0039m
A stiff, uninhabited-looking apartment of considerable size, lit with the electric light, upholstered in light wood and new red leather, and ornamented by a life-sized portrait of Fisher himself, this picture being as uncompromising and apoplectic as the original. Finally, standing in an artificially easy attitude before a fireplace containing a frilled arrangement of pink paper, picture an exceedingly uncomfortable Frenchman.
“You scarcely expected me?” I begin, with a smile.
“I did not,” says Fisher.
“I did not expect to see you,” I continue; but to this he makes no reply.
“I was looking for the house of Mr. Hankey.”
“Were you?” says Fisher.
“Do you know him?” I ask.
“No,” says Fisher.
A pause. The campaign has opened badly; no doubt of that. I must try another move.
“You will wonder how I knew him,” I say, pleasant.
Fisher only breathes more heavily.
“Our mutual friend, Smith,” I begin, watching closely to see if his mind responds to this name. I know that Smith is common in England, and think he will surely know some one so called. “Smith mentioned you.”
But no, there is no gleam of recognition.
“Indeed,” is all he remarks, very calmly.
There is no help for it, I must go on.
“I intended to call upon you some day this week. I have heard you highly spoken of—'The great Fisher,' 'The famous Fisher.' Indeed, sir, I assure you, your name is a household word in Scotland.”
I choose Scotland because I know its accent is different from English. My own also is different. Therefore I shall be Scotch. Unhappy selection!
“Do you mean to pretend you are Scotch?” says Fisher, frowning as well as breathing at me.
I must withdraw one foot.
“Half Scotch, half Italian,” I reply.
Ah, France, why did I deny you? I was afraid to own you, I blush to confess it. And I was righteously punished.
“Italian?” says he, with more interest. “Ah, indeed!”
9041
He stares more intently, frowns more portentously, and respires more loudly than ever.
“A charming country,” I say.
“No doubt,” says Fisher.
At this moment the door opens behind him and a lady appears. She has a puffy cheek, a pale eye, a comfortable figure, a curled fringe of gray hair, and slightly projecting teeth; in a word, the mate of Fisher. There can be no mistake, and I am quick to seize the chance.
“My dear Mrs. Fisher!” I exclaim, advancing towards her.
With a movement like a hippopotamus wallowing, Fisher places himself between us. Does he think I have come to elope with her?
I assume the indignant rôle.
“Mr. Fisher!” I cry, much hurt at this want of confidence.
“Who is this gentleman?” asks Mrs. Fisher, looking at me, I think, with a not altogether disapproving glance.
“Ask him,” says Fisher.
“Madame,” I say, with a bow, “I am an unfortunate stranger, come to pay my respects to Mr. Fisher and his beautiful lady. I wish you could explain my reception.”
“What is your name?” says Mrs. Fisher, with comparative graciousness, considering that she is a bourgeois Englishwoman taken by surprise, and fearing both to be cold to a possible man of position and to be friendly with a possible nobody.
A name I must have, and I must also invent it at once, and it must be something both Scotch and Italian. I take the first two that come into my head.
“Dugald Cellarini,” I reply.
They look at one another dubiously. I must put them at their ease at any cost.
“A fine picture,” I say, indicating the portrait of my host, “and an excellent likeness. Do you not think so, Mrs. Fisher?”
She looks at me as if she had a new thought.
“Are you a friend of the artist?” she asks.
“An intimate,” I reply with alacrity.
“We have informed Mr. Benzine that we specially desired him not to bring any more of his Bohemian acquaintances to our house,” says the amiable lady.
I am plunging deeper into the morass! Still, I have at last accounted for my presence.
“Mr. Benzine did not warn me of this, madame,” I reply, coldly. “I apologize and I withdraw.”
I make a step towards the door, but the large form of Fisher still intervenes.
“Then Benzine sent you?” he says.
“He did, though evidently under a misapprehension.”
“And what about Smith?” asks Fisher, with an approach to intelligence in his bovine eye.
“Well, what about him?” I ask, defiantly.
“Did he send you, too?”
“My reception has been such that I decline to give any further explanations.”
“That is all very well,” says Fisher—“that is all very well—”
He is evidently cogitating what is all very well, when we hear heavy steps in the passage.
“They have come at last!” he exclaims, and opens the door.
“More visitors!” I say to myself, hoping now for a diversion. In another moment I get it. Enter the butler and two gigantic policemen.
8000
“'Let me out,' said the mouse, 'I do not care for this cheese.'”
—Fables of Laetertius.
9044
ICTURE now this comedy and its actors. Fisher of the porpoise habit, Mrs. Fisher of the puffy cheek, poor Dugald Cellarini, and these two vast, blue-coated, thief-catching “bobbies” (as with kindly humor the English term their police); all save Dugald looking terribly solemn and important. He, poor man, strove hard to give the affair a lighter turn, but what is one artist in a herd of Philistines? I was not appreciated; that is the truth. A man may defy an empire, a papal bull, an infectious disease, but a prejudice—never! “Constable,” says Fisher, “I have caught him.” Both bobbies look at me with much the same depressing glance as Fisher himself.
“Yes, sir,” says one, in what evidently was intended for a tone of congratulation. “So I see.”
The other bobby evidently agrees with this sentiment. Wonderful unanimity! I have noticed it in the Paris gendarmes also, the same quick and intelligent grasp of a situation.
The latter quality was so conspicuous in my two blue-coated friends that I named them instantly Lecoq and Holmes.
Holmes speaks next, after an impressive pause.
“What's he done?”
“That is the point,” says Fisher, in a tone of such damaging insinuation that I am spurred to my defence.
“Exactly—what have I done?”
“He has endeavored to effect an entry into my house by removing a pane of glass,” says Fisher.
“Pardon me; to call the attention of the servants by rapping upon a pane of glass.”
“Come now, none of that!” says Lecoq, with such severity that I see the situation at once. He is jealous. I have cast an imputation on some fair housemaid—the future Mrs. Lecoq, no doubt.
“An assignation, you think?” I ask, with a reassuring smile.
“Sir!” cries Mrs. Fisher, indignantly. “It was my daughter's window you broke!”
Shall I pose as the lover of Miss Fisher? I have heard that unmarried English girls take strange liberties.
“Your fair daughter—” I begin.
“Is a child of fifteen,” interrupts virtuous Mrs.
Fisher, “and I am certain knows nothing of this person.”
By the expression of their intelligent countenances, Holmes and Lecoq show their concurrence in this opinion.
“Confront her with me!” I demand, folding my arms defiantly.
It has since struck me that this was a happy inspiration, and in the right dramatic key. Unfortunately, it requires an imaginative audience, and I had two Fishers and two bobbies.
Rapidly I had calculated what would happen. The fair and innocent maiden should be aroused from her virgin slumbers; with dishevelled locks, and in a long, loose, and becoming drapery of some soft color (light blue to harmonize with her flaxen hair, for instance), she should be led into this chamber of the inquisition; then my eye should moisten, my voice be as the lute of Apollo, and it would be a thousand francs to a dishonored check that I should melt her into some soft confession. Not that I should ask her to compromise her reputation to save me. Never, on my honor, would I permit that. Indeed, if my plight tempted her to invent a story she might repent of afterwards, I should disavow it with so sincere and honest an air that my captors would exclaim together, “We have misjudged him!”
No, I should merely persuade her to confess that a not ill-looking foreigner had pursued her with glances of chivalrous admiration for some days past, and that from his air of hopeless passion it was not surprising to find him to-night tapping upon her window-pane.
Alas, that so promising a scheme should fail through the incurable poverty of the Fisher spirit! My demand is simply ignored.
“What acquaintance have you with my daughter?” asks Mrs. Fisher, icily.
“You will respect my confidence?” I ask, earnestly.
“We shall use our discretion,” replies the virtuous lady.
“Quite so; we shall use our discretion,” repeats her unspeakable husband.
“I am satisfied with your assurance,” I say. “The discretion of a Fisher is equivalent to the seal of the confessional. I thank you from my heart, and I bow to your judgment.”
“What do you know of my daughter?” Mrs. Fisher repeats, quite unmoved by my candor.
“Madame, I was about to tell you. You asked if I was acquainted with that charming, and, I can assure you on my honor, spotless young lady?”
“I did,” says Mrs. Fisher; “but I do not require any remarks on her character from you, sir.”
“Pardon me; they escaped me inadvertently What I feel deeply I am tempted to say. I do not know Miss Fisher personally. I have not yet ventured to address a word to her, not so much as a syllable, not even a whisper. My respect for her innocence, for her youth, for her parents, has been too great. But this I confess: I have for days, for weeks, for months, followed her loved figure with the eye of chaste devotion! On her walks abroad I have been her silent, frequently her unseen, attendant. Through every street in London I have followed the divine Miss Fisher, as a sailor the polar star! To-night, in a moment of madness, I approached her home; I touched her window that I might afterwards kiss the hand that had come so near her! In my passion I touched too hard, the pane broke, and here I stand before you!”
So completely had I been carried away on the wings of my own fancy that once or twice in the course of this outburst I had committed myself to more than I had any intention of avowing. Be emphatic but never definite, is my counsel to the liar. But I had, unluckily, tied myself to my inventions. The gestures, the intonation, the key of sentiment were beyond criticism; but then I was addressing Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, of Chickawungaree Villa.
They glance at one another, and Lecoq glances at them.
He, honest man, merely touches his head significantly and winks in my direction. The Fishers are not, however, content with this charitable criticism.
“My daughter only returned from her seminary in Switzerland four days ago,” says Mrs. Fisher.
“And she has never visited the streets of London except in Mrs. Fisher's company,” adds her spouse, with a look of what is either dull hatred or impending apoplexy.
Even at that crisis my wits did not desert me.
“My faith!” I cry, “I must be mistaken! It is not, then, Miss Fisher whom I worship! A thousand pardons, sir, and I beg of you to convey them to the lady whom I disturbed under a misapprehension!”
At this there is a pause, nobody volunteering to run with this message to the bedside of Miss Fisher, though I glance pointedly at Holmes, and even make the money in my pocket jingle. At last comes a sound of stifled air trying to force a passage through something dense. It proceeds, I notice, from my friend Fisher. Then it becomes a more articulate though scarcely less disagreeable noise.
“I do not believe a word you say, sir!” he booms.
“My friend, you are an agnostic,” I reply, with a smile.
Fisher only breathes with more apparent difficulty than ever. He is evidently going to deal a heavy blow this time. It falls.
“I charge this person with being concerned in the burglary at Mrs. Thompson's house last night, and with trying to burgle mine,” says he.
He pauses, and then delivers another:
“He has confessed to being an Italian.”
The constables prick up their ears.
“The organ-grinder!” exclaims Holmes, with more excitement than I had thought him capable of.
“The man as made the butler drunk and gagged the cook!” cries Lecoq.
Here is a fine situation for a political fugitive! I am indignant. I am pathetic. 'No use. I explain frankly that I came to see Mr. Hankey. That only deepens suspicion, for it seems that the excellent Hankey inhabited Mount Olympus House next door for only three weeks, and departed a month ago without either paying his rent or explaining the odor of dead bodies proceeding from his cellars. Doubtless my French friends had acted for the best in sending me to him, but would that he had taken the trouble to inform them of his change of address! And then, why had I ever thought of being an Italian? It appeared now that a gentleman of that nationality, having won the confidence of the Thompson children and the Thompson servants by his skill upon the hand-organ, had basely misused it in the fashion indicated by Lecoq. Certainly it was hard to see why such a skilled artist should have returned the very next night to a house three doors away, and then bungled his business so shamefully; but that argument is beyond the imagination of my bobbies. In fact, they seem only too pleased to find a thief so ready to meet them half-way.
“Thank you, sir,” says Holmes, at the conclusion of the painful scene. “We shouldn't mind a drop.”
This means that they are about to be rewarded for their share in the capture by a glass of Fisher's ale. And I? Well, I am not to have any ale, but I am to accompany them to the cells, and next morning make my appearance before the magistrate on one charge of burglary and another of attempted burglary.
I cannot resist one parting shot at my late host.
“Yes, Fisher,” I remark, critically, showing no hurry to leave the room, “I like that portrait of you. It has all your plain, well-fed, plum-pudding appearance, without your unpleasant manner of breathing and your ridiculous conversation—and it is not married to Mrs. Fisher.”
To this there is no reply. Indeed, I do not think they recovered their senses for at least ten minutes after I left the room.
8000
“The comedy of the law is probably the chief diversion of the angels.”
—La Rabide.
9052
VER the rest of that night I shall draw a veil. I was taken to Newgate, immured in the condemned cell, and left to my reflections. They were sombre enough, I assure you. Young, ambitious, ardent, I sat there in that foreign prison, without a friend, without a hope. If I state the truth about myself, this excuse will be seized for sending me back to France. And what then? Another prison! If I keep my identity concealed, how shall I prove that I am not the burgling musician?
As you can well imagine, I slept little and dreamed much. I was only thankful I had no parents to mourn my loss, for by this time I had quite made up my mind that the organ-grinder's antecedents would certainly hang me.
I cursed Fisher, I cursed the League, I cursed F. II, that indefatigable conspirator who had dragged me from a comfortable hotel and a safe alias to—what? The scaffold; ah, yes, the scaffold!
It may sound amusing now, when I am still unhanged; but it was far from amusing then, I assure you.
Well, the morning broke at last, and I was led, strongly escorted by the twins Lecoq and Holmes, towards the venerable law-court at Westminster. I recognized the judge, the jury, the witnesses, and the counsel, though my thoughts were too engrossed to take a careful note of these. In fact, in writing this account I am to some extent dependent on reports of other trials. They are all much the same, I understand, differing chiefly as one or more judges sit upon the bench.
In this case there was only one, a little gentleman with a shrewd eye and a dry voice—a typical hanging judge, I said to myself. I prepared for the worst.
First comes the formal accusation. I, giving the name of Dugald Cellarini am a blood-thirsty burglar. Such, in brief, is the charge, although its deadly significance is partly obscured by the discreet phraseology of the law.
Then my friend Holmes enters the box, stiff and evidently nervous, and in a halting voice and incoherent manner (which in France would inevitably have led to his being placed in the dock himself) he describes the clever way I was caught by himself and the astute Lecoq. So misleading is his account of my guilty demeanor and suspicious conduct, that I instantly resolve to cross-examine him. Politely but firmly I request the judge's permission. It is granted, and I can see there is a stir of excitement in the court.
“Did I struggle with you?” I ask.
Holmes, turning redder than ever, admits that I did not.
“Did I knock you down? Did I seek to escape?”
No, Holmes was not knocked down, nor had I tried to escape from the representatives of the law.
“And why, if I was a burglar, did I not do these things?”
“You wasn't big enough,” says Holmes.
Well, I admit he had the advantage of me there. The court, prejudiced against me as they were, laughed with Holmes, but at the next bout I returned his lunge with interest.
“What did Fisher give you to drink?” I ask.
The question is dismissed by my vindictive judge as irrelevant, but I have thrown Holmes into great confusion and made the court smile with me.
“That is all,” I say, in the tone of a conqueror, and thereupon Lecoq takes the place of Holmes, and in precisely the same manner, and with the same criminal look of abasement, repeats almost exactly the same words.
Against him I design a different line of counterattack. I remember his jealousy when I spoke of the servants, and, if possible, I shall discredit his testimony by an assault upon his character. Assuming an encouraging air, I ask:
“You know the servants at Fisher's house?”
He stammers, “Yes.”
“With one in particular you are well acquainted?”
He looks at the judge for protection, but so little is my line of attack suspected that the judge only gazes at us in rapt attention.
“I do,” says Lecoq, after a horribly incriminating pause.
“Now tell me this,” I demand, sternly. “Have you always behaved towards her as an honorable policeman?”
Would you believe it? This question also is disallowed! But I think I have damaged Lecoq all the same.
Next comes Fisher, red-faced, more pompous than ever, and inspired, I can see, with vindictive hatred towards myself. It appears that he is a London merchant; that his daughter heard a tapping on her window and called her father; that he and his servant caught me in the act of entering the chaste bedchamber through a broken window.
At this point I ask if I may put a question. The judge says yes.
“How much glass fell out?” I ask.
“Half a pane,” says he.
“And the rest stayed in?”
He has to admit that it did; very ungraciously, however.
“How many panes to the window?”
He cannot answer this; but the judge, much to my surprise, comes to the rescue and elicits the fact that there are six.
“How far had I gone through a twelfth of your window?” I ask.
His face gets redder, and there is a laugh through the court. I feel that I have “scored a try,” as they say, and my spirits begin to rise again.
But, alas! they are soon damped. Mrs. Thompson's butler steps into the witness-box, and a more shameless liar I have never heard. Yes, he remembers an organ-grinder coming to the house on various occasions during the past fortnight. Here I interpose.
“What did he play?” I ask.
“Not being interested in such kinds of music, I cannot say.”
“Possibly you have a poor ear?” I suggest.
“My ear is as right as some people's, but it has not been accustomed to the hand-organ,” says the butler, with a magnificence that seems to impress even the judge.
“You should have it boxed, my friend,” I cannot help retorting, though I fear this does not meet the unqualified approval of the judge.
Next he is asked for an account of his dealings with the musician when that gentleman visited the kitchen upon the night of the burglary, and it appears that, shortly after the grinder's departure, he lost consciousness with a completeness and rapidity that can only have been caused by some insidious drug surreptitiously introduced into the glass of beer he happened to be finishing at that moment. He scorns the insinuation (made by myself) that he and the musician were drinking together; he would not so far demean himself. That outcast did, however, on one occasion, approach suspiciously near his half-empty glass.
“Well,” I remark, with a smile, “the moral Is that next time you should provide your guests with glasses of their own.”
Again I score, but quickly he has his revenge. Does he recognize me as the organ-grinder? he is asked. He is not sure of the face, not taking particular notice of persons of that description, but—he is ready to swear to my voice!
It seems, then, that I have the same accent as an Italian organ-grinder! I bow ironically, but the sarcasm, I fear, is lost.
“What is so distinctive about this voice I share with your Italian boon companion?” I inquire, suavely.
He evidently dislikes the innuendo, but, in the presence of so many of his betters, decides to retaliate only by counter-sarcasm. “It's what I call an unedicated voice,” says he.
“Uneducated Italian or uneducated English?” I inquire.
“Italian,” he replies, with the most consummate assurance.
“You know Italian?”
“Having travelled in Italy, I am not altogether unfamiliar,” he answers.
I then put to him a simple Italian sentence.
“What does that mean, and is it educated or uneducated?” I ask.
“It means something that I should not care for his lordship to hear, and is the remark of a thoroughly uneducated person,” he retorts.
The court roars, and some even cheer the witness. For myself, I am compelled to join the laughter—the impudence is so colossal.
“My lord,” I say to the judge, “this distinguished scholar has so delicate a mind that I should only scandalize him by asking further questions.”
So the butler retires with such an air of self-satisfaction that I could have shot him, and the gagged cook takes his place.
This young woman is not ill-looking, and is very abashed at having to make this public appearance. It appears that her glimpse of the burglar was brief, as with commendable prudence he rapidly fastened her night-shift over her head, but in that glimpse she recognized my mustache!
“Could she tell how it felt?” I ask.
The point is appreciated by the court, though not, I fear, by the judge, who looks at me as though calculating the drop he should allow. Yes, it is all very well to jest about my mustache, but to be hanged by it, that is a different affair. And the case is very black against me.
“Has the prisoner any witnesses to call?” asks the judge.
“No,” I reply, “but I shall make you a speech.”
And thereupon I delight them with the following oration, an oration which should have gone on much longer than it did but for a most unforeseen interruption.
“My lord, the jury, and my peers,” I begin—remembering so much from my historical stories—“I am entirely guiltless of this extraordinary and infamous charge. No one but such a man as Fisher would have brought it!” [Here I point my finger at the unhappy tenant of Chickawungaree.]
“No one else of the brave English would have stooped to injure an innocent and defenceless stranger! As to the butler and the cook, you have seen their untruthful faces, you have heard their incredible testimony. I say no more regarding them. The policemen have only shown that they found me an unwilling and insulted—though invited—guest of the perfidious Fisher. What harm, then? Have you never been the unwilling guests of a distasteful host?
“Who am I? Why did I visit such a person as Fisher? I shall tell you. I am a French subject, a traveller in England. Only yesterday I arrived in London. How can I, then, have burgled Madame Thompson? Impossible! Absurd! I had not set my foot upon the shores of England—”
At this point the judge, in his dry voice, interrupts me to ask if I can bring any witnesses to prove this assertion.
“Witnesses?” I exclaim, not knowing what the devil to add to this dramatic cry, when, behold! I see, sent by Providence, a young man rising from his seat in the court. It is my fair-haired fellow-passenger!
“May I give evidence?” says he.
“Though your name be Iscariot, yes!” I cry.
The judge frowns, for it seems the demand was addressed to him and not to me; but he permits my acquaintance to enter the box. And now a doubt assails me. What will he say? Add still more damaging testimony, or prove that I am the harmless Bunyan?
He does neither, but in a very composed and assured fashion, that carries conviction with it, he tells the judge that he travelled with me from Paris on the very night of the crime, adding that I had appeared to him a very harmless though somewhat eccentric person. Not the adjectives I should have chosen myself, perhaps; but, I assure you, I should have let him call me vulgar or dirty without a word of protest.
Of course it follows that I cannot be the musical burglar, while as for my friend Fisher, that worthy gentleman is so disconcerted at the turn things have taken that he seems as anxious to withdraw his share of the charge as he was to make it.
I am saved; the case breaks, down.
“How's that?” says the judge.
“Guiltless!” cries the jury.
And so I am a free man once more, and the cook must swear to another mustache.
The first thing I do is to seize my witness and drag him from the court, repeating my thanks all the while.
“But how did you come to be in court?” I ask.
“Oh, I happen to be a barrister!” he explains. “I came in about another case, and, finding you'd been burgling, I thought I'd stay and see the fun.”
“Your case must take care of itself; come and lunch with me.”
Yes, he can escape. His case will not come on to-day, as mine has taken so long; and so we go forth together to begin a friendship that I trust may always endure.
And to this day I have never paid for Fisher's broken pane of glass.
8000
“On earth men style him 'Richard,''
But the gods hail him 'Dick.'”
—An English Poet (adapted).
9062
FRIEND in need.” say the English, “is a friend indeed. And who could be more in need of a friend than I at that moment? It was like the rolling up of London fog-banks and the smile of the sun peeping through at last. No longer was I quite alone in my exile. If you have ever wandered solitary through an unknown city, listened to a foreign tongue and to none other, eaten alien viands, fallen into strange misadventures, and all without a single friendly ear to confide your troubles to, you will sympathize with the joyous swelling of my heart as I faced my barrister at that luncheon.
And he, I assure you, was a very other person from the indifferent Englishman of the journey. The good heart was showing through, still obscured as it was by the self-contained manner and the remnants of that suspicion with which every Briton is taught to regard the insinuating European.
I have already given you a sketch of his exterior—the smooth, fair hair, the ruddy cheek, the clear eye, and, I should add, the compressed and resolute mouth; also, not least, the admirable fit of his garments. Now I can fill in the picture: Name, to begin with, Richard Shafthead; younger son of honest, conservative baronet; eldest brother provided with an income, I gather, Dick with injunctions to earn one. Hence attendance at courts of justice, a respectable gravity of apparel, and that compression of the lips. In speech, courteous upon a slight acquaintance, though without any excessive anxiety to please; on greater intimacy, very much to the point without regarding much the susceptibilities of his audience. Yet this bluntness was, tempered always by good-fellowship, and sometimes by a smile; and beneath it flowed, deep down, and scarcely ever bubbling into the light of day, a stream of sentiment that linked him with the poetry of his race. My friend Shafthead would have laughed outright had you told him this. Nevertheless this secret is the skeleton in the respectable English cupboard. Your John Bull is an edifice of sentiment jealously covered by a hoarding on which are displayed advertisements of pills and other practical commodities. It is his one fear lest any one should discover this preposterous and hideous erection is not the real building.
Dick's only comment on the above statement would probably be that I had mixed my metaphors or had exceeded at lunch. But he is shrewd enough to know in his heart that I have but spoken the truth, even though my metaphors were as heterogeneous as the ark of Noah. How else can you explain the astonishing contrast between those who write the songs of England and those whose industry enables them to recompense the singers?
No doubt there is a noticeable difference between the poet and the people in every land and every race, but in England it is so staggering. The hair of the English poet is so very long, his eye so very frenzied, his voice so steeped in emotion, so buoyed by melody. Even his prose appeals to the heart rather than to the head. Thackeray weeps as he writes of good women; Scott blushes as he writes of bad. No one is cynical but the villains. The heroines are all pure as the best cocoa.
Then look at the check suits and the stony eyes of Mr. Cook's protégées. Do they understand what Tennyson has written for them? If not, why do they pay for it?
John Bull and John Milton; William Bull and William Shakespeare; Lord Bull and Lord Byron; Charles Bull and Charles Dickens; how are these couples related? By this religious, moral, sentimental stream; welling in one, hidden in another under ten tons of shyness and roast beef; a torrent here, a trickle there, sometimes almost dry in a dusty season. That is how.
Does Dick again recommend teetotalism as a cure for these speculations? Come with me to your rooms, my friend, and let us glance through your library.
I take up a volume of Shakespeare and find it contains the sonnets.
“Ah, Shakespeare's sonnets,” I say, with an air of patronage towards that eminent poet. “You know them?”
“Used to know 'em a little.” He is giving me another taste of that characteristic British stare. Evidently he is offended by my tone, and will fall an easy victim to my next move.
“They are much overrated,” I say, putting the book away.
“You should write to theTimesabout it,” he replies, sarcastically, and then adds, with conviction, “They are about the finest things in English.”
“Yet no Englishman reads them,” I remark, lightly.
“I used to know half a dozen of 'em by heart,” he retorts.
Half a dozen of those miracles of sensuous diction off by heart! Prosaic Briton! I do not say this aloud, but take next the songs of Kipling, and profess not to understand one of them. To convince me it is not mere nonsense, he reads and expounds.
He has been round the world, and shot wild beasts on the veldt and in the jungle, and can explain allusions and share exotic sentiments.
Is this man mere plum-pudding and international perfidy, who feels thus the glamour of the song?
“Ah, here is a novel of Zola!” I exclaim. “You enjoy him, of course?”
“A filthy brute,” says Dick. “I read half of that, and I am keeping it now for shaving-papers.”
There is perhaps more strength of conviction than critical judgment in this comment. I might retort that all the water in the world neither has been passed through a filter nor foams over a fall, and that the pond and the gutter have their purpose in the world. I do not make this reply, however; I merely note that a strong sentiment must underlie a strong prejudice.
As you will perhaps have gathered, my good Dick had his limitations. He could be sympathetic; if, for instance, he were to see me insulted, beaten, robbed of my purse and my mistress, and blinded in one eye, he would, I am sure, feel for me deeply, and show himself most tactful in his consolation. But it would require some such well-marked instance to open the gates of his heart; and in minor matters I should not dream of applying to him, unless, indeed, it was a practical service he could perform.
He himself had held his peace and confided in no one when his fair cousin married the wealthy manufacturer of soda-water, and his heart had long since healed. In the days of his wild oats, when duns were knocking at his door, he had retired from St. James Street to a modest apartment in the Temple, sold such of his effects as were marketable, and philosophically sought a cheap restaurant and a coarser tobacco. His debts were now paid and all was well again. When he did not get the degree he was expected to at Oxford, he may have said “damn,” but I doubt if he enlarged on this observation. What did that disappointment matter to-day? Then why should other people make a fuss if they were hurt?
Yet his heart was as a child's if you could extract it from its wrappings of tin-foil and brown paper, and I am happy I knew him long enough to see him “play the fool,” as he would term it.
On that first afternoon of our acquaintance I found him courteous before lunch, genial after (I took care to “make him proud.” as the English say). I was perfectly frank; told him my true name, the plot that had miscarried, my flight to England—everything.
“I am not Bunyan, I am not even Cellarini, but merely Augustine d'Haricot, eternally at your service,” I said. “You have saved me from prison, perhaps from the scaffold.”
He laughed.
“It wouldn't have been as bad as that, but I'm glad to have been of any use.”
And then changing the subject, as an Englishman does when complimented (for they hold that either you lie and are a knave, or tell the truth and are a fool), he asked:
“What are you going to do now?”
“That depends upon your advice,” I replied. “What is my danger? How wise is it to move freely in this country?”
“There is no danger at all if it is only a political offence,” he answered. “Unless you've been picking pockets, or anything else as well.”
I answered him I had not, and he promised to inquire into the case and give me a full assurance on the next morning.
“And now,” I said, “tell me, my friend, how to live as an Englishman. I do not mean to adopt the English mind, the English sentiment, but only to move in your world, so long as I must live in it. I want to see, I want to hear, I want to record my impressions and my adventures. As the time is not ripe to wield the sword, I shall wield the eyes and the pen. Also, I shall doubtless fall in love, and I should like to hunt a fox and shoot a pheasant.”
We laughed together at this programme; in brief, we made a good beginning.
That afternoon we set out together to look for suitable apartments for myself, and by a happy chance we had hardly gone a hundred paces before we spied a gentleman approaching us whom Shafthead declared to be a veritable authority on London life; also a cousin of his own.
“But will he not be busy?” I inquired.
“Young devil,” answered Shafthead, “it will serve to keep him out of mischief for an hour or two.”
Thereupon I was presented to Mr. Teddy Lumme, a young gentleman of small stature, with a small, cheerful, clean-shaven, dark face, and a large hat that sloped backward and sideways towards a large collar. His elbows moved as though he were driving a cab; his boots shone brightly enough to serve for mirrors; his morning-coat was cut in imitation of the “pink” of a huntsman; a large mass of variegated silk was fastened beneath his collar by a neat pearl pin; in a word, he belonged to a type that is universal, yet this specimen was unmistakably English. In age I learned afterwards that he was just twenty-five, emancipated for little more than a year from the University of Oxford, and still enjoying the relief from the rigorous rules of that institution. No accusation of reticence to be made against Mr. Lumme! He talked all the time, cheerfully and artlessly.
“You want rooms?” he said. “Quelle chose? I mean, don't you know, what kind? I don't know much French, I'm afraid. Oh, you talk English? Devilish glad to hear it. I say, Dick, you remember that girl I told you of? Well, it's just as I said. I knew, damn it all. What do you want to give?” (This to me.) “You don't care much? That simplifies matters.”
In this strain Mr. Lumme entertained us on our way, Shafthead regarding him with a half-amused, half-sardonic grin, of which his relative seemed entirely oblivious, while I enjoyed myself amazingly. I felt like Captain Cook on the gallantMarchandpalavering with the chiefs of some equatorial state.
“I demand a cold bath and an English servant,” I said. “Anything else characteristic you can add, but those are essential.”