the
upper chambers, would serve his purpose for the night; while in the
dining-room, which was large, airy, and lightsome, looking on the square and
garden, he might very agreeably pass his days, cook his meals, and study to
bring himself to some proficiency in that art of painting which he had recently
determined to adopt. It did not take him long to make the change: he had soon
returned to the mansion with his modest kit; and the cabman who brought
him was readily induced, by the young man’s pleasant manner and a small
gratuity, to assist him in the installation of the iron bed. By six in the evening,
when Somerset went forth to dine, he was able to look back upon the mansion
with a sense of pride and property. Four-square it stood, of an imposing
frontage, and flanked on either side by family hatchments. His eye, from
where he stood whistling in the key, with his back to the garden railings,
reposed on every feature of reality; and yet his own possession seemed as
flimsy as a dream.

In the course of a few days, the genteel inhabitants of the square began to
remark the customs of their neighbour. The sight of a young gentleman
discussing a clay pipe, about four o’clock of the aĞernoon, in the
drawing-room balcony of so discreet a mansion; and perhaps still more, his
periodical excursion to a decent tavern in the neighbourhood, and his
unabashed return, nursing the full tankard: had presently raised to a high
pitch the interest and indignation of the liveried servants of the square. The
disfavour of some of these gentlemen at first proceeded to the length of insult;
but Somerset knew how to be affable with any class of men; and a few rude
words merrily accepted, and a few glasses amicably shared, gained for him the
right of toleration.
 The young man had embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of its
ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices. He scorned to bear the yoke of
any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room into
a studio for the reproduction of still life. There he amassed a variety of objects,
indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen, the drawing-room, and the back
garden; and there spent his days in smiling assiduity. Meantime, the great bulk
of empty building overhead lay, like a load, upon his imagination. To hold so
great a stake and to do nothing, argued some defect of energy; and he at
length determined to act upon the hint given by Mrs. Luxmore herself, and to
stick, with wafers, in the window of the dining-room, a small hand-bill
announcing furnished lodgings. At half-past six of a fine July morning, he
affixed the bill, and went forth into the square to study the result. It seemed, to
his eye, promising and unpretentious; and he returned to the drawing-room
balcony to consider, over a studious pipe, the knoĴy problem of how much he
was to charge.

Thereupon he somewhat relaxed in his devotion to the art of painting.

Indeed, from that time forth, he would spend the best part of the day in the
front balcony, like the aĴentive angler poring on his float; and the beĴer to
support the tedium, he would frequently console himself with his clay pipe.
On several occasions passers-by appeared to be arrested by the ticket, and on
several others ladies and gentlemen drove to the very doorstep by the
carriageful; but it appeared there was something repulsive in the appearance
of the house; for, with one accord, they would cast but one look upward, and
hastily resume their onward progress, or direct the driver to proceed. Somerset
had thus the mortification of actually meeting the eye of a large number of
lodging-seekers; and though he hastened to withdraw his pipe, and to
compose his features to an air of invitation, he was never rewarded by so much
as an inquiry. “Can there,” he thought, “be anything repellent in myself?” But
a candid examination in one of the pier-glasses of the drawing-room led him to
dismiss the fear.

Something, however, was amiss. His vast and accurate calculations on the
fly-leaves of books, or on the backs of playbills, appeared to have been an idle
sacrifice of time. By these, he had variously computed the weekly takings of
the house, from sums as modest as five-and-twenty-shillings, up to the more
majestic figure of a hundred pounds; and yet, in despite of the very elements
of arithmetic, here he was making literally nothing.

This incongruity impressed him deeply and occupied his thoughtful leisure
on the balcony; and at last it seemed to him that he had detected the error of
his method. “This,” he reflected, “is an age of generous display: the age of the
sandwich-man, of Griffiths, of Pears’ legendary soap, and of Eno’s fruit salt
which, by sheer brass and notoriety, and the most disgusting pictures I ever
remember to have seen, has overlaid that comforter of my childhood,
Lamplough’s pyretic saline. Lamplough was genteel, Eno was omnipresent;
Lamplough was trite, Eno original and abominably vulgar; and here have I, a
man of some pretensions to knowledge of the world, contented myself with
half a sheet of note-paper, a few cold words which do not directly address the
imagination, and the adornment (if adornment it may be called) of four red
wafers! Am I, then, to sink with Lamplough, or to soar with Eno? Am I to
adopt that modesty which is doubtless becoming in a duke? or to take hold of
the red facts of life with the emphasis of the tradesman and the poet?”

Pursuant upon these meditations, he procured several sheets of the very

largest size of drawing-paper; and laying forth his paints, proceeded to
compose an ensign that might aĴract the eye and at the same time, in his own
phrase, directly address the imagination of the passenger. Something taking in
the way of colour, a good, savoury choice of words, and a realistic design
seĴing forth the life a lodger might expect to lead within the walls of that
palace of delight: these, he perceived, must be the elements of his
advertisement. It was possible, upon the one hand, to depict the sober
pleasures of domestic life, the evening fire, blond-headed urchins, and the
hissing urn; but on the other, it was possible (and he almost felt as if it were
more suited to his muse) to set forth the charms of an existence somewhat
wider in its range, or, boldly say, the paradise of the Mohammedan. So long did
the artist waver between these two views, that, before he arrived at a
conclusion, he had finally conceived and completed both designs. With the
proverbially tender heart of the parent, he found himself unable to sacrifice
either of these offspring of his art; and decided to expose them on alternate
days. “In this way,” he thought, “I shall address myself indifferently to all
classes of the world.”

The tossing of a penny decided the only remaining point; and the more
imaginative canvas received the suffrages of fortune and appeared first in the
window of the mansion. It was of a high fancy, the legend eloquently writ, the
scheme of colour taking and bold; and but for the imperfection of the artist’s
drawing, it might have been taken for a model of its kind. As it was, however,
when viewed from his favourite point against the garden railings, and with
some touch of distance, it caused a pleasurable rising of the artist’s heart. “I
have thrown away,” he ejaculated, “an invaluable motive; and this shall be the
subject of my first Academy picture.”

The fate of neither of these works was equal to its merit. A crowd would
certainly, from time to time, collect before the area-railings; but they came to
jeer and not to speculate; and those who pushed their inquiries further, were
too plainly animated by the spirit of derision. The racier of the two cartoons
displayed, indeed, no symptom of aĴractive merit; and though it had a certain
share of that success called scandalous, failed uĴerly of its effect. On the day,
however, of the second appearance of the companion work, a real inquirer did
actually present himself before the eyes of Somerset.

This was a gentlemanly man, with some marks of recent merriment, and his
voice under inadequate control.

“I beg your pardon,” said he, “but what is the meaning of your
extraordinary bill?”

“I beg yours,” returned Somerset hotly. “Its meaning is sufficiently explicit.”

And being now, from dire experience, fearful of ridicule, he was preparing to
close the door, when the gentleman thrust his cane into the aperture.

“Not so fast, I beg of you,” said he. “If you really let apartments, here is a
possible tenant at your door; and nothing would give me greater pleasure than
to see the accommodation and to learn your terms.”

His heart joyously beating, Somerset admiĴed the visitor, showed him over
the various apartments, and, with some return of his persuasive eloquence,
expounded their aĴractions. The gentleman was particularly pleased by the
elegant proportions of the drawing-room.

“This,” he said, “would suit me very well. What, may I ask, would be your
terms a week, for this floor and the one above it?”

“I was thinking,” returned Somerset, “of a hundred pounds.”

“Surely not,” exclaimed the gentleman.

“Well, then,” returned Somerset, “fiĞy.”

The gentleman regarded him with an air of some amazement. “You seem to
be strangely elastic in your demands,” said he. “What if I were to proceed on
your own principle of division, and offer twenty-five?”

“Done!” cried Somerset; and then, overcome by a sudden embarrassment,

“you see,” he added apologetically, “it is all found money for me.”

“Really?” said the stranger, looking at him all the while with growing
wonder. “Without extras, then?”

“I—I suppose so,” stammered the keeper of the lodging-house.

“Service included?” pursued the gentleman.

“Service?” cried Somerset. “Do you mean that you expect me to empty your
slops?”

The gentleman regarded him with a very friendly interest. “My dear fellow,”
said he, “if you take my advice, you will give up this business.” And thereupon
he resumed his hat and took himself away.

This smarting disappointment produced a strong effect on the artist of the

cartoons; and he began with shame to eat up his rosier illusions. First one and
then the other of his great works was condemned, withdrawn from exhibition,
and relegated, as a mere wall-picture, to the decoration of the dining-room.
Their place was taken by a replica of the original watered announcement, to
which, in particularly large leĴers, he had added the pithy rubric: “No service.”
Meanwhile he had fallen into something as nearly bordering on low spirits as
was consistent with his disposition; depressed, at once by the failure of his
scheme, the laughable turn of his late interview, and the judicial blindness of
the public to the merit of the twin cartoons.

Perhaps a week had passed before he was again startled by the note of the
knocker. A gentleman of a somewhat foreign and somewhat military air, yet
closely shaven and wearing a soĞ hat, desired in the politest terms to visit the
apartments. He had (he explained) a friend, a gentleman in tender health,
desirous of a sedate and solitary life, apart from interruptions and the noises of
the common lodging-house. “The unusual clause,” he continued, “in your
announcement, particularly struck me.‘This,’ I said, ’is the place for Mr. Jones.’
You are yourself, sir, a professional gentleman?” concluded the visitor, looking
keenly in Somerset’s face.

“I am an artist,” replied the young man lightly.

“And these,” observed the other, taking a side glance through the open door
of the dining-room, which they were then passing, “these are some of your
works. Very remarkable.” And he again and still more sharply peered into the
countenance of the young man.

Somerset, unable to suppress a blush, made the more haste to lead his
visitor upstairs and to display the apartments.

“Excellent,” observed the stranger, as he looked from one of the back

windows. “Is that a mews behind, sir? Very good. Well, sir: see here. My friend
will take your drawing-room floor; he will sleep in the back drawing-room; his
nurse, an excellent Irish widow, will aĴend on all his wants and occupy a
garret; he will pay you the round sum of ten dollars a week; and you, on your
part, will engage to receive no other lodger? I think that fair.”

Somerset had scarcely words in which to clothe his gratitude and joy.

“Agreed,” said the other; “and to spare you trouble, my friend will bring
some men with him to make the changes. You will find him a retiring inmate,
sir; receives but few, and rarely leaves the house except at night.”
 “Since I have been in this house,” returned Somerset, “I have myself, unless
it were to fetch beer, rarely gone abroad except in the evening. But a man,” he
added, “must have some amusement.”

An hour was then agreed on; the gentleman departed; and Somerset sat
down to compute in English money the value of the figure named. The result
of this investigation filled him with amazement and disgust; but it was now too
late; nothing remained but to endure; and he awaited the arrival of his tenant,
still trying, by various arithmetical expedients, to obtain a more favourable
quotation for the dollar. With the approach of dusk, however, his impatience
drove him once more to the front balcony. The night fell, mild and airless; the
lamps shone around the central darkness of the garden; and through the tall
grove of trees that intervened, many warmly illuminated windows on the
farther side of the square told their tale of white napery, choice wine, and
genial hospitality. The stars were already thickening overhead, when the young
man’s eyes alighted on a procession of three four-wheelers, coasting round the
garden railing and bound for the Superfluous Mansion. They were laden with
formidable boxes; moved in a military order, one following another; and, by the
extreme slowness of their advance, inspired Somerset with the most serious
ideas of his tenant’s malady.

By the time he had the door open, the cabs had drawn up beside the
pavement; and from the two first, there had alighted the military gentleman of
the morning and two very stalwart porters. These proceeded instantly to take
possession of the house; with their own hands, and firmly rejecting Somerset’s
assistance, they carried in the various crates and boxes; with their own hands
dismounted and transferred to the back drawing-room the bed in which the
tenant was to sleep; and it was not until the bustle of arrival had subsided, and
the arrangements were complete, that there descended, from the third of the
three vehicles, a gentleman of great stature and broad shoulders, leaning on
the shoulder of a woman in a widow’s dress, and himself covered by a long
cloak and muffled in a coloured comforter.

Somerset had but a glimpse of him in passing; he was soon shut into the
back drawing-room; the other men departed; silence redescended on the
house; and had not the nurse appeared a liĴle before half-past ten, and, with a
strong brogue, asked if there were a decent public-house in the
neighbourhood, Somerset might have still supposed himself to be alone in the
Superfluous Mansion.

Day followed day; and still the young man had never come by speech or
sight of his mysterious lodger. The doors of the drawing-room flat were never
open; and although Somerset could hear him moving to and fro, the tall man
had never quiĴed the privacy of his apartments. Visitors, indeed, arrived;
sometimes in the dusk, sometimes at intempestuous hours of night or morning;
men, for the most part; some meanly aĴired, some decently; some loud, some
cringing; and yet all, in the eyes of Somerset, displeasing. A certain air of fear
and secrecy was common to them all; they were all voluble, he thought, and ill
at ease; even the military gentleman proved, on a closer inspection, to be no
gentleman at all; and as for the doctor who aĴended the sick man, his manners
were not suggestive of a university career. The nurse, again, was scarcely a
desirable house-fellow. Since her arrival, the fall of whisky in the young man’s
private boĴle was much accelerated; and though never communicative, she
was at times unpleasantly familiar. When asked about the patient’s health, she
would dolorously shake her head, and declare that the poor gentleman was in
a pitiful condition.

Yet somehow Somerset had early begun to entertain the notion that his
complaint was other than bodily. The ill-looking birds that gathered to the
house, the strange noises that sounded from the drawing-room in the dead
hours of night, the careless aĴendance and intemperate habits of the nurse,
the entire absence of correspondence, the entire seclusion of Mr. Jones
himself, whose face, up to that hour, he could not have sworn to in a court of
justice—all weighed unpleasantly upon the young man’s mind. A sense of
something evil, irregular and underhand, haunted and depressed him; and this
uneasy sentiment was the more firmly rooted in his mind, when, in the fulness
of time, he had an opportunity of observing the features of his tenant. It fell in
this way. The young landlord was awakened about four in the morning by a
noise in the hall. Leaping to his feet, and opening the door of the library, he
saw the tall man, candle in hand, in earnest conversation with the gentleman
who had taken the rooms. The faces of both were strongly illuminated; and in
that of his tenant Somerset could perceive none of the marks of disease, but
every sign of health, energy, and resolution. While he was still looking, the
visitor took his departure; and the invalid, having carefully fastened the front
door, sprang upstairs without a trace of lassitude.

That night upon his pillow, Somerset began to kindle once more into the hot
fit of the detective fever; and the next morning resumed the practice of his art
with careless hand and an abstracted mind. The day was destined to be fertile
in surprises; nor had he long been seated at the easel ere the first of these
occurred. A cab laden with baggage drew up before the door; and Mrs.
Luxmore in person rapidly mounted the steps and began to pound upon the
knocker. Somerset hastened to aĴend the summons.

“My dear fellow,” she said, with the utmost gaiety, “here I come dropping
from the moon. I am delighted to find you faithful; and I have no doubt you
will be equally pleased to be restored to liberty.”
 Somerset could find no words, whether of protest or welcome; and the
spirited old lady pushed briskly by him, and paused on the threshold of the
dining-room. The sight that met her eyes was one well calculated to inspire
astonishment. The mantelpiece was arrayed with saucepans and empty boĴles;
on the fire some chops were frying; the floor was liĴered from end to end with
books, clothes, walking-canes, and the materials of the painter’s craĞ; but what
far outstripped the other wonders of the place was the corner which had been
arranged for the study of still-life. This formed a sort of rockery; conspicuous
upon which, according to the principles of the art of composition, a cabbage
was relieved against a copper keĴle, and both contrasted with the mail of a
boiled lobster.

“My gracious goodness!” cried the lady of the house; and then, turning in
wrath on the young man, “From what rank in life are you sprung?” she
demanded. “You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the astonishing
evidences before me, I should say you can only be a green-grocer’s man. Pray,
gather up your vegetables, and let me see no more of you.”

“Madam,” babbled Somerset, “you promised me a month’s warning.”

“That was under a misapprehension,” returned the old lady. “I now give you
warning to leave at once.”

“Madam,” said the young man, “I wish I could; and indeed, as far as I am
concerned, it might be done. But then, my lodger!”

“Your lodger?” echoed Mrs. Luxmore.

“My lodger: why should I deny it?” returned Somerset. “He is only by the
week.”

The old lady sat down upon a chair. “You have a lodger?—you?” she cried.
“And pray, how did you get him?”

“By advertisement,” replied the young man. “O madam, I have not lived
unobservantly. I adopted“—his eyes involuntarily shiĞed to the cartoons—“I
adopted every method.”

Her eyes had followed his; for the first time in Somerset’s experience, she
produced a double eyeglass; and as soon as the full merit of the works had
flashed upon her, she gave way to peal aĞer peal of her trilling and soprano
laughter.

“Oh, I think you are perfectly delicious!” she cried. “I do hope you had them
in the window. M’Pherson,” she continued, crying to her maid, who had been
all this time grimly waiting in the hall, “I lunch with Mr. Somerset. Take the
cellar key and bring some wine.”
 In this gay humour she continued throughout the luncheon; presented
Somerset with a couple of dozen of wine, which she made M’Pherson bring
up from the cellar—“as a present, my dear,” she said, with another burst of
tearful merriment, “for your charming pictures, which you must be sure to
leave me when you go“; and finally, protesting that she dared not spoil the
absurdest houseful of madmen in the whole of London, departed (as she
vaguely phrased it) for the continent of Europe.

She was no sooner gone than Somerset encountered in the corridor the Irish
nurse; sober, to all appearance, and yet a prey to singularly strong emotion. It
was made to appear, from her account, that Mr. Jones had already suffered
acutely in his health from Mrs. Luxmore’s visit, and that nothing short of a full
explanation could allay the invalid’s uneasiness. Somerset, somewhat staring,
told what he thought fit of the affair.

“Is that all?” cried the woman. “As God sees you, is that all?”

“My good woman,” said the young man, “I have no idea what you can be
driving at. Suppose the lady were my friend’s wife, suppose she were my fairy
godmother, suppose she were the Queen of Portugal; and how should that
affect yourself or Mr. Jones?”

“Blessed Mary!” cried the nurse, “it’s he that will be glad to hear it!”

And immediately she fled upstairs.

Somerset, on his part, returned to the dining-room, and, with a very

thoughtful brow and ruminating many theories, disposed of the remainder of
the boĴle. It was port; and port is a wine, sole among its equals and superiors,
that can in some degree support the competition of tobacco. Sipping, smoking,
and theorising, Somerset moved on from suspicion to suspicion, from resolve
to resolve, still growing braver and rosier as the boĴle ebbed. He was a sceptic,
none prouder of the name; he had no horror at command, whether for crimes
or vices, but beheld and embraced the world, with an immoral approbation,
the frequent consequence of youth and health. At the same time, he felt
convinced that he dwelt under the same roof with secret malefactors; and the
unregenerate instinct of the chase impelled him to severity. The boĴle had run
low; the summer sun had finally withdrawn; and at the same moment, night
and the pangs of hunger recalled him from his dreams.

He went forth, and dined in the Criterion: a dinner in consonance, not so

much with his purse, as with the admirable wine he had discussed. What with
one thing and another, it was long past midnight when he returned home. A
cab was at the door; and entering the hall, Somerset found himself face to face
with one of the most regular of the few who visited Mr. Jones: a man of
powerful figure, strong lineaments, and a chin-beard in the American fashion.
This person was carrying on one shoulder a black portmanteau, seemingly of
considerable weight. That he should find a visitor removing baggage in the
dead of night, recalled some odd stories to the young man’s memory; he had
heard of lodgers who thus gradually drained away, not only their own effects,
but the very furniture and fiĴings of the house that sheltered them; and now,
in a mood between pleasantry and suspicion, and aping the manner of a
drunkard, he roughly bumped against the man with the chin-beard and
knocked the portmanteau from his shoulder to the floor. With a face struck
suddenly as white as paper, the man with the chin-beard called lamentably on
the name of his Maker, and fell in a mere heap on the mat at the foot of the
stairs. At the same time, though only for a single instant, the heads of the sick
lodger and the Irish nurse popped out like rabbits over the banisters of the first
floor; and on both the same scare and pallor were apparent.

The sight of this incredible emotion turned Somerset to stone, and he

continued speechless, while the man gathered himself together, and, with the
help of the hand-rail and audibly thanking God, scrambled once more upon
his feet.

“What in Heaven’s name ails you?” gasped the young man as soon as he
could find words and uĴerance.

“Have you a drop of brandy?” returned the other. “I am sick.”

Somerset administered two drams, one aĞer the other, to the man with the
chin-beard; who then, somewhat restored, began to confound himself in
apologies for what he called his miserable nervousness, the result, he said, of a
long course of dumb ague; and having taken leave with a hand that still
sweated and trembled, he gingerly resumed his burthen and departed.

Somerset retired to bed but not to sleep. What, he asked himself, had been
the contents of the black portmanteau? Stolen goods? the carcass of one
murdered? or—and at the thought he sat upright in bed—an infernal
machine? He took a solemn vow that he would set these doubts at rest; and,
with the next morning, installed himself beside the dining-room window,
vigilant with eye and ear, to await and profit by the earliest opportunity.

The hours went heavily by. Within the house there was no circumstance of
novelty; unless it might be that the nurse more frequently made liĴle journeys
round the corner of the square, and before aĞernoon was somewhat loose of
speech and gait. A liĴle aĞer six, however, there came round the corner of the
gardens a very handsome and elegantly dressed young woman, who paused a
liĴle way off, and for some time, and with frequent sighs, contemplated the
front of the Superfluous Mansion. It was not the first time that she had thus
stood afar and looked upon it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden;
and the young man had already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of
her carriage, and had already been the buĴ of a chance arrow from her eye.
He hailed her coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a liĴle nearer to
the window to enjoy the sight. What was his surprise, however, when, as if
with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted the steps, and tapped discreetly
at the door! He made haste to get before the Irish nurse, who was not
improbably asleep, and had the satisfaction to receive this gracious visitor in
person.

She inquired for Mr. Jones; and then, without transition, asked the young
man if he were the person of the house (and at the words, he thought he could
perceive her to be smiling), “because,” she added, “if you are, I should like to
see some of the other rooms.”

Somerset told her he was under an engagement to receive no other lodgers;

but she assured him that would be no maĴer, as these were friends of Mr.
Jones’s. “And,” she continued, moving suddenly to the dining-room door, “let
us begin here.” Somerset was too late to prevent her entering, and perhaps
lacked the courage to essay. “Ah!” she cried, “how changed it is!”

“Madam,” cried the young man, “since your entrance, it is I who have the
right to say so.”

She received this inane compliment with a demure and conscious droop of
the eyelids, and gracefully steering her dress among the mingled liĴer, now
with a smile, now with a sigh, reviewed the wonders of the two apartments.
She gazed upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes, and a heightened colour,
and, in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed a high opinion of their merits.
She praised the effective disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of
which Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she fairly broke
forth in admiration. “How simple and manly!” she cried: “none of that
effeminacy of neatness, which is so detestable in a man!” Hard upon this,
telling him, before he had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and
would trouble him no further, she took her leave with an engaging smile, and
ascended the staircase alone.

For more than an hour the young lady remained closeted with Mr. Jones;
and at the end of that time, the night being now come completely, they leĞ the
house in company. This was the first time since the arrival of his lodger that
Somerset had found himself alone with the Irish widow; and without the loss
of any more time than was required by decency, he stepped to the foot of the
stairs and hailed her by her name. She came instantly, wreathed in weak smiles
and with a nodding head; and when the young man politely offered to
introduce her to the treasures of his art, she swore that nothing could afford
her greater pleasure, for, though she had never crossed the threshold, she had
frequently observed his beautiful pictures through the door. On entering the
dining-room, the sight of a boĴle and two glasses prepared her to be a gentle
critic; and as soon as the pictures had been viewed and praised, she was easily
persuaded to join the painter in a single glass. “Here,” she said, “are my
respects; and a pleasure it is, in this horrible house, to see a gentleman like
yourself, so affable and free, and a very nice painter, I am sure.” One glass so
agreeably prefaced, was sure to lead to the acceptance of a second; at the
third, Somerset was free to cease from the affectation of keeping her company;
and as for the fourth, she asked it of her own accord. “For indeed,” said she,
“what with all these clocks and chemicals, without a drop of the creature life
would be impossible entirely. And you seen yourself that even M’Guire was
glad to beg for it. And even himself, when he is downhearted with all these
cruel disappointments, though as temperate a man as any child, will be
sometimes crying for a glass of it. And I’ll thank you for a thimbleful to seĴle
what I got.” Soon aĞer, she began with tears to narrate the deathbed
dispositions and lament the trifling assets of her husband. Then she declared
she heard “the master” calling her, rose to her feet, made but one lurch of it
into the still-life rockery, and with her head upon the lobster, fell into
stertorous slumbers.

Somerset mounted at once to the first story, and opened the door of the
drawing-room, which was brilliantly lit by several lamps. It was a great
apartment; looking on the square with three tall windows, and joined by a pair
of ample folding-doors to the next room; elegant in proportion, papered in
sea-green, furnished in velvet of a delicate blue, and adorned with a majestic
mantelpiece of variously tinted marbles. Such was the room that Somerset
remembered; that which he now beheld was changed in almost every feature:
the furniture covered with a figured chintz; the walls hung with a rhubarb-
coloured paper, and diversified by the curtained recesses for no less than
seven windows. It seemed to himself that he must have entered, without
observing the transition, into the adjoining house. Presently from these more
specious changes, his eye condescended to the many curious objects with
which the floor was liĴered. Here were the locks of dismounted pistols; clocks
and clockwork in every stage of demolition, some still busily ticking, some
reduced to their dainty elements; a great company of carboys, jars, and boĴles;
a carpenter’s bench and a laboratory-table.

The back drawing-room, to which Somerset proceeded, had likewise

undergone a change. It was transformed to the exact appearance of a common
lodging-house bedroom; a bed with green curtains occupied one corner; and
the window was blocked by the regulation table and mirror. The door of a
small closet here aĴracted the young man’s aĴention; and striking a vesta, he
opened it and entered. On a table, several wigs and beards were lying spread;
about the walls hung an incongruous display of suits and overcoats; and
conspicuous among the last the young man observed a large overall of the
most costly sealskin. In a flash his mind reverted to the advertisement in the
Standard newspaper. The great height of his lodger, the disproportionate
breadth of his shoulders, and the strange particulars of his instalment, all
pointed to the same conclusion.

The vesta had now burned to his fingers; and taking the coat upon his arm,
Somerset hastily returned to the lighted drawing-room. There, with a mixture
of fear and admiration, he pored upon its goodly proportions and the
regularity and soĞness of the pile. The sight of a large pier-glass put another
fancy in his head. He donned the fur coat; and standing before the mirror in
an aĴitude suggestive of a Russian prince, he thrust his hands into the ample
pockets. There his fingers encountered a folded journal. He drew it out, and
recognised the type and paper of the Standard; and at the same instant his
eyes alighted on the offer of two hundred pounds. Plainly then, his lodger,
now no longer mysterious, had laid aside his coat on the very day of the
appearance of the advertisement.

He was thus standing, the tell-tale coat upon his back, the incriminating
paper in his hand, when the door opened and the tall lodger, with a firm but
somewhat pallid face, stepped into the room and closed the door again behind
him. For some time the two looked upon each other in perfect silence; then
Mr. Jones moved forward to the table, took a seat, and, still without once
changing the direction of his eyes, addressed the young man.

“You are right,” he said. “It is for me the blood money is offered. And now
what will you do?”

It was a question to which Somerset was far from being able to reply. Taken
as he was at unawares, masquerading in the man’s own coat, and surrounded
by a whole arsenal of diabolical explosives, the keeper of the lodging-house
was silenced.

“Yes,” resumed the other, “I am he. I am that man, whom with impotent
hate and fear they still hunt from den to den, from disguise to disguise. Yet, my
landlord, you have it in your power, if you be poor, to lay the basis of your
fortune; if you be unknown, to capture honour at one snatch. You have
hocussed an innocent widow; and I find you here in my apartment, for whose
use I pay you in stamped money, searching my wardrobe, and your
hand—shame, sir!—your hand in my very pocket. You can now complete the
cycle of your ignominious acts, by what will be at once the simplest, the safest,
and the most remunerative.” The speaker paused as if to emphasise his words;
and then, with a great change of tone and manner, thus resumed: “And yet,
sir, when I look upon your face, I feel certain that I cannot be deceived: certain
that in spite of all, I have the honour and pleasure of speaking to a gentleman.
Take off my coat, sir—which but cumbers you. Divest yourself of this
confusion: that which is but thought upon, thank God, need be no burthen to
the conscience; we have all harboured guilty thoughts; and if it flashed into
your mind to sell my flesh and blood, my anguish in the dock, and the sweat of
my death agony—it was a thought, dear sir, you were as incapable of acting on,
as I of any further question of your honour.” At these words the speaker, with
a very open, smiling countenance, like a forgiving father, offered Somerset his
hand.

It was not in the young man’s nature to refuse forgiveness or dissect

generosity. He instantly, and almost without thought, accepted the proffered
grasp.

“And now,” resumed the lodger, “now that I hold in mine your loyal hand, I
lay by my apprehensions, I dismiss suspicion, I go further—by an effort of will,
I banish the memory of what is past. How you came here, I care not: enough
that you are here—as my guest. Sit ye down; and let us, with your good
permission, improve acquaintance over a glass of excellent whisky.”

So speaking, he produced glasses and a boĴle; and the pair pledged each
other in silence.

“Confess,” observed the smiling host, “you were surprised at the

appearance of the room.”

“I was indeed,” said Somerset; “nor can I imagine the purpose of these
changes.”

“These,” replied the conspirator, “are the devices by which I continue to

exist. Conceive me now, accused before one of your unjust tribunals; conceive
the various witnesses appearing, and the singular variety of their reports! One
will have visited me in this drawing-room as it originally stood; a second finds
it as it is to-night; and to-morrow or next day, all may have been changed. If
you love romance (as artists do), few lives are more romantic than that of the
obscure individual now addressing you. Obscure yet famous. Mine is an
anonymous, infernal glory. By infamous means, I work towards my bright
purpose. I found the liberty and peace of a poor country desperately abused;
the future smiles upon that land; yet, in the meantime, I lead the existence of a
hunted brute, work towards appalling ends, and practise hell’s dexterities.”

Somerset, glass in hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before him, and
listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment. He looked
him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks of education;
and wondered the more profoundly.

“Sir,” he said—“for I know not whether I should still address you as Mr.
Jones—”

“Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot, Henderland, by all

or any of these you may address me,” said the ploĴer; “for all I have at some
time borne. Yet that which I most prize, that which is most feared, hated, and
obeyed, is not a name to be found in your directories; it is not a name current
in post-offices or banks; and indeed, like the celebrated clan M’Gregor, I may
justly describe myself as being nameless by day. But,” he continued, rising to
his feet, “by night, and among my desperate followers, I am the redoubted
Zero.”

Somerset was unacquainted with the name; but he politely expressed

surprise and gratification. “I am to understand,” he continued, “that, under
this alias, you follow the profession of a dynamiter?”3

The ploĴer had resumed his seat and now replenished the glasses.

“I do,” he said. “In this dark period of time, a star—the star of

dynamite—has risen for the oppressed; and among those who practise its use,
so thick beset with dangers and aĴended by such incredible difficulties and
disappointments, few have been more assiduous, and not many—” He
paused, and a shade of embarrassment appeared upon his face—“not many
have been more successful than myself.”

“I can imagine,” observed Somerset, “that, from the sweeping consequences

looked for, the career is not devoid of interest. You have, besides, some of the
entertainment of the game of hide-and-seek. But it would still seem to me—I
speak as a layman—that nothing could be simpler or safer than to deposit an
infernal machine and retire to an adjacent county to await the painful
consequences.”

“You speak, indeed,” returned the ploĴer, with some evidence of warmth,
“you speak, indeed, most ignorantly. Do you make nothing, then, of such a
peril as we share this moment? Do you think it nothing to occupy a house like
this one, mined, menaced, and, in a word, literally toĴering to its fall?”

“Good God!” ejaculated Somerset.

“And when you speak of ease,” pursued Zero, “in this age of scientific
studies, you fill me with surprise. Are you not aware that chemicals are
proverbially fickle as woman, and clockwork as capricious as the very devil? Do
you see upon my brow these furrows of anxiety? do you observe the silver
threads that mingle with my hair? Clockwork, clockwork has stamped them on
my brow—chemicals have sprinkled them upon my locks! No, Mr. Somerset,”
he resumed, aĞer a moment’s pause, his voice still quivering with sensibility,
“you must not suppose the dynamiter’s life to be all gold. On the contrary: you
cannot picture to yourself the bloodshot vigils and the staggering
disappointments of a life like mine. I have toiled (let us say) for months, up
early and down late; my bag is ready, my clock set; a daring agent has hurried
with white face to deposit the instrument of ruin; we await the fall of England,
the massacre of thousands, the yell of fear and execration; and lo! a snap like
that of a child’s pistol, an offensive smell, and the entire loss of so much time
and plant! If,” he concluded musingly, “we had been merely able to recover
the lost bags, I believe, with but a touch or two, I could have remedied the
peccant engine. But what with the loss of plant and the almost insuperable
scientific difficulties of the task, our friends in France are almost ready to
desert the chosen medium. They propose, instead, to break up the drainage
system of cities and sweep off whole populations with the devastating typhoid
pestilence: a tempting and a scientific project: a process, indiscriminate indeed,
but of idyllical simplicity. I recognise its elegance; but, sir, I have something of
the poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune. And, for my small
part, I shall remain devoted to that more emphatic, more striking, and (if you
please) more popular method of the explosive bomb. Yes,” he cried, with
unshaken hope, “I will still continue and, I feel it in my bosom, I shall yet
succeed.”

“Two things I remark,” said Somerset. “The first somewhat staggers me.
Have you, then—in all this course of life, which you have sketched so
vividly—have you not once succeeded?”

“Pardon me,” said Zero. “I have had one success. You behold in me the
author of the outrage of Red Lion Court.”

“But if I remember right,” objected Somerset, “the thing was a fiasco. A

scavenger’s barrow and some copies of the Weekly Budget—these were the
only victims.”

“You will pardon me again,” returned Zero, with positive asperity: “a child
was injured.”

“And that fitly brings me to my second point,” said Somerset. “For I

observed you to employ the word‘indiscriminate.’ Now, surely, a scavenger’s
barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the very acme and top
pin-point of indiscriminate and, pardon me, of ineffectual reprisal.”

“Did I employ the word?” asked Zero. “Well, I will not defend it. But for
efficiency, you touch on graver maĴers; and before entering upon so vast a
subject, permit me once more to fill our glasses. Disputation is dry work,” he
added, with a charming gaiety of manner.

Once more accordingly the pair pledged each other in a stalwart grog; and
Zero, leaning back with an air of some complacency, proceeded more largely to
develop his opinions.

“The indiscriminate?” he began. “War, my dear sir, is indiscriminate. War

spares not the child; it spares not the barrow of the harmless scavenger. No
more,” he concluded, beaming, “no more do I. Whatever may strike fear,
whatever may confound or paralyse the activities of the guilty nation, barrow
or child, imperial Parliament or excursion steamer, is welcome to my simple
plans. You are not,” he inquired, with a shade of sympathetic interest, “you are
not, I trust, a believer?”

“Sir, I believe in nothing,” said the young man.

“You are then,” replied Zero, “in a position to grasp my argument. We agree
that humanity is the object, the glorious triumph of humanity; and being
pledged to labour for that end, and face to face with the banded opposition of
kings, parliaments, churches, and the members of the force, who am I—who
are we, dear sir—to affect a nicety about the tools employed? You might,
perhaps, expect us to aĴack the Queen, the sinister Gladstone, the rigid Derby,
or the dexterous Granville; but there you would be in error. Our appeal is to
the body of the people; it is these that we would touch and interest. Now, sir,
have you observed the English housemaid?”

“I should think I had,” cried Somerset.

“From a man of taste and a votary of art, I had expected it,” returned the
conspirator politely. “A type apart; a very charming figure; and thoroughly
adapted to our ends. The neat cap, the clean print, the comely person, the
engaging manner; her position between classes, parents in one, employers in
another; the probability that she will have at least one sweetheart, whose
feelings we shall address:—yes, I have a leaning—call it, if you will, a
weakness—for the housemaid. Not that I would be understood to despise the
nurse. For the child is a very interesting feature: I have long since marked out
the child as the sensitive point in society.” He wagged his head, with a wise,
pensive smile. “And talking, sir, of children and of the perils of our trade, let
me now narrate to you a liĴle incident of an explosive bomb, that fell out some
weeks ago under my own observation. It fell out thus.”

And Zero leaning back in his chair narrated the following simple tale.

The Arabian author of the original has here a long passage conceived in
a style too oriental for the English reader. We subjoin a specimen, and it
seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or verse: “Any
writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a never-resting fightard“;
and he goes on (if we correctly gather his meaning) to object to such
elegant and obviously correct spellings as lamp-lightard, corn-dealard,
 apple-filchard (clearly justified by the parallel—pilchard), and opera-
dançard. “Dynamitist,” he adds, “I could understand.”

ZERO’S TALE OF THE EXPLOSIVE BOMB4

I DINED by appointment with one of our most trusted agents, in a private

chamber at St. James’s Hall. You have seen the man: it was M’Guire, the most
chivalrous of creatures, but not himself expert in our contrivances. Hence the
necessity of our meeting; for I need not remind you what enormous issues
depend upon the nice adjustment of the engine. I set our liĴle petard for half
an hour, the scene of action being hard by; and, the beĴer to avert miscarriage,
employed a device, a recent invention of my own, by which the opening of the
Gladstone bag in which the bomb was carried should instantly determine the
explosion. M’Guire was somewhat dashed by this arrangement, which was
new to him: and pointed out, with excellent, clear good sense, that should he
be arrested, it would probably involve him in the fall of our opponents. But I
was not to be moved, made a strong appeal to his patriotism, gave him a good
glass of whisky, and despatched him on his glorious errand.

Our objective was the effigy of Shakespeare in Leicester Square: a spot, I

think, admirably chosen; not only for the sake of the dramatist, still very
foolishly claimed as a glory by the English race, in spite of his disgusting
political opinions; but from the fact that the seats in the immediate
neighbourhood are oĞen thronged by children, errand-boys, unfortunate
young ladies of the poorer class, and infirm old men—all classes making a
direct appeal to public pity, and therefore suitable with our designs. As
M’Guire drew near, his heart was inflamed by the most noble sentiment of
triumph. Never had he seen the garden so crowded; children, still stumbling in
the impotence of youth, ran to and fro, shouting and playing, round the
pedestal; an old, sick pensioner sat upon the nearest bench, a medal on his
breast, a stick with which he walked (for he was disabled by wounds) reclining
on his knee. Guilty England would thus be stabbed in the most delicate
quarters; the moment had, indeed, been well selected; and M’Guire, with a
radiant prevision of the event, drew merrily nearer. Suddenly his eye alighted
on the burly form of a policeman, standing hard by the effigy in an aĴitude of
watch. My bold companion paused; he looked about him closely; here and
there, at different points of the enclosure, other men stood or loitered,
affecting an abstraction, feigning to gaze upon the shrubs, feigning to talk,
feigning to be weary and to rest upon the benches. M’Guire was no child in
these affairs; he instantly divined one of the plots of the Machiavellian
Gladstone.

A chief difficulty with which we have to deal is a certain nervousness in the

subaltern branches of the corps; as the hour of some design draws near, these
chicken-souled conspirators appear to suffer some revulsion of intent; and
frequently despatch to the authorities, not indeed specific denunciations, but
vague anonymous warnings. But for this purely accidental circumstance,
England had long ago been an historical expression. On the receipt of such a
leĴer, the Government lays a trap for its adversaries, and surrounds the
threatened spot with hirelings. My blood sometimes boils in my veins, when I
consider the case of those who sell themselves for money in such a cause.
True, thanks to the generosity of our supporters, we patriots receive a very
comfortable stipend; I myself, of course, touch a salary which puts me quite
beyond the reach of any peddling, mercenary thoughts; M’Guire, again, ere he
joined our ranks, was on the brink of starving, and now, thank God! receives a
decent income. That is as it should be; the patriot must not be diverted from
his task by any base consideration; and the distinction between our position
and that of the police is too obvious to be stated.

Plainly, however, our Leicester Square design had been divulged; the
Government had craĞily filled the place with minions; even the pensioner was
not improbably a hireling in disguise; and our emissary, without other aid or
protection than the simple apparatus in his bag, found himself confronted by
force; brutal force; that strong hand which was a character of the ages of
oppression. Should he venture to deposit the machine, it was almost certain
that he would be observed and arrested; a cry would arise; and there was just
a fear that the police might not be present in sufficient force to protect him
from the savagery of the mob. The scheme must be delayed. He stood with his
bag on his arm, pretending to survey the front of the Alhambra, when there
flashed into his mind a thought to appal the bravest. The machine was set; at
the appointed hour, it must explode; and how, in the interval, was he to be rid
of it?

Put yourself, I beseech you, into the body of that patriot. There he was,
friendless and helpless; a man in the very flower of life, for he is not yet forty;
with long years of happiness before him; and now condemned, in one
moment, to a cruel and revolting death by dynamite! The square, he said, went
round him like a thaumatrope; he saw the Alhambra leap into the air like a
balloon; and reeled against the railing. It is probable he fainted.

When he came to himself, a constable had him by the arm.

“My God!” he cried.

 “You seem to be unwell, sir,” said the hireling.

“I feel beĴer now,” cried poor M’Guire: and with uneven steps, for the
pavement of the square seemed to lurch and reel under his footing, he fled
from the scene of this disaster. Fled? Alas, from what was he fleeing? Did he
not carry that from which he fled, along with him? and had he the wings of the
eagle, had he the swiĞness of the ocean winds, could he have been rapt into
the uĴermost quarters of the earth, how should he escape the ruin that he
carried? We have heard of living men who have been feĴered to the dead; the
grievance, soberly considered, is no more than sentimental; the case is but a
flea-bite to that of him who should be linked, like poor M’Guire, to an
explosive bomb.

A thought struck him in Green Street, like a dart through his liver: suppose it
were the hour already. He stopped as though he had been shot, and plucked
his watch out. There was a howling in his ears, as loud as a winter tempest; his
sight was now obscured as if by a cloud, now, as by a lightning flash, would
show him the very dust upon the street. But so brief were these intervals of
vision, and so violently did the watch vibrate in his hands, that it was
impossible to distinguish the numbers on the dial. He covered his eyes for a
few seconds; and in that space, it seemed to him that he had fallen to be a man
of ninety. When he looked again, the watch-plate had grown legible: he had
twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, and no plan!

Green Street, at that time, was very empty; and he now observed a liĴle girl
of about six drawing near to him and, as she came, kicking in front of her, as
children will, a piece of wood. She sang, too; and something in her accent
recalling him to the past produced a sudden clearness in his mind. Here was a
God-sent opportunity!

“My dear,” said he, “would you like a present of a preĴy bag?”

The child cried aloud with joy and put out her hands to take it. She had
looked first at the bag, like a true child; but most unfortunately, before she had
yet received the fatal giĞ, her eyes fell directly on M’Guire; and no sooner had
she seen the poor gentleman’s face than she screamed out and leaped
backward, as though she had seen the devil. Almost at the same moment a
woman appeared upon the threshold of a neighbouring shop, and called upon
the child in anger. “Come here, colleen,” she said, “and don’t be plaguing the
poor old gentleman!” With that she re-entered the house, and the child
followed her, sobbing aloud.

With the loss of this hope M’Guire’s reason swooned within him. When next
he awoke to consciousness, he was standing before St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields,
wavering like a drunken man; the passers-by regarded him with eyes in which
he read, as in a glass, an image of the terror and horror that dwelt within his
own.

“I am afraid you are very ill, sir,” observed a woman, stopping and gazing
hard in his face. “Can I do anything to help you?”

“Ill?” said M’Guire. “O God!” And then, recovering some shadow of his
self-command, “Chronic, madam,” said he: “a long course of the dumb ague.
But since you are so compassionate—an errand that I lack the strength to carry
out,” he gasped—“this bag to Portman Square. O compassionate woman, as
you hope to be saved, as you are a mother, in the name of your babes that wait
to welcome you at home, oh, take this bag to Portman Square! I have a mother,
too,” he added, with a broken voice. “Number 19 Portman Square.”

I suppose he had expressed himself with too much energy of voice; for the
woman was plainly taken with a certain fear of him. “Poor gentleman!” said
she. “If I were you, I would go home.” And she leĞ him standing there in his
distress.

“Home!” thought M’Guire, “what a derision!” What home was there for
him, the victim of philanthropy? He thought of his old mother, of his happy
youth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion; of the possibility that he
might not be killed, that he might be cruelly mangled, crippled for life,
condemned to life-long pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely deafened.
Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter’s peril; but even waiving death, have
you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be smiĴen
suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of life, and from the voice of
friendship and love? How liĴle do we realise the sufferings of others! Even
your brutal Government, in the heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples
not to hound the patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the
hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so
horrible a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but
with the fear before it of the withering scorn of the good.

But I wander from M’Guire. From this dread glance into the past and future,
his thoughts returned at a bound upon the present. How had he wandered
there? and how long—O heavens! how long had he been about it? He pulled
out his watch; and found that but three minutes had elapsed. It seemed too
bright a thing to be believed. He glanced at the church clock; and sure enough,
it marked an hour four minutes in advance of the watch.

Of all that he endured, M’Guire declares that pang was the most desolate.
Till then, he had had one friend, one counsellor, in whom he plenarily trusted;
by whose advertisement he numbered the minutes that remained to him of
life; on whose sure testimony he could tell when the time was come to risk the
last adventure, to cast the bag away from him, and take to flight. And now in
what was he to place reliance? His watch was slow; it might be losing time; if
so, in what degree? What limit could he set to its derangement? and how
much was it possible for a watch to lose in thirty minutes? Five? ten? fiĞeen? It
might be so; already, it seemed years since he had leĞ St. James’s Hall on this
so promising enterprise; at any moment, then, the blow was to be looked for.

In the face of this new distress, the wild disorder of his pulses seĴled down;
and a broken weariness succeeded, as though he had lived for centuries and
for centuries been dead. The buildings and the people in the street became
incredibly small, and far-away, and bright; London sounded in his ears stilly,
like a whisper; and the raĴle of the cab that nearly charged him down was like
a sound from Africa. Meanwhile, he was conscious of a strange abstraction
from himself; and heard and felt his footfalls on the ground, as those of a very
old, small, debile, and tragically fortuned man, whom he sincerely pitied.

As he was thus moving forward past the National Gallery, in a medium, it

seemed, of greater rarity and quiet than ordinary air, there slipped into his
mind the recollection of a certain entry in Whitcomb Street hard by, where he
might perhaps lay down his tragic cargo unremarked. Thither, then, he bent
his steps, seeming, as he went, to float above the pavement; and there, in the
mouth of the entry, he found a man in a sleeved waistcoat, gravely chewing a
straw. He passed him by, and twice patrolled the entry, scouting for the barest
chance; but the man had faced about and continued to observe him curiously.

Another hope was gone. M’Guire re-issued from the entry, still followed by
the wondering eyes of the man in the sleeved waistcoat. He once more
consulted his watch: there were but fourteen minutes leĞ to him. At that, it
seemed as if a sudden, genial heat were spread about his brain; for a second or
two, he saw the world as red as blood; and thereaĞer entered into a complete
possession of himself, with an incredible cheerfulness of spirits, prompting him
to sing and chuckle as he walked. And yet this mirth seemed to belong to
things external; and within, like a black and leaden-heavy kernel, he was
conscious of the weight upon his soul.

“I care for nobody, no, not I,

And nobody cares for me,”

he sang, and laughed at the appropriate burthen, so that the passengers stared
upon him on the street. And still the warmth seemed to increase and to
become more genial. What was life? he considered, and what he, M’Guire?
What even Erin, our green Erin? All seemed so incalculably liĴle that he smiled
as he looked down upon it. He would have given years, had he possessed
them, for a glass of spirits; but time failed, and he must deny himself this last
indulgence.

At the corner of the Haymarket, he very jauntily hailed a hansom cab;

jumped in; bade the fellow drive him to a part of the Embankment, which he
named; and as soon as the vehicle was in motion, concealed the bag as
completely as he could under the vantage of the apron, and once more drew
out his watch. So he rode for five interminable minutes, his heart in his mouth
at every jolt, scarce able to possess his terrors, yet fearing to wake the aĴention
of the driver by too obvious a change of plan, and willing, if possible, to leave
him time to forget the Gladstone bag.

At length, at the head of some stairs on the Embankment, he hailed; the cab
was stopped; and he alighted—with how glad a heart! He thrust his hand into
his pocket. All was now over; he had saved his life; nor that alone, but he had
engineered a striking act of dynamite; for what could be more pictorial, what
more effective, than the explosion of a hansom cab, as it sped rapidly along the
streets of London? He felt in one pocket; then in another. The most crushing
seizure of despair descended on his soul; and, struck into abject dumbness, he
stared upon the driver. He had not one penny.

“Hillo,” said the driver, “don’t seem well.”

“Lost my money,” said M’Guire, in tones so faint and strange that they
surprised his hearing.

The man looked through the trap. “I dessay,” said he: “you’ve leĞ your bag.”

M’Guire half unconsciously fetched it out; and looking on that black

continent at arm’s length, withered inwardly and felt his features sharpen as
with mortal sickness.

“This is not mine,” said he. “Your last fare must have leĞ it. You had beĴer
take it to the station.”

“Now look here,” returned the cabman: “are you off your chump? or am I?”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you what,” exclaimed M’Guire: “you take it for your
fare!”

“Oh, I dessay,” replied the driver. “Anything else? What’s in your bag? Open
it, and let me see.”

“No, no,” returned M’Guire. “O no, not that. It’s a surprise; it’s prepared
expressly: a surprise for honest cabmen.”

“No, you don’t,” said the man, alighting from his perch, and coming very
close to the unhappy patriot. “You’re either going to pay my fare, or get in
again and drive to the office.”
 It was at this supreme hour of his distress, that M’Guire spied the stout
figure of one Godall, a tobacconist of Rupert Street, drawing near along the
Embankment. The man was not unknown to him; he had bought of his wares,
and heard him quoted for the soul of liberality; and such was now the
nearness of his peril, that even at such a straw of hope he clutched with
gratitude.

“Thank God!” he cried. “Here comes a friend of mine. I’ll borrow.” And he
dashed to meet the tradesman. “Sir,” said he, “Mr. Godall, I have dealt with
you—you doubtless know my face—calamities for which I cannot blame
myself have overwhelmed me. Oh, sir, for the love of innocence, for the sake of
the bonds of humanity, and as you hope for mercy at the throne of grace, lend
me two-and-six!”

“I do not recognise your face,” replied Mr. Godall; “but I remember the cut
of your beard, which I have the misfortune to dislike. Here, sir, is a sovereign;
which I very willingly advance to you, on the single condition that you shave
your chin.”

M’Guire grasped the coin without a word; cast it to the cabman, calling out
to him to keep the change; bounded down the steps, flung the bag far forth
into the river, and fell headlong aĞer it. He was plucked from a watery grave, it
is believed, by the hands of Mr. Godall. Even as he was being hoisted dripping
to the shore, a dull and choked explosion shook the solid masonry of the
Embankment, and far out in the river a momentary fountain rose and
disappeared.

The Arabian author, with that quaint particularity of touch which our
translation usually prætermits, here registers a somewhat interesting
detail. Zero pronounced the word “boom“; and the reader, if but for the
nonce, will possibly consent to follow him.

THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (continued)

SOMERSET in vain strove to aĴach a meaning to these words. He had, in the

meanwhile, applied himself assiduously to the flagon; the ploĴer began to melt
in twain, and seemed to expand and hover on his seat; and with a vague sense
of nightmare, the young man rose unsteadily to his feet, and, refusing the
proffer of a third grog, insisted that the hour was late and he must positively
get to bed.
 “Dear me,” observed Zero, “I find you very temperate. But I will not be
oppressive. Suffice it that we are now fast friends; and, my dear landlord, au
revoir!”

So saying the ploĴer once more shook hands; and with the politest
ceremonies, and some necessary guidance, conducted the bewildered young
gentleman to the top of the stair.

Precisely how he got to bed was a point on which Somerset remained in

uĴer darkness; but the next morning when, at a blow, he started broad awake,
there fell upon his mind a perfect hurricane of horror and wonder. That he
should have suffered himself to be led into the semblance of intimacy with
such a man as his abominable lodger, appeared, in the cold light of day, a
mystery of human weakness. True, he was caught in a situation that might
have tested the aplomb of Talleyrand. That was perhaps a palliation; but it was
no excuse. For so wholesale a capitulation of principle, for such a fall into
criminal familiarity, no excuse indeed was possible; nor any remedy, but to
withdraw at once from the relation.

As soon as he was dressed, he hurried upstairs, determined on a rupture.

Zero hailed him with the warmth of an old friend.

“Come in,” he cried, “dear Mr. Somerset! Come in, sit down, and, without
ceremony, join me at my morning meal.”

“Sir,” said Somerset, “you must permit me first to disengage my honour.

Last night, I was surprised into a certain appearance of complicity; but once
for all, let me inform you that I regard you and your machinations with
unmingled horror and disgust, and I will leave no stone unturned to crush
your vile conspiracy.”

“My dear fellow,” replied Zero, with an air of some complacency, “I am well
accustomed to these human weaknesses. Disgust? I have felt it myself; it
speedily wears off. I think none the worse, I think the more of you, for this
engaging frankness. And in the meanwhile, what are you to do? You find
yourself, if I interpret rightly, in very much the same situation as Charles the
Second (possibly the least degraded of your British sovereigns) when he was
taken into the confidence of the thief. To denounce me is out of the question;
and what else can you aĴempt? No, dear Mr. Somerset, your hands are tied;
and you find yourself condemned, under pain of behaving like a cad, to be that
same charming and intellectual companion who delighted me last night.”

“At least,” cried Somerset, “I can, and do, order you to leave this house.”

“Ah!” cried the ploĴer, “but there I fail to follow you. You may, if you please,
enact the part of Judas; but if, as I suppose, you recoil from that extremity of
meanness, I am, on my side, far too intelligent to leave these lodgings, in which
I please myself exceedingly, and from which you lack the power to drive me.
No, no, dear sir; here I am, and here I propose to stay.”

“I repeat,” cried Somerset, beside himself with a sense of his own weakness,
“I repeat that I give you warning. I am master of this house; and I emphatically
give you warning.”

“A week’s warning?” said the imperturbable conspirator. “Very well: we will

talk of it a week from now. That is arranged; and, in the meanwhile, I observe
my breakfast growing cold. Do, dear Mr. Somerset, since you find yourself
condemned, for a week at least, to the society of a very interesting character,
display some of that open favour, some of that interest in life’s obscurer sides,
which stamp the character of the true artist. Hang me, if you will, to-morrow;
but to-day show yourself divested of the scruple of the burgess, and sit down
pleasantly to share my meal.”

“Man!” cried Somerset, “do you understand my sentiments?”

“Certainly,” replied Zero; “and I respect them! Would you be outdone in

such a contest? will you alone be partial? and in this nineteenth century,
cannot two gentlemen of education agree to differ on a point of politics?
Come, sir: all your hard words have leĞ me smiling; judge then, which of us is
the philosopher!”

Somerset was a young man of a very tolerant disposition and by nature

easily amenable to sophistry. He threw up his hands with a gesture of despair,
and took the seat to which the conspirator invited him. The meal was
excellent; the host not only affable, but primed with curious information. He
seemed, indeed, like one who had too long endured the torture of silence, to
exult in the most wholesale disclosures. The interest of what he had to tell was
great; his character, besides, developed step by step; and Somerset, as the time
fled, not only outgrew some of the discomfort of his false position, but began
to regard the conspirator with a familiarity that verged upon contempt. In any
circumstances, he had a singular inability to leave the society in which he
found himself; company, even if distasteful, held him captive like a limed
sparrow; and on this occasion, he suffered hour to follow hour, was easily
persuaded to sit down once more to table, and did not even aĴempt to
withdraw till, on the approach of evening, Zero, with many apologies,
dismissed his guest. His fellow-conspirators, the dynamiter handsomely
explained, as they were unacquainted with the sterling qualities of the young
man, would be alarmed at the sight of a strange face.

As soon as he was alone, Somerset fell back upon the humour of the
morning. He raged at the thought of his facility; he paced the dining-room,
forming the sternest resolutions for the future; he wrung the hand which had
been dishonoured by the touch of an assassin; and among all these whirling
thoughts, there flashed in from time to time, and ever with a chill of fear, the
thought of the confounded ingredients with which the house was stored. A
powder magazine seemed a secure smoking-room alongside of the
Superfluous Mansion.

He sought refuge in flight, in locomotion, in the flowing bowl. As long as the

bars were open, he travelled from one to another, seeking light, safety, and the
companionship of human faces; when these resources failed him, he fell back
on the belated baked-potato man; and at length, still pacing the streets, he was
goaded to fraternise with the police. Alas, with what a sense of guilt he
conversed with these guardians of the law; how gladly had he wept upon their
ample bosoms; and how the secret fluĴered to his lips and was still denied an
exit! Fatigue began at last to triumph over remorse; and about the hour of the
first milkman, he returned to the door of the mansion; looked at it with a
horrid expectation, as though it should have burst that instant into flames;
drew out his key, and when his foot already rested on the steps, once more lost
heart and fled for repose to the grisly shelter of a coffee-shop.

It was on the stroke of noon when he awoke. Dismally searching in his

pockets, he found himself reduced to half-a-crown; and, when he had paid the
price of his distasteful couch, saw himself obliged to return to the Superfluous
Mansion. He sneaked into the hall and stole on tiptoe to the cupboard where
he kept his money. Yet half a minute, he told himself, and he would be free for
days from his obseding lodger, and might decide at leisure on the course he
should pursue. But fate had otherwise designed: there came a tap at the door
and Zero entered.

“Have I caught you?” he cried, with innocent gaiety. “Dear fellow, I was
growing quite impatient.” And on the speaker’s somewhat stolid face there
came a glow of genuine affection. “I am so long unused to have a friend,” he
continued, “that I begin to be afraid I may prove jealous.” And he wrung the
hand of his landlord.

Somerset was, of all men, least fit to deal with such a greeting. To reject
these kind advances was beyond his strength. That he could not return
cordiality for cordiality was already almost more than he could carry. That
inequality between kind sentiments which, to generous characters, will always
seem to be a sort of guilt, oppressed him to the ground; and he stammered
vague and lying words.

“That is all right,” cried Zero—“that is as it should be—say no more! I had a

vague alarm; I feared you had deserted me; but I now own that fear to have
been unworthy, and apologise. To doubt of your forgiveness were to repeat my
sin. Come, then; dinner waits; join me again and tell me your adventures of the
night.”

Kindness still sealed the lips of Somerset; and he suffered himself once more
to be set down to table with his innocent and criminal acquaintance. Once
more the ploĴer plunged up to the neck in damaging disclosures: now it would
be the name and biography of an individual, now the address of some
important centre, that rose, as if by accident, upon his lips; and each word was
like another turn of the thumbscrew to his unhappy guest. Finally, the course
of Zero’s bland monologue led him to the young lady of two days ago; that
young lady, who had flashed on Somerset for so brief a while but with so
conquering a charm; and whose engaging grace, communicative eyes, and
admirable conduct of the sweeping skirt, remained imprinted on his memory.

“You saw her?” said Zero. “Beautiful, is she not? She, too, is one of ours: a
true enthusiast: nervous, perhaps, in presence of the chemicals; but in maĴers
of intrigue the very soul of skill and daring. Lake, Fonblanque, de Marly,
Valdevia, such are some of the names that she employs; her true name—but
there, perhaps, I go too far. Suffice it, that it is to her I owe my present lodging,
and, dear Somerset, the pleasure of your acquaintance. It appears she knew
the house. You see, dear fellow, I make no concealment: all that you can care
to hear, I tell you openly.”

“For God’s sake,” cried the wretched Somerset, “hold your tongue! You
cannot imagine how you torture me!”

A shade of serious discomposure crossed the open countenance of Zero.

“There are times,” he said, “when I begin to fancy that you do not like me.
Why, why, dear Somerset, this lack of cordiality? I am depressed; the
touchstone of my life draws near; and if I fail“—he gloomily nodded—“from
all the height of my ambitious schemes, I fall, dear boy, into contempt. These
are grave thoughts, and you may judge my need of your delightful company.
Innocent praĴler, you relieve the weight of my concerns. And yet ... and yet....”
The speaker pushed away his plate, and rose from table. “Follow me,” said he,
“follow me. My mood is on; I must have air, I must behold the plain of baĴle.”

So saying, he led the way hurriedly to the top flat of the mansion, and
thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded platform, sheltered at one end
by a great stalk of chimneys and occupying the actual summit of the roof. On
both sides, it bordered, without parapet or rail, on the incline of slates; and,
northward above all, commanded an extensive view of housetops, and, rising
through the smoke, the distant spires of churches.

“Here,” cried Zero, “you behold this field of city, rich, crowded, laughing
with the spoil of continents; but soon, how soon, to be laid low! Some day,
some night, from this coign of vantage, you shall perhaps be startled by the
detonation of the judgment gun—not sharp and empty like the crack of
cannon, but deep-mouthed and unctuously solemn. Instantly thereaĞer, you
shall behold the flames break forth. Ay,” he cried, stretching forth his hand,
“ay, that will be a day of retribution. Then shall the pallid constable flee side by
side with the detected thief. Blaze!” he cried, “blaze, derided city! Fall,
flatulent monarchy, fall like Dagon!”

With these words his foot slipped upon the lead; and but for Somerset’s
quickness, he had been instantly precipitated into space. Pale as a sheet, and
limp as a pocket-handkerchief, he was dragged from the edge of downfall by
one arm; helped, or rather carried, down the ladder; and deposited in safety
on the aĴic landing. Here he began to come to himself, wiped his brow, and at
length, seizing Somerset’s hand in both of his, began to uĴer his
acknowledgments.

“This seals it,” said he. “Ours is a life and death connection. You have
plucked me from the jaws of death; and if I were before aĴracted by your
character, judge now of the ardour of my gratitude and love! But I perceive I
am still greatly shaken. Lend me, I beseech you, lend me your arm as far as my
apartment.”

A dram of spirits restored the ploĴer to something of his customary

self-possession; and he was standing, glass in hand and genially convalescent,
when his eye was aĴracted by the dejection of the unfortunate young man.

“Good Heavens, dear Somerset,” he cried, “what ails you? Let me offer you
a touch of spirits.”

But Somerset had fallen below the reach of this material comfort.

“Let me be,” he said. “I am lost; you have caught me in the toils. Up to this
moment, I have lived all my life in the most reckless manner, and done exactly
what I pleased, with the most perfect innocence. And now—what am I? Are
you so blind and wooden that you do not see the loathing you inspire me with?
Is it possible you can suppose me willing to continue to exist upon such terms?
To think,” he cried, “that a young man, guilty of no fault on earth but
amiability, should find himself involved in such a damned imbroglio!” And,
placing his knuckles in his eyes, Somerset rolled upon the sofa.

“My God,” said Zero, “is this possible? And I so filled with tenderness and
interest! Can it be, dear Somerset, that you are under the empire of these
outworn scruples? or that you judge a patriot by the morality of the religious
tract? I thought you were a good agnostic.”

“Mr. Jones,” said Somerset, “it is in vain to argue. I boast myself a total
disbeliever not only in revealed religion, but in the data, method, and
conclusions of the whole of ethics. Well! what maĴers it? what signifies a form
of words? I regard you as a reptile, whom I would rejoice, whom I long, to
stamp under my heel. You would blow up others? Well then, understand: I
want, with every circumstance of infamy and agony, to blow up you!”

“Somerset, Somerset!” said Zero, turning very pale, “this is wrong; this is
very wrong. You pain, you wound me, Somerset.”

“Give me a match!” cried Somerset wildly. “Let me set fire to this

incomparable monster! Let me perish with him in his fall!”

“For God’s sake,” cried Zero, clutching hold of the young man, “for God’s
sake command yourself! We stand upon the brink; death yawns around us; a
man—a stranger in this foreign land—one whom you have called your
friend——”

“Silence!” cried Somerset, “you are no friend, no friend of mine. I look on

you with loathing, like a toad: my flesh creeps with physical repulsion; my soul
revolts against the sight of you.”

Zero burst into tears. “Alas!” he sobbed, “this snaps the last link that bound
me to humanity. My friend disowns—he insults me. I am indeed accurst.”

Somerset stood for an instant staggered by this sudden change of front. The
next moment, with a despairing gesture, he fled from the room and from the
house. The first dash of his escape carried him hard upon half way to the next
police-office; but presently began to droop; and before he reached the house
of lawful intervention, he fell once more among doubtful counsels. Was he an
agnostic? had he a right to act? Away with such nonsense, and let Zero perish!
ran his thoughts. And then again: had he not promised, had he not shaken
hands and broken bread? and that with open eyes? and if so, how could he
take action, and not forfeit honour? But honour? what was honour? A figment,
which, in the hot pursuit of crime, he ought to dash aside. Ay, but crime? A
figment, too, which his enfranchised intellect discarded. All day, he wandered
in the parks, a prey to whirling thoughts; all night, patrolled the city; and at the
peep of day he sat down by the wayside in the neighbourhood of Peckham
and biĴerly wept. His gods had fallen. He who had chosen the broad, daylit,
unencumbered paths of universal scepticism, found himself still the bondslave
of honour. He who had accepted life from a point of view as loĞy as the
predatory eagle’s, though with no design to prey; he who had clearly
recognised the common moral basis of war, of commercial competition, and of
crime; he who was prepared to help the escaping murderer or to embrace the
impenitent thief, found, to the overthrow of all his logic, that he objected to
the use of dynamite. The dawn crept among the sleeping villas and over the
smokeless fields of city; and still the unfortunate sceptic sobbed over his fall
from consistency.

At length he rose and took the rising sun to witness. “There is no question
as to fact,” he cried; “right and wrong are but figments and the shadow of a
word; but for all that, there are certain things that I cannot do, and there are
certain others that I will not stand.” Thereupon he decided to return, to make
one last effort of persuasion, and, if he could not prevail on Zero to desist from
his infernal trade, throw delicacy to the winds, give the ploĴer an hour’s start,
and denounce him to the police. Fast as he went, being winged by this
resolution, it was already well on in the morning when he came in sight of the
Superfluous Mansion. Tripping down the steps, was the young lady of the
various aliases; and he was surprised to see upon her countenance the marks
of anger and concern.

“Madam,” he began, yielding to impulse and with no clear knowledge of

what he was to add.

But at the sound of his voice she seemed to experience a shock of fear or
horror; started back; lowered her veil with a sudden movement; and fled,
without turning, from the square.

Here, then, we step aside a moment from following the fortunes of

Somerset, and proceed to relate the strange and romantic episode of THE
BROWN BOX.

DESBOROUGH’S ADVENTURE

THE BROWN BOX

MR. HARRY DESBOROUGH lodged in the fine and grave old quarter of
Bloomsbury, roared about on every side by the high tides of London, but itself
rejoicing in romantic silences and city peace. It was in Queen Square that he
had pitched his tent, next door to the Children’s Hospital, on your leĞ hand as
you go north: Queen Square, sacred to humane and liberal arts, whence homes
were made beautiful, where the poor were taught, where the sparrows were
plentiful and loud, and where groups of patient liĴle ones would hover all day
long before the hospital, if by chance they might kiss their hand or speak a
word to their sick brother at the window. Desborough’s room was on the first
floor and fronted to the square; but he enjoyed besides, a right by which he
oĞen profited, to sit and smoke upon a terrace at the back, which looked down
upon a fine forest of back gardens, and was in turn commanded by the
windows of an empty room.

On the aĞernoon of a warm day, Desborough sauntered forth upon this

terrace, somewhat out of hope and heart, for he had been now some weeks on
the vain quest of situations, and prepared for melancholy and tobacco. Here,
at least, he told himself that he would be alone; for, like most youths who are
neither rich, nor wiĴy, nor successful, he rather shunned than courted the
society of other men. Even as he expressed the thought, his eye alighted on the
window of the room that looked upon the terrace; and, to his surprise and
annoyance, he beheld it curtained with a silken hanging. It was like his luck, he
thought; his privacy was gone, he could no longer brood and sigh unwatched,
he could no longer suffer his discouragement to find a vent in words or soothe
himself with sentimental whistling; and in the irritation of the moment, he
struck his pipe upon the rail with unnecessary force. It was an old, sweet,
seasoned briar-root, glossy and dark with long employment, and justly dear to
his fancy. What, then, was his chagrin, when the head snapped from the stem,
leaped airily in space, and fell and disappeared among the lilacs of the garden?

He threw himself savagely into the garden chair, pulled out the story-paper
which he had brought with him to read, tore off a fragment of the last sheet,
which contains only the answers to correspondents, and set himself to roll a
cigareĴe. He was no master of the art; again and again, the paper broke
between his fingers and the tobacco showered upon the ground; and he was
already on the point of angry resignation, when the window swung slowly
inward, the silken curtain was thrust aside, and a lady somewhat strangely
aĴired stepped forth upon the terrace.

“Señorito,” said she, and there was a rich thrill in her voice, like an organ
note, “Señorito, you are in difficulties. Suffer me to come to your assistance.”

With the words, she took the paper and tobacco from his unresisting hands;
and with a facility that, in Desborough’s eyes, seemed magical, rolled and
presented him a cigareĴe. He took it, still seated, still without a word; staring
with all his eyes upon that apparition. Her face was warm and rich in colour; in
shape, it was that piquant triangle, so innocently sly, so saucily aĴractive, so
rare in our more northern climates; her eyes were large, starry, and visited by
changing lights; her hair was partly covered by a lace mantilla, through which
her arms, bare to the shoulder, gleamed white; her figure, full and soĞ in all
the womanly contours, was yet alive and active, light with excess of life, and
slender by grace of some divine proportion.

“You do not like my cigarrito, Señor?” she asked. “Yet it is beĴer made than
yours.” At that she laughed, and her laughter trilled in his ear like music; but
the next moment her face fell. “I see,” she cried. “It is my manner that repels
you. I am too constrained, too cold. I am not,” she added, with a more
engaging air, “I am not the simple English maiden I appear.”

“Oh!” murmured Harry, filled with inexpressible thoughts.

“In my own dear land,” she pursued, “things are differently ordered. There,
I must own, a girl is bound by many and rigorous restrictions; liĴle is permiĴed
her; she learns to be distant, she learns to appear forbidding. But here, in free
England—oh, glorious liberty!” she cried, and threw up her arms with a
gesture of inimitable grace—“here there are no feĴers; here the woman may
dare to be herself entirely, and the men, the chivalrous men—is it not wriĴen
on the very shield of your nation, honi soit? Ah, it is hard for me to learn, hard
for me to dare to be myself. You must not judge me yet awhile; I shall end by
conquering this stiffness, I shall end by growing English. Do I speak the
language well?”

“Perfectly—oh, perfectly!” said Harry, with a fervency of conviction worthy

of a graver subject.

“Ah, then,” she said, “I shall soon learn; English blood ran in my father’s
veins; and I have had the advantage of some training in your expressive
tongue. If I speak already without accent, with my thorough English
appearance, there is nothing leĞ to change except my manners.”

“Oh no,” said Desborough. “Oh, pray not! I—madam——”

“I am,” interrupted the lady, “the Señorita Teresa Valdevia. The evening air
grows chill. Adios, Señorito.” And before Harry could stammer out a word,
she had disappeared into her room.

He stood transfixed, the cigareĴe still unlighted in his hand. His thoughts
had soared above tobacco, and still recalled and beautified the image of his
new acquaintance. Her voice re-echoed in his memory; her eyes, of which he
could not tell the colour, haunted his soul. The clouds had risen at her coming,
and he beheld a new-created world. What she was, he could not fancy, but he
adored her. Her age, he durst not estimate; fearing to find her older than
himself, and thinking sacrilege to couple that fair favour with the thought of
mortal changes. As for her character, beauty, to the young, is always good. So
the poor lad lingered late upon the terrace, stealing timid glances at the
curtained window, sighing to the gold laburnums, rapt into the country of
romance; and when at length he entered and sat down to dine, on cold boiled
muĴon and a pint of ale, he feasted on the food of gods.

Next day when he returned to the terrace, the window was a liĴle ajar and
he enjoyed a view of the lady’s shoulder, as she sat patiently sewing and all
unconscious of his presence. On the next, he had scarce appeared when the
window opened, and the Señorita tripped forth into the sunlight, in a morning
disorder, delicately neat, and yet somehow foreign, tropical, and strange. In
one hand she held a packet.

“Will you try,” she said, “some of my father’s tobacco—from dear Cuba?
There, as I suppose you know, all smoke, ladies as well as gentlemen. So you
need not fear to annoy me. The fragrance will remind me of home. My home,
Señor, was by the sea.” And as she uĴered these few words, Desborough, for
the first time in his life, realised the poetry of the great deep. “Awake or asleep,
I dream of it; dear home, dear Cuba!”

“But some day,” said Desborough, with an inward pang, “some day you will
return!”

“Never!” she cried; “ah, never, in Heaven’s name!”

“Are you then resident for life in England?” he inquired, with a strange
lightening of spirit.

“You ask too much, for you ask more than I know,” she answered sadly; and
then, resuming her gaiety of manner: “But you have not tried my Cuban
tobacco,” she said.

“Señorita,” said he, shyly abashed by some shadow of coquetry in her

manner, “whatever comes to me—you—I mean,” he concluded, deeply
flushing, “that I have no doubt the tobacco is delightful.”

“Ah, Señor,” she said, with almost mournful gravity, “you seemed so simple
and good, and already you are trying to pay compliments—and besides,” she
added, brightening, with a quick upward glance, into a smile, “you do it so
badly! English gentlemen, I used to hear, could be fast friends, respectful,
honest friends; could be companions, comforters, if the need arose, or
champions, and yet never encroach. Do not seek to please me by copying the
graces of my countrymen. Be yourself: the frank, kindly, honest English
gentleman that I have heard of since my childhood and still longed to meet.”

Harry, much bewildered, and far from clear as to the manners of the Cuban
gentlemen, strenuously disclaimed the thought of plagiarism.

“Your national seriousness of bearing best becomes you, Señor,” said the
lady. “See!” marking a line with her dainty, slippered foot, “thus far it shall be
common ground; there, at my window-sill, begins the scientific frontier. If you
choose, you may drive me to my forts; but if, on the other hand, we are to be
real English friends, I may join you here when I am not too sad; or, when I am
yet more graciously inclined, you may draw your chair beside the window and
teach me English customs, while I work. You will find me an apt scholar, for
my heart is in the task.” She laid her hand lightly upon Harry’s arm, and
looked into his eyes. “Do you know,” said she, “I am emboldened to believe
that I have already caught something of your English aplomb? Do you not
perceive a change, Señor? Slight, perhaps, but still a change? Is my deportment
not more open, more free, more like that of the dear‘British Miss,’ than when
you saw me first?” She gave a radiant smile; withdrew her hand from Harry’s
arm; and before the young man could formulate in words the eloquent
emotions that ran riot through his brain—with an “Adios, Señor: good-night,
my English friend,” she vanished from his sight behind the curtain.

The next day, Harry consumed an ounce of tobacco in vain upon the neutral
terrace; neither sight nor sound rewarded him, and the dinner-hour
summoned him at length from the scene of disappointment. On the next, it
rained; but nothing, neither business nor weather, neither prospective poverty
nor present hardship, could now divert the young man from the service of his
lady; and wrapt in a long ulster, with the collar raised, he took his stand against
the balustrade, awaiting fortune, the picture of damp and discomfort to the
eye, but glowing inwardly with tender and delightful ardours. Presently the
window opened; and the fair Cuban, with a smile imperfectly dissembled,
appeared upon the sill.

“Come here,” she said, “here, beside my window. The small verandah gives
a belt of shelter.” And she graciously handed him a folding-chair.

As he sat down, visibly aglow with shyness and delight, a certain bulkiness
in his pocket reminded him that he was not come empty-handed.

“I have taken the liberty,” said he, “of bringing you a liĴle book. I thought of
you, when I observed it on the stall, because I saw it was in Spanish. The man
assured me it was by one of the best authors, and quite proper.” As he spoke,
he placed the liĴle volume in her hand. Her eyes fell as she turned the pages,
and a flush rose and died again upon her cheeks, as deep as it was fleeting.
“You are angry,” he cried in agony. “I have presumed.”

“No, Señor, it is not that,” returned the lady. “I“—and a flood of colour once
more mounted to her brow—“I am confused and ashamed because I have
deceived you. Spanish,” she began, and paused—“Spanish is of course my
native tongue,” she resumed, as though suddenly taking courage; “and this
should certainly put the highest value on your thoughtful present; but alas, sir,
of what use is it to me? And how shall I confess to you the truth—the
humiliating truth—that I cannot read?”

As Harry’s eyes met hers in undisguised amazement, the fair Cuban seemed
to shrink before his gaze. “Read?” repeated Harry. “You!”

She pushed the window still more widely open with a large and noble
gesture. “Enter, Señor,” said she. “The time has come to which I have long
looked forward, not without alarm; when I must either fear to lose your
friendship, or tell you without disguise the story of my life.”

It was with a sentiment bordering on devotion that Harry passed the

window. A semi-barbarous delight in form and colour had presided over the
studied disorder of the room in which he found himself. It was filled with
dainty stuffs, furs and rugs and scarves of brilliant hues, and set with elegant
and curious trifles—fans on the mantelshelf, an antique lamp upon a bracket,
and on the table a silver-mounted bowl of cocoa-nut about half full of unset
jewels. The fair Cuban, herself a gem of colour and the fit masterpiece for that
rich frame, motioned Harry to a seat, and, sinking herself into another, thus
began her history.

STORY OF THE FAIR CUBAN

I AM not what I seem. My father drew his descent, on the one hand, from
grandees of Spain, and on the other, through the maternal line, from the
patriot Bruce. My mother, too, was the descendant of a line of kings; but, alas!
these kings were African. She was fair as the day: fairer than I, for I inherited a
darker stain of blood from the veins of my European father; her mind was
noble, her manners queenly and accomplished; and seeing her more than the
equal of her neighbours and surrounded by the most considerate affection and
respect, I grew up to adore her, and when the time came, received her last sigh
upon my lips, still ignorant that she was a slave and alas! my father’s mistress.
Her death, which befell me in my sixteenth year, was the first sorrow I had
known: it leĞ our home bereaved of its aĴractions, cast a shade of melancholy
on my youth, and wrought in my father a tragic and durable change. Months
went by: with the elasticity of my years, I regained some of the simple mirth
that had before distinguished me; the plantation smiled with fresh crops; the
negroes on the estate had already forgoĴen my mother and transferred their
simple obedience to myself; but still the cloud only darkened on the brows of
Señor Valdevia. His absences from home had been frequent even in the old
days, for he did business in precious gems in the city of Havana; they now
became almost continuous; and when he returned, it was but for the night and
with the manner of a man crushed down by adverse fortune.

The place where I was born and passed my days was an isle set in the
Caribbean Sea, some half-hour’s rowing from the coasts of Cuba. It was steep,
rugged, and, except for my father’s family and plantation, uninhabited and leĞ
to nature. The house, a low building surrounded by spacious verandahs, stood
upon a rise of ground and looked across the sea to Cuba. The breezes blew
about it gratefully, fanned us as we lay swinging in our silken hammocks, and
tossed the boughs and flowers of the magnolia. Behind and to the leĞ, the
quarter of the negroes and the waving fields of the plantation covered an
eighth part of the surface of the isle. On the right and closely bordering on the
garden, lay a vast and deadly swamp, densely covered with wood, breathing
fever, doĴed with profound sloughs, and inhabited by poisonous oysters,
man-eating crabs, snakes, alligators, and sickly fishes. Into the recesses of that
jungle none could penetrate but those of African descent; an invisible,
unconquerable foe lay there in wait for the European; and the air was death.

One morning (from which I must date the beginning of my ruinous

misfortune) I leĞ my room a liĴle aĞer day, for in that warm climate all are
early risers, and found not a servant to aĴend upon my wants. I made the
circuit of the house, still calling; and my surprise had almost changed into
alarm, when, coming at last into a large verandahed court, I found it thronged
with negroes. Even then, even when I was amongst them, not one turned or
paid the least regard to my arrival. They had eyes and ears for but one person:
a woman, richly and tastefully aĴired; of elegant carriage, and a musical
speech; not so much old in years, as worn and marred by self-indulgence: her
face, which was still aĴractive, stamped with the most cruel passions, her eye
burning with the greed of evil. It was not from her appearance, I believe, but
from some emanation of her soul, that I recoiled in a kind of fainting terror; as
we hear of plants that blight and snakes that fascinate, the woman shocked
and daunted me. But I was of a brave nature; trod the weakness down; and
forcing my way through the slaves, who fell back before me in embarrassment,
as though in the presence of rival mistresses, I asked, in imperious tones:
“Who is this person?”

A slave girl, to whom I had been kind, whispered in my ear to have a care,
for that was Madam Mendizabal; but the name was new to me.

In the meanwhile the woman, applying a pair of glasses to her eyes, studied
me with insolent particularity from head to foot.

“Young woman,” said she at last, “I have had a great experience in

refractory servants, and take a pride in breaking them. You really tempt me;
and if I had not other affairs, and these of more importance, on my hand, I
should certainly buy you at your father’s sale.”

“Madam——” I began, but my voice failed me.

“Is it possible that you do not know your position?” she returned, with a
hateful laugh. “How comical! Positively, I must buy her. Accomplishments, I
suppose?” she added, turning to the servants.

Several assured her that the young mistress had been brought up like any
lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.

“She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,” said Señora
Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses; “and I should take a
pleasure,” she pursued, more directly addressing myself, “in bringing you
acquainted with a whip.” And she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty
upon her face.

At this, I found expression. Calling by name upon the servants, I bade them
turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat, and set her back upon
the mainland. But with one voice they protested that they durst not obey,
coming close about me, pleading and beseeching me to be more wise; and
when I insisted, rising higher in passion and speaking of this foul intruder in
the terms she had deserved, they fell back from me as from one who had
blasphemed. A superstitious reverence plainly encircled the stranger; I could
read it in their changed demeanour, and in the paleness that prevailed upon
the natural colour of their faces; and their fear perhaps reacted on myself. I
looked again at Madam Mendizabal. She stood perfectly composed, watching
my face through her glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her
assured superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of rage,
fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the house.

I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach. As I went, my head
whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and insults. Who was she?
what, in Heaven’s name, the power she wielded over my obedient negroes?
Why had she addressed me as a slave? why spoken of my father’s sale? To all
these tumultuary questions I could find no answer; and, in the turmoil of my
mind, nothing was plain except the hateful, leering image of the woman.

I was still running, mad with fear and anger, when I saw my father coming
to meet me from the landing-place; and, with a cry that I thought would have
killed me, leaped into his arms and broke into a passion of sobs and tears upon
his bosom. He made me sit down below a tall palmeĴo that grew not far off;
comforted me, but with some abstraction in his voice; and, as soon as I
regained the least command upon my feelings, asked me, not without
harshness, what this grief betokened. I was surprised by his tone into a still
greater measure of composure; and in firm tones, though still interrupted by
sobs, I told him there was a stranger in the island, at which I thought he
started and turned pale; that the servants would not obey me; that the
stranger’s name was Madam Mendizabal, and, at that, he seemed to me both
troubled and relieved; that she had insulted me, treated me as a slave (and
here my father’s brow began to darken), threatened to buy me at a sale, and
questioned my own servants before my face; and that, at last, finding myself
quite helpless and exposed to these intolerable liberties, I had fled from the
house in terror, indignation, and amazement.

“Teresa,” said my father, with singular gravity of voice, “I must make to-day
a call upon your courage; much must be told you, there is much that you must
do to help me; and my daughter must prove herself a woman by her spirit. As
for this Mendizabal, what shall I say? or how am I to tell you what she is?
Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of slaves; to-day she is what you see
her—prematurely old, disgraced by the practice of every vice and every
nefarious industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some reputable man,
whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her ancient mates, the slaves
of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its reason is mysterious. Horrible rites,
it is supposed, cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo. Be that as it may, I
would have you dismiss the thought of this incomparable witch; it is not from
her that danger threatens us; and into her hands, I make bold to promise, you
shall never fall.”

“Father!” I cried. “Fall? Was there any truth, then, in her words? Am I—O
father, tell me plain; I can bear anything but this suspense.”

“I will tell you,” he replied, “with merciful bluntness. Your mother was a
slave; it was my design, so soon as I had saved a competence, to sail to the free
land of Britain, where the law would suffer me to marry her: a design too long
procrastinated; for death, at the last moment, intervened. You will now
understand the heaviness with which your mother’s memory hangs about my
neck.”

I cried out aloud, in pity for my parents; and, in seeking to console the
survivor, I forgot myself.

“It maĴers not,” resumed my father. “What I have leĞ undone can never be
repaired, and I must bear the penalty of my remorse. But, Teresa, with so
cuĴing a reminder of the evils of delay, I set myself at once to do what was still
possible: to liberate yourself.”

I began to break forth in thanks, but he checked me with a sombre

roughness.

“Your mother’s illness,” he resumed, “had engaged too great a portion of my

time; my business in the city had lain too long at the mercy of ignorant
underlings; my head, my taste, my unequalled knowledge of the more precious
stones, that art by which I can distinguish, even on the darkest night, a
sapphire from a ruby and tell at a glance in what quarter of the earth a gem
was disinterred—all these had been too long absent from the conduct of
affairs. Teresa, I was insolvent.”

“What maĴers that?” I cried. “What maĴers poverty, if we be leĞ together

with our love and sacred memories?”

“You do not comprehend,” he said gloomily. “Slave as you are, young—alas!

scarce more than child!—accomplished, beautiful with the most touching
beauty, innocent as an angel—all these qualities that should disarm the very
wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those to whom I stand indebted,
commodities to buy and sell. You are a chaĴel; a marketable thing; and
worth—heavens, that I should say such words!—worth money. Do you begin
to see? If I were to give you freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the
manumission would be certainly annulled; you would be still a slave, and I a
criminal.”

I caught his hand in mine, kissed it, and moaned in pity for myself, in
sympathy for my father.

“How I have toiled,” he continued, “how I have dared and striven to repair
my losses, Heaven has beheld and will remember. Its blessing was denied to
my endeavours, or, as I please myself by thinking, but delayed to descend
upon my daughter’s head. At length, all hope was at an end; I was ruined
beyond retrieve; a heavy debt fell due upon the morrow, which I could not
meet; I should be declared a bankrupt, and my goods, my lands, my jewels that
I so much loved, my slaves whom I have spoiled and rendered happy, and oh!
tenfold worse, you, my beloved daughter, would be sold and pass into the
hands of ignorant and greedy traffickers. Too long, I saw, had I accepted and
profited by this great crime of slavery; but was my daughter, my innocent,
unsullied daughter, was she to pay the price? I cried out—no!—I took Heaven
to witness my temptation; I caught up this bag and fled. Close upon my track
are the pursuers; perhaps to-night, perhaps to-morrow, they will land upon
this isle, sacred to the memory of the dear soul that bore you, to consign your
father to an ignominious prison, and yourself to slavery and dishonour. We
have not many hours before us. Off the north coast of our isle, by strange good
fortune, an English yacht has for some days been hovering. It belongs to Sir
George Greville, whom I slightly know, to whom ere now I have rendered
unusual services, and who will not refuse to help in our escape. Or if he did, if
his gratitude were in default, I have the power to force him. For what does it
mean my child—what means this Englishman, who hangs for years upon the
shores of Cuba, and returns from every trip with new and valuable gems?”

“He may have found a mine,” I hazarded.

“So he declares,” returned my father; “but the strange giĞ I have received
from nature easily transpierced the fable. He brought me diamonds only,
which I bought, at first, in innocence; at a second glance, I started; for of these
stones, my child, some had first seen the day in Africa, some in Brazil; while
others, from their peculiar water and rude workmanship, I divined to be the
spoil of ancient temples. Thus put upon the scent, I made inquiries: Oh, he is
cunning, but I was cunninger than he. He visited, I found, the shop of every
jeweller in town; to one he came with rubies, to one with emeralds, to one with
precious beryl; to all, with this same story of the mine. But in what mine, what
rich epitome of the earth’s surface, were there conjoined the rubies of Ispahan,
the pearls of Coromandel, and the diamonds of Golconda? No, child, that
man, for all his yacht and title, that man must fear and must obey me. To-night,
then, as soon as it is dark, we must take our way through the swamp by the
path which I shall presently show you; thence, across the highlands of the isle,
a track is blazed, which shall conduct us to the haven on the north; and close
by the yacht is riding. Should my pursuers come before the hour at which I
look to see them, they will still arrive too late; a trusty man aĴends on the
mainland; as soon as they appear, we shall behold, if it be dark, the redness of
a fire—if it be day, a pillar of smoke, on the opposing headland; and thus
warned, we shall have time to put the swamp between ourselves and danger.
Meantime, I would conceal this bag; I would, before all things, be seen to arrive
at the house with empty hands; a babbling slave might else undo us. For see!”
he added; and holding up the bag, which he had already shown me, he poured
into my lap a shower of unmounted jewels, brighter than flowers, of every size
and colour, and catching, as they fell, upon a million dainty facets, the ardour
of the sun.

I could not restrain a cry of admiration.

“Even in your ignorant eyes,” pursued my father, “they command respect.

Yet what are they but pebbles, passive to the tool, cold as death? Ingrate!” he
cried. “Each one of these—miracles of nature’s patience, conceived out of the
dust in centuries of microscopical activity, each one is, for you and me, a year
of life, liberty, and mutual affection. How, then, should I cherish them! and
why do I delay to place them beyond reach! Teresa, follow me.”

He rose to his feet, and led me to the borders of the great jungle, where they
overhung, in a wall of poisonous and dusky foliage, the declivity of the hill on
which my father’s house stood planted. For some while he skirted, with
aĴentive eyes, the margin of the thicket. Then, seeming to recognise some
mark, for his countenance became immediately lightened of a load of thought,
he paused and addressed me. “Here,” said he, “is the entrance of the secret
path that I have mentioned, and here you shall await me. I but pass some
hundreds of yards into the swamp to bury my poor treasure; as soon as that is
safe I will return.” It was in vain that I sought to dissuade him, urging the
dangers of the place; in vain that I begged to be allowed to follow, pleading the
black blood that I now knew to circulate in my veins: to all my appeals he
turned a deaf ear, and, bending back a portion of the screen of bushes,
disappeared into the pestilential silence of the swamp.

At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust aside; and my
father stepped from out the thicket, and paused, and almost staggered in the
first shock of the blinding sunlight. His face was of a singular dusky red; and
yet, for all the heat of the tropical noon, he did not seem to sweat.

“You are tired,” I cried, springing to meet him. “You are ill.”

“I am tired,” he replied; “the air in that jungle stifles one; my eyes, besides,
have grown accustomed to its gloom, and the strong sunshine pierces them
like knives. A moment, Teresa, give me but a moment. All shall yet be well. I
have buried the hoard under a cypress, immediately beyond the bayou, on the
leĞ-hand margin of the path; beautiful, bright things, they now lie whelmed in
slime; you shall find them there, if needful. But come, let us to the house; it is
time to eat against our journey of the night; to eat and then to sleep, my poor
Teresa: then to sleep.” And he looked upon me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking
his head as if in pity.

We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone too long
and that the servants might suspect; passed through the airy stretch of the
verandah; and came at length into the grateful twilight of the shuĴered house.
The meal was spread; the house servants, already informed by the boatmen of
the master’s return, were all back at their posts, and terrified, as I could see, to
face me. My father still murmuring of haste with weary and feverish
pertinacity, I hurried at once to take my place at table; but I had no sooner leĞ
his arm than he paused and thrust forth both his hands with a strange gesture
of groping. “How is this?” he cried, in a sharp, unhuman voice. “Am I blind?” I
ran to him and tried to lead him to the table; but he resisted and stood stiffly
where he was, opening and shuĴing his jaws, as if in a painful effort aĞer
breath. Then suddenly he raised both hands to his temples, cried out, “My
head, my head!” and reeled and fell against the wall.

I knew too well what it must be. I turned and begged the servants to relieve
him. But they, with one accord, denied the possibility of hope; the master had
gone into the swamp, they said, the master must die; all help was idle. Why
should I dwell upon his sufferings? I had him carried to a bed, and watched
beside him. He lay still, and at times ground his teeth, and talked at times
unintelligibly, only that one word of hurry, hurry, coming distinctly to my ears,
and telling me that, even in the last struggle with the powers of death, his
mind was still tortured by his daughter’s peril. The sun had gone down, the
darkness had fallen, when I perceived that I was alone on this unhappy earth.
What thoughts had I of flight, of safety, of the impending dangers of my
situation? Beside the body of my last friend, I had forgoĴen all except the
natural pangs of my bereavement.

The sun was some four hours above the eastern line when I was recalled to a
knowledge of the things of earth by the entrance of the slave-girl to whom I
have already referred. The poor soul was indeed devotedly aĴached to me;
and it was with streaming tears that she broke to me the import of her coming.
With the first light of dawn a boat had reached our landing-place, and set on
shore upon our isle (till now so fortunate) a party of officers bearing a warrant
to arrest my father’s person, and a man of a gross body and low manners, who
declared the island, the plantation, and all its human chaĴels, to be now his
own. “I think,” said my slave-girl, “he must be a politician or some very
powerful sorcerer; for Madam Mendizabal had no sooner seen them coming
than she took to the woods.”

“Fool,” said I, “it was the officer she feared; and at any rate why does that
beldam still dare to pollute the island with her presence? And oh, Cora,” I
exclaimed, remembering my grief, “what maĴer all these troubles to an
orphan?”

“Mistress,” said she, “I must remind you of two things. Never speak as you
do now of Madam Mendizabal; or never to a person of colour; for she is the
most powerful woman in this world, and her real name even, if one durst
pronounce it, were a spell to raise the dead. And whatever you do, speak no
more of her to your unhappy Cora; for though it is possible she may be afraid
of the police (and indeed I think that I have heard she is in hiding), and though
I know that you will laugh and not believe, yet it is true, and proved, and
known that she hears every word that people uĴer in this whole, vast world;
and your poor Cora is already deep enough in her black books. She looks at
me, mistress, till my blood turns ice. That is the first I had to say; and now for
the second; do, pray, for Heaven’s sake, bear in mind that you are no longer
the poor Señor’s daughter. He is gone, dear gentleman; and now you are no
more than a common slave-girl like myself. The man to whom you belong calls
for you; oh, my dear mistress, go at once! With your youth and beauty, you
may still, if you are winning and obedient, secure yourself an easy life.”

For the moment I looked on the creature with the indignation you may
conceive; the next, it was gone: she did but speak aĞer her kind, as the bird
sings or caĴle bellow. “Go,” said I. “Go, Cora. I thank you for your kind
intentions. Leave me alone one moment with my dead father; and tell this man
that I will come at once.”

She went; and I, turning to the bed of death, addressed to those deaf ears
the last appeal and defence of my beleaguered innocence. “Father,” I said, “it
was your last thought, even in the pangs of dissolution, that your daughter
should escape disgrace. Here, at your side, I swear to you that purpose shall be
carried out; by what means, I know not; by crime, if need be; and Heaven
forgive both you and me and our oppressors, and Heaven help my
helplessness!” Thereupon I felt strengthened as by long repose; stepped to the
mirror, ay, even in that chamber of the dead; hastily arranged my hair,
refreshed my tear-worn eyes, breathed a dumb farewell to the originator of my
days and sorrows; and, composing my features to a smile, went forth to meet
my master.

He was in a great, hot bustle, reviewing that house, once ours, to which he
had but now succeeded; a corpulent, sanguine man of middle age, sensual,
vulgar, humorous, and, if I judged rightly, not ill-disposed by nature. But the
sparkle that came into his eye as he observed me enter warned me to expect
the worse.

“Is this your late mistress?” he inquired of the slaves; and, when he had
learnt it was so, instantly dismissed them. “Now, my dear,” said he, “I am a
plain man: none of your damned Spaniards, but a true blue, hard-working,
honest Englishman. My name is Caulder.”

“Thank you, sir,” said I, and curtsied very smartly as I had seen the servants.

“Come,” said he, “this is beĴer than I had expected; and if you choose to be
dutiful in the station to which it has pleased God to call you, you will find me a
very kind old fellow. I like your looks,” he added, calling me by my name,
which he scandalously mispronounced. “Is your hair all your own?” he then
inquired with a certain sharpness, and coming up to me, as though I were a
horse, he grossly satisfied his doubts. I was all one flame from head to foot, but
I contained my righteous anger and submiĴed. “That is very well,” he
continued, chucking me good-humouredly under the chin. “You will have no
cause to regret coming to old Caulder, eh? But that is by the way. What is more
to the point is this: your late master was a most dishonest rogue and levanted
with some valuable property that belonged of rights to me. Now, considering
your relation to him, I regard you as the likeliest person to know what has
become of it; and I warn you, before you answer, that my whole future
kindness will depend upon your honesty. I am an honest man myself, and
expect the same in my servants.”

“Do you mean the jewels?” said I, sinking my voice into a whisper.

“That is just precisely what I do,” said he, and chuckled.

“Hush!” said I.

“Hush?” he repeated. “And why hush? I am on my own place, I would have

you to know, and surrounded by my own lawful servants.”
 “Are the officers gone?” I asked; and, oh! how my hopes hung upon the
answer!

“They are,” said he, looking somewhat disconcerted. “Why do you ask?”

“I wish you had kept them,” I answered, solemnly enough, although my

heart at that same moment leaped with exultation. “Master, I must not conceal
from you the truth. The servants on this estate are in a dangerous condition,
and mutiny has long been brewing.”

“Why,” he cried, “I never saw a milder-looking lot of niggers in my life.” But

for all that he turned somewhat pale.

“Did they tell you,” I continued, “that Madam Mendizabal is on the island?
that, since her coming, they obey none but her? that if, this morning, they have
received you with even decent civility, it was only by her orders—issued with
what aĞer-thought I leave you to consider?”

“Madam Jezebel?” said he. “Well, she is a dangerous devil; the police are
aĞer her, besides, for a whole series of murders; but aĞer all, what then? To be
sure, she has a great influence with you coloured folk. But what in fortune’s
name can be her errand here?”

“The jewels,” I replied. “Ah, sir, had you seen that treasure, sapphire and
emerald and opal, and the golden topaz, and rubies, red as the sunset—of
what incalculable worth, of what unequalled beauty to the eye!—had you seen
it, as I have, and alas! as she has—you would understand and tremble at your
danger.”

“She has seen them!” he cried, and I could see by his face that my audacity
was justified by its success.

I caught his hand in mine. “My master,” said I, “I am now yours; it is my

duty, it should be my pleasure, to defend your interests and life. Hear my
advice then; and, I conjure you, be guided by my prudence. Follow me privily;
let none see where we are going; I will lead you to the place where the
treasure has been buried; that once disinterred, let us make straight for the
boat, escape to the mainland, and not return to this dangerous isle without the
countenance of soldiers.”

What free man in a free land would have credited so sudden a devotion? But
this oppressor, through the very arts and sophistries he had abused, to quiet
the rebellion of his conscience and to convince himself that slavery was
natural, fell like a child into the trap I laid for him. He praised and thanked me;
told me I had all the qualities he valued in a servant; and when he had
questioned me further as to the nature and value of the treasure, and I had
once more artfully inflamed his greed, bade me, without delay, proceed to
carry out my plan of action.

From a shed in the garden I took a pick and shovel; and thence, by devious
paths among the magnolias, led my master to the entrance of the swamp. I
walked first, carrying, as I was now in duty bound, the tools, and glancing
continually behind me, lest we should be spied upon and followed. When we
were come as far as the beginning of the path, it flashed into my mind I had
forgoĴen meat; and leaving Mr. Caulder in the shadow of a tree, I returned
alone to the house for a basket of provisions. Were they for him? I asked
myself. And a voice within me answered, No. While we were face to face,
while I still saw before my eyes the man to whom I belonged as the hand
belongs to the body, my indignation held me bravely up. But now that I was
alone, I conceived a sickness at myself and my designs that I could scarce
endure; I longed to throw myself at his feet, avow my intended treachery, and
warn him from that pestilential swamp, to which I was decoying him to die;
but my vow to my dead father, my duty to my innocent youth, prevailed upon
these scruples; and though my face was pale and must have reflected the
horror that oppressed my spirits, it was with a firm step that I returned to the
borders of the swamp, and with smiling lips that I bade him rise and follow me.

The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, through the living
jungle. On either hand and overhead, the mass of foliage was continuously
joined; the day sparingly filtered through the depth of superimpending wood;
and the air was hot like steam, and heady with vegetable odours, and lay like a
load upon the lungs and brain. Underfoot, a great depth of mould received our
silent footprints; on each side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my
passing skirts with a continuous hissing rustle; and, but for these sentient
vegetables, all in that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless.

We had gone but a liĴle way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with sudden
nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path. My heart yearned, as I
beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal to return upon his
steps. What were a few jewels in the scales with life? I asked. But no, he said;
that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an honest man, and
would not stand to be defrauded, and so forth, panting the while, like a sick
dog. Presently he got to his feet again, protesting he had conquered his
uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I saw in his changed
countenance the first approaches of death.

“Master,” said I, “you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills me with dread.
Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that we seek.”

“Wench,” he cried, “look before you; look at your steps. I declare to Heaven,
if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall remind you of the change
in your position.”
 A liĴle aĞer, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a whisper,
that its touch was death. Presently a great green serpent, vivid as the grass in
spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once again I paused and looked
back at my companion with a horror in my eyes. “The coffin snake,” said I,
“the snake that dogs its victim like a hound.”

But he was not to be dissuaded. “I am an old traveller,” said he. “This is a

foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be at an end.”

“Ay,” said I, looking at him with a strange smile, “what end?”

Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and then,
perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher, “There!” said he.
“What did I tell you? We are past the worst.”

Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very
narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could see it
broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging creepers:
sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the flat heads of
alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs.

“If we fall from that unsteady bridge,” said I, “see, where the caiman lies
ready to devour us! If, by the least divergence from the path, we should be
snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the
border of the thicket! Once helpless, how they would swarm together to the
assault! What could man do against a thousand of such mailed assailants? And
what a death were that, to perish alive under their claws!”

“Are you mad, girl?” he cried. “I bid you be silent and lead on.”

Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick that
was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face. “Lead on!” he cried again.
“Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough, and all for a prating
slave-girl?”

I took the blow in silence, I took it smiling; but the blood welled back upon
my heart. Something, I know not what, fell at that moment with a dull plunge
in the waters of the lagoon, and I told myself it was my pity that had fallen.

On the farther side, to which we now hastily scrambled, the wood was not
so dense, the web of creepers not so solidly convolved. It was possible, here
and there, to mark a patch of somewhat brighter daylight, or to distinguish,
through the lighter web of parasites, the proportions of some soaring tree. The
cypress on the leĞ stood very visibly forth, upon the edge of such a clearing;
the path in that place widened broadly; and there was a patch of open ground,
beset with horrible ant-heaps, thick with their artificers. I laid down the tools
and basket by the cypress root, where they were instantly blackened over with
the crawling ants; and looked once more in the face of my unconscious victim.
Mosquitoes and foul flies wove so close a veil between us that his features
were obscured; and the sound of their flight was like the turning of a mighty
wheel.

“Here,” I said, “is the spot. I cannot dig, for I have not learned to use such
instruments; but, for your own sake, I beseech you to be swiĞ in what you do.”

He had sunk once more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw
rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father’s. “I feel
ill,” he gasped, “horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone of these
carrion flies confounds me. Have you not wine?”

I gave him a glass, and he drank greedily. “It is for you to think,” said I, “if
you should further persevere. The swamp has an ill name.” And at the word I
ominously nodded.

“Give me the pick,” said he. “Where are the jewels buried?”

I told him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim
twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it overhead with
the vigour of a healthy man. At first, there broke forth upon him a strong
sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which the greedy insects seĴled
thickly.

“To sweat in such a place,” said I. “O master, is this wise? Fever is drunk in
through open pores.”

“What do you mean?” he screamed, pausing with the pick buried in the soil.
“Do you seek to drive me mad? Do you think I do not understand the danger
that I run?”

“That is all I want,” said I: “I only wish you to be swiĞ.” And then, my mind
fliĴing to my father’s deathbed, I began to murmur, scarce above my breath,
the same vain repetition of words, “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

Presently, to my surprise, the treasure-seeker took them up; and while he

still wielded the pick, but now with staggering and uncertain blows, repeated
to himself, as it were the burthen of a song, “Hurry, hurry, hurry“; and then
again, “There is no time to lose; the marsh has an ill name, ill name“; and then
back to “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” with a dreadful mechanical, hurried, and yet
wearied uĴerance, as a sick man rolls upon his pillow. The sweat had
disappeared; he was now dry, but, all that I could see of him, of the same dull
brick-red. Presently his pick unearthed the bag of jewels; but he did not
observe it, and continued hewing at the soil.

“Master,” said I, “there is the treasure.”

 He seemed to waken from a dream. “Where?” he cried; and then, seeing it
before his eyes, “Can this be possible?” he added. “I must be light-headed.
Girl,” he cried suddenly, with the same screaming tone of voice that I had once
before observed, “what is wrong? is this swamp accursed?”

“It is a grave,” I answered. “You will not go out alive; and as for me, my life
is in God’s hands.”

He fell upon the ground like a man struck by a blow, but whether from the
effect of my words, or from sudden seizure of the malady, I cannot tell. PreĴy
soon he raised his head. “You have brought me here to die,” he said; “at the
risk of your own days, you have condemned me. Why?”

“To save my honour,” I replied. “Bear me out that I have warned you. Greed
of these pebbles, and not I, has been your undoer.”

He took out his revolver and handed it to me. “You see,” he said, “I could
have killed you even yet. But I am dying, as you say; nothing could save me;
and my bill is long enough already. Dear me, dear me,” he said, looking in my
face with a curious, puzzled, and pathetic look, like a dull child at school, “if
there be a judgment aĞerwards, my bill is long enough.”

At that, I broke into a passion of weeping, crawled at his feet, kissed his
hands, begged his forgiveness, put the pistol back into his grasp, and besought
him to avenge his death; for indeed, if with my life I could have bought back
his, I had not balanced at the cost. But he was determined, the poor soul, that I
should yet more biĴerly regret my act.

“I have nothing to forgive,” said he. “Dear Heaven, what a thing is an old
fool! I thought, upon my word, you had taken quite a fancy to me.”

He was seized, at the same time, with a dreadful, swimming dizziness, clung
to me like a child, and called upon the name of some woman. Presently this
spasm, which I watched with choking tears, lessened and died away; and he
came again to the full possession of his mind. “I must write my will,” he said.
“Get out my pocket-book.” I did so, and he wrote hurriedly on one page with a
pencil. “Do not let my son know,” he said; “he is a cruel dog, is my son Philip;
do not let him know how you have paid me out“; and then all of a sudden,
“God,” he cried, “I am blind,” and clapped both hands before his eyes; and
then again, and in a groaning whisper, “Don’t leave me to the crabs!” I swore I
would be true to him so long as a pulse stirred; and I redeemed my promise. I
sat there and watched him, as I had watched my father; but with what
different, with what appalling thoughts! Through the long aĞernoon, he
gradually sank. All that while, I fought an uphill baĴle to shield him from the
swarms of ants and the clouds of mosquitoes: the prisoner of my crime. The
night fell, the roar of insects instantly redoubled in the dark arcades of the
swamp; and still I was not sure that he had breathed his last. At length, the
flesh of his hand, which I yet held in mine, grew chill between my fingers, and
I knew that I was free.

I took his pocket-book and the revolver, being resolved rather to die than to
be captured, and, laden besides with the basket and the bag of gems, set
forward towards the north. The swamp, at that hour of the night, was filled
with a continuous din: animals and insects of all kinds and all inimical to life,
contributing their parts. Yet in the midst of this turmoil of sound, I walked as
though my eyes were bandaged, beholding nothing. The soil sank under my
foot, with a horrid, slippery consistence, as though I were walking among
toads; the touch of the thick wall of foliage, by which alone I guided myself,
affrighted me like the touch of serpents; the darkness checked my breathing
like a gag; indeed, I have never suffered such extremes of fear as during that
nocturnal walk, nor have I ever known a more sensible relief than when I
found the path beginning to mount and to grow firmer under foot, and saw,
although still some way in front of me, the silver brightness of the moon.

Presently I had crossed the last of the jungle, and come forth amongst noble
and loĞy woods, clean rock, the clean, dry dust, the aromatic smell of
mountain plants that had been baked all day in sunlight, and the expressive
silence of the night. My negro blood had carried me unhurt across that reeking
and pestiferous morass; by mere good fortune, I had escaped the crawling and
stinging vermin with which it was alive; and I had now before me the easier
portion of my enterprise, to cross the isle and to make good my arrival at the
haven and my acceptance on the English yacht. It was impossible by night to
follow such a track as my father had described; and I was casting about for any
landmark and, in my ignorance, vainly consulting the disposition of the stars,
when there fell upon my ear, from somewhere far in front, the sound of many
voices hurriedly singing.

I scarce knew upon what grounds I acted; but I shaped my steps in the
direction of that sound; and in a quarter of an hour’s walking, came
unperceived to the margin of an open glade. It was lighted by the strong moon
and by the flames of a fire. In the midst there stood a liĴle low and rude
building, surmounted by a cross: a chapel, as I then remembered to have
heard, long since desecrated and given over to the rites of Hoodoo. Hard by
the steps of entrance was a black mass, continually agitated and stirring to and
fro as if with inarticulate life; and this I presently perceived to be a heap of
cocks, hares, dogs, and other birds and animals, still struggling, but helplessly
tethered and cruelly tossed one upon another. Both the fire and the chapel
were surrounded by a ring of kneeling Africans, both men and women. Now
they would raise their palms half closed to Heaven, with a peculiar, passionate
gesture of supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their
hands before them on the ground. As the double movement passed and
repassed along the line, the heads kept rising and falling, like waves upon the
sea; and still, as if in time to these gesticulations, the hurried chant continued. I
stood spell-bound, knowing that my life depended by a hair, knowing that I
had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.

Presently the door of the chapel opened and there came forth a tall negro,
entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife. He was followed by
an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam Mendizabal, naked also,
and carrying in both hands, and raised to the level of her face, an open basket
of wicker. It was filled with coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with
the upliĞed basket, shot through the osier grating and curled about her arms.
At the sight of this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher;
and the chant rose in pitch and grew more irregular in time and accent. Then,
at a sign from the tall negro, where he stood, motionless and smiling, in the
moon- and fire-light, the singing died away, and there began the second stage
of this barbarous and bloody celebration. From different parts of the ring, one
aĞer another, man or woman, ran forth into the midst; ducked, with that same
gesture of the thrown-up hand, before the priestess and her snakes; and, with
various adjurations, uĴered aloud the blackest wishes of the heart. Death and
disease were the favours usually invoked: the death or the disease of enemies
or rivals; some calling down these plagues upon the nearest of their own
blood, and one, to whom I swear I had been never less than kind, invoking
them upon myself. At each petition, the tall negro, still smiling, picked up some
bird or animal from the heaving mass upon his leĞ, slew it with the knife, and
tossed its body on the ground. At length, it seemed, it reached the turn of the
high priestess. She set down the basket on the steps, moved into the centre of
the ring, grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and still grovelling liĞed up
her voice, between speech and singing, and with so great, with so insane a
fervour of excitement, as struck a sort of horror through my blood.

“Power,” she began, “whose name we do not uĴer; power that is neither
good nor evil, but below them both; stronger than good, greater than evil—all
my life long I have adored and served thee. Who has shed blood upon thine
altars? whose voice is broken with the singing of thy praises? whose limbs are
faint before their age with leaping in thy revels? Who has slain the child of her
body? I,” she cried, “I, Metamnbogu! By my own name, I name myself. I tear
away the veil. I would be served or perish. Hear me, slime of the fat swamp,
blackness of the thunder, venom of the serpent’s udder—hear or slay me! I
would have two things, O shapeless one, O horror of emptiness—two things,
or die! The blood of my white-faced husband; oh! give me that; he is the
enemy of Hoodoo; give me blood! And yet another, O racer of the blind winds,
O germinator in the ruins of the dead, O root of life, root of corruption! I grow
old, I grow hideous; I am known, I am hunted for my life: let thy servant then
lay by this outworn body; let thy chief priestess turn again to the blossom of
her days, and be a girl once more, and the desired of all men, even as in the
past! And, O lord and master, as I here ask a marvel not yet wrought since we
were torn from the old land, have I not prepared the sacrifice in which thy soul
delighteth—the kid without the horns?”

Even as she uĴered the words, there was a great rumour of joy through all
the circle of worshippers; it rose, and fell, and rose again; and swelled at last
into rapture, when the tall negro, who had stepped an instant into the chapel,
reappeared before the door, carrying in his arms the body of the slave-girl,
Cora. I know not if I saw what followed. When next my mind awoke to a clear
knowledge, Cora was laid upon the steps before the serpents; the negro with
the knife stood over her; the knife rose; and at this I screamed out in my great
horror, bidding them, in God’s name, to pause.

A stillness fell upon the mob of cannibals. A moment more, and they must
have thrown off this stupor, and I infallibly have perished. But Heaven had
designed to save me. The silence of these wretched men was not yet broken,
when there arose, in the empty night, a sound louder than the roar of any
European tempest, swiĞer to travel than the wings of any Eastern wind.
Blackness engulfed the world: blackness, stabbed across from every side by
intricate and blinding lightning. Almost in the same second, at one world-
swallowing stride, the heart of the tornado reached the clearing. I heard an
agonising crash, and the light of my reason was overwhelmed.

When I recovered consciousness, the day was come. I was unhurt; the trees
close about me had not lost a bough; and I might have thought at first that the
tornado was a feature in a dream. It was otherwise indeed; for when I looked
abroad, I perceived I had escaped destruction by a hand’s-breadth. Right
through the forest, which here covered hill and dale, the storm had ploughed a
lane of ruin. On either hand, the trees waved uninjured in the air of the
morning; but in the forthright course of its advance, the hurricane had leĞ no
trophy standing. Everything in that line, tree, man, or animal, the desecrated
chapel and the votaries of Hoodoo, had been subverted and destroyed in that
brief spasm of anger of the powers of air. Everything but a yard or two beyond
the line of its passage, humble flower, loĞy tree, and the poor vulnerable maid
who now knelt to pay her gratitude to Heaven, awoke unharmed in the crystal
purity and peace of the new day.

To move by the path of the tornado was a thing impossible to man, so wildly
were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together by that fugitive convulsion. I
crossed it indeed; with such labour and patience, with so many dangerous
slips and falls, as leĞ me, at the farther side, bankrupt alike of strength and
courage. There I sat down awhile to recruit my forces; and as I ate (how
should I bless the kindliness of Heaven!), my eye, fliĴing to and fro in the
colonnade of the great trees, alighted on a trunk that had been blazed. Yes, by
the directing hand of Providence, I had been conducted to the very track I was
to follow. With what a light heart I now set forth, and walking with how glad a
step traversed the uplands of the isle!

It was hard upon the hour of noon when I came, all taĴered and wayworn,
to the summit of a steep descent, and looked below me on the sea. About all
the coast, the surf, roused by the tornado of the night, beat with a particular
fury and made a fringe of snow. Close at my feet I saw a haven, set in
precipitous and palm-crowned bluffs of rock. Just outside, a ship was heaving
on the surge, so trimly sparred, so glossily painted, so elegant and point-device
in every feature, that my heart was seized with admiration. The English colours
blew from her masthead; and, from my high station, I caught glimpses of her
snowy planking, as she rolled on the uneven deep, and saw the sun gliĴer on
the brass of her deck furniture. There, then, was my ship of refuge; and of all
my difficulties only one remained: to get on board of her.

Half an hour later, I issued at last out of the woods on the margin of a cove,
into whose jaws the tossing and blue billows entered, and along whose shores
they broke with a surprising loudness. A wooded promontory hid the yacht;
and I had walked some distance round the beach, in what appeared to be a
virgin solitude, when my eye fell on a boat, drawn into a natural harbour,
where it rocked in safety, but deserted. I looked about for those who should
have manned her; and presently, in the immediate entrance of the wood, spied
the red embers of a fire and, stretched around in various aĴitudes, a party of
slumbering mariners. To these I drew near: most were black, a few white; but
all were dressed with the conspicuous decency of yachtsmen; and one, from
his peaked cap and gliĴering buĴons, I rightly divined to be an officer. Him,
then, I touched upon the shoulder. He started up; the sharpness of his
movement woke the rest; and they all stared upon me in surprise.

“What do you want?” inquired the officer.

“To go on board the yacht,” I answered.

I thought they all seemed disconcerted at this; and the officer, with
something of sharpness, asked me who I was. Now I had determined to
conceal my name until I met Sir George; and the first name that rose to my lips
was that of the Señora Mendizabal. At the word, there went a shock about the
liĴle party of seamen; the negroes stared at me with indescribable eagerness,
the whites themselves with something of a scared surprise; and instantly the
spirit of mischief prompted me to add: “And if the name is new to your ears,
call me Metamnbogu.”
 I had never seen an effect so wonderful. The negroes threw their hands into
the air, with the same gesture I remarked the night before about the Hoodoo
camp-fire; first one, and then another, ran forward and kneeled down and
kissed the skirts of my torn dress; and when the white officer broke out
swearing and calling to know if they were mad, the coloured seamen took him
by the shoulders, dragged him on one side till they were out of hearing, and
surrounded him with open mouths and extravagant pantomime. The officer
seemed to struggle hard; he laughed aloud, and I saw him make gestures of
dissent and protest; but in the end, whether overcome by reason or simply
weary of resistance, he gave in—approached me civilly enough, but with
something of a sneering manner underneath—and touching his cap, “My
lady,” said he, “if that is what you are, the boat is ready.”

My reception on board the Nemorosa (for so the yacht was named) partook
of the same mingled nature. We were scarcely within hail of that great and
elegant fabric, where she lay rolling gunwale under and churning the blue sea
to snow, before the bulwarks were lined with the heads of a great crowd of
seamen, black, white, and yellow; and these and the few who manned the boat
began exchanging shouts in some lingua franca incomprehensible to me. All
eyes were directed on the passenger; and once more I saw the negroes toss up
their hands to Heaven, but now as if with passionate wonder and delight.

At the head of the gangway, I was received by another officer, a gentlemanly

man with blond and bushy whiskers; and to him I addressed my demand to
see Sir George.

“But this is not——” he cried, and paused.

“I know it,” returned the other officer, who had brought me from the shore.
“But what the devil can we do? Look at all the niggers!”

I followed his direction; and as my eye lighted upon each, the poor ignorant
Africans ducked, and bowed, and threw their hands into the air, as though in
the presence of a creature half divine. Apparently the officer with the whiskers
had instantly come round to the opinion of his subaltern; for he now
addressed me with every signal of respect.

“Sir George is at the island, my lady,” said he: “for which, with your
ladyship’s permission, I shall immediately make all sail. The cabins are
prepared. Steward, take Lady Greville below.”

Under this new name, then, and so captivated by surprise that I could
neither think nor speak, I was ushered into a spacious and airy cabin, hung
about with weapons and surrounded by divans. The steward asked for my
commands; but I was by this time so wearied, bewildered, and disturbed, that I
could only wave him to leave me to myself, and sink upon a pile of cushions.
Presently, by the changed motion of the ship, I knew her to be under way; my
thoughts, so far from clarifying, grew the more distracted and confused;
dreams began to mingle and confound them; and at length, by insensible
transition, I sank into a dreamless slumber.

When I awoke, the day and night had passed, and it was once more
morning. The world on which I reopened my eyes swam strangely up and
down; the jewels in the bag that lay beside me clinked together ceaselessly; the
clock and the barometer wagged to and fro like pendulums; and overhead,
seamen were singing out at their work, and coils of rope claĴering and
thumping on the deck. Yet it was long before I had divined that I was at sea;
long before I had recalled, one aĞer another, the tragical, mysterious, and
inexplicable events that had brought me where I was.

When I had done so, I thrust the jewels, which I was surprised to find had
been respected, into the bosom of my dress; and, seeing a silver bell hard by
upon a table, rang it loudly. The steward instantly appeared; I asked for food;
and he proceeded to lay the table, regarding me the while with a disquieting
and pertinacious scrutiny. To relieve myself of my embarrassment, I asked him,
with as fair a show of ease as I could muster, if it were usual for yachts to carry
so numerous a crew?

“Madam,” said he, “I know not who you are, nor what mad desire has
induced you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that are not yours. I
warn you from the soul. No sooner arrived at the island——”

At this moment he was interrupted by the whiskered officer, who had

entered unperceived behind him, and now laid a hand upon his shoulder. The
sudden pallor, the deadly and sick fear that was imprinted on the steward’s
face, formed a startling addition to his words.

“Parker!” said the officer, and pointed towards the door.

“Yes, Mr. Kentish,” said the steward. “For God’s sake, Mr. Kentish!” And
vanished, with a white face, from the cabin.

Thereupon the officer bade me sit down, and began to help me, and join in
the meal. “I fill your ladyship’s glass,” said he, and handed me a tumbler of
neat rum.

“Sir,” cried I, “do you expect me to drink this?”

He laughed heartily. “Your ladyship is so much changed,” said he, “that I no

longer expect any one thing more than any other.”

Immediately aĞer, a white seaman entered the cabin, saluted both Mr.
Kentish and myself, and informed the officer there was a sail in sight, which
was bound to pass us very close, and that Mr. Harland was in doubt about the
colours.

“Being so near the island?” asked Mr. Kentish.

“That was what Mr. Harland said, sir,” returned the sailor, with a scrape.

“BeĴer not, I think,” said Mr. Kentish. “My compliments to Mr. Harland;
and if she seem a lively boat, give her the stars and stripes; but if she be dull,
and we can easily outsail her, show John Dutchman. That is always another
word for incivility at sea; so we can disregard a hail or a flag of distress,
without aĴracting notice.”

As soon as the sailor had gone on deck, I turned to the officer in wonder.
“Mr. Kentish, if that be your name,” said I, “are you ashamed of your own
colours?”

“Your ladyship refers to the‘Jolly Roger’?” he inquired, with perfect gravity;

and, immediately aĞer, went into peals of laughter. “Pardon me,” said he; “but
here for the first time, I recognise your ladyship’s impetuosity.” Nor, try as I
pleased, could I extract from him any explanation of this mystery, but only oily
and commonplace evasion.

While we were thus occupied, the movement of the Nemorosa gradually

became less violent; its speed at the same time diminished; and presently aĞer,
with a sullen plunge, the anchor was discharged into the sea. Kentish
immediately rose, offered his arm, and conducted me on deck; where I found
we were lying in a roadstead among many low and rocky islets, hovered about
by an innumerable cloud of sea-fowl. Immediately under our board, a
somewhat larger isle was green with trees, set with a few low buildings and
approached by a pier of very crazy workmanship; and a liĴle inshore of us, a
smaller vessel lay at anchor.

I had scarce time to glance to the four quarters ere a boat was lowered. I was
handed in, Kentish took place beside me, and we pulled briskly to the pier. A
crowd of villainous, armed loiterers, both black and white, looked on upon our
landing; and again the word passed about among the negroes, and again I was
received with prostrations and the same gesture of the flung-up hand. By this,
what with the appearance of these men and the lawless, seagirt spot in which I
found myself, my courage began a liĴle to decline, and, clinging to the arm of
Mr. Kentish, I begged him to tell me what it meant.

“Nay, madam,” he returned, “you know.” And leading me smartly through

the crowd, which continued to follow at a considerable distance, and at which
he still kept looking back, I thought, with apprehension, he brought me to a
low house that stood alone in an encumbered yard, opened the door, and
begged me to enter.

“But why?” said I. “I demand to see Sir George.”

“Madam,” returned Mr. Kentish, looking suddenly as black as thunder, “to

drop all fence, I know neither who nor what you are; beyond the fact that you
are not the person whose name you have assumed. But be what you please,
spy, ghost, devil, or most ill-judging jester, if you do not immediately enter that
house, I will cut you to the earth.” And even as he spoke, he threw an uneasy
glance behind him at the following crowd of blacks.

I did not wait to be twice threatened; I obeyed at once and with a palpitating
heart; and the next moment, the door was locked from the outside and the key
withdrawn. The interior was long, low, and quite unfurnished, but filled,
almost from end to end, with sugar-cane, tar-barrels, old tarry rope, and other
incongruous and highly inflammable material; and not only was the door
locked, but the solitary window barred with iron.

I was by this time so exceedingly bewildered and afraid, that I would have
given years of my life to be once more the slave of Mr. Caulder. I still stood,
with my hands clasped, the image of despair, looking about me on the lumber
of the room or raising my eyes to Heaven; when there appeared, outside the
window bars, the face of a very black negro, who signed to me imperiously to
draw near. I did so, and he instantly, and with every mark of fervour,
addressed me a long speech in some unknown and barbarous tongue.

“I declare,” I cried, clasping my brow, “I do not understand one syllable.”

“Not?” he said in Spanish. “Great, great, are the powers of Hoodoo! Her
very mind is changed! But, O chief priestess, why have you suffered yourself to
be shut into this cage? why did you not call your slaves at once to your
defence? Do you not see that all has been prepared to murder you? at a spark,
this flimsy house will go in flames; and alas! who shall then be the chief
priestess? and what shall be the profit of the miracle?”

“Heavens!” cried I, “can I not see Sir George? I must, I must, come by
speech of him. Oh, bring me to Sir George!” And, my terror fairly mastering
my courage, I fell upon my knees and began to pray to all the saints.

“Lordy!” cried the negro, “here they come!” And his black head was
instantly withdrawn from the window.

“I never heard such nonsense in my life,” exclaimed a voice.

“Why, so we all say, Sir George,” replied the voice of Mr. Kentish. “But put
yourself in our place. The niggers were near two to one. And upon my word, if
you’ll excuse me, sir, considering the notion they have taken in their heads, I
regard it as precious fortunate for all of us that the mistake occurred.”

“This is no question of fortune, sir,” returned Sir George. “It is a question of

my orders, and you may take my word for it, Kentish, either Harland, or
yourself, or Parker—or, by George, all three of you!—shall swing for this affair.
These are my sentiments. Give me the key and be off.”

Immediately aĞer, the key turned in the lock; and there appeared upon the
threshold a gentleman, between forty and fiĞy, with a very open countenance
and of a stout and personable figure.

“My dear young lady,” said he, “who the devil may you be?”

I told him all my story in one rush of words. He heard me, from the first,
with an amazement you can scarcely picture, but when I came to the death of
the Señora Mendizabal in the tornado, he fairly leaped into the air.

“My dear child,” he cried, clasping me in his arms, “excuse a man who
might be your father! This is the best news I ever had since I was born; for that
hag of a mulaĴo was no less a person than my wife.” He sat down upon a
tar-barrel, as if unmanned by joy. “Dear me,” said he, “I declare this tempts me
to believe in Providence. And what,” he added, “can I do for you?”

“Sir George,” said I, “I am already rich: all that I ask is your protection.”

“Understand one thing,” he said, with great energy: “I will never marry.”

“I had not ventured to propose it,” I exclaimed, unable to restrain my mirth;

“I only seek to be conveyed to England, the natural home of the escaped
slave.”

“Well,” returned Sir George, “frankly I owe you something for this
exhilarating news; besides, your father was of use to me. Now, I have made a
small competence in business—a jewel mine, a sort of naval agency, et cætera,
and I am on the point of breaking up my company, and retiring to my place in
Devonshire to pass a plain old age, unmarried. One good turn deserves
another: if you swear to hold your tongue about this island, these liĴle bonfire
arrangements, and the whole episode of my unfortunate marriage, why, I’ll
carry you home aboard the Nemorosa.”

I eagerly accepted his conditions.

“One thing more,” said he. “My late wife was some sort of a sorceress
among the blacks; and they are all persuaded she has come alive again in your
agreeable person. Now, you will have the goodness to keep up that fancy, if
you please; and to swear to them, on the authority of Hoodoo or whatever his
name may be, that I am from this moment quite a sacred character.”
 “I swear it,” said I, “by my father’s memory; and that is a vow that I will
never break.”

“I have considerably beĴer hold on you than any oath,” returned Sir
George, with a chuckle; “for you are not only an escaped slave, but have, by
your own account, a considerable amount of stolen property.”

I was struck dumb; I saw it was too true; in a glance, I recognised that these
jewels were no longer mine; with similar quickness, I decided they should be
restored, ay, if it cost me the liberty that I had just regained. Forgetful of all
else, forgetful of Sir George, who sat and watched me with a smile, I drew out
Mr. Caulder’s pocket-book and turned to the page on which the dying man
had scrawled his testament. How shall I describe the agony of happiness and
remorse with which I read it! for my victim had not only set me free, but
bequeathed to me the bag of jewels.

My plain tale draws towards a close. Sir George and I, in my character of his
rejuvenated wife, displayed ourselves arm-in-arm among the negroes, and
were cheered and followed to the place of embarkation. There, Sir George,
turning about, made a speech to his old companions, in which he thanked and
bade them farewell with a very manly spirit; and towards the end of which he
fell on some expressions which I still remember. “If any of you gentry lose your
money,” he said, “take care you do not come to me; for in the first place, I shall
do my best to have you murdered; and if that fails, I hand you over to the law.
Blackmail won’t do for me. I’ll rather risk all upon a cast, than be pulled to
pieces by degrees. I’ll rather be found out and hang, than give a doit to one
man-jack of you.” That same night we got under way and crossed to the port
of New Orleans, whence, as a sacred trust, I sent the pocket-book to Mr.
Caulder’s son. In a week’s time, the men were all paid off; new hands were
shipped; and the Nemorosa weighed her anchor for Old England.

A more delightful voyage it were hard to fancy. Sir George, of course, was
not a conscientious man; but he had an unaffected gaiety of character that
naturally endeared him to the young; and it was interesting to hear him lay out
his projects for the future, when he should be returned to parliament, and
place at the service of the nation his experience of marine affairs. I asked him if
his notion of piracy upon a private yacht were not original. But he told me, no.
“A yacht, Miss Valdevia,” he observed, “is a chartered nuisance. Who
smuggles? Who robs the salmon rivers of the west of Scotland? Who cruelly
beats the keepers if they dare to intervene? The crews and the proprietors of
yachts. All I have done is to extend the line a trifle; and if you ask me for my
unbiassed opinion, I do not suppose that I am in the least alone.”

In short we were the best of friends, and lived like father and daughter;
though I still withheld from him, of course, that respect which is only due to
moral excellence.

We were still some days’ sail from England, when Sir George obtained, from
an outward-bound ship, a packet of newspapers; and from that fatal hour my
misfortunes recommenced. He sat, the same evening, in the cabin, reading the
news, and making savoury comments on the decline of England and the poor
condition of the navy; when I suddenly observed him to change countenance.

“Hullo!” said he, “this is bad; this is deuced bad, Miss Valdevia. You would
not listen to sound sense, you would send that pocket-book to that man
Caulder’s son.”

“Sir George,” said I, “it was my duty.”

“You are preĴily paid for it, at least,” says he; “and much as I regret it, I, for
one, am done with you. This fellow Caulder demands your extradition.”

“But a slave,” I returned, “is safe in England.”

“Yes, by George!” replied the baronet; “but it’s not a slave, Miss Valdevia, it’s
a thief that he demands. He has quietly destroyed the will; and now accuses
you of robbing your father’s bankrupt estate of jewels to the value of a
hundred thousand pounds.”

I was so much overcome by indignation at this hateful charge and concern

for my unhappy fate that the genial baronet made haste to put me more at
ease.

“Do not be cast down,” said he. “Of course, I wash my hands of you myself.
A man in my position—baronet, old family, and all that—cannot possibly be
too particular about the company he keeps. But I am a deuced good-humoured
old boy, let me tell you, when not ruffled; and I will do the best I can to put you
right. I will lend you a trifle of ready money, give you the address of an
excellent lawyer in London, and find a way to set you on shore unsuspected.”

He was in every particular as good as his word. Four days later, the
Nemorosa sounded her way, under the cloak of a dark night, into a certain
haven of the coast of England; and a boat, rowing with muffled oars, set me
ashore upon the beach within a stone’s throw of a railway station. Thither,
guided by Sir George’s directions, I groped a devious way; and, finding a bench
upon the platform, sat me down, wrapped in a man’s fur greatcoat, to await
the coming of the day. It was still dark when a light was struck behind one of
the windows of the building; nor had the east begun to kindle to the warmer
colours of the dawn, before a porter, carrying a lantern, issued from the door
and found himself face to face with the unfortunate Teresa. He looked all
about him; in the grey twilight of the dawn, the haven was seen to lie deserted,
and the yacht had long since disappeared.
 “Who are you?” he cried.

“I am a traveller,” said I.

“And where do you come from?” he asked.

“I’m going, by the first train, to London,” I replied.

In such manner, like a ghost or a new creation, was Teresa with her bag of
jewels landed on the shores of England; in this silent fashion, without history
or name, she took her place among the millions of a new country.

Since then, I have lived by the expedients of my lawyer, lying concealed in

quiet lodgings, dogged by the spies of Cuba, and not knowing at what hour my
liberty and honour may be lost.

THE BROWN BOX (concluded)

THE effect of this tale on the mind of Harry Desborough was instant and
convincing. The Fair Cuban had been already the loveliest, she now became, in
his eyes, the most romantic, the most innocent and the most unhappy of her
sex. He was bereĞ of words to uĴer what he felt: what pity, what admiration,
what youthful envy of a career so vivid and adventurous. “Oh, madam!” he
began; and finding no language adequate to that apostrophe, caught up her
hand and wrung it in his own. “Count upon me,” he added, with bewildered
fervour; and, geĴing somehow or other out of the apartment and from the
circle of that radiant sorceress, he found himself in the strange out-of-doors,
beholding dull houses, wondering at dull passers-by, a fallen angel. She had
smiled upon him as he leĞ, and with how significant, how beautiful a smile!
The memory lingered in his heart; and when he found his way to a certain
restaurant where music was performed, flutes (as it were of Paradise)
accompanied his meal. The strings went to the melody of that parting smile;
they paraphrased and glossed it in the sense that he desired; and for the first
time in his plain and somewhat dreary life, he perceived himself to have a taste
for music.

The next day, and the next, his meditations moved to that delectable air.
Now he saw her, and was favoured; now saw her not at all; now saw her and
was put by. The fall of her foot upon the stair entranced him; the books that he
sought out and read were books on Cuba and spoke of her indirectly; nay, and
in the very landlady’s parlour, he found one that told of precisely such a
hurricane and, down to the smallest detail, confirmed (had confirmation been
required) the truth of her recital. Presently he began to fall into that preĴiest
mood of a young love, in which the lover scorns himself for his presumption.
Who was he, the dull one, the commonplace unemployed, the man without
adventure, the impure, the untruthful, to aspire to such a creature made of fire
and air, and hallowed and adorned by such incomparable passages of life?
What should he do, to be more worthy? by what devotion, call down the
notice of these eyes to so terrene a being as himself?

He betook himself, thereupon, to the rural privacy of the square, where,

being a lad of a kind heart, he had made himself a circle of acquaintances
among its shy frequenters, the half-domestic cats and the visitors that hung
before the windows of the Children’s Hospital. There he walked, considering
the depth of his demerit and the height of the adored one’s super-excellence;
now lighting upon earth to say a pleasant word to the brother of some infant
invalid; now, with a great heave of breath remembering the queen of women,
and the sunshine of his life.

What was he to do? Teresa, he had observed, was in the habit of leaving the
house towards aĞernoon: she might, perchance, run danger from some Cuban
emissary, when the presence of a friend might turn the balance in her favour:
how, then, if he should follow her? To offer his company would seem like an
intrusion; to dog her openly were a manifest impertinence; he saw himself
reduced to a more stealthy part, which, though in some ways distasteful to his
mind, he did not doubt that he could practise with the skill of a detective.

The next day he proceeded to put his plan in action. At the corner of
ToĴenham Court Road, however, the Señorita suddenly turned back, and met
him face to face, with every mark of pleasure and surprise.

“Ah, Señor, I am sometimes fortunate!” she cried. “I was looking for a

messenger“; and with the sweetest of smiles she despatched him to the east
end of London, to an address which he was unable to find. This was a biĴer
pill to the knight-errant; but when he returned at night, worn out with fruitless
wandering and dismayed by his fiasco, the lady received him with a friendly
gaiety, protesting that all was for the best, since she had changed her mind and
long since repented of her message.

Next day he resumed his labours, glowing with pity and courage, and
determined to protect Teresa with his life. But a painful shock awaited him. In
the narrow and silent Hanway Street, she turned suddenly about and
addressed him with a manner and a light in her eyes, that were new to the
young man’s experience.

“Do I understand that you follow me, Señor?” she cried. “Are these the
manners of the English gentleman?”

Harry confounded himself in the most abject apologies and prayers to be

forgiven, vowed to offend no more, and was at length dismissed, crestfallen
and heavy of heart. The check was final; he gave up that road to service; and
began once more to hang about the square or on the terrace, filled with
remorse and love, admirable and idiotic, a fit object for the scorn and envy of
older men. In these idle hours, while he was courting fortune for a sight of the
beloved, it fell out naturally that he should observe the manners and
appearance of such as came about the house. One person alone was the
occasional visitor of the young lady: a man of considerable stature and
distinguished only by the doubtful ornament of a chin-beard in the style of an
American deacon. Something in his appearance grated upon Harry; this
distaste grew upon him in the course of days; and when at length he mustered
courage to inquire of the Fair Cuban who this was, he was yet more dismayed
by her reply.

“That gentleman,” said she, a smile struggling to her face, “that gentleman, I
will not aĴempt to conceal from you, desires my hand in marriage, and presses
me with the most respectful ardour. Alas, what am I to say? I, the forlorn
Teresa, how shall I refuse or accept such protestations?”

Harry feared to say more; a horrid pang of jealousy transfixed him; and he
had scarce the strength of mind to take his leave with decency. In the solitude
of his own chamber, he gave way to every manifestation of despair. He
passionately adored the Señorita; but it was not only the thought of her
possible union with another that distressed his soul, it was the indefeasible
conviction that her suitor was unworthy. To a duke, a bishop, a victorious
general, or any man adorned with obvious qualities, he had resigned her with
a sort of biĴer joy; he saw himself follow the wedding party from a great way
off; he saw himself return to the poor house, then robbed of its jewel; and
while he could have wept for his despair, he felt he could support it nobly. But
this affair looked otherwise. The man was patently no gentleman; he had a
startled, skulking, guilty bearing; his nails were black, his eyes evasive, his love
perhaps was a pretext; he was perhaps, under this deep disguise, a Cuban
emissary! Harry swore that he would satisfy these doubts; and the next
evening, about the hour of the usual visit, he posted himself at a spot whence
his eye commanded the three issues of the square.

Presently aĞer, a four-wheeler rumbled to the door; and the man with the
chin-beard alighted, paid off the cabman, and was seen by Harry to enter the
house with a brown box hoisted on his back. Half an hour later, he came forth
again without the box, and struck eastward at a rapid walk; and Desborough,
with the same skill and caution that he had displayed in following Teresa,
proceeded to dog the steps of her admirer. The man began to loiter, studying
with apparent interest the wares of the small fruiterer or tobacconist; twice he
returned hurriedly upon his former course; and then, as though he had
suddenly conquered a moment’s hesitation, once more set forth with resolute
and swiĞ steps in the direction of Lincoln’s Inn. At length, in a deserted
by-street, he turned; and coming up to Harry with a countenance which
seemed to have become older and whiter, inquired with some severity of
speech if he had not had the pleasure of seeing the gentleman before.

“You have, sir,” said Harry, somewhat abashed, but with a good show of
stoutness; “and I will not deny that I was following you on purpose.
Doubtless,” he added, for he supposed that all men’s minds must still be
running on Teresa, “you can divine my reason.”

At these words, the man with the chin-beard was seized with a palsied
tremor. He seemed, for some seconds, to seek the uĴerance which his fear
denied him; and then, whipping sharply about, he took to his heels at the most
furious speed of running.

Harry was at first so taken aback that he neglected to pursue; and by the
time he had recovered his wits, his best expedition was only rewarded by a
glimpse of the man with the chin-beard mounting into a hansom, which
immediately aĞer disappeared into the moving crowds of Holborn.

Puzzled and dismayed by this unusual behaviour, Harry returned to the

house in Queen Square, and ventured for the first time to knock at the fair
Cuban’s door. She bade him enter, and he found her kneeling with rather a
disconsolate air beside a brown wooden trunk.

“Señorita,” he broke out, “I doubt whether that man’s character is what he

wishes you to believe. His manner, when he found, and indeed when I
admiĴed, that I was following him, was not the manner of an honest man.”

“Oh!” she cried, throwing up her hands as in desperation, “Don Quixote,

Don Quixote, have you again been tilting against windmills?” And then, with a
laugh, “Poor soul!” she added, “how you must have terrified him! For know
that the Cuban authorities are here, and your poor Teresa may soon be hunted
down. Even yon humble clerk from my solicitor’s office may find himself at any
moment the quarry of armed spies.”

“A humble clerk!” cried Harry, “why, you told me yourself that he wished to
marry you!”

“I thought you English like what you call a joke,” replied the lady calmly. “As
a maĴer of fact he is my lawyer’s clerk, and has been here to-night charged
with disastrous news. I am in sore straits, Señor Harry. Will you help me?”
 At this most welcome word, the young man’s heart exulted; and in the hope,
pride, and self-esteem, that kindled with the very thought of service, he forgot
to dwell upon the lady’s jest. “Can you ask?” he cried. “What is there that I
can do? Only tell me that.”

With signs of an emotion that was certainly unfeigned, the Fair Cuban laid
her hand upon the box. “This box,” she said, “contains my jewels, papers, and
clothes; all, in a word, that still connects me with Cuba and my dreadful past.
They must now be smuggled out of England; or, by the opinion of my lawyer, I
am lost beyond remedy. To-morrow, on board the Irish packet, a sure hand
awaits the box; the problem still unsolved is to find some one to carry it as far
as Holyhead, to see it placed on board the steamer, and instantly return to
town. Will you be he? Will you leave to-morrow by the first train, punctually
obey orders, bear still in mind that you are surrounded by Cuban spies; and
without so much as a look behind you, or a single movement to betray your
interest, leave the box where you have put it and come straight on shore? Will
you do this, and so save your friend?”

“I do not clearly understand ...” began Harry.

“No more do I,” replied the Cuban. “It is not necessary that we should, so
long as we obey the lawyer’s orders.”

“Señorita,” returned Harry gravely, “I think this, of course, a very liĴle thing
to do for you, when I would willingly do all. But suffer me to say one word. If
London is unsafe for your treasures, it cannot long be safe for you; and indeed,
if I at all fathom the plan of your solicitor, I fear I may find you already fled on
my return. I am not considered clever, and can only speak out plainly what is
in my heart: that I love you, and that I cannot bear to lose all knowledge of
you. I hope no more than to be your servant; I ask no more than just that I
shall hear of you. Oh, promise me so much!”

“You shall,” she said, aĞer a pause. “I promise you, you shall.” But though
she spoke with earnestness, the marks of great embarrassment and a strong
conflict of emotions appeared upon her face.

“I wish to tell you,” resumed Desborough, “in case of accidents....”

“Accidents!” she cried: “why do you say that?”

“I do not know,” said he, “you may be gone before my return, and we may
not meet again for long. And so I wished you to know this: That since the day
you gave me the cigareĴe, you have never once, not once, been absent from
my mind; and if it will in any way serve you, you may crumple me up like that
piece of paper, and throw me on the fire. I would love to die for you.”

“Go!” she said, “Go now at once! My brain is in a whirl. I scarce know what
we are talking. Go; and good-night; and oh, may you come safe!”

Once back in his own room a fearful joy possessed the young man’s mind;
and as he recalled her face struck suddenly white and the broken uĴerance of
her last words, his heart at once exulted and misgave him. Love had indeed
looked upon him with a tragic mask; and yet what maĴered, since at least it
was love—since at least she was commoved at their division? He got to bed
with these parti-coloured thoughts; passed from one dream to another all
night long, the white face of Teresa still haunting him, wrung with unspoken
thoughts; and, in the grey of the dawn, leaped suddenly out of bed, in a kind
of horror. It was already time for him to rise. He dressed, made his breakfast
on cold food that had been laid for him the night before; and went down to the
room of his idol for the box. The door was open; a strange disorder reigned
within; the furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the room leĞ bare of
impediment, as though for the pacing of a creature with a tortured mind.
There lay the box, however, and upon the lid a paper with these words:
“Harry, I hope to be back before you go. Teresa.”

He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the table. She had
called him Harry: that should be enough, he thought, to fill the day with
sunshine; and yet somehow the sight of that disordered room still poisoned his
enjoyment. The door of the bedchamber stood gaping open; and though he
turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not but observe the bed had
not been slept in. He was still pondering what this should mean, still trying to
convince himself that all was well, when the moving needle of his watch
summoned him to set forth without delay. He was before all things a man of
his word; ran round to Southampton Row to fetch a cab; and, taking the box
on the front seat, drove off towards the terminus.

The streets were scarcely awake; there was liĴle to amuse the eye; and the
young man’s aĴention centred on the dumb companion of his drive. A card
was nailed upon one side, bearing the superscription: “Miss Doolan, passenger
to Dublin. Glass. With care.” He thought with a sentimental shock that the fair
idol of his heart was perhaps driven to adopt the name of Doolan; and, as he
still studied the card, he was aware of a deadly black depression seĴling
steadily upon his spirits. It was in vain for him to contend against the tide; in
vain that he shook himself or tried to whistle: the sense of some impending
blow was not to be averted. He looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab
pursued its way without a trace of any follower. He gave ear; and over and
above the jolting of the wheels upon the road, he was conscious of a certain
regular and quiet sound that seemed to issue from the box. He put his ear to
the cover; at one moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate ticking; the next,
the sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening recapture it. He laughed
at himself; but still the gloom continued; and it was with more than the
common relief of an arrival, that he leaped from the cab before the station.

Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some thirty

minutes earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the box into the
charge of a porter, who set it on a truck, he proceeded briskly to pace the
platform. Presently the bookstall opened; and the young man was looking at
the books when he was seized by the arm. He turned and, though she was
closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.

“Where is it?” she asked; and the sound of her voice surprised him.

“It?” he said. “What?”

“The box. Have it put on a cab instantly. I am in fearful haste.”

He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not daring to trouble

her with questions; and when the cab had been brought round, and the box
mounted on the front, she passed a liĴle way off upon the pavement and
beckoned him to follow.

“Now,” said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at first
affected him, “you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer;
and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has
been put off: if not,” she added, with a sobbing sigh, “it does not maĴer. So,
good-bye.”

“Teresa,” said Harry, “get into your cab, and I will go along with you. You
are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and till I know the whole, not even
you can make me leave you.”

“You will not?” she asked. “Oh, Harry, it were beĴer!”

“I will not,” said Harry stoutly.

She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand suddenly
and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and, still holding him,
walked to the cab-door.

“Where are we to drive?” asked Harry.

“Home, quickly,” she answered; “double fare!” And as soon as they had
both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily trundled from the station.

Teresa leaned back in a corner. The whole way Harry could perceive her
tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no explanation. At the door of
the house in Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman lowered the box,
which Harry, glad to display his strength, received upon his shoulders.

“Let the man take it,” she whispered. “Let the man take it.”
 “I will do no such thing,” said Harry cheerfully; and having paid the fare, he
followed Teresa through the door which she had opened with her key. The
landlady and maid were gone upon their morning errands; the house was
empty and still; and as the raĴling of the cab died away down Gloucester
Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his burthen, he heard
close against his shoulders the same faint and muffled ticking as before. The
lady, still preceding him, opened the door of her room, and helped him to
lower the box tenderly in the corner by the window.

“And now,” said Harry, “what is wrong?”

“You will not go away?” she cried, with a sudden break in her voice and
beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience. “Oh, Harry, Harry,
go away! Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I deserve!”

“The fate?” repeated Harry. “What is this?”

“No fate,” she resumed. “I do not know what I am saying. But I wish to be
alone. You may come back this evening, Harry; come again when you like; but
leave me now, only leave me now!” And then suddenly, “I have an errand,”
she exclaimed; “you cannot refuse me that!”

“No,” replied Harry, “you have no errand. You are in grief or danger. LiĞ
your veil and tell me what it is.”

“Then,” she said, with a sudden composure, “you leave but one course open
to me.” And raising the veil, she showed him a countenance from which every
trace of colour had fled, eyes marred with weeping, and a brow on which
resolve had conquered fear. “Harry,” she began, “I am not what I seem.”

“You have told me that before,” said Harry, “several times.”

“Oh, Harry, Harry,” she cried, “how you shame me! But this is the God’s
truth. I am a dangerous and wicked girl. My name is Clara Luxmore. I was
never nearer Cuba than Penzance. From first to last I have cheated and played
with you. And what I am I dare not even name to you in words. Indeed, until
to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never grasped the depth and
foulness of my guilt.”

The young man looked upon her aghast. Then a generous current poured
along his veins. “That is all one,” he said. “If you be all you say, you have the
greater need of me.”

“Is it possible,” she exclaimed, “that I have schemed in vain? And will
nothing drive you from this house of death?”

“Of death?” he echoed.

 “Death!” she cried: “death! In that box which you have dragged about
London and carried on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the trigger’s
mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite.”

“My God!” cried Harry.

“Ah!” she continued wildly, “will you flee now? At any moment you may
hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building. I was sure M’Guire was
wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my fears; I
beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own contrivances. I knew
then I loved you—Harry, will you go now? Will you not spare me this unwilling
crime?”

Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he turned to
her.

“Is it,” he asked hoarsely, “an infernal machine?”

Her lips formed the word “yes“; which her voice refused to uĴer.

With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that still
chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured sound, the
blood flowed back upon his heart.

“For whom?” he asked.

“What maĴers it?” she cried, seizing him by the arm. “If you may still be
saved, what maĴer questions?”

“God in Heaven!” cried Harry. “And the Children’s Hospital! At whatever

cost, this damned contrivance must be stopped!”

“It cannot,” she gasped. “The power of man cannot avert the blow. But you,
Harry—you, my beloved—you may still——”

And then from the box that lay so quietly in the corner, a sudden catch was
audible, like the catch of a clock before it strikes the hour. For one second, the
two stared at each other with liĞed brows and stony eyes. Then Harry,
throwing one arm over his face, with the other clutched the girl to his breast
and staggered against the wall.

A dull and startling thud resounded through the room; their eyes blinked
against the coming horror; and still clinging together like drowning people,
they fell to the floor. Then followed a prolonged and strident hissing as from
the indignant pit; an offensive stench seized them by the throat; the room was
filled with dense and choking fumes.

Presently these began a liĴle to disperse: and when at length they drew
themselves, all limp and shaken, to a siĴing posture, the first object that
greeted their vision was the box reposing uninjured in its corner, but still
leaking liĴle wreaths of vapour round the lid.

“Oh, poor Zero!” cried the girl with a strange sobbing laugh. “Alas, poor
Zero! This will break his heart!”

THE SUPERFLUOUS MANSION (concluded)

SOMERSET ran straight upstairs; the door of the drawing-room, contrary to all
custom, was unlocked; and, bursting in, the young man found Zero seated on a
sofa in an aĴitude of singular dejection. Close beside him stood an untasted
grog, the mark of strong preoccupation. The room besides was in confusion:
boxes had been tumbled to and fro; the floor was strewn with keys and other
implements; and in the midst of this disorder lay a lady’s glove.

“I have come,” cried Somerset, “to make an end of this. Either you will
instantly abandon all your schemes, or (cost what it may) I will denounce you
to the police.”

“Ah!” replied Zero, slowly shaking his head. “You are too late, dear fellow! I
am already at the end of all my hopes and fallen to be a laughing-stock and
mockery. My reading,” he added, with a gentle despondency of manner, “has
not been much among romances; yet I recall from one a phrase that depicts my
present state with critical exactitude; and you behold me siĴing here‘like a
burst drum.’”

“What has befallen you?” cried Somerset.

“My last batch,” retorted the ploĴer wearily, “like all the others, is a hollow
mockery and a fraud. In vain do I combine the elements; in vain adjust the
springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of disconsideration that (except
yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul that I can face. My subordinates
themselves have turned upon me. What language have I heard to-day, what
illiberality of sentiment, what pungency of expression! She came once; I could
have pardoned that, for she was moved; but she returned, returned to
announce to me this crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane.
Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a biĴer cup; the speech of females is remarkable
for ... well, well! Denounce me, if you will; you but denounce the dead. I am
extinct. It is strange how, at this supreme crisis of my life, I should be haunted
by quotations from works of an inexact and even fanciful description; but
here,” he added, “is another:‘Othello’s occupation’s gone.’ Yes, dear Somerset,
it is gone; I am no more a dynamiter; and how, I ask you, aĞer having tasted of
these joys, am I to condescend to a less glorious life?”

“I cannot describe how you relieve me,” returned Somerset, siĴing down on
one of several boxes that had been drawn out into the middle of the floor. “I
had conceived a sort of maudlin toleration for your character; I have a great
distaste, besides, for anything in the nature of a duty; and upon both grounds,
your news delights me. But I seem to perceive,” he added, “a certain sound of
ticking in this box.”

“Yes,” replied Zero, with the same slow weariness of manner, “I have set
several of them going.”

“My God!” cried Somerset, bounding to his feet. “Machines?”

“Machines!” returned the ploĴer biĴerly. “Machines indeed! I blush to be

their author. Alas!” he said, burying his face in his hands, “that I should live to
say it!”

“Madman!” cried Somerset, shaking him by the arm. “What am I to

understand? Have you, indeed, set these diabolical contrivances in motion?
and do we stay here to be blown up?”

“’Hoist with his own petard?’” returned the ploĴer musingly. “One more
quotation: strange! But indeed my brain is struck with numbness. Yes, dear
boy, I have, as you say, put my contrivances in motion. The one on which you
are siĴing, I have timed for half an hour. Yon other——”

“Half an hour!” echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation. “Merciful

heavens, in half an hour?”

“Dear fellow, why so much excitement?” inquired Zero. “My dynamite is

not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give it him to play
with. You see this brick?” he continued, liĞing a cake of the infernal compound
from the laboratory-table. “At a touch it should explode, and that with such
unconquerable energy as should bestrew the square with ruins. Well, now,
behold! I dash it on the floor.”

Somerset sprang forward, and, with the strength of the very ecstasy of
terror, wrested the brick from his possession. “Heavens!” he cried, wiping his
brow; and then with more care than ever mother handled her first-born withal,
gingerly transported the explosive to the far end of the apartment; the ploĴer,
his arms once more fallen to his side, dispiritedly watching him.

“It was entirely harmless,” he sighed. “They describe it as burning like

tobacco.”

“In the name of fortune,” cried Somerset, “what have I done to you, or what
have you done to yourself, that you should persist in this insane behaviour? If
not for your own sake, then for mine, let us depart from this doomed house,
where I profess I have not the heart to leave you; and then, if you will take my
advice, and if your determination be sincere, you will instantly quit this city,
where no further occupation can detain you.”

“Such, dear fellow, was my own design,” replied the ploĴer. “I have, as you
observe, no further business here; and once I have packed a liĴle bag, I shall
ask you to share a frugal meal, to go with me as far as to the station, and see
the last of a broken-hearted man. And yet,” he added, looking on the boxes
with a lingering regret, “I should have liked to make quite certain. I cannot but
suspect my underlings of some mismanagement; it may be fond, but yet I
cherish that idea: it may be the weakness of a man of science, but yet,” he
cried, rising into some energy, “I will never, I cannot if I try, believe that my
poor dynamite has had fair usage!”

“Five minutes!” said Somerset, glancing with horror at the timepiece. “If you
do not instantly buckle to your bag, I leave you.”

“A few necessaries,” returned Zero, “only a few necessaries, dear Somerset,

and you behold me ready.”

He passed into the bedroom, and aĞer an interval which seemed to draw
out into eternity for his unfortunate companion, he returned, bearing in his
hand an open Gladstone bag. His movements were still horribly deliberate,
and his eyes lingered gloatingly on his dear boxes, as he moved to and fro
about the drawing-room, gathering a few small trifles. Last of all, he liĞed one
of the squares of dynamite.

“Put that down!” cried Somerset. “If what you say be true, you have no call
to load yourself with that ungodly contraband.”

“Merely a curiosity, dear boy,” he said persuasively, and slipped the brick
into his bag; “merely a memento of the past—ah, happy past, bright past! You
will not take a touch of spirits? no? I find you very abstemious. Well,” he
added, “if you have really no curiosity to await the event——”

“I!” cried Somerset. “My blood boils to get away.”

“Well, then,” said Zero, “I am ready; I would I could say, willing; but thus to
leave the scene of my sublime endeavours——”

Without further parley, Somerset seized him by the arm, and dragged him
downstairs; the hall-door shut with a clang on the deserted mansion; and still
towing his laggardly companion, the young man sped across the square in the
Oxford Street direction. They had not yet passed the corner of the garden,
when they were arrested by a dull thud of an extraordinary amplitude of
sound, accompanied and followed by a shaĴering fracas. Somerset turned in
time to see the mansion rend in twain, vomit forth flames and smoke, and
instantly collapse into its cellars. At the same moment, he was thrown violently
to the ground. His first glance was towards Zero. The ploĴer had but reeled
against the garden rail; he stood there, the Gladstone bag clasped tight upon
his heart, his whole face radiant with relief and gratitude; and the young man
heard him murmur to himself: “Nunc dimiĴis, nunc dimiĴis!“

The consternation of the populace was indescribable: the whole of Golden

Square was alive with men, women, and children, running wildly to and fro,
and, like rabbits in a warren, dashing in and out of the house doors, and under
favour of this confusion, Somerset dragged away the lingering ploĴer.

“It was grand,” he continued to murmur: “it was indescribably grand. Ah,
green Erin, green Erin, what a day of glory! and, oh, my calumniated dynamite,
how triumphantly hast thou prevailed!”

Suddenly a shade crossed his face; and pausing in the middle of the footway,
he consulted the dial of his watch.

“Good God!” he cried, “how mortifying! seven minutes too early! The
dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has once
more betrayed me. Alas, can there be no success unmixed with failure? and
must even this red-leĴer day be chequered by a shadow?”

“Incomparable ass!” said Somerset, “what have you done? Blown up the
house of an unoffending old lady, and the whole earthly property of the only
person who is fool enough to befriend you!”

“You do not understand these maĴers,” replied Zero, with an air of great
dignity. “This will shake England to the heart. Gladstone, the truculent old
man, will quail before the pointing finger of revenge. And now that my
dynamite is proved effective——”

“Heavens, you remind me!” ejaculated Somerset. “That brick in your bag
must be instantly disposed of. But how? If we could throw it in the river——”

“A torpedo,” cried Zero, brightening, “a torpedo in the Thames! Superb,

dear fellow! I recognise in you the marks of an accomplished anarch.”

“True!” returned Somerset. “It cannot so be done; and there is no help but
you must carry it away with you. Come on, then, and let me at once consign
you to a train.”

“Nay, nay, dear boy,” protested Zero. “There is now no call for me to leave.
My character is now reinstated; my fame brightens; this is the best thing I have
done yet; and I see from here the ovations that await the author of the Golden
Square Atrocity.”

“My young friend,” returned the other, “I give you your choice. I will either
see you safe on board a train or safe in gaol.”

“Somerset, this is unlike you!” said the chemist. “You surprise me,
Somerset.”

“I shall considerably more surprise you at the next police office,” returned
Somerset, with something bordering on rage. “For on one point my mind is
seĴled: either I see you packed off to America, brick and all, or else you dine in
prison.”

“You have perhaps neglected one point,” returned the unoffended Zero:
“for, speaking as a philosopher, I fail to see what means you can employ to
force me. The will, my dear fellow——”

“Now, see here,” interrupted Somerset. “You are ignorant of anything but
science, which I can never regard as being truly knowledge; I, sir, have studied
life; and allow me to inform you that I have but to raise my hand and
voice—here in this street—and the mob——”

“Good God in Heaven, Somerset,” cried Zero, turning deadly white and
stopping in his walk, “great God in Heaven, what words are these? Oh, not in
jest, not even in jest, should they be used! The brutal mob, the savage
passions.... Somerset, for God’s sake, a public-house!”

Somerset considered him with freshly awakened curiosity. “This is very

interesting,” said he. “You recoil from such a death?”

“Who would not?” asked the ploĴer.

“And to be blown up by dynamite,” inquired the young man, “doubtless

strikes you as a form of euthanasia?”

“Pardon me,” returned Zero: “I own, and, since I have braved it daily in my
professional career, I own it even with pride: it is a death unusually distasteful
to the mind of man.”

“One more question,” said Somerset; “you object to Lynch Law? why?”

“It is assassination,” said the ploĴer calmly; but with eyebrows a liĴle liĞed,
as in wonder at the question.

“Shake hands with me,” cried Somerset. “Thank God, I have now no
ill-feeling leĞ; and though you cannot conceive how I burn to see you on the
gallows, I can quite contentedly assist at your departure.”

“I do not very clearly take your meaning,” said Zero, “but I am sure you
mean kindly. As to my departure, there is another point to be considered. I
have neglected to supply myself with funds; my liĴle all has perished in what
history will love to relate under the name of the Golden Square Atrocity; and
without what is coarsely if vigorously called stamps, you must be well aware it
is impossible for me to pass the ocean.”

“For me,” said Somerset, “you have now ceased to be a man. You have no
more claim upon me than a door-scraper; but the touching confusion of your
mind disarms me from extremities. Until to-day, I always thought stupidity was
funny; I now know otherwise; and when I look upon your idiot face, laughter
rises within me like a deadly sickness, and the tears spring up into my eyes as
biĴer as blood. What should this portend? I begin to doubt; I am losing faith in
scepticism. Is it possible,” he cried, in a kind of horror of himself—“is it
conceivable that I believe in right and wrong? Already I have found myself,
with incredulous surprise, to be the victim of a prejudice of personal honour.
And must this change proceed? Have you robbed me of my youth? Must I fall,
at my time of life, into the Common Banker? But why should I address that
head of wood? Let this suffice. I dare not let you stay among women and
children; I lack the courage to denounce you, if by any means I may avoid it;
you have no money; well then, take mine, and go; and if ever I behold your
face aĞer to-day, that day will be your last.”

“Under the circumstances,” replied Zero, “I scarce see my way to refuse

your offer. Your expressions may pain, they cannot surprise me; I am aware
our point of view requires a liĴle training, a liĴle moral hygiene, if I may so
express it; and one of the points that has always charmed me in your character
is this delightful frankness. As for the small advance, it shall be remiĴed you
from Philadelphia.”

“It shall not,” said Somerset.

“Dear fellow, you do not understand,” returned the ploĴer. “I shall now be
received with fresh confidence by my superiors; and my experiments will be
no longer hampered by pitiful conditions of the purse.”

“What I am now about, sir, is a crime,” replied Somerset; “and were you to
roll in wealth like Vanderbilt, I should scorn to be reimbursed of money I had
so scandalously misapplied. Take it, and keep it. By George, sir, three days of
you have transformed me to an ancient Roman.”

With these words, Somerset hailed a passing hansom; and the pair were
driven rapidly to the railway terminus. There, an oath having been extracted,
the money changed hands.

“And now,” said Somerset, “I have bought back my honour with every
penny I possess. And I thank God, though there is nothing before me but
starvation, I am free from all entanglement with Mr. Zero Pumpernickel
Jones.”

“To starve?” cried Zero. “Dear fellow, I cannot endure the thought.”

“Take your ticket!” returned Somerset.

“I think you display temper,” said Zero.

“Take your ticket,” reiterated the young man.

“Well,” said the ploĴer, as he returned, ticket in hand, “your aĴitude is so

strange and painful, that I scarce know if I should ask you to shake hands.”

“As a man, no,” replied Somerset; “but I have no objection to shake hands
with you, as I might with a pump-well that ran poison or hell-fire.”

“This is a very cold parting,” sighed the dynamiter; and still followed by
Somerset, he began to descend the platform. This was now bustling with
passengers; the train for Liverpool was just about to start, another had but
recently arrived; and the double tide made movement difficult. As the pair
reached the neighbourhood of the bookstall, however, they came into an open
space; and here the aĴention of the ploĴer was aĴracted by a Standard
broadside bearing the words: “Second Edition: Explosion in Golden Square.”
His eye lighted; groping in his pocket for the necessary coin, he sprang
forward—his bag knocked sharply on the corner of the stall—and instantly,
with a formidable report, the dynamite exploded. When the smoke cleared
away the stall was seen much shaĴered, and the stall-keeper running forth in
terror from the ruins; but of the Irish patriot or the Gladstone bag no adequate
remains were to be found.

In the first scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and came
out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with hunger, and
his pockets destitute of coin. Yet as he continued to walk the pavements, he
wondered to find in his heart a sort of peaceful exultation, a great content, a
sense, as it were, of divine presence and the kindliness of fate; and he was able
to tell himself that even if the worst befell, he could now starve with a certain
comfort since Zero was expunged.

Late in the aĞernoon he found himself at the door of Mr. Godall’s shop; and
being quite unmanned by his long fast, and scarce considering what he did, he
opened the glass door and entered.

“Ha!” said Mr. Godall, “Mr. Somerset! Well, have you met with an
adventure? Have you the promised story? Sit down, if you please; suffer me to
choose you a cigar of my own special brand; and reward me with a narrative in
your best style.”
 “I must not take a cigar,” said Somerset.

“Indeed!” said Mr. Godall. “But now I come to look at you more closely, I
perceive that you are changed. My poor boy, I hope there is nothing wrong?”

Somerset burst into tears.

EPILOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN

ON a certain day of lashing rain in the December of last year, and between the
hours of nine and ten in the morning, Mr. Edward Challoner pioneered himself
under an umbrella to the door of the Cigar Divan in Rupert Street. It was a
place he had visited but once before: the memory of what had followed on that
visit and the fear of Somerset having prevented his return. Even now, he
looked in before he entered; but the shop was free of customers.

The young man behind the counter was so intently writing in a penny
version-book, that he paid no heed to Challoner’s arrival. On a second glance,
it seemed to the laĴer that he recognised him.

“By Jove,” he thought, “unquestionably Somerset!”

And though this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to
avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste to
curiosity.

“’Or opulent rotunda strike the sky,’” said the shopman to himself, in the
tone of one considering a verse. “I suppose it would be too much to
say‘orotunda,’ and yet how noble it were!‘Or opulent orotunda strike the sky.’
But that is the biĴerness of arts; you see a good effect, and some nonsense
about sense continually intervenes.”

“Somerset, my dear fellow,” said Challoner, “is this a masquerade?”

“What? Challoner!” cried the shopman. “I am delighted to see you. One

moment, till I finish the octave of my sonnet: only the octave.” And with a
friendly waggle of the hand, he once more buried himself in the commerce of
the Muses. “I say,” he said presently, looking up, “you seem in wonderful
preservation: how about the hundred pounds?”

“I have made a small inheritance from a great aunt in Wales,” replied

Challoner modestly.
 “Ah,” said Somerset, “I very much doubt the legitimacy of inheritance. The
State, in my view, should collar it. I am now going through a stage of socialism
and poetry,” he added apologetically, as one who spoke of a course of
medicinal waters.

“And are you really the person of the—establishment?” inquired Challoner,

deĞly evading the word “shop.”

“A vendor, sir, a vendor,” returned the other, pocketing his poesy. “I help old
Happy and Glorious. Can I offer you a weed?”

“Well, I scarcely like ...” began Challoner.

“Nonsense, my dear fellow,” cried the shopman. “We are very proud of the
business; and the old man, let me inform you, besides being the most egregious
of created beings from the point of view of ethics, is literally sprung from the
loins of kings.‘De Godall je suis le fervent.’ There is only one Godall.—By the
way,” he added, as Challoner lit his cigar, “how did you get on with the
detective trade?”

“I did not try,” said Challoner curtly.

“Ah, well, I did,” returned Somerset, “and made the most incomparable
mess of it; lost all my money and fairly covered myself with odium and ridicule.
There is more in that business, Challoner, than meets the eye; there is more, in
fact, in all businesses. You must believe in them, or get up the belief that you
believe. Hence,” he added, “the recognised inferiority of the plumber, for no
one could believe in plumbing.”

“A propos,” asked Challoner, “do you still paint?”

“Not now,” replied Paul; “but I think of taking up the violin.”

Challoner’s eye, which had been somewhat restless since the trade of the
detective had been named, now rested for a moment on the columns of the
morning paper, where it lay spread upon the counter.

“By Jove,” he cried, “that’s odd!”

“What is odd?” asked Paul.

“Oh, nothing,” returned the other: “only I once met a person called
M’Guire.”

“So did I!” cried Somerset. “Is there anything about him?”

Challoner read as follows: “Mysterious death in Stepney. An inquest was held

yesterday on the body of Patrick M’Guire, described as a carpenter. Dr.
Dovering stated that he had for some time treated the deceased as a
dispensary patient, for sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and nervous depression.
There was no cause of death to be found. He would say the deceased had
sunk. Deceased was not a temperate man, which doubtless accelerated death.
Deceased complained of dumb ague, but witness had never been able to
detect any positive disease. He did not know that he had any family. He
regarded him as a person of unsound intellect, who believed himself a member
and the victim of some secret society. If he were to hazard an opinion, he
would say deceased had died of fear.”

“And the doctor would be right,” cried Somerset; “and my dear Challoner, I
am so relieved to hear of his demise, that I will——. Well, aĞer all,” he added,
“poor devil, he was well served.”

The door at this moment opened, and Desborough appeared upon the
threshold. He was wrapped in a long waterproof, imperfectly supplied with
buĴons; his boots were full of water, his hat greasy with service; and yet he
wore the air of one exceeding well content with life. He was hailed by the two
others with exclamations of surprise and welcome.

“And did you try the detective business?” inquired Paul.

“No,” returned Harry. “Oh yes, by the way, I did though: twice, and got
caught out both times. But I thought I should find my—my wife here?” he
added, with a kind of proud confusion.

“What? are you married?” cried Somerset.

“Oh yes,” said Harry, “quite a long time: a month at least.”

“Money?” asked Challoner.

“That’s the worst of it,” Desborough admiĴed. “We are deadly hard up. But
the Pri—Mr. Godall is going to do something for us. That is what brings us
here.”

“Who was Mrs. Desborough?” said Challoner, in the tone of a man of

society.

“She was a Miss Luxmore,” returned Harry. “You fellows will be sure to like
her, for she is much cleverer than I. She tells wonderful stories, too; beĴer than
a book.”

And just then the door opened, and Mrs. Desborough entered. Somerset
cried out aloud to recognise the young lady of the Superfluous Mansion, and
Challoner fell back a step and dropped his cigar as he beheld the sorceress of
Chelsea.

“What!” cried Harry, “do you both know my wife?”

 “I believe I have seen her,” said Somerset, a liĴle wildly.

“I think I have met the gentleman,” said Mrs. Desborough sweetly; “but I
cannot imagine where it was.”

“Oh no,” cried Somerset fervently; “I have no notion—I cannot conceive

—where it could have been. Indeed,” he continued, growing in emphasis, “I
think it highly probable that it’s a mistake.”

“And you, Challoner?” asked Harry, “you seemed to recognise her, too.”

“These are both friends of yours, Harry?” said the lady. “Delighted, I am
sure. I do not remember to have met Mr. Challoner.”

Challoner was very red in the face, perhaps from having groped aĞer his
cigar. “I do not remember to have had the pleasure,” he responded huskily.

“Well, and Mr. Godall?” asked Mrs. Desborough.

“Are you the lady that has an appointment with old ...” began Somerset, and
paused, blushing. “Because if so,” he resumed, “I was to announce you at
once.”

And the shopman raised a curtain, opened a door, and passed into a small
pavilion which had been added to the back of the house. On the roof, the rain
resounded musically. The walls were lined with maps and prints and a few
works of reference. Upon a table was a large-scale map of Egypt and the
Soudan, and another of Tonkin, on which, by the aid of coloured pins, the
progress of the different wars was being followed day by day. A light,
refreshing odour of the most delicate tobacco hung upon the air; and a fire,
not of foul coal, but of clear-flaming resinous billets, chaĴered upon silver
dogs. In this elegant and plain apartment, Mr. Godall sat in a morning muse,
placidly gazing at the fire and hearkening to the rain upon the roof.

“Ha, my dear Mr. Somerset,” said he, “and have you since last night
adopted any fresh political principle?”

“The lady, sir,” said Somerset, with another blush.

“You have seen her, I believe?” returned Mr. Godall; and on Somerset’s
replying in the affirmative: “You will excuse me, my dear sir,” he resumed, “if I
offer you a hint. I think it not improbable this lady may desire entirely to forget
the past. From one gentleman to another, no more words are necessary.”

A moment aĞer, he had received Mrs. Desborough with that grave and
touching urbanity that so well became him.

“I am pleased, madam, to welcome you to my poor house,” he said; “and

shall be still more so, if what were else a barren courtesy and a pleasure
personal to myself, shall prove to be of serious benefit to you and Mr.
Desborough.”

“Your highness,” replied Clara, “I must begin with thanks; it is like what I
have heard of you, that you should thus take up the case of the unfortunate;
and as for my Harry, he is worthy of all that you can do.” She paused.

“But for yourself?” suggested Mr. Godall—“it was thus you were about to
continue, I believe.”

“You take the words out of my mouth,” she said. “For myself, it is different.”

“I am not here to be a judge of men,” replied the prince; “still less of women.
I am now a private person like yourself and many million others; but I am one
who still fights upon the side of quiet. Now, madam, you know beĴer than I,
and God beĴer than you, what you have done to mankind in the past; I pause
not to inquire; it is with the future I concern myself, it is for the future I
demand security. I would not willingly put arms into the hands of a disloyal
combatant; and I dare not restore to wealth one of the levyers of a private and
a barbarous war. I speak with some severity, and yet I pick my terms. I tell
myself continually that you are a woman; and a voice continually reminds me
of the children whose lives and limbs you have endangered. A woman,” he
repeated solemnly—“and children. Possibly, madam, when you are yourself a
mother, you will feel the bite of that antithesis: possibly when you kneel at
night beside a cradle, a fear will fall upon you, heavier than any shame; and
when your child lies in the pain and danger of disease, you shall hesitate to
kneel before your Maker.”

“You look at the fault,” she said, “and not at the excuse. Has your own heart
never leaped within you at some story of oppression? But, alas, no! for you
were born upon a throne.”

“I was born of woman,” said the prince; “I came forth from my mother’s
agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings. This, which you forgot, I have
still faithfully remembered. Is it not one of your English poets, that looked
abroad upon the earth and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops
manœuvring, warships at sea, and a great dust of baĴles on shore; and, casting
anxiously about for what should be the cause of so many and painful
preparations, spied at last, in the centre of all, a mother and her babe? These,
madam, are my politics; and the verses, which are by Mr. Coventry Patmore, I
have caused to be translated into the Bohemian tongue. Yes, these are my
politics: to change what we can, to beĴer what we can; but still to bear in mind
that man is but a devil weakly feĴered by some generous beliefs and
impositions; and for no word however nobly sounding, and no cause however
just and pious, to relax the stricture of these bonds.”
 There was a silence of a moment.

“I fear, madam,” resumed the prince, “that I but weary you. My views are
formal like myself; and like myself, they also begin to grow old. But I must still
trouble you for some reply.”

“I can say but one thing,” said Mrs. Desborough: “I love my husband.”

“It is a good answer,” returned the prince; “and you name a good influence,
but one that need not be conterminous with life.”

“I will not play at pride with such a man as you,” she answered. “What do
you ask of me? not protestations, I am sure. What shall I say? I have done
much that I cannot defend and that I would not do again. Can I say more? Yes:
I can say this: I never abused myself with the muddle-headed fairy tales of
politics. I was at least prepared to meet reprisals. While I was levying war
myself—or levying murder, if you choose the plainer term—I never accused
my adversaries of assassination. I never felt or feigned a righteous horror,
when a price was put upon my life by those whom I aĴacked. I never called
the policeman a hireling. I may have been a criminal, in short; but I never was a
fool.”

“Enough, madam,” returned the prince: “more than enough! Your words
are most reviving to my spirits; for in this age, when even the assassin is a
sentimentalist, there is no virtue greater in my eyes than intellectual clarity.
Suffer me then to ask you to retire; for by the signal of that bell, I perceive my
old friend, your mother, to be close at hand. With her I promise you to do my
utmost.”

And as Mrs. Desborough returned to the Divan, the prince, opening a door
upon the other side, admiĴed Mrs. Luxmore.

“Madam, and my very good friend,” said he, “is my face so much changed
that you no longer recognise Prince Florizel in Mr. Godall?”

“To be sure!” she cried, looking at him through her glasses. “I have always
regarded your highness as a perfect man; and in your altered circumstances, of
which I have already heard with deep regret, I will beg you to consider my
respect increased instead of lessened.”

“I have found it so,” returned the prince, “with every class of my

acquaintance. But, madam, I pray you to be seated. My business is of a delicate
order, and regards your daughter.”

“In that case,” said Mrs. Luxmore, “you may save yourself the trouble of
speaking, for I have fully made up my mind to have nothing to do with her. I
will not hear one word in her defence; but as I value nothing so particularly as
the virtue of justice, I think it my duty to explain to you the grounds of my
complaint. She deserted me, her natural protector; for years she has consorted
with the most disreputable persons; and, to fill the cup of her offence, she has
recently married. I refuse to see her, or the being to whom she has linked
herself. One hundred and twenty pounds a year, I have always offered her: I
offer it again. It is what I had myself when I was her age.”

“Very well, madam,” said the prince; “and be that so! But to touch upon
another maĴer: what was the income of the Reverend Bernard Fanshawe?”

“My father?” asked the spirited old lady. “I believe he had seven hundred
pounds in the year.”

“You were one, I think, of several?” pursued the prince.

“Of four,” was the reply. “We were four daughters; and, painful as the
admission is to make, a more detestable family could scarce be found in
England.”

“Dear me!” said the prince. “And you, madam, have an income of eight
thousand?”

“Not more than five,” returned the old lady; “but where on earth are you
conducting me?”

“To an allowance of one thousand pounds a year,” replied Florizel, smiling.

“For I must not suffer you to take your father for a rule. He was poor, you are
rich. He had many calls upon his poverty: there are none upon your wealth.
And indeed, madam, if you will let me touch this maĴer with a needle, there is
but one point in common to your two positions: that each had a daughter more
remarkable for liveliness than duty.”

“I have been entrapped into this house,” said the old lady, geĴing to her
feet. “But it shall not avail. Not all the tobacconists in Europe....”

“Ah, madam,” interrupted Florizel, “before what is referred to as my fall,

you had not used such language! And since you so much object to the simple
industry by which I live, let me give you a friendly hint. If you will not consent
to support your daughter, I shall be constrained to place that lady behind my
counter, where I doubt not she would prove a great aĴraction; and your
son-in-law shall have a livery and run the errands. With such young blood my
business might be doubled, and I might be bound, in common gratitude, to
place the name of Luxmore beside that of Godall.”

“Your highness,” said the old lady, “I have been very rude, and you are very
cunning. I suppose the minx is on the premises. Produce her.”

“Let us rather observe them unperceived,” said the prince; and so saying he
rose and quietly drew back the curtain.

Mrs. Desborough sat with her back to them on a chair; Somerset and Harry
were hanging on her words with extraordinary interest; Challoner, alleging
some affair, had long ago withdrawn from the detested neighbourhood of the
enchantress.

“At that moment,” Mrs. Desborough was saying, “Mr. Gladstone detected
the features of his cowardly assailant. A cry rose to his lips: a cry of mingled
triumph....”

“That is Mr. Somerset!” interrupted the spirited old lady, in the highest note
of her register. “Mr. Somerset, what have you done with my house-property?”

“Madam,” said the prince, “let it be mine to give the explanation; and in the
meanwhile, welcome your daughter.”

“Well, Clara, how do you do?” said Mrs. Luxmore. “It appears I am to give
you an allowance. So much the beĴer for you. As for Mr. Somerset, I am very
ready to have an explanation; for the whole affair, though costly, was
eminently humorous. And at any rate,” she added, nodding to Paul, “he is a
young gentleman for whom I have a great affection, and his pictures were the
funniest I ever saw.”

“I have ordered a collation,” said the prince. “Mr. Somerset, as these are all
your friends, I propose, if you please, that you should join them at table. I will
take the shop.”

STRANGE CASE OF
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

TO

KATHARINE DE MATTOS

It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;

Still will we be the children of the heather and the wind.
 Far away from home, O it’s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

STRANGE CASE OF
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

STORY OF THE DOOR

MR. UTTERSON the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never
lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in
sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable. At friendly
meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human
beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his
talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the aĞer-dinner face,
but more oĞen and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself;
drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he
enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he
had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy,
at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity
inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to
say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” In this character,
it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last
good influence in the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long
as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his
demeanour.

No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. UĴerson; for he was undemonstrative at
the best, and even his friendships seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity
of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle
ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way. His
friends were those of his own blood, or those whom he had known the
longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no
aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt, the bond that united him to Mr.
Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a
nut to crack for many, what these two could see in each other or what subject
they could find in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in
their Sunday walks that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would
hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men
put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of
each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the
calls of business, that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.

It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street
in a busy quarter of London. The street was small, and what is called quiet, but
it drove a thriving trade on the week-days. The inhabitants were all doing well,
it seemed, and all emulously hoping to do beĴer still, and laying out the
surplus of their gains in coquetry; so that the shop-fronts stood along that
thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even
on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty
of passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a
fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shuĴers, well-polished brasses, and
general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the eye of
the passenger.

Two doors from one corner on the leĞ hand going east, the line was broken
by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building
thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two stories high; showed no
window, nothing but a door on the lower story and a blind forehead of
discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature the marks of
prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither
bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess
and struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the
schoolboy had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation
no one had appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their
ravages.

Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street, but when
they came abreast of the entry, the former liĞed up his cane and pointed.

“Did you ever remark that door?” he asked; and when his companion had
replied in the affirmative, “it is connected in my mind,” added he, “with a very
odd story.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. UĴerson, with a slight change of voice, “and what was
that?”

“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was coming home from
some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter
morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally
nothing to be seen but lamps. Street aĞer street, and all the folks asleep
—street aĞer street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a
church—till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens
and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All at once I saw two figures:
one a liĴle man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the
other a girl of maybe eight or ten, who was running as hard as she was able
down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at
the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled
calmly over the child’s body and leĞ her screaming on the ground. It sounds
nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some
damned Juggernaut. I gave a view-holloa, took to my heels, collared my
gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group
about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool, and made no resistance, but
gave me one look so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The
people who had turned out were the girl’s own family; and preĴy soon, the
doctor, for whom she had been sent, put in his appearance. Well, the child was
not much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there
you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one curious
circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the
child’s family, which was only natural. But the doctor’s case was what struck
me. He was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour,
with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir,
he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that
Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in
his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the
question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make
such a scandal out of this as should make his name stink from one end of
London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he
should lose them. And all the time, as we were pitching it in red-hot, we were
keeping the women off him as best we could, for they were as wild as harpies. I
never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle,
with a kind of black sneering coolness—frightened, too, I could see that—but
carrying it off, sir, really like Satan.‘If you choose to make capital out of this
accident,’ said he,‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but wishes to avoid a
scene,’ says he.‘Name your figure.’ Well, we screwed him up to a hundred
pounds for the child’s family; he would have clearly liked to stick out; but there
was something about the lot of us that meant mischief, and at last he struck.
The next thing was to get the money; and where do you think he carried us but
to that place with the door?—whipped out a key, went in, and presently came
back with the maĴer of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on
CouĴs’s, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t mention,
though it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well
known and oĞen printed. The figure was stiff; but the signature was good for
more than that, if it was only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out to my
gentleman that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does
not, in real life, walk into a cellar-door at four in the morning and come out of
it with another man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was
quite easy and sneering. ’Set your mind at rest,’ says he,‘I will stay with you till
the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So we all set off, the doctor, and
the child’s father, and our friend and myself, and passed the rest of the night in
my chambers; and next day, when we had breakfasted, went in a body to the
bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and said I had every reason to believe it was
a forgery. Not a bit of it. The cheque was genuine.”

“Tut-tut,” said Mr. UĴerson.

“I see you feel as I do,” said Mr. Enfield. “Yes, it’s a bad story. For my man
was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really damnable man: and
the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of the proprieties, celebrated
too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellows who do what they call
good. Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some
of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call that place with the
door, in consequence. Though even that, you know, is far from explaining all,”
he added, and with the words fell into a vein of musing.

From this he was recalled by Mr. UĴerson asking rather suddenly: “And you
don’t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?”

“A likely place, isn’t it?” returned Mr. Enfield. “But I happened to have
noticed his address; he lives in some square or other.”

“And you never asked about—the place with the door?” said Mr. UĴerson.

“No, sir: I had a delicacy,” was the reply. “I feel very strongly about puĴing
questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a
question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and
away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the
last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his own
back-garden and the family have to change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule
of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.”

“A very good rule too,” said the lawyer.

“But I have studied the place for myself,” continued Mr. Enfield. “It seems
scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one
but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure. There are three
windows looking on the court on the first floor; none below; the windows are
always shut, but they’re clean. And then there is a chimney which is generally
smoking; so somebody must live there. Yet it’s not so sure; for the buildings are
so packed together about that court that it’s hard to say where one ends and
another begins.”

The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then, “Enfield,” said Mr.
UĴerson, “that’s a good rule of yours.”

“Yes, I think it is,” returned Enfield.

“But for all that,” continued the lawyer, “there’s one point I want to ask: I
want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child.”

“Well,” said Mr. Enfield, “I can’t see what harm it would do. He was a man
of the name of Hyde.”

“H’m,” said Mr. UĴerson. “What sort of a man is he to see?”

“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance;
something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so
disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he
gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He’s
an extraordinary-looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the
way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of
memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.”

Mr. UĴerson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a
weight of consideration. “You are sure he used a key?” he inquired at last.

“My dear sir——” began Enfield, surprised out of himself.

“Yes, I know,” said UĴerson; “I know it must seem strange. The fact is, if I
do not ask you the name of the other party it is because I know it already. You
see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have been inexact in any point,
you had beĴer correct it.”

“I think you might have warned me,” returned the other with a touch of
sullenness. “But I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. The fellow had a
key; and what’s more, he has it still. I saw him use it not a week ago.”

Mr. UĴerson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man
presently resumed. “Here is another lesson to say nothing,” said he. “I am
ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to this
again.”

“With all my heart,” said the lawyer. “I shake hands on that, Richard.”
 SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE

THAT evening Mr. UĴerson came home to his bachelor house in sombre spirits
and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a Sunday, when
this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his
reading-desk, until the clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of
twelve, when he would go soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night,
however, as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went
into his business-room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private
part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s Will, and sat
down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was holograph, for
Mr. UĴerson, though he took charge of it now that it was made, had refused to
lend the least assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case of
the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., &c., all his possessions
were to pass into the hands of his “friend and benefactor Edward Hyde,” but
that in case of Dr. Jekyll’s “disappearance or unexplained absence for any
period exceeding three calendar months,” the said Edward Hyde should step
into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes without further delay and free from any
burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to the
members of the doctor’s household. This document had long been the lawyer’s
eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and
customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto
it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a
sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name
was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began
to be clothed upon with detestable aĴributes; and out of the shiĞing,
insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the
sudden, definite presentment of a fiend.

“I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in

the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.”

With that he blew out his candle, put on a great-coat, and set forth in the
direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the
great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. “If any
one knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought.

The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of
delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room, where Dr. Lanyon
sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced
gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and
decided manner. At sight of Mr. UĴerson, he sprang up from his chair and
welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was the way of the man, was
somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling. For these
two were old friends, old mates both at school and college, both thorough
respecters of themselves and of each other, and, what does not always follow,
men who thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company.

AĞer a liĴle rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so
disagreeably preoccupied his mind.

“I suppose, Lanyon,” said he, “you and I must be the two oldest friends that
Henry Jekyll has?”

“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “But I suppose we
are. And what of that? I see liĴle of him now.”

“Indeed?” said UĴerson. “I thought you had a bond of common interest.”

“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll
became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though
of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake’s sake, as they say, I
see and I have seen devilish liĴle of the man. Such unscientific balderdash,”
added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, “would have estranged Damon
and Pythias.”

This liĴle spirt of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. UĴerson. “They
have only differed on some point of science,” he thought; and being a man of
no scientific passions (except in the maĴer of conveyancing) he even added:
“It is nothing worse than that!” He gave his friend a few seconds to recover his
composure, and then approached the question he had come to put. “Did you
ever come across a protégé of his—one Hyde?” he asked.

“Hyde,” repeated Lanyon. “No. Never heard of him. Since my time.”

That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with him to
the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the small hours of the
morning began to grow large. It was a night of liĴle ease to his toiling mind,
toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions.

Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently near to
Mr. UĴerson’s dwelling, and still he was digging at the problem. Hitherto it
had touched him on the intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also
was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross
darkness of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before
his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures. He would be aware of the great field of
lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the figure of a man walking swiĞly; then of a
child running from the doctor’s; and then these met, and that human
Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams. Or
else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep, dreaming
and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened,
the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would
stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead
hour he must rise and do its bidding. The figure in these two phases haunted
the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide
more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiĞly and still the
more swiĞly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city,
and at every street-corner crush a child and leave her screaming. And still the
figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams, it had no
face, or one that baffled him and melted before his eyes; and thus it was that
there sprang up and grew apace in the lawyer’s mind a singularly strong,
almost an inordinate, curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If
he could but once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and
perhaps roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when well
examined. He might see a reason for his friend’s strange preference or
bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clauses of the will.
And at least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man who was
without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to raise up, in the
mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.

From that time forward, Mr. UĴerson began to haunt the door in the
by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business
was plenty and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by
all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found
on his chosen post.

“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”

And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the
air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind,
drawing a regular paĴern of light and shadow. By ten o’clock, when the shops
were closed, the by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of
London from all round, very silent. Small sounds carried far; domestic sounds
out of the houses were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the
rumour of the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time. Mr.
UĴerson had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd,
light footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols he had long
grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of a single
person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out distinct from the
vast hum and claĴer of the city. Yet his aĴention had never before been so
sharply and decisively arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious
prevision of success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.

The steps drew swiĞly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they
turned the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry, could
soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and very
plainly dressed, and the look of him, even at that distance, went somehow
strongly against the watcher’s inclination. But he made straight for the door,
crossing the roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his
pocket like one approaching home.

Mr. UĴerson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed.
“Mr. Hyde, I think?”

Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was
only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he
answered coolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”

“I see you are going in,” returned the lawyer. “I am an old friend of Dr.
Jekyll’s—Mr. UĴerson of Gaunt Street—you must have heard my name; and
meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me.”

“You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home,” replied Mr. Hyde, blowing in
the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, “How did you know
me?” he asked.

“On your side,” said Mr. UĴerson, “will you do me a favour?”

“With pleasure,” replied the other. “What shall it be?”

“Will you let me see your face?” asked the lawyer.

Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden reflection,
fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other preĴy
fixedly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you again,” said Mr. UĴerson. “It
may be useful.”

“Yes,” returned Mr. Hyde, “it is as well we have met; and à propos, you
should have my address.” And he gave a number of a street in Soho.

“Good God!” thought Mr. UĴerson, “can he too have been thinking of the
will?” But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in acknowledgment
of the address.

“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”

“By description,” was the reply.

“Whose description?”

“We have common friends,” said Mr. UĴerson.

“Common friends?” echoed Mr. Hyde, a liĴle hoarsely. “Who are they?”

“Jekyll, for instance,” said the lawyer.

 “He never told you,” cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger. “I did not think
you would have lied.”

“Come,” said Mr. UĴerson, “that is not fiĴing language.”

The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with
extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the
house.

The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had leĞ him, the picture of
disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or
two and puĴing his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The
problem he was thus debating as he walked was one of a class that is rarely
solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish. He gave an impression of deformity
without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne
himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and
boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice;
all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain
the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing, and fear with which Mr. UĴerson
regarded him. “There must be something else,” said the perplexed gentleman.
“There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man
seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old
story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires
through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for O my poor
old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of
your new friend.”

Round the corner from the by-street there was a square of ancient,
handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate and
let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men: map-engravers,
architects, shady lawyers, and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house,
however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of
this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged
in darkness except for the fan-light, Mr. UĴerson stopped and knocked. A
well-dressed elderly servant opened the door.

“Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?” asked the lawyer.

“I will see, Mr. UĴerson,” said Poole, admiĴing the visitor, as he spoke, into
a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall, paved with flags, warmed (aĞer the
fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly
cabinets of oak. “Will you wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in
the dining-room?”

“Here, thank you,” said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on the tall
fender. This hall, in which he was now leĞ alone, was a pet fancy of his friend
the doctor’s; and UĴerson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest
room in London. But to-night there was a shudder in his blood; the face of
Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea and
distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in
the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting
of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently
returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, Poole,” he said. “Is
that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?”

“Quite right, Mr. UĴerson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr. Hyde has a key.”

“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man,
Poole,” resumed the other musingly.

“Yes, sir, he do indeed,” said Poole. “We have all orders to obey him.”

“I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?” asked UĴerson.

“O dear no, sir. He never dines here,” replied the butler. “Indeed, we see
very liĴle of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the
laboratory.”

“Well, good-night, Poole.”

“Good-night, Mr. UĴerson.”

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry
Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was wild
when he was young; a long while ago, to be sure; but in the law of God there is
no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the
cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment coming, pede claudo, years
aĞer memory has forgoĴen and self-love condoned the fault.” And the lawyer,
scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the
corners of memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity
should leap to light there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read
the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by
the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful
gratitude by the many that he had come so near to doing, yet avoided. And
then, by a return on his former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. “This
Master Hyde, if he were studied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own:
black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst
would be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to
think of this creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry, what a
wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the
will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulder to the
wheel—if Jekyll will but let me,” he added, “if Jekyll will only let me.” For once
more he saw before his mind’s eye, as clear as a transparency, the strange
clauses of the will.

DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE

A FORTNIGHT later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his
pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent, reputable men,
and all judges of good wine; and Mr. UĴerson so contrived that he remained
behind aĞer the others had departed. This was no new arrangement, but a
thing that had befallen many scores of times. Where UĴerson was liked, he
was liked well. Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted
and the loose-tongued had already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit
awhile in his unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their
minds in the man’s rich silence aĞer the expense and strain of gaiety. To this
rule Dr. Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite side of the
fire—a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fiĞy, with something of a slyish
cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness—you could see by his
looks that he cherished for Mr. UĴerson a sincere and warm affection.

“I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll,” began the laĴer. “You know
that will of yours?”

A close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful; but the
doctor carried it off gaily. “My poor UĴerson,” said he, “you are unfortunate in
such a client. I never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will; unless it
were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my scientific heresies.
Oh, I know he’s a good fellow—you needn’t frown—an excellent fellow, and I
always mean to see more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an
ignorant, blatant pedant. I was never more disappointed in any man than
Lanyon.”

“You know I never approved of it,” pursued UĴerson, ruthlessly

disregarding the fresh topic.

“My will? Yes, certainly, I know that,” said the doctor, a trifle sharply. “You
have told me so.”

“Well, I tell you so again,” continued the lawyer. “I have been learning
something of young Hyde.”
 The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and there
came a blackness about his eyes. “I do not care to hear more,” said he. “This is
a maĴer I thought we had agreed to drop.”

“What I heard was abominable,” said UĴerson.

“It can make no change. You do not understand my position,” returned the
doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. “I am painfully situated,
UĴerson; my position is a very strange—a very strange one. It is one of those
affairs that cannot be mended by talking.”

“Jekyll,” said UĴerson, “you know me: I am a man to be trusted. Make a

clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no doubt I can get you out of it.”

“My good UĴerson,” said the doctor, “this is very good of you, this is
downright good of you, and I cannot find words to thank you in. I believe you
fully; I would trust you before any man alive—ay, before myself, if I could make
the choice; but indeed it isn’t what you fancy; it is not so bad as that; and just
to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I
can be rid of Mr. Hyde. I give you my hand upon that; and I thank you again
and again; and I will just add one liĴle word, UĴerson, that I’m sure you’ll take
in good part: this is a private maĴer, and I beg of you to let it sleep.”

UĴerson reflected a liĴle, looking in the fire.

“I have no doubt you are perfectly right,” he said at last, geĴing to his feet.

“Well, but since we have touched upon this business, and for the last time I
hope,” continued the doctor, “there is one point I should like you to
understand. I have really a very great interest in poor Hyde. I know you have
seen him; he told me so; and I fear he was rude. But I do sincerely take a great,
a very great interest in that young man; and if I am taken away, UĴerson, I
wish you to promise me that you will bear with him and get his rights for him. I
think you would, if you knew all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you
would promise.”

“I can’t pretend that I shall ever like him,” said the lawyer.

“I don’t ask that,” pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon the other’s arm; “I
only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him for my sake, when I am no
longer here.”

UĴerson heaved an irrepressible sigh. “Well,” said he, “I promise.”

 THE CAREW MURDER CASE

NEARLY a year later, in the month of October 18—, London was startled by a
crime of singular ferocity, rendered all the more notable by the high position of
the victim. The details were few and startling. A maid-servant living alone in a
house not far from the river had gone upstairs to bed about eleven. Although a
fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early part of the night was
cloudless, and the lane, which the maid’s window overlooked, was brilliantly lit
by the full moon. It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon
her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of
musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated that
experience), never had she felt more at peace with all men or thought more
kindly of the world. And as she so sat she became aware of an aged and
beautiful gentleman with white hair drawing near along the lane: and
advancing to meet him another and very small gentleman, to whom at first she
paid less aĴention. When they had come within speech (which was just under
the maid’s eyes) the older man bowed and accosted the other with a very
preĴy manner of politeness. It did not seem as if the subject of his address
were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as
if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke,
and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such an innocent and
old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a
well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she
was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once visited
her master, and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a
heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he answered never a word, and
seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he
broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the
cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old
gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a
trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to
the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim
under foot, and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were
audibly shaĴered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At the horror of
these sights and sounds the maid fainted.

It was two o’clock when she came to herself and called for the police. The
murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim in the middle of the lane,
incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been done, although it
was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middle
under the stress of this insensate cruelty; and one splintered half had rolled in
the neighbouring guĴer—the other, without doubt, had been carried away by
the murderer. A purse and a gold watch were found upon the victim; but no
cards or papers, except a sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been
probably carrying to the post, and which bore the name and address of Mr.
UĴerson.

This was brought to the lawyer the next morning before he was out of bed;
and he had no sooner seen it, and been told the circumstances, than he shot
out a solemn lip. “I shall say nothing till I have seen the body,” said he; “this
may be very serious. Have the kindness to wait while I dress.” And with the
same grave countenance he hurried through his breakfast and drove to the
police station, whither the body had been carried. As soon as he came into the
cell he nodded.

“Yes,” said he, “I recognise him. I am sorry to say that this is Sir Danvers
Carew.”

“Good God, sir,” exclaimed the officer, “is it possible?” And the next
moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition. “This will make a deal
of noise,” he said. “And perhaps you can help us to the man.” And he briefly
narrated what the maid had seen, and showed the broken stick.

Mr. UĴerson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the stick
was laid before him he could doubt no longer; broken and baĴered as it was,
he recognised it for one that he had himself presented many years before to
Henry Jekyll.

“Is this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature?” he inquired.

“Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid calls

him,” said the officer.

Mr. UĴerson reflected; and then, raising his head, “If you will come with me
in my cab,” he said, “I think I can take you to his house.”

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season.
A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was
continually charging and routing these embaĴled vapours; so that as the cab
crawled from street to street, Mr. UĴerson beheld a marvellous number of
degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of
evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of
some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment, the fog would be quite
broken up, and a haggard shaĞ of daylight would glance in between the
swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing
glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slaĴernly passengers, and its lamps, which
had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this
mournful re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of
some city in a nightmare.
 The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he
glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that
terror of the law and the law’s officers which may at times assail the most
honest.

As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog liĞed a liĴle, and
showed him a dingy street, a gin-palace, a low French eating-house, a shop for
the retail of penny numbers and twopenny salads, many ragged children
huddled in the doorways, and many women of many different nationalities
passing out, key in hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the
fog seĴled down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off
from his blackguardly surroundings. This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s
favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a million sterling.

An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an
evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent. Yes, she
said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in that night
very late, but had gone away again in less than an hour; there was nothing
strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and he was oĞen absent; for
instance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday.

“Very well then, we wish to see his rooms,” said the lawyer; and when the
woman began to declare it was impossible, “I had beĴer tell you who this
person is,” he added. “This is Inspector Newcomen of Scotland Yard.”

A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman’s face. “Ah!” said she, “he
is in trouble! What has he done?”

Mr. UĴerson and the inspector exchanged glances. “He don’t seem a very
popular character,” observed the laĴer. “And now, my good woman, just let
me and this gentleman have a look about us.”

In the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman remained
otherwise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these were
furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was filled with wine; the plate
was of silver, the napery elegant; a good picture hung upon the walls, a giĞ (as
UĴerson supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who was much of a connoisseur; and
the carpets were of many plies and agreeable in colour. At this moment,
however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly
ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their pockets inside out; lockfast
drawers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though
many papers had been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred
the buĴ-end of a green cheque-book, which had resisted the action of the fire;
the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched his
suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the bank, where
several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the murderer’s credit,
completed his gratification.

“You may depend upon it, sir,” he told Mr. UĴerson: “I have him in my
hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have leĞ the stick or,
above all, burned the cheque-book. Why, money’s life to the man. We have
nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the handbills.”

This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had
numbered few familiars—even the master of the servant-maid had only seen
him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been
photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as
common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the
haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed
his beholders.

INCIDENT OF THE LETTER

IT was late in the aĞernoon when Mr. UĴerson found his way to Dr. Jekyll’s
door, where he was at once admiĴed by Poole, and carried down by the
kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden to the building
which was indifferently known as the laboratory or the dissecting-rooms. The
doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and, his
own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the
destination of the block at the boĴom of the garden. It was the first time that
the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed
the dingy windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a
distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with
eager students and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical
apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and liĴered with packing straw, and
the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the farther end, a flight of
stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize; and through this, Mr.
UĴerson was at last received into the doctor’s cabinet. It was a large room,
fiĴed round with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a
cheval-glass and a business-table, and looking out upon the court by three
dusty windows barred with iron. The fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set
lighted on the chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly;
and there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deadly sick; he did not
rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him welcome in a
changed voice.

“And now,” said Mr. UĴerson, as soon as Poole had leĞ them, “you have
heard the news?”

The doctor shuddered. “They were crying it in the square,” he said. “I heard
them in my dining-room.”

“One word,” said the lawyer. “Carew was my client, but so are you, and I
want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide this
fellow?”

“UĴerson, I swear to God,” cried the doctor, “I swear to God I will never set
eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with him in this
world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not want my help; you do not
know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never
more be heard of.”

The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend’s feverish manner.
“You seem preĴy sure of him,” said he; “and for your sake, I hope you may be
right. If it came to a trial your name might appear.”

“I am quite sure of him,” replied Jekyll; “I have grounds for certainty that I
cannot share with any one. But there is one thing on which you may advise
me. I have—I have received a leĴer; and I am at a loss whether I should show
it to the police. I should like to leave it in your hands, UĴerson; you would
judge wisely, I am sure; I have so great a trust in you.”

“You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?” asked the lawyer.

“No,” said the other. “I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I am
quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this hateful
business has rather exposed.”

UĴerson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend’s selfishness, and

yet relieved by it. “Well,” said he at last, “let me see the leĴer.”

The leĴer was wriĴen in an odd, upright hand and signed “Edward Hyde“:
and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer’s benefactor, Dr. Jekyll, whom
he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities, need labour
under no alarm for his safety, as he had means of escape on which he placed a
sure dependence. The lawyer liked this leĴer well enough; it put a beĴer
colour on the intimacy than he had looked for; and he blamed himself for some
of his past suspicions.

“Have you the envelope?” he asked.

“I burned it,” replied Jekyll, “before I thought what I was about. But it bore
no postmark. The note was handed in.”

“Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?” asked UĴerson.

“I wish you to judge for me entirely,” was the reply. “I have lost confidence
in myself.”

“Well, I shall consider,” returned the lawyer.—“And now one word more: it
was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that disappearance?”

The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut his mouth tight
and nodded.

“I knew it,” said UĴerson. “He meant to murder you. You have had a fine
escape.”

“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor solemnly:
“I have had a lesson—O God, UĴerson, what a lesson I have had!” And he
covered his face for a moment with his hands.

On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole. “By
the by,” said he, “there was a leĴer handed in to-day: what was the messenger
like?” But Poole was positive nothing had come except by post; “and only
circulars by that,” he added.

This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the leĴer had
come by the laboratory door; possibly indeed, it had been wriĴen in the
cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently judged, and handled with
the more caution. The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse
along the footways: “Special edition. Shocking murder of an M.P.” That was
the funeral oration of one friend and client; and he could not help a certain
apprehension lest the good name of another should be sucked down in the
eddy of the scandal. It was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make;
and, self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing for advice. It
was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it might be fished for.

Presently aĞer, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest, his
head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely calculated
distance from the fire, a boĴle of a particular old wine that had long dwelt
unsunned in the foundations of his house. The fog still slept on the wing above
the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and through the
muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was
still rolling on through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But
the room was gay with firelight. In the boĴle the acids were long ago resolved;
the imperial dye had soĞened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained
windows; and the glow of hot autumn aĞernoons on hillside vineyards was
ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer
melted. There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest;
and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant. Guest had oĞen
been on business to the doctor’s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to
hear of Mr. Hyde’s familiarity about the house; he might draw conclusions:
was it not as well, then, that he should see a leĴer which put that mystery to
rights? and above all since Guest, being a great student and critic of
handwriting, would consider the step natural and obliging? The clerk, besides,
was a man of counsel; he would scarce read so strange a document without
dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. UĴerson might shape his future
course.

“This is a sad business about Sir Danvers,” he said.

“Yes, sir, indeed. It has elicited a great deal of public feeling,” returned
Guest. “The man, of course, was mad.”

“I should like to hear your views on that,” replied UĴerson. “I have a

document here in his handwriting; it is between ourselves, for I scarce know
what to do about it; it is an ugly business at the best. But there it is; quite in
your way: a murderer’s autograph.”

Guest’s eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it with
passion. “No, sir,” he said; “not mad; but it is an odd hand.”

“And by all accounts a very odd writer,” added the lawyer.

Just then the servant entered with a note.

“Is that from Dr. Jekyll, sir?” inquired the clerk. “I thought I knew the
writing. Anything private, Mr. UĴerson?”

“Only an invitation to dinner. Why? do you want to see it?”

“One moment. I thank you, sir“; and the clerk laid the two sheets of paper
alongside and sedulously compared their contents. “Thank you, sir,” he said at
last, returning both; “it’s a very interesting autograph.”

There was a pause, during which Mr. UĴerson struggled with himself. “Why
did you compare them, Guest?” he inquired suddenly.

“Well, sir,” returned the clerk, “there’s a rather singular resemblance; the
two hands are in many points identical: only differently sloped.”

“Rather quaint,” said UĴerson.

“It is, as you say, rather quaint,” returned Guest.

“I wouldn’t speak of this note, you know,” said the master.

“No, sir,” said the clerk. “I understand.”

 But no sooner was Mr. UĴerson alone that night than he locked the note
into his safe, where it reposed from that time forward. “What!” he thought.
“Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!” And his blood ran cold in his veins.

REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON

TIME ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death of Sir
Danvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had disappeared out of
the ken of the police as though he had never existed. Much of his past was
unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable: tales came out of the man’s cruelty, at
once so callous and violent, of his vile life, of his strange associates, of the
hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of his present
whereabouts, not a whisper. From the time he had leĞ the house in Soho on
the morning of the murder, he was simply bloĴed out; and gradually, as time
drew on, Mr. UĴerson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to
grow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of
thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that that
evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came
out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more
their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for
charities, he was now no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was
much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if
with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months the
doctor was at peace.

On the 8th of January UĴerson had dined at the doctor’s with a small party;
Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to the
other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. On the 12th,
and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. “The doctor was
confined to the house,” Poole said, “and saw no one.” On the 15th he tried
again, and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two
months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh
upon his spirits. The fiĞh night he had in Guest to dine with him; and the sixth
he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon’s.

There at least he was not denied admiĴance; but when he came in, he was
shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor’s appearance. He
had his death-warrant wriĴen legibly upon his face. The rosy man had grown
pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was
not so much these tokens of a swiĞ physical decay that arrested the lawyer’s
notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to
some deep-seated terror of the mind. It was unlikely that the doctor should
fear death; and yet that was what UĴerson was tempted to suspect. “Yes,” he
thought; “he is a doctor, he must know his own state and that his days are
counted; and the knowledge is more than he can bear.” And yet when
UĴerson remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of great firmness that
Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.

“I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall never recover. It is a question of

weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir, I used to like it. I
sometimes think if we knew all we should be more glad to get away.”

“Jekyll is ill too,” observed UĴerson. “Have you seen him?”

But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. “I wish to see
or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll,” he said in a loud, unsteady voice. “I am quite
done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any allusion to one
whom I regard as dead.”

“Tut-tut,” said Mr. UĴerson; and then, aĞer a considerable pause, “Can’t I
do anything?” he inquired. “We are three very old friends, Lanyon; we shall
not live to make others.”

“Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask himself.”

“He will not see me,” said the lawyer.

“I am not surprised at that,” was the reply. “Some day, UĴerson, aĞer I am
dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell
you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me of other things, for
God’s sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keep clear of this accursed topic,
then, in God’s name, go, for I cannot bear it.”

As soon as he got home, UĴerson sat down and wrote to Jekyll, complaining
of his exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of this unhappy break
with Lanyon; and the next day brought him a long answer, oĞen very
pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious in driĞ. The quarrel
with Lanyon was incurable. “I do not blame our old friend,” Jekyll wrote, “but
I share his view that we must never meet. I mean from henceforth to lead a life
of extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my
friendship, if my door is oĞen shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my
own dark way. I have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I
cannot name. If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I
could not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so
unmanning; and you can but do one thing, UĴerson, to lighten this destiny,
and that is to respect my silence.” UĴerson was amazed; the dark influence of
Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to his old tasks and
amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with every promise of a cheerful
and an honoured age; and now in a moment, friendship and peace of mind
and the whole tenor of his life were wrecked. So great and unprepared a
change pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon’s manner and words, there
must lie for it some deeper ground.

A week aĞerwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less than a
fortnight he was dead. The night aĞer the funeral, at which he had been sadly
affected, UĴerson locked the door of his business-room, and siĴing there by
the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set before him an envelope
addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend. “PRIVATE:
for the hands of G. J. UĴerson ALONE, and in case of his predecease to be
destroyed unread,” so it was emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded
to behold the contents. “I have buried one friend to-day,” he thought: “what if
this should cost me another?” And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty,
and broke the seal. Within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and
marked upon the cover as “not to be opened till the death or disappearance of
Dr. Henry Jekyll.” UĴerson could not trust his eyes. Yes, it was disappearance;
here again, as in the mad will which he had long ago restored to its author,
here again were the idea of a disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll
bracketed. But in the will that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of
the man Hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and horrible.
WriĴen by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A great curiosity came
on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to the boĴom of
these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his dead friend were
stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his private
safe.

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may be

doubted if, from that day forth, UĴerson desired the society of his surviving
friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but his thoughts
were disquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps
relieved to be denied admiĴance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak
with Poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds of the
open city, rather than to be admiĴed into that house of voluntary bondage,
and to sit and speak with its inscrutable recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very
pleasant news to communicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever
confined himself to the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes
even sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not read; it
seemed as if he had something on his mind. UĴerson became so used to the
unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off liĴle by liĴle in the
frequency of his visits.
 INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW

IT chanced on Sunday, when Mr. UĴerson was on his usual walk with Mr.
Enfield, that their way lay once again through the by-street; and that when
they came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it.

“Well,” said Enfield, “that story’s at an end at least. We shall never see more
of Mr. Hyde.”

“I hope not,” said UĴerson. “Did I ever tell you that I once saw him, and
shared your feeling of repulsion?”

“It was impossible to do the one without the other,” returned Enfield. “And
by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that this was
a back way to Dr. Jekyll’s! It was partly your own fault that I found it out, even
when I did.”

“So you found it out, did you?” said UĴerson. “But if that be so, we may
step into the court and take a look at the windows. To tell you the truth, I am
uneasy about poor Jekyll; and even outside, I feel as if the presence of a friend
might do him good.”

The court was very cool and a liĴle damp, and full of premature twilight,
although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with sunset. The middle
one of the three windows was half-way open; and siĴing close beside it, taking
the air with an infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner,
UĴerson saw Dr. Jekyll.

“What! Jekyll!” he cried. “I trust you are beĴer.”

“I am very low, UĴerson,” replied the doctor drearily, “very low. It will not
last long, thank God.”

“You stay too much indoors,” said the lawyer. “You should be out, whipping
up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my cousin—Mr.
Enfield—Dr. Jekyll.) Come now; get your hat and take a quick turn with us.”

“You are very good,” sighed the other. “I should like to very much; but no,
no, no, it is quite impossible; I dare not. But indeed, UĴerson, I am very glad to
see you; this is really a great pleasure; I would ask you and Mr. Enfield up, but
the place is really not fit.”

“Why then,” said the lawyer good-naturedly, “the best thing we can do is to
stay down here and speak with you from where we are.”
 “That is just what I was about to venture to propose,” returned the doctor,
with a smile. But the words were hardly uĴered, before the smile was struck
out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and
despair as froze the very blood of the two gentleman below. They saw it but for
a glimpse, for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse had
been sufficient, and they turned and leĞ the court without a word. In silence,
too, the by-street; and it was not until they had come into a neighbouring
thoroughfare, where even upon a Sunday there were still some stirrings of life,
that Mr. UĴerson at last turned and looked at his companion. They were both
pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.

“God forgive us, God forgive us!” said Mr. UĴerson.

But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously, and walked on once
more in silence.

THE LAST NIGHT

MR. UTTERSON was siĴing by his fireside one evening aĞer dinner, when he
was surprised to receive a visit from Poole.

“Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?” he cried; and then, taking a second
look at him, “What ails you?” he added, “is the doctor ill?”

“Mr. UĴerson,” said the man, “there is something wrong.”

“Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,” said the lawyer. “Now,
take your time, and tell me plainly what you want.”

“You know the doctor’s ways, sir,” replied Poole, “and how he shuts himself
up. Well, he’s shut up again in the cabinet; and I don’t like it, sir—I wish I may
die if I like it. Mr. UĴerson, sir, I’m afraid.”

“Now, my good man,” said the lawyer, “be explicit. What are you afraid of?”

“I’ve been afraid for about a week,” returned Poole, doggedly disregarding
the question, “and I can bear it no more.”

The man’s appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was altered for
the worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced his terror,
he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even now, he sat with the glass
of wine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor. “I
can bear it no more,” he repeated.
 “Come,” said the lawyer, “I see you have some good reason, Poole; I see
there is something seriously amiss. Try to tell me what it is.”

“I think there’s been foul play,” said Poole hoarsely.

“Foul play!” cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened, and rather inclined to
be irritated in consequence. “What foul play? What does the man mean?”

“I daren’t say, sir,” was the answer; “but will you come along with me and
see for yourself?”

Mr. UĴerson’s only answer was to rise and get his hat and greatcoat; but he
observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared upon the
butler’s face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine was still untasted when
he set it down to follow.

It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on
her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most
diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked
the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of
passengers, besides; for Mr. UĴerson thought he had never seen that part of
London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise; never in his life had
he been conscious of so sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; for,
struggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation
of calamity. The square, when they got there, was all full of wind and dust, and
the thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing. Poole,
who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of
the pavement, and, in spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and mopped
his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. But for all the hurry of his coming,
these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away, but the moisture of
some strangling anguish; for his face was white, and his voice, when he spoke,
harsh and broken.

“Well, sir,” he said, “here we are, and God grant there be nothing wrong.”

“Amen, Poole,” said the lawyer.

Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was
opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, “Is that you, Poole?”

“It’s all right,” said Poole. “Open the door.”

The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was built
high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and women, stood
huddled together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of Mr. UĴerson, the
housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the cook, crying out “Bless
God! it’s Mr. UĴerson,” ran forward as if to take him in her arms.
 “What, what? Are you all here?” said the lawyer peevishly. “Very irregular,
very unseemly; your master would be far from pleased.”

“They’re all afraid,” said Poole.

Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid liĞed up her voice
and now wept loudly.

“Hold your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a ferocity of accent that testified
to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly raised
the note of her lamentation, they had all started and turned towards the inner
door with faces of dreadful expectation. “And now,” continued the butler,
addressing the knife-boy, “reach me a candle, and we’ll get this through hands
at once.” And then he begged Mr. UĴerson to follow him, and led the way to
the back-garden.

“Now, sir,” said he, “you come as gently as you can. I want you to hear, and
I don’t want you to be heard. And see here, sir, if by any chance he was to ask
you in, don’t go.”

Mr. UĴerson’s nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave a jerk that

nearly threw him from his balance; but he re-collected his courage and
followed the butler into the laboratory building and through the surgical
theatre, with its lumber of crates and boĴles, to the foot of the stair. Here
Poole motioned him to stand on one side and listen; while he himself, seĴing
down the candle and making a great and obvious call on his resolution,
mounted the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on the red
baize of the cabinet door.

“Mr. UĴerson, sir, asking to see you,” he called; and, even as he did so, once
more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.

A voice answered from within: “Tell him I cannot see any one,” it said
complainingly.

“Thank you, sir,” said Poole, with a note of something like triumph in his
voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. UĴerson back across the yard and
into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the beetles were leaping on
the floor.

“Sir,” he said, looking Mr. UĴerson in the eyes, “was that my master’s
voice?”

“It seems much changed,” replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look for
look.

“Changed? Well, yes, I think so,” said the butler. “Have I been twenty years
in this man’s house, to be deceived about his voice? No, sir; master’s made
away with; he was made away with eight days ago, when we heard him cry out
upon the name of God; and who’s in there instead of him, and why it stays
there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. UĴerson!”

“This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale, my man,” said
Mr. UĴerson, biting his finger. “Suppose it were as you suppose, supposing Dr.
Jekyll to have been—well, murdered, what could induce the murderer to stay?
That won’t hold water; it doesn’t commend itself to reason.”

“Well, Mr. UĴerson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I’ll do it yet,” said
Poole. “All this last week (you must know) him, or it, or whatever it is that lives
in that cabinet, has been crying night and day for some sort of medicine and
cannot get it to his mind. It was sometimes his way—the master’s, that is—to
write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. We’ve had
nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the
very meals leĞ there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir,
every day, ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and
complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town.
Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling me to
return it, because it was not pure, and another order to a different firm. This
drug is wanted biĴer bad, sir, whatever for.”

“Have you any of these papers?” asked Mr. UĴerson.

Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which the lawyer,
bending nearer to the candle, carefully examined. Its contents ran thus: “Dr.
Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs. Maw. He assures them that their
last sample is impure, and quite useless for his present purpose. In the year
18—, Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large quantity from Messrs. M. He now
begs them to search with the most sedulous care, and should any of the same
quality be leĞ, to forward it to him at once. Expense is no consideration. The
importance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated.” So far the leĴer had
run composedly enough, but here, with a sudden spluĴer of the pen, the
writer’s emotion had broken loose. “For God’s sake,” he had added, “find me
some of the old.”

“This is a strange note,” said Mr. UĴerson; and then sharply, “How do you
come to have it open?”

“The man at Maw’s was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to me like so
much dirt,” returned Poole.

“This is unquestionably the doctor’s hand, do you know?” resumed the

lawyer.

“I thought it looked like it,” said the servant rather sulkily; and then, with
another voice, “But what maĴers hand-of-write?” he said. “I’ve seen him!”

“Seen him?” repeated Mr. UĴerson. “Well?”

“That’s it!” said Poole. “It was this way. I came suddenly into the theatre
from the garden. It seems he had slipped out to look for this drug, or whatever
it is; for the cabinet door was open, and there he was at the far end of the
room digging among the crates. He looked up when I came in, gave a kind of
cry, and whipped upstairs into the cabinet. It was but for one minute that I saw
him, but the hair stood up on my head like quills. Sir, if that was my master,
why had he a mask upon his face? If it was my master, why did he cry out like
a rat, and run from me? I have served him long enough. And then ...” the man
paused and passed his hand over his face.

“These are all very strange circumstances,” said Mr. UĴerson, “but I think I
begin to see daylight. Your master, Poole, is plainly seized with one of those
maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught I know,
the alteration of his voice; hence the mask and his avoidance of his friends;
hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which the poor soul retains
some hope of ultimate recovery—God grant that he be not deceived. There is
my explanation; it is sad enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is
plain and natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant
alarms.”

“Sir,” said the butler, turning to a sort of moĴled pallor, “that thing was not
my master, and there’s the truth. My master“—here he looked round him and
began to whisper—“is a tall, fine build of a man, and this was more of a
dwarf.” UĴerson aĴempted to protest. “O sir,” cried Poole, “do you think I do
not know my master aĞer twenty years? do you think I do not know where his
head comes to in the cabinet door, where I saw him every morning of my life?
No, sir, that thing in the mask was never Dr. Jekyll—God knows what it was,
but it was never Dr. Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was
murder done.”

“Poole,” replied the lawyer, “if you say that, it will become my duty to make
certain. Much as I desire to spare your master’s feelings, much as I am puzzled
by this note which seems to prove him to be still alive, I shall consider it my
duty to break in that door.”

“Ah, Mr. UĴerson, that’s talking!” cried the butler.

“And now comes the second question,” resumed UĴerson: “Who is going to
do it?”

“Why, you and me, sir,” was the undaunted reply.

“That is very well said,” returned the lawyer; “and whatever comes of it, I
shall make it my business to see you are no loser.”

“There is an axe in the theatre,” continued Poole; “and you might take the
kitchen poker for yourself.”

The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his hand, and
balanced it. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, looking up, “that you and I are
about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?”

“You may say so, sir, indeed,” returned the butler.

“It is well, then, that we should be frank,” said the other. “We both think
more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. This masked figure that
you saw, did you recognise it?”

“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that I could
hardly swear to that,” was the answer. “But if you mean, was it Mr.
Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same bigness; and
it had the same quick light way with it; and then who else could have got in by
the laboratory door? You have not forgot, sir, that at the time of the murder he
had still the key with him? But that’s not all. I don’t know, Mr. UĴerson, if ever
you met this Mr. Hyde?”

“Yes,” said the lawyer, “I once spoke with him.”

“Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something
queer about that gentleman—something that gave a man a turn—I don’t know
rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt it in your marrow kind of
cold and thin.”

“I own I felt something of what you describe,” said Mr. UĴerson.

“Quite so, sir,” returned Poole. “Well, when that masked thing like a monkey
jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it went
down my spine like ice. Oh, I know it’s not evidence, Mr. UĴerson; I’m
book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feelings, and I give you my
Bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!”

“Ay, ay,” said the lawyer. “My fears incline to the same point. Evil, I fear,
founded—evil was sure to come—of that connection. Ay, truly, I believe you; I
believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer (for what purpose, God
alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim’s room. Well, let our name be
vengeance. Call Bradshaw.”

The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous.

“Pull yourself together, Bradshaw,” said the lawyer. “This suspense, I know,
is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make an end of it. Poole,
here, and I are going to force our way into the cabinet. If all is well, my
shoulders are broad enough to bear the blame. Meanwhile, lest anything
should really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to escape by the back, you and
the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks, and take your post
at the laboratory door. We give you ten minutes to get to your stations.”

As Bradshaw leĞ, the lawyer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let us
get to ours,” he said; and taking the poker under his arm, he led the way into
the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now quite dark. The
wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that deep well of building,
tossed the light of the candle to and fro about their steps, until they came into
the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to wait. London
hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken
by the sound of a footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.

“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “ay, and the beĴer part of the
night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist, there’s a bit of a
break. Ah, it’s an ill-conscience that’s such an enemy to rest! Ah, sir, there’s
blood foully shed in every step of it! But hark again, a liĴle closer—put your
heart in your ears, Mr. UĴerson, and tell me, is that the doctor’s foot?”

The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they went so
slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread of Henry Jekyll.
UĴerson sighed. “Is there never anything else?” he asked.

Poole nodded. “Once,” he said. “Once I heard it weeping!”

“Weeping? how that?” said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of horror.

“Weeping like a woman or a lost soul,” said the butler. “I came away with
that upon my heart that I could have wept too.”

But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole disinterred the axe from
under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest table to
light them to the aĴack; and they drew near with bated breath to where that
patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in the quiet of the
night.

“Jekyll,” cried UĴerson, with a loud voice, “I demand to see you.” He

paused a moment, but there came no reply. “I give you fair warning, our
suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he resumed; “if not by
fair means, then by foul—if not of your consent, then by brute force!”

“UĴerson,” said the voice, “for God’s sake have mercy!”

“Ah, that’s not Jekyll’s voice—it’s Hyde’s!” cried UĴerson. “Down with the
door, Poole.”
 Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and the
red baize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal screech, as of
mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the axe again, and again
the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four times the blow fell; but the
wood was tough and the fiĴings were of excellent workmanship; and it was
not until the fiĞh, that the lock burst in sunder and the wreck of the door fell
inwards on the carpet.

The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had
succeeded, stood back a liĴle and peered in. There lay the cabinet before their
eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and chaĴering on the hearth,
the keĴle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth
on the business-table, and, nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea: the
quietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of
chemicals, the most commonplace that night in London.

Right in the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted, and still
twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back, and beheld the face
of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the
doctor’s bigness; the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but
life was quite gone; and by the crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell
of kernels that hung upon the air, UĴerson knew that he was looking on the
body of a self-destroyer.

“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save or punish. Hyde
is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the body of your
master.”

The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre,
which filled almost the whole ground story and was lighted from above, and by
the cabinet, which formed an upper story at one end and looked upon the
court. A corridor joined the theatre to the door on the by-street; and with this,
the cabinet communicated separately by a second flight of stairs. There were
besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar. All these they now thoroughly
examined. Each closet needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the
dust that fell from their doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed,
was filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon who
was Jekyll’s predecessor; but even as they opened the door, they were
advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a perfect mat of
cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance. Nowhere was there any
trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.

Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. “He must be buried here,” he
said, hearkening to the sound.
 “Or he may have fled,” said UĴerson, and he turned to examine the door in
the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they found the key,
already stained with rust.

“This does not look like use,” observed the lawyer.

“Use!” echoed Poole. “Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a man
had stamped on it.”

“Ay,” continued UĴerson, “and the fractures, too, are rusty.” The two men
looked at each other with a scare. “This is beyond me, Poole,” said the lawyer.
“Let us go back to the cabinet.”

They mounted the stair in silence, and, still with an occasional awe-struck
glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents
of the cabinet. At one table there were traces of chemical work, various
measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for
an experiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented.

“That is the same drug that I was always bringing him,” said Poole; and even
as he spoke, the keĴle with a startling noise boiled over.

This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up,
and the tea-things stood ready to the siĴer’s elbow, the very sugar in the cup.
There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea-things open, and
UĴerson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had
several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand, with
startling blasphemies.

Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the
cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But it
was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow playing on the roof,
the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the
presses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.

“This glass have seen some strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.

“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the same tones.
“For what did Jekyll“—he caught himself up at the word with a start, and then
conquering the weakness: “what could Jekyll want with it?” he said.

“You may say that!” said Poole.

Next they turned to the business-table. On the desk, among the neat array
of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor’s hand, the
name of Mr. UĴerson. The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to
the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one
which he had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of
death and as a deed of giĞ in case of disappearance; but, in place of the name
of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement, read the name of
Gabriel John UĴerson. He looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and
last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.

“My head goes round,” he said. “He has been all these days in possession;
he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see himself displaced; and
he has not destroyed this document.”

He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor’s hand, and
dated at the top. “O Poole!” the lawyer cried, “he was alive and here this day.
He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space, he must be still alive, he
must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we
venture to declare this suicide? Oh, we must be careful. I foresee that we may
yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe.”

“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.

“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. “God grant I have no cause for
it!” and with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read as follows:

“My dear UĴerson,—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have
disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee,
but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that
the end is sure, and must be early. Go then, and first read the narrative which
Lanyon warned me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear
more, turn to the confession of Your unworthy and unhappy friend,

“HENRY JEKYLL.“

“There was a third enclosure?” asked UĴerson.

“Here sir,” said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet sealed
in several places.

The lawyer put it in his pocket. “I would say nothing of this paper. If your
master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is now ten; I must
go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall be back before
midnight, when we shall send for the police.”

They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and UĴerson,
once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged
back to his office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to
be explained.

DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE

ON the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening delivery
a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague and old school-
companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised by this; for we were by
no means in the habit of correspondence; I had seen the man, dined with him,
indeed, the night before; and I could imagine nothing in our intercourse that
should justify the formality of registration. The contents increased my wonder;
for this is how the leĴer ran:—

“10th December, 18—

“Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may

have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least on
my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day when, if you had
said to me,‘Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason, depend upon you,’ I would
not have sacrificed my fortune or my leĞ hand to help you. Lanyon, my life,
my honour, my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night, I am lost.
You might suppose, aĞer this preface, that I am going to ask you for something
dishonourable to grant. Judge for yourself.

“I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night—ay, even if you
were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless your
carriage should be actually at the door; and with this leĴer in your hand for
consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my butler, has his orders;
you will find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith. The door of my cabinet
is then to be forced; and you are to go in alone; to open the glazed press (leĴer
E) on the leĞ hand, breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, with all its
contents as they stand, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same
thing) the third from the boĴom. In my extreme distress of mind I have a
morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you may know the
right drawer by its contents: some powders, a phial, and a paper book. This
drawer I beg of you to carry back with you to Cavendish Square exactly as it
stands.

“That is the first part of the service: now for the second. You should be back,
if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before midnight; but I will
leave you that amount of margin, not only in the fear of one of those obstacles
that can neither be prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when your
servants are in bed is to be preferred for what will then remain to do. At
midnight, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting-room, to admit
with your own hand into the house a man who will present himself in my
name, and to place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with
you from my cabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my
gratitude completely. Five minutes aĞerwards, if you insist upon an
explanation, you will have understood that these arrangements are of capital
importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they must
appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or the
shipwreck of my reason.

“Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart sinks
and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility. Think of me at
this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distress that no
fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually serve
me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told. Serve me, my dear
Lanyon, and save

“Your friend,

“H. J.

“P.S.—I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my soul.
It is possible that the post office may fail me, and this leĴer not come into your
hands until to-morrow morning. In that case, dear Lanyon, do my errand
when it shall be most convenient for you in the course of the day; and once
more expect my messenger at midnight. It may then already be too late; and if
that night passes without event, you will know that you have seen the last of
Henry Jekyll.”

Upon the reading of this leĴer I made sure my colleague was insane; but till
that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound to do as he
requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less I was in a position to
judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded could not be set aside
without a grave responsibility. I rose accordingly from table, got into a hansom,
and drove straight to Jekyll’s house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had
received by the same post as mine a registered leĴer of instruction, and had
sent at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we
were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman’s surgical
theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll’s private cabinet is
most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the lock excellent; the
carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and have to do much damage,
if force were to be used; and the locksmith was near despair. But this last was a
handy fellow, and aĞer two hours’ work the door stood open. The press
marked E was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up with straw
and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to Cavendish Square.

Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly enough
made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so that it was plain
they were of Jekyll’s private manufacture; and when I opened one of the
wrappers, I found what seemed to me a simple, crystalline salt of a white
colour. The phial, to which I next turned my aĴention, might have been about
half-full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell
and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other
ingredients I could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version-book,
and contained liĴle but a series of dates. These covered a period of many
years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago, and quite
abruptly. Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date, usually no
more than a single word: “double” occurring perhaps six times in a total of
several hundred entries; and once very early in the list, and followed by several
marks of exclamation, “total failure!!!” All this, though it wheĴed my curiosity,
told me liĴle that was definite. Here was a phial of some tincture, a paper of
some salt, and a record of a series of experiments that had led (like too many
of Jekyll’s investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. How could the
presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour, the sanity, or
the life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could go to one place, why
could he not go to another? And even granting some impediment, why was
this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The more I reflected, the more
convinced I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease; and though
I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver that I might be found
in some posture of self-defence.

Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded
very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a small man
crouching against the pillars of the portico.

“Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?” I asked.

He told me “yes” by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him

enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the
darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing with his
bull’s-eye open; and at the sight I thought my visitor started and made greater
haste.

These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed him

into the bright light of the consulting-room, I kept my hand ready on my
weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I had never set eyes
on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as I have said; I was struck
besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable
combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of
constitution, and—last but not least—with the odd, subjective disturbance
caused by his neighbourhood. This bore some resemblance to incipient rigor,
and was accompanied by a marked sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it
down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely wondered at the
acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to
lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than
the principle of hatred.

This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in
me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion
that would have made an ordinary person laughable: his clothes, that is to say,
although they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him
in every measurement—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep
them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches and the collar
sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous
accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was
something abnormal and misbegoĴen in the very essence of the creature that
now faced me—something seizing, surprising, and revolting—this fresh
disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that to my interest in
the man’s nature and character there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his
life, his fortune and status in the world.

These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set down
in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on fire with
sombre excitement.

“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And so lively was his
impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me.

I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood.
“Come, sir,” said I. “You forget that I have not yet the pleasure of your
acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.” And I showed him an example, and
sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of my
ordinary manner to a patient as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my
pre-occupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster.

“I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough. “What you say is
very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my politeness. I
come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of
business of some moment; and I understood ...” he paused and put his hand to
his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was
wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—“I understood, a drawer....”

But here I took pity on my visitor’s suspense, and some perhaps on my own
growing curiosity.

“There it is, sir,” said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the floor
behind a table and still covered with the sheet.

He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart; I could
hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so
ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.

“Compose yourself,” said I.

He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair,

plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents he uĴered one loud sob of
such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next moment, in a voice that
was already fairly well under control, “Have you a graduated glass?” he asked.

I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he
asked.

He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red
tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a
reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour,
to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at
the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark
purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had
watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass
upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.

“And now,” said he, “to seĴle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be
guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from
your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much
command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide.
As you decide, you shall be leĞ as you were before, and neither richer nor
wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be
counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a
new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid
open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be
blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.”

“Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, “you
speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very
strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable
services to pause before I see the end.”
 “It is well,” replied my visitor. “Lanyon, you remember your vows: what
follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long
been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the
virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors
—behold!”

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled,
staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes,
gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he
seemed to swell—his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to
melt and alter—and the next moment I had sprung to my feet and leaped back
against the wall, my arm raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind
submerged in terror.

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my
eyes—pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his
hands, like a man restored from death—there stood Henry Jekyll!

What he told me in the next hour I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I
saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now
when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I
cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has leĞ me; the deadliest
terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; I feel that my days are
numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the
moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I
cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one
thing, UĴerson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more
than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll’s
own confession, known by the name of Hyde, and hunted for in every corner
of the land as the murderer of Carew.

HASTIE LANYON.

HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE

I WAS born in the year 18— to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent
parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good
among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every
guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of
my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition such as has made the
happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious
desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave
countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my
pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look
round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood
already commiĴed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have
even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views
that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense
of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any
particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was, and, with even a
deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of
good and ill which divide and compound man’s dual nature. In this case, I was
driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at
the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though
so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me
were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and
plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance
of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the
direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the
transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the
perennial war among my members. With every day, and from both sides of my
intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that
truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful
shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state
of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow,
others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will
be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and
independent denizens. I for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced
infallibly in one direction, and in one direction only. It was on the moral side,
and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive
duality of man; I saw that of the two natures that contended in the field of my
consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I
was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my
scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked possibility of such a
miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the
thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could but be
housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable;
the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his
more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his
upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no
longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.
It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous fagots were thus bound
together—that in the agonised womb of consciousness these polar twins
should be continuously struggling. How, then, were they dissociated?

I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side-light began to shine

upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to perceive more deeply
than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling immateriality, the mist-like
transience, of this seemingly so solid body in which we walk aĴired. Certain
agents I found to have the power to shake and to pluck that fleshy vestment,
even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I
will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because
I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for
ever on man’s shoulders, and when the aĴempt is made to cast it off, it but
returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second,
because as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were
incomplete. Enough, then, that I not only recognised my natural body for the
mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but
managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned
from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none
the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp,
of lower elements in my soul.

I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I knew well
that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled and shook the very
fortress of identity, might by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least
inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, uĴerly blot out that immaterial
tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery so
singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long
since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale
chemists, a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my
experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I
compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the
glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage
drank off the potion.

The most racking pangs succeeded; a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea,
and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death.
Then these agonies began swiĞly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a
great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something
indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger,
lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a
current of disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a
solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom
of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more
wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought,
in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands,
exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act I was suddenly
aware that I had lost in stature.

There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside me
as I write was brought there later on, and for the very purpose of these
transformations. The night, however, was far gone into the morning—the
morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the conception of the day—the
inmates of my house were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and I
determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venture in my new
shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations
looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of
that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole
through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and, coming to my room, I
saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.

I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but that
which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature, to which I
had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust and less developed
than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which
had been, aĞer all, nine-tenths a life of effort, virtue, and control, it had been
much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came
about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter, and younger than
Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was
wriĴen broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must
still believe to be the lethal side of man) had leĞ on that body an imprint of
deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I
was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This too, was
myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the
spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided
countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was
doubtless right. I have observed that when I bore the semblance of Edward
Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the
flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are
commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of
mankind, was pure evil.

I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive experiment
had yet to be aĴempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had lost my identity
beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no
longer mine; and, hurrying back to my cabinet, I once more prepared and
drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to
myself once more with the character, the stature, and the face of Henry Jekyll.

That night I had come to the fatal cross roads. Had I approached my
discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the
empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and
from these agonies of death and birth I had come forth an angel instead of a
fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor
divine; it but shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; and like
the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth. At that time my
virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swiĞ to seize
the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence,
although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was
wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that incongruous
compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already learned to
despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.

Even at that time I had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness of a
life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as my pleasures
were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only well known and highly
considered, but growing towards the elderly man, this incoherency of my life
was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new power
tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the
body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward
Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humorous; and I
made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that
house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as
housekeeper a creature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On
the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I
described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square;
and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar object, in my
second character. I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so
that if anything befell me in the person of Doctor Jekyll, I could enter on that
of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, on
every side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of my position.

Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own
person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did so for his
pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the public eye with a load of
genial respectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these leadings
and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable
mantle, the safety was complete. Think of it—I did not even exist! Let me but
escape into my laboratory-door, give me but a second or two to mix and
swallow the draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had
done, Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror;
and there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his
study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.
 The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have
said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of
Edward Hyde they soon began to turn towards the monstrous. When I would
come back from these excursions, I was oĞen plunged into a kind of wonder at
my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent
forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and
villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with
bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of
stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but
the situation was apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of
conscience. It was Hyde, aĞer all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was
no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would
even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And
thus his conscience slumbered.

Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now I can
scarce grant that I commiĴed it) I have no design of entering; I mean but to
point out the warnings and the successive steps with which my chastisement
approached. I met with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, I
shall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child aroused against me
the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised the other day in the person of
your kinsman; the doctor and the child’s family joined him; there were
moments when I feared for my life; and at last, in order to pacify their too just
resentment, Edward Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a
cheque drawn in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily
eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank in the
name of Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own hand backward,
I had supplied my double with a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of
fate.

Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for one
of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next day in bed
with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about me; in vain I saw
the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room in the square; in vain that
I recognised the paĴern of the bed-curtains and the design of the mahogany
frame; something still kept insisting that I was not where I was, that I had not
wakened where I seemed to be, but in the liĴle room in Soho where I was
accustomed to sleep in the body of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and, in
my psychological way, began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion,
occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortable morning doze.
I was still so engaged when, in one of my more wakeful moments, my eye fell
upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry Jekyll (as you have oĞen remarked)
was professional in shape and size: it was large, firm, white, and comely. But
the hand which I now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London
morning, lying half shut on the bed-clothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a
dusky pallor, and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand
of Edward Hyde.

I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the mere
stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden and
startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed, I rushed to the
mirror. At the sight that met my eyes my blood was changed into something
exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened
Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself; and then, with
another bound of terror—how was it to be remedied? It was well on in the
morning; the servants were up; all my drugs were in the cabinet—a long
journey, down two pairs of stairs, through the back passage, across the open
court and through the anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing
horror-struck. It might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use
was that, when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then,
with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind that the
servants were already used to the coming and going of my second self. I had
soon dressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed
through the house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde
at such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later Dr. Jekyll
had returned to his own shape, and was siĴing down, with a darkened brow,
to make a feint of breakfasting.

Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal of my

previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the wall, to be
spelling out the leĴers of my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously
than ever before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That
part of me which I had the power of projecting had lately been much exercised
and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though the body of Edward
Hyde had grown in stature, as though (when I wore that form) I were
conscious of a more generous tide of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if
this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently
overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of
Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine. The power of the drug had not always
been equally displayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed me;
since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double, and once,
with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rare uncertainties
had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in
the light of that morning’s accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in the
beginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of late
gradually but decidedly transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore
seemed to point to this: that I was slowly losing hold of my original and beĴer
self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.
 Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory
in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them.
Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now
with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of
Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the
mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from
pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father’s interest; Hyde had more than a son’s
indifference. To cast in my lot with Jekyll was to die to those appetites which I
had long secretly indulged, and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with
Hyde was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a
blow and for ever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal;
but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would
suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious
of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this
debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and
alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with
me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the beĴer part,
and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.

Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends

and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the
comparative youth, the light step, leaping pulses, and secret pleasures, that I
had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some
unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor
destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For
two months, however, I was true to my determination; for two months I led a
life of such severity as I had never before aĴained to, and enjoyed the
compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to obliterate
the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow into a thing
of course; I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde
struggling aĞer freedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once
again compounded and swallowed the transforming draught.

I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his vice,
he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that he runs
through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I, long as I had
considered my position, made enough allowance for the complete moral
insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the leading characters
of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been
long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the
draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill. It must have
been this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with
which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare at least, before
God, no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so pitiful
a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in which
a sick child may break a plaything. But I had voluntarily stripped myself of all
those balancing instincts, by which even the worst of us continues to walk with
some degree of steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted,
however slightly, was to fall.

Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of glee I
mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow: and it was not till
weariness had begun to succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my
delirium, struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mist dispersed; I
saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once
glorying and trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life
screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make
assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the
lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on my crime,
light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still hastening and still
hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger. Hyde had a song upon his
lips as he compounded the draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man.
The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll,
with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and
liĞed his clasped hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head
to foot, I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood,
when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying toils
of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same sense of
unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have screamed aloud; I
sought with tears and prayers to smother down the crowd of hideous images
and sounds with which my memory swarmed against me; and still, between
the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness
of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The
problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether
I would or not, I was now confined to the beĴer part of my existence; and oh
how I rejoiced to think it! with what willing humility I embraced anew the
restrictions of natural life! with what sincere renunciation I locked the door by
which I had so oĞen gone and come, and ground the key under my heel!

The next day came the news that the murder had been overlooked, that the
guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in
public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I
was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my beĴer impulses thus
buĴressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of
refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would be
raised to take and slay him.

I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with
honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself how
earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve suffering; you
know that much was done for others, and that the days passed quietly, almost
happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and
innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was
still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence
wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down,
began to growl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare
idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that I was
once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary
secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation.

There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last;
and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.
And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old
days before I had made my discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet
under foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the
Regent’s Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. I
sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory;
the spiritual side a liĴle drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet
moved to begin. AĞer all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I
smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with
the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that vainglorious
thought a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most deadly
shuddering. These passed away, and leĞ me faint; and then, as in its turn the
faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in the temper of my
thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of
obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my shrunken limbs;
the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy. I was once more Edward
Hyde. A moment before I had been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy,
beloved—the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was
the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall
to the gallows.

My reason wavered, but it did not fail me uĴerly. I have more than once
observed that, in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to a
point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that, where Jekyll
perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment.
My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to reach them?
That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set myself to
solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my
own servants would consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another
hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded?
Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way
into his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor,
prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll?
Then I remembered that of my original character, one part remained to me: I
could write my own hand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the
way that I must follow became lighted up from end to end.

Thereupon I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a passing

hansom, drove to a hotel in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced to
remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical enough, however
tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I
gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile
withered from his face—happily for him—yet more happily for myself, for in
another instant I had certainly dragged him from his perch. At the inn, as I
entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made the
aĴendants tremble; not a look did they exchange in my presence; but
obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me
wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me:
shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict
pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the
will; composed his two important leĴers, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and
that he might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with
directions that they should be registered.

Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his
nails; there he dined, siĴing alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing
before his eye; and then, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the
corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city.
He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived
in him but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to
grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, aĴired in his
misfiĴing clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the midst of the
nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest.
He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chaĴering to himself, skulking through the
less frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from
midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He
smote her in the face, and she fled.

When I came to myself at Lanyon’s, the horror of my old friend perhaps

affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to
the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A change had
come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it was the horror of
being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon’s condemnation partly in a
dream; it was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got
into bed. I slept aĞer the prostration of the day, with a stringent and profound
slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I
awoke in the morning shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and
feared the thought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not, of course,
forgoĴen the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at
home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape
shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of hope.

I was stepping leisurely across the court aĞer breakfast, drinking the chill of
the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those indescribable
sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter
of my cabinet, before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of
Hyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to myself; and alas!
six hours aĞer, as I sat looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the
drug had to be re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by
a great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of
the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all hours of the
day and night I would be taken with the premonitory shudder; above all, if I
slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair, it was always as Hyde that I
awakened. Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the
sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had
thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and
emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied
by one thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when the
virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition (for the
pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy
brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a
body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. The
powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And
certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it
was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that
creature that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and
was co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which in
themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought of Hyde,
for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This
was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to uĴer cries and
voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead,
and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that
insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay
caged in his flesh, where he heard it muĴer and felt it struggle to be born; and
at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against
him, and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a
different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit
temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a part instead of a
person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which
Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself
regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my
own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the leĴers and
destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of
death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the
ruin. But his love of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze at
the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of this
aĴachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off by
suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.

It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no
one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these,
habit brought—no, not alleviation—but a certain callousness of soul, a certain
acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years,
but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed
me from my own face and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never
been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent
out for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the
first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without efficiency.
You will learn from Poole how I have had London ransacked; it was in vain;
and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that
unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.

About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under the
influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last time, short of a
miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts or see his own face (now
how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing
to an end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a
combination of great prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of
change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some
time shall have elapsed aĞer I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and
circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from the action
of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both has
already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when I shall again
and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering
and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruck
ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge)
and give ear to every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or
will he find the courage to release himself at the last moment? God knows; I
am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns
another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up
my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.
 THRAWN JANET

THRAWN JANET
THE Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of
Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his
hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any
human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In
spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and
uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the
impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the
terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against
the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He
had a sermon on 1st Peter v. and 8th, “The devil as a roaring lion,” on the
Sunday aĞer every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass
himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the maĴer and the
terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and
the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those
hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of
Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side,
and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising towards the sky, had
begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis’s ministry, to be avoided in the dusk
hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen siĴing
at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing
late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more
particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between
the high-road and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its back was towards
the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden,
hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the road. The
house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not
directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the
road on the one hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders
that bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed
among the young parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation. The
minister walked there oĞen aĞer dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the
instancy of his unspoken prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse
door was locked, the more daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to
“follow my leader” across that legendary spot.

This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of spotless

character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and subject of
inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or business into that
unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were
ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis’s
ministrations; and among those who were beĴer informed, some were
naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only,
one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and
recount the cause of the minister’s strange looks and solitary life.

FiĞy years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam’ first into Ba’weary, he was still a
young man—a callant, the folk said—fu’ o’ book-learnin’ an’ grand at the
exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi’ nae leevin’ experience
in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi’ his giĞs an’ his gab; but
auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the
young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, an’ the parish that was like
to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o’ the Moderates—weary fa’
them; but ill things are like guid—they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time;
an’ there were folk even then that said the Lord had leĞ the college professors
to their ain devices, an’ the lads that went to study wi’ them wad hae done
mair an’ beĴer siĴin’ in a peat-bog, like their forbears o’ the persecution, wi’ a
Bible under their oxter an’ a speerit o’ prayer in their heart. There was nae
doubt, onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been ower lang at the college. He was
careful an’ troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He had a
feck o’ books wi’ him—mair than had ever been seen before in a’ that
presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had wi’ them, for they were a’ like to
have smoored in the De’il’s Hag between this an’ Kilmackerlie. They were
books o’ divinity, to be sure, or so they ca’d them; but the serious were of
opinion there was liĴle service for sae mony, when the hale o’ God’s Word
would gang in the neuk o’ a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day, an’ half the
nicht forbye, which was scant decent—writin’, nae less; an’ first, they were
feared he wad read his sermons; an’ syne it proved he was writin’ a book
himsel’, which was surely no’ flĴin’ for ane o’ his years an’ sma’ experience.

Onyway it behoved him to get an auld, decent wife to keep the manse for
him an’ see to his bit denners; an’ he was recommended to an auld limmer
—Janet M’Clour, they ca’d her—an’ sae far leĞ to himsel’ as to be ower
persuaded. There was mony advised him to the contrar, for Janet was mair
than suspeckit by the best folk in Ba’weary. Lang or that, she had had a wean
to a dragoon; she hadna come forrit5 for maybe threĴy year; an’ bairns had
seen her mumblin’ to hersel’ up on Key’s Loan in the gloamin’, whilk was an
unco time an’ place for a God-fearin’ woman. Howsoever, it was the laird
himsel’ that had first tauld the minister o’ Janet; an’ in thae days he wad hae
gane a far gate to pleesure the laird. When folk tauld him that Janet was sib to
the de’il, it was a’ superstition by his way o’ it; an’ when they cast up the Bible
to him an’ the witch o’ Endor, he wad threep it doun their thrapples that thir
days were a’ gane by, an’ the de’il was mercifully restrained.

Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet M’Clour was to be servant at
the manse, the folk were fair mad wi’ her an’ him thegither; an’ some o’ the
guid wives had nae beĴer to dae than get round her door-cheeks and chairge
her wi’ a’ that was ken’t again’ her, frae the sodger’s bairn to John Tamson’s
twa kye. She was nae great speaker; folk usually let her gang her ain gate, an’
she let them gang theirs, wi’ neither Fair-guid-een nor Fair-guid-day: but when
she buckled to, she had a tongue to deave the miller. Up she got, an’ there
wasna an auld story in Ba’weary but she gart somebody lowp for it that day;
they couldna say ae thing but she could say twa to it; till, at the hinder end, the
guidwives up and claught hand o’ her, an’ clawed the coats aff her back, an’
pu’d her doun the clachan to the water o’ Dule, to see if she were a witch or
no, soom or droun. The carline skirled till ye could hear her at the Hangin’
Shaw, an’ she focht like ten; there was mony a guidwife bure the mark o’ her
neist day an’ mony a lang day aĞer; an’ just in the hoĴest o’ the collieshangie,
wha suld come up (for his sins) but the new minister.

“Women,” said he (and he had a grand voice), “I charge you in the Lord’s
name to let her go.”

Janet ran to him—she was fair wud wi’ terror—an’ clang to him, an’ prayed
him, for Christ’s sake, save her frae the cummers; an’ they, for their pairt, tauld
him a’ that was ken’t, an’ maybe mair.

“Woman,” says he to Janet, “is this true?”

“As the Lord sees me,” says she, “as the Lord made me, no a word o’t.
Forbye the bairn,” says she, “I’ve been a decent woman a’ my days.”

“Will you,” says Mr. Soulis, “in the name of God, and before me, His
unworthy minister, renounce the devil and his works?”

Weel, it wad appear that when he askit that, she gave a girn that fairly
frichtit them that saw her, an’ they could hear her teeth play dirl thegither in
her chaĞs; but there was naething for’t but the ae way or the ither; an’ Janet
liĞed up her hand an’ renounced the de’il before them a’.
 “And now,” says Mr. Soulis to the guidwives, “home with ye, one and all,
and pray to God for His forgiveness.”

An’ he gied Janet his arm, though she had liĴle on her but a sark, an’ took
her up the clachan to her ain door like a leddy o’ the land; an’ her screighin’
and laughin’ as was a scandal to be heard.

There were mony grave folk lang ower their prayers that nicht; but when the
morn cam’ there was sic a fear fell upon a’ Ba’weary that the bairns hid
theirsels, an’ even the men-folk stood an’ keekit frae their doors. For there was
Janet comin’ doun the clachan—her or her likeness, nane could tell—wi’ her
neck thrawn, an’ her heid on ae side, like a body that has been hangit, an’ a
girn on her face like an unstreakit corp. By an’ by they got used wi’ it, an’ even
speered at her to ken what was wrang; but frae that day forth she couldna
speak like a Christian woman, but slavered an’ played click wi’ her teeth like a
pair o’ shears; an’ frae that day forth the name o’ God cam’ never on her lips.
Whiles she wad try to say it, but it michtna be. Them that kenned best said
least; but they never gied that Thing the name o’ Janet M’Clour; for the auld
Janet, by their way o’t, was in muckle hell that day. But the minister was
neither to haud nor to bind; he preached about naething but the folk’s cruelty
that had gi’en her a stroke of the palsy; he skelpit the bairns that meddled her;
an’ he had her up to the manse that same nicht, an’ dwalled there a’ his lane
wi’ her under the Hangin’ Shaw.

Weel, time gaed by: an’ the idler sort commenced to think mair lichtly o’ that
black business. The minister was weel thocht o’; he was aye late at the writing,
folk wad see his can’le doon by the Dule water aĞer twal’ at e’en; an’ he
seemed pleased wi’ himsel’ an’ upsiĴen as at first, though a’ body could see
that he was dwining. As for Janet she cam’ an’ she gaed; if she didna speak
muckle afore, it was reason she should speak less then; she meddled naebody;
but she was an eldritch thing to see, an’ nane wad hae mistrysted wi’ her for
Ba’weary glebe.

About the end o’ July there cam’ a spell o’ weather, the like o’t never was in
that countryside; it was lown an’ het an’ heartless; the herds couldna win up
the Black Hill, the bairns were ower weariet to play; an’ yet it was gousty too,
wi’ claps o’ het wund that rumm’led in the glens, and bits o’ shouers that
slockened naething. We aye thocht it but to thun’er on the morn; but the morn
cam’, an’ the morn’s morning, an’ it was aye the same uncanny weather, sair
on folks and bestial. O’ a’ that were the waur, nane suffered like Mr. Soulis; he
could neither sleep nor eat, he tauld his elders; an’ when he wasna writin’ at
his weary book, he wad be stravaguin’ ower a’ the countryside like a man
possessed, when a’ body else was blithe to keep caller ben the house.

Abune Hangin’ Shaw, in the bield o’ the Black Hill, there’s a bit enclosed
grund wi’ an iron yeĴ; an’ it seems, in the auld days, that was the kirkyaird o’
Ba’weary, and consecrated by the Papists before the blessed licht shone upon
the kingdom. It was a great howff o’ Mr. Soulis’s, onyway; there he wad sit an’
consider his sermons; an’ indeed it’s a bieldy bit. Weel, as he cam’ ower the
wast end o’ the Black Hill ae day, he saw first twa, an’ syne fower, an’ syne
seeven corbie craws fleein’ round an’ round abune the auld kirkyaird. They
flew laigh an’ heavy, an’ squawked to ither as they gaed; an’ it was clear to Mr.
Soulis that something had put them frae their ordinar’. He wasna easy fleyed,
an’ gaed straucht up to the wa’s; an’ what suld he find there but a man, or the
appearance o’ a man, siĴin’ in the inside upon a grave. He was of a great
stature, an’ black as hell, an’ his e’en were singular to see.6 Mr. Soulis had
heard tell o’ black men, mony’s the time; but there was something unco about
this black man that daunted him. Het as he was, he took a kind o’ cauld grue in
the marrow o’ his banes; but up he spak for a’ that; an’ says he: “My friend,
are you a stranger in this place?” The black man answered never a word; he
got upon his feet, an’ begoud to hirsle to the wa’ on the far side; but he aye
lookit at the minister; an’ the minister stood an’ lookit back; till a’ in a meenit
the black man was ower the wa’ an’ rinnin’ for the bield o’ the trees. Mr.
Soulis, he hardly kenned why, ran aĞer him; but he was fair forjeskit wi’ his
walk an’ the het, unhalesome weather; an’ rin as he likit, he got nae mair than
a glisk o’ the black man amang the birks, till he won doun to the foot o’ the
hillside, an’ there he saw him ance mair, gaun hap-step-an’-lowp ower Dule
water to the manse.

Mr. Soulis wasna weel pleased that this fearsome gangrel suld mak’ sae free
wi’ Ba’weary manse; an’ he ran the harder, an’, wet shoon, ower the burn, an’
up the walk; but the deil a black man was there to see. He stepped out upon
the road, but there was naebody there; he gaed a’ ower the gairden, but na,
nae black man. At the hinder end, an’ a bit feared, as was but natural, he liĞed
the hasp an’ into the manse; an’ there was Janet M’Clour before his een, wi’
her thrawn craig, an’ nane sae pleased to see him. An’ he aye minded sinsyne,
when first he set his een upon her, he had the same cauld and deidly grue.

“Janet,” says he, “have you seen a black man?”

“A black man?” quo’ she. “Save us a’! Ye’re no wise, minister. There’s nae
black man in a’ Ba’weary.”

But she didna speak plain, ye maun understand; but yam-yammered, like a
powney wi’ the bit in its moo.

“Weel,” says he, “Janet, if there was nae black man, I have spoken with the
Accuser of the Brethren.”

An’ he sat down like ane wi’ a fever, an’ his teeth chiĴered in his heid.
 “Hoots,” says she, “think shame to yoursel’, minister“; an’ gied him a drap
brandy that she keept aye by her.

Syne Mr. Soulis gaed into his study amang a’ his books. It’s a lang, laigh, mirk
chalmer, perishin’ cauld in winter, an’ no’ very dry even in the tap o’ the
simmer, for the manse stands near the burn. Sae doun he sat, an’ thocht o’ a’
that had come an’ gane since he was in Ba’weary, an’ his hame, an’ the days
when he was a bairn an’ ran daffin’ on the braes; an’ that black man aye ran in
his heid like the owercome o’ a sang. Aye the mair he thocht, the mair he
thocht o’ the black man. He tried the prayer, an’ the words wadna come to
him; an’ he tried, they say, to write at his book, but he couldna mak’ nae mair
o’ that. There was whiles he thocht the black man was at his oxter, an’ the
swat stood upon him cauld as well-water; an’ there was ither whiles when he
cam’ to himsel’ like a christened bairn an’ minded naething.

The upshot was that he gaed to the window an’ stood glowrin’ at Dule
water. The trees are unco thick, an’ the water lies deep an’ black under the
manse; an’ there was Janet washin’ the cla’es wi’ her coats kilted. She had her
back to the minister, an’ he, for his pairt, hardly kenned what he was lookin’ at.
Syne she turned round, an’ shawed her face; Mr. Soulis had the same cauld
grue as twice that day afore, an’ it was borne in upon him what folk said, that
Janet was deid lang syne, an’ this was a bogle in her clay-cauld flesh. He drew
back a pickle and he scanned her narrowly. She was tramp-trampin’ in the
cla’es, croonin’ to hersel’; and eh! Gude guide us, but it was a fearsome face.
Whiles she sang louder, but there was nae man born o’ woman that could tell
the words o’ her sang; an’ whiles she lookit side-lang doun, but there was
naething there for her to look at. There gaed a scunner through the flesh upon
his banes; an’ that was Heeven’s advertisement. But Mr. Soulis just blamed
himsel’, he said, to think sae ill o’ a puir, auld afflicted wife that hadna a freend
forbye himsel’; an’ he put up a bit prayer for him an’ her, an’ drank a liĴle
caller water—for his heart rose again’ the meat—an’ gaed up to his naked bed
in the gloamin’.

That was a nicht that has never been forgoĴen in Ba’weary, the nicht o’ the
seeventeenth o’ August, seeventeen hun’er’ an’ twal’. It had been het afore, as
I hae said, but that nicht it was beĴer than ever. The sun gaed doun amang
unco-lookin’ clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no’ a star, no’ a breath o’ wund;
ye couldna see your han’ afore your face, an’ even the auld folk cuist the
covers frae their beds an’ lay pechin’ for their breath. Wi’ a’ that he had upon
his mind, it was geyan unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an’ he
tummled; the gude, caller bed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he
slept, an’ whiles he waukened; whiles he heard the time o’ nicht, an’ whiles a
tyke yowlin’ up the muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he thocht he heard
bogles claverin’ in his lug, an’ whiles he saw spunkies in the room. He
behoved, he judged, to be sick; an’ sick he was—liĴle he jaloosed the sickness.

At the hinder end he got a clearness in his mind, sat up in his sark on the
bed-side, an’ fell thinkin’ ance mair o’ the black man an’ Janet. He couldna
weel tell how—maybe it was the cauld to his feet—but it cam’ in upon him wi’
a spate that there was some connection between thir twa, an’ that either or
baith o’ them were bogles. An’ just at that moment, in Janet’s room, which was
neist to his, there cam’ a stramp o’ feet as if men were wars’lin’, an’ then a
loud bang; an’ then a wund gaed reishling round the fower quarters o’ the
house; an’ then a’ was aince mair as seelent as the grave.

Mr. Soulis was feared for neither man nor deevil. He got his tinder-box, an’
lit a can’le, an’ made three steps o’t ower to Janet’s door. It was on the hasp,
an’ he pushed it open, an’ keekit bauldly in. It was a big room, as big as the
minister’s ain, an’ plenished wi’ grand, auld, solid gear, for he had naething
else. There was a fower-posted bed wi’ auld tapestry; an’ a braw cabinet o’ aik,
that was fu’ o’ the minister’s divinity books, an’ put there to be out o’ the gate;
an’ a wheen duds o’ Janet’s lying here an’ there about the floor. But nae Janet
could Mr. Soulis see; nor ony sign o’ a contention. In he gaed (an’ there’s few
that wad hae followed him) an’ lookit a’ round, an’ listened. But there was
naething to be heard, neither inside the manse nor in a’ Ba’weary parish, an’
naething to be seen but the muckle shadows turnin’ round the can’le. An’
then a’ at aince, the minister’s heart played dunt an’ stood stock-still; an’ a
cauld wund blew amang the hairs o’ his heid. Whaten a weary sicht was that
for the puir man’s een! For there was Janet hangin’ frae a nail beside the auld
aik cabinet: her heid aye lay on her shouther, her een were steekit, the tongue
projected frae her mouth, an’ her heels were twa feet clear abune the floor.

“God forgive us all!” thocht Mr. Soulis; “poor Janet’s dead.”

He cam’ a step nearer to the corp; an’ then his heart fair whammled in his
inside. For, by what cantrip it wad ill beseem a man to judge, she was hingin’
frae a single nail an’ by a single wursted thread for darnin’ hose.

It’s an awfu’ thing to be your lane at nicht wi’ siccan prodigies o’ darkness;
but Mr. Soulis was strong in the Lord. He turned an’ gaed his ways oot o’ that
room, an’ lockit the door ahint him; an’ step by step, doon the stairs, as heavy
as leed; an’ set doon the can’le on the table at the stairfoot. He couldna pray,
he couldna think, he was dreepin’ wi’ caul’ swat, an’ naething could he hear
but the dunt-dunt-duntin’ o’ his ain heart. He micht maybe hae stood there an
hour, or maybe twa, he minded sae liĴle; when a’ o’ a sudden, he heard a
laigh, uncanny steer upstairs; a foot gaed to an’ fro in the chalmer whaur the
corp was hingin’; syne the door was opened, though he minded weel that he
had lockit it; an’ syne there was a step upon the landin’, an’ it seemed to him
as if the corp was lookin’ ower the rail an’ doun upon him whaur he stood.
 He took up the can’le again (for he couldna want the licht), an’ as saĞly as
ever he could, gaed straucht out o’ the manse an’ to the far end o’ the
causeway. It was aye pit-mirk; the flame o’ the can’le, when he set it on the
grund, brunt steedy and clear as in a room; naething moved, but the Dule
water seepin’ an’ sabbin’ doun the glen, an’ yon unhaly footstep that cam’
ploddin’ doun the stairs inside the manse. He kenned the foot ower weel, for it
was Janet’s; an’ at ilka step that cam’ a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper
in his vitals. He commended his soul to Him that made an’ keepit him; “and, O
Lord,” said he, “give me strength this night to war against the powers of evil.”

By this time the foot was comin’ through the passage for the door; he could
hear a hand skirt alang the wa’, as if the fearsome thing was feelin’ for its way.
The saughs tossed an’ maned thegither, a lang sigh cam’ ower the hills, the
flame o’ the can’le was blawn aboot; an’ there stood the corp o’ Thrawn Janet,
wi’ her grogram goun an’ her black mutch, wi’ the heid aye upon the shouther,
an’ the girn still upon the face o’t—leevin’, ye wad hae said—deid, as Mr.
Soulis weel kenned—upon the threshold o’ the manse.

It’s a strange thing that the saul o’ man should be that thirled into his
perishable body; but the minister saw that, an’ his heart didna break.

She didna stand there lang; she began to move again an’ cam’ slowly
towards Mr. Soulis whaur he stood under the saughs. A’ the life o’ his body, a’
the strength o’ his speerit, were glowerin’ frae his een. It seemed she was gaun
to speak, but wanted words, an’ made a sign wi’ the leĞ hand. There cam’ a
clap o’ wund, like a cat’s fuff; oot gaed the can’le, the saughs skreighed like
folk; and Mr. Soulis kenned that, live or die, this was the end o’t.

“Witch, beldame, devil!” he cried, “I charge you, by the power of God,

begone—if you be dead, to the grave—if you be damned, to hell.”

An’ at that moment the Lord’s ain hand out o’ the Heevens struck the
Horror whaur it stood; the auld, deid, desecrated corp o’ the witch-wife, sae
lang keepit frae the grave an’ hirsled round by de’ils, lowed up like a brunstane
spunk an’ fell in ashes to the grund; the thunder followed, peal on dirlin’ peal,
the rairin’ rain upon the back o’ that; an’ Mr. Soulis lowped through the
garden hedge, an’ ran, wi’ skelloch upon skelloch, for the clachan.

That same mornin’, John Christie saw the Black Man pass the Muckle Cairn
as it was chappin’ six; before eicht, he gaed by the change-house at Knockdow;
an’ no’ lang aĞer, Sandy M’Lellan saw him gaun linkin’ doun the braes frae
Kilmackerlie. There’s liĴle doubt but it was him that dwalled sae lang in Janet’s
body; but he was awa’ at last; an’ sinsyne the de’il has never fashed us in
Ba’weary.

But it was a sair dispensation for the minister; lang, lang he lay ravin’ in his
bed; an’ frae that hour to this he was the man ye ken the day.

“To come forrit“—to offer oneself as a communicant.

It was a common belief in Scotland that the devil appeared as a black

man. This appears in several witch trials, and I think in Law’s
“Memorials,” that delightful storehouse of the quaint and grisly.

END OF VOL. V

PRINTED BY CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.

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