‘Merton,’ said our hero, ‘and yours?’
‘Macnab. I can lend you a plain suit of morning clothes from here, and we don’t want the stratagem of the constable. You don’t even need the extra trouble of putting on evening dress in my house.’
‘How very fortunate,’ said Merton, and in a quarter of an hour he was attired as a simple citizen, and was driving to the house of Mr. Macnab. Here he was merely introduced to the guests—it was a men’s party—as a gentleman from England on business. The guests had too much tact to tarry long, and by eleven o’clock the chief and Merton were ringing at the door bell of Professor Lumley. The servant knew both of them, and ushered them into the professor’s study. He was reading examination papers. Mrs. Lumley had not returned from a party. Lumley greeted Merton warmly.
‘I am passing through Edinburgh, and thought I might find you at home,’ Merton said.
‘Mr. Macnab,’ said Lumley, shaking hands with the chief, ‘you have not taken my friend into custody?’
‘No, professor; Mr. Merton will tell you that he is released, and I’ll be going home.’
‘You won’t stop and smoke?’
‘No, I should bede trop,’ answered the chief; ‘good night, professor; good night, Mr. Merton.’
‘But the broken window?’
‘Oh, we’ll settle that, and let you have the bill.’
Merton gave his club address, and the chief shook hands and departed.
‘Now, whathaveyou been doing, Merton?’ asked Lumley.
Merton briefly explained the whole set of circumstances, and added, ‘Now, Lumley, you are my sole hope. You can give me a bed to-night?’
‘With all the pleasure in the world.’
‘And lend me a set of Mrs. Lumley’s raiment and a lady’s portmanteau?’
‘Are you quite mad?’
‘No, but I must get to London undiscovered, and, for certain reasons, with which I need not trouble you, that is absolutely the only possible way. You remember, at Oxford, I made up fairly well for female parts.’
‘Is there absolutely no other way?’
‘None, I have tried every conceivable plan, mentally. Mourning is best, and a veil.’
At this moment Mrs. Lumley’s cab was heard, returning from her party.
‘Run down and break it to Mrs. Lumley,’ said Merton. ‘Luckily we have often acted together.’
‘Luckily you are a favourite of hers,’ said Lumley.
In ten minutes the pair entered the study. Mrs. Lumley, a tall lady, as Merton had said, came in, laughing and blushing.
‘I shall drive with you myself to the train. My maid must be in the secret,’ she said.
‘She is an old acquaintance of mine,’ said Merton. ‘But I think you had better not come with me to the station. Nobody is likely to see me, leaving your house about nine, with my veil down. But, if any onedoessee me, he must take me for you.’
‘Oh, it is I who am running up to town incognita?’
‘For a day or two—you will lend me a portmanteau to give local colour?’
‘With pleasure,’ said Mrs. Lumley.
‘And Lumley will telegraph to Trevor to meet you at King’s Cross, with his brougham, at 6.15 P. M.?’
This also was agreed to, and so ended this romance of Bradshaw.
At about twenty-five minutes to seven, on March 7, the express entered King’s Cross. A lady of fashionable appearance, with her veil down, gazed anxiously out of the window of a reserved carriage. She presently detected the person for whom she was looking, and waved her parasol. Trevor, lifting hishat, approached; the lady had withdrawn into the carriage, and he entered.
‘Mum’s the word!’ said the lady.
‘Why, it’s—hang it all, it’s Merton!’
‘Your sister is staying with you?’ asked Merton eagerly.
‘Yes; but what on earth—’
‘I’ll tell you in the brougham. But you take a weight off my bosom! I am going to stay with you for a day or two; and now my reputation (or Mrs. Lumley’s) is safe. Your servants never saw Mrs. Lumley?’
‘Never,’ said Trevor.
‘All right! My portmanteau has her initials, S. M. L., and a crimson ticket; send a porter for it. Now take me to the brougham.’
Trevor offered his arm and carried the dressing-bag; the lady was led to his carriage. The portmanteau was recovered, and they drove away.
‘Give me a cigarette,’ said Merton, ‘and I’ll tell you all about it.’
He told Trevor all about it—except about the emu’s feathers.
‘But a male disguise would have done as well,’ said Trevor
‘Not a bit. It would not have suited what I have to do in town. I cannot tell you why. The affair is complex. I have to settle it, if I can, so that neither Logan nor any one else—except the body-snatcher and polite letter-writer—shall ever know how I managed it.’
Trevor had to be content with this reply. He tookMerton, when they arrived, into the smoking-room, rang for tea, and ‘squared his sister,’ as he said, in the drawing-room. The pair were dining out, and after a solitary dinner, Merton (in a tea-gown) occupied himself with literary composition. He put his work in a large envelope, sealed it, marked it with a St. Andrew’s cross, and, when Trevor returned, asked him to put it in his safe. ‘Two days after to-morrow, if I do not appear, you must open the envelope and read the contents,’ he said.
After luncheon on the following day—a wet day—Miss Trevor and Merton (who was still arrayed as Mrs. Lumley) went out shopping. Miss Trevor then drove off to pay a visit (Merton could not let her know his next move), and he himself, his veil down, took a four-wheeled cab, and drove to Madame Claudine’s. He made one or two purchases, and then asked for the head of the establishment, an Irish lady. To her he confided that he had to break a piece of distressing family news to Miss Markham, of the cloak department; that young lady was summoned; Madame Claudine, with a face of sympathy, ushered them into her private room, and went off to see a customer. Miss Markham was pale and trembling; Merton himself felt agitated.
‘Is it about my father, or—’ the girl asked.
‘Pray be calm,’ said Merton. ‘Sit down. Both are well.’
The girl started. ‘Your voice—’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ said Merton; ‘you know me.’ And taking off his glove, he showed a curious mediæval ring, familiar to his friends. ‘I could get at you inno other way than this,’ he said, ‘and it was absolutely necessary to see you.’
‘What is it? I know it is about my father,’ said the girl.
‘He has done us a great service,’ said Merton soothingly. He had guessed what the ‘distressing circumstances’ were in which the marquis had been restored to life. Perhaps the reader guesses? A discreet person, who has secretly to take charge of a corpse of pecuniary value, adopts certain measures (discovered by the genius of ancient Egypt), for its preservation. These measures, doubtless, had revived the marquis, who thus owed his life to his kidnapper.
‘He has, I think, done us a great service,’ Merton repeated; and the girl’s colour returned to her beautiful face, that had been of marble.
‘Yet there are untoward circumstances,’ Merton admitted. ‘I wish to ask you two or three questions. I must give you my word of honour that I have no intention of injuring your father. The reverse; I am really acting in his interests. Now, first, he has practised in Australia. May I ask if he was interested in the Aborigines?’
‘Yes, very much,’ said the girl, entirely puzzled. ‘But,’ she added, ‘he was never in the Labour trade.’
‘Blackbird catching?’ said Merton. ‘No. But he had, perhaps, a collection of native arms and implements?’
‘Yes; a very fine one.’
‘Among them were, perhaps, some curious nativeshoes, made of emu’s feathers—they are calledInterliniaor, by white men,Kurdaitchashoes?’
‘I don’t remember the name,’ said Miss Markham, ‘but he had quite a number of them. The natives wear them to conceal their tracks when they go on a revenge party.’
Merton’s guess was now a certainty. The marquis had spoken of Miss Markham’s father as a ‘landlouping’ Australian doctor. The footmarks of the feathered shoes in the snow at Kirkburn proved that an article which only an Australian (or an anthropologist) was likely to know of had been used by the body-snatchers.
Merton reflected. Should he ask the girl whether she had told her father what, on the night of the marquis’s appearance at the office, Logan had told her? He decided that this was superfluous; of course she had told her father, and the doctor had taken his measures (and the body of the marquis) accordingly. To ask a question would only be to enlighten the girl.
‘That is very interesting,’ said Merton. ‘Now, I won’t pretend that I disguised myself in this way merely to ask you about Australian curiosities. The truth is that, in your father’s interests, I must have an interview with him.’
‘You don’t mean to do him any harm?’ asked the girl anxiously.
‘I have given you my word of honour. As things stand, I do not conceal from you that I am the only person who can save him from a situation which might be disagreeable, and that is what I want to do.’
‘He will be quite safe if he sees you?’ asked the girl, wringing her hands.
‘That is the only way in which he can be safe, I am afraid.’
‘You would not use a girl against her own father?’
‘I would sooner die where I sit,’ said Merton earnestly. ‘Surely you can trust a friend of Mr. Logan’s—who, by the bye, is very well.’
‘Oh, oh,’ cried the girl, ‘I read that story of the stolen corpse in the papers. I understand!’
‘It was almost inevitable that you should understand,’ said Merton.
‘But then,’ said the girl, ‘what did you mean by saying that my father has done you a great service. You are deceiving me. I have said too much. This is base!’ Miss Markham rose, her eyes and cheeks burning.
‘What I told you is the absolute and entire truth,’ said Merton, nearly as red as she was.
‘Then,’ exclaimed Miss Markham, ‘this is baser yet! You must mean that by doing what you think he has done my father has somehow enabled Robert—Mr. Logan—to come into the marquis’s property. Perhaps the marquis left no will, or the will—is gone! And do you believe that Mr. Logan will thank you for acting in this way?’ She stood erect, her hand resting on the back of a chair, indignant and defiant.
‘In the first place, I have a written power from Mr. Logan to act as I think best. Next, I have not even informed myself as to how the law of Scotland stands in regard to the estate of a man who dies leaving no will. Lastly, Miss Markham, I am extremely hamperedby the fact that Mr. Logan has not the remotest suspicion of what I suspected—and now know—to be the truth as to the disappearance of his cousin’s body. I successfully concealed my idea from Mr. Logan, so as to avoid giving pain to him and you. I did my best to conceal it from you, though I never expected to succeed. And now, if you wish to know how your father has conferred a benefit on Mr. Logan, I must tell you, though I would rather be silent. Mr. Logan is aware of the benefit, but will never, if you can trust yourself, suspect his benefactor.’
‘I can never, never see him again,’ the girl sobbed.
‘Time is flying,’ said Merton, who was familiar, in works of fiction, with the situation indicated by the girl. ‘Can you trust me, or not?’ he asked, ‘My single object is secrecy and your father’s safety. I owe that to my friend, to you, and even, as it happens, to your father. Can you enable me, dressed as I am, to have an interview with him?’
‘You will not hurt him? You will not give him up? You will not bring the police on him?’
‘I am acting as I do precisely for the purpose of keeping the police off him. They have discovered nothing.’
The girl gave a sigh of relief.
‘Your father’s only danger would lie in my—failure to return from my interview with him. AgainstthatI cannot safeguard him; it is fair to tell you so. But my success in persuading him to adopt a certain course would be equally satisfactory to Mr. Logan and to himself.’
‘Mr. Logan knows nothing?’
‘Absolutely nothing. I alone, and now you, know anything.’
The girl walked up and down in agony.
‘Nobody will ever know if I do not tell you how to find him,’ she said.
‘Unhappily that is not the case. I only askyou, so that it may not be necessary to take other steps, tardy, but certain, and highly undesirable.’
‘You will not go to him armed?’
‘I give you my word of honour,’ said Merton. ‘I have risked myself unarmed already.’
The girl paused with fixed eyes that saw nothing. Merton watched her. Then she took her resolve.
‘I do not know where he is living. I know that on Wednesdays, that is, the day after to-morrow, he is to be found at Dr. Fogarty’s, a private asylum, a house with a garden, in Water Lane, Hammersmith.’
It was the lane in which stood the Home for Destitute and Decayed Cats, whither Logan had once abducted Rangoon, the Siamese puss.
‘Thank you,’ said Merton simply. ‘And I am to ask for?’
‘Ask first for Dr. Fogarty. You will tell him that you wish to see theErtwa Oknurcha.’
‘Ah, Australian for “The Big Man,”’ said Merton.
‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Miss Markham. ‘Dr. Fogarty will then ask, “Have you thechuringa?”’
The girl drew out a slim gold chain which hung round her neck and under her dress. At the end of it was a dark piece of wood, shaped much like a largecigar, and decorated with incised concentric circles, stained red.
‘Take that and show it to Dr. Fogarty,’ said Miss Markham, detaching the object from the chain.
Merton returned it to her. ‘I know where to get a similarchuringa,’ he said. ‘Keep your own. Its absence, if asked for, might lead to awkward questions.’
‘Thank you, I can trust you,’ said Miss Markham, adding, ‘You will address my father as Dr. Melville.’
‘Again thanks, and good-bye,’ said Merton. He bowed and withdrew.
‘She is a good deal upset, poor girl,’ Merton remarked to Madame Claudine, who, on going to comfort Miss Markham with tea, found her weeping. Merton took another cab, and drove to Trevor’s house.
After dinner (at which there were no guests), and in the smoking-room, Trevor asked whether he had made any progress.
‘Everything succeeded to a wish,’ said Merton. ‘You remember Water Lane?’
‘Where Logan carried the Siamese cat in my cab,’ said Trevor, grinning at the reminiscence. ‘Rather! I reconnoitred the place with Logan.’
‘Well, on the day after to-morrow I have business there.’
‘Not at the Cats’ Home?’
‘No, but perhaps you might reconnoitre again. Do you remember a house with high walls and spikes on them?’
‘I do,’ said Trevor; ‘but how do you know? Younever were there. You disapproved of Logan’s method in the case of the cat.’
‘I never was there; I only made a guess, because the house I am interested in is a private asylum.’
‘Well, you guessed right. What then?’
‘You might reconnoitre the ground to-morrow—the exits, there are sure to be some towards waste land or market gardens.’
‘Jolly!’ said Trevor. ‘I’ll make up as a wanderer from Suffolk, looking for a friend in the slums; semi-bargee kind of costume.’
‘That would do,’ said Merton. ‘But you had better go in the early morning.’
‘A nuisance. Why?’
‘Because, later, you will have to get a gang of fellows to be about the house the day after, when I pay my visit.’
‘Fellows of our own sort, or the police?’
‘Neither. I thought of fellows of our own sort. They would talk and guess.’
‘Better get some of Ned Mahony’s gang?’ asked Trevor.
Mr. Mahony was an ex-pugilist, and a distinguished instructor in the art of self-defence. He also was captain of a gang of ‘chuckers out.’
‘Yes,’ said Merton, ‘that is my idea.Theywill guess, too; but when they know the place is a private lunatic asylum their hypothesis is obvious.’
‘They’ll think that a patient is to be rescued?’
‘That will be their idea. And the old trick is a good trick. Cart of coals blocked in the gateway, or with another cart—the bigger the better—in thelane. The men will dress accordingly. Others will have stolen to the back and sides of the house; you will, in short, stop the earths after I enter. Your brougham, after setting me down, will wait in Hammersmith Road, or whatever the road outside is.’
‘I may come?’ asked Trevor.
‘In command, as a coal carter.’
‘Hooray!’ said Trevor, ‘and I’ll tell you what, I won’t reconnoitre as a bargee, but as a servant out of livery sent to look for a cat at the Home. And I’ll mistake the asylum for the Home for Cats, and try to scout a little inside the gates.’
‘Capital,’ said Merton. ‘Then, later, I want you to go to a curiosity shop near the Museum’ (he mentioned the street), ‘and look into the window. You’ll see a little brown piece of wood likethis.’ Merton sketched rapidly the piece of wood which Miss Markham wore under her dress. ‘The man has several. Buy one about the size of a big cigar for me, and buy one or two other trifles first.’
‘The man knows me,’ said Trevor, ‘I have bought things from him.’
‘Very good, but don’t buy it when any other customer is in the shop. And, by the way, take Mrs. Lumley’s portmanteau—the lock needs mending—to Jones’s in Sloane Street to be repaired. One thing more, I should like to add a few lines to that manuscript I gave you to keep in your safe.’
Trevor brought the sealed envelope. Merton added a paragraph and resealed it. Trevor locked it up again.
On the following day Trevor started early, did his scouting in Water Lane, and settled with Mr. Mahony about his gang of muscular young prize-fighters. He also brought the native Australian curiosity, and sent Mrs. Lumley’s portmanteau to have the lock repaired.
Merton determined to call at Dr. Fogarty’s asylum at four in the afternoon. The gang, under Trevor, was to arrive half an hour later, and to surround and enter the premises if Merton did not emerge within half an hour.
At four o’clock exactly Trevor’s brougham was at the gates of the asylum. The footman rang the bell, a porter opened a wicket, and admitted a lady of fashionable aspect, who asked for Dr. Fogarty. She was ushered into his study, her card (‘Louise, 13 --- Street’) was taken by the servant, and Dr. Fogarty appeared. He was a fair, undecided looking man, with blue wandering eyes, and long untidy, reddish whiskers. He bowed and looked uncomfortable, as well he might.
‘I have called to see theErtwa Oknurcha, Dr. Fogarty,’ said Merton.
‘Oh Lord,’ said Dr. Fogarty, and murmured, ‘Another of his lady friends!’ adding, ‘I must ask, Miss, have you thechuringa?’
Merton produced, out of his muff, the Australian specimen which Trevor had bought.
The doctor inspected it. ‘I shall take it to theErtwa Oknurcha,’ he said, and shambled out. Presently he returned. ‘He will see you, Miss.’
Merton found the redoubtable Dr. Markham, an elderly man, clean shaven, prompt-looking, with verykeen dark eyes, sitting at a writing table, with a few instruments of his profession lying about. The table stood on an oblong space of uncarpeted and polished flooring of some extent. Dr. Fogarty withdrew, the other doctor motioned Merton to a chair on the opposite side of the table. This chair was also on the uncarpeted space, and Merton observed four small brass plates in the parquet. Arranging his draperies, and laying aside his muff, Merton sat down, slightly shifting the position of the chair.
‘Perhaps, Dr. Melville,’ he said, ‘it will be more reassuring to you if I at once hold my hands up,’ and he sat there and smiled, holding up his neatly gloved hands.
The doctor stared, andhishand stole towards an instrument like an unusually long stethoscope, which lay on his table.
Merton sat there ‘hands up,’ still smiling. ‘Ah, the blow-tube?’ he said. ‘Very good and quiet! Do you useurali? Infinitely better, at close quarters, than the noisy old revolver.’
‘I see I have to do with a cool hand, sir,’ said the doctor.
‘Ah,’ said Merton. ‘Then let us talk as between man and man.’ He tilted his chair backwards, and crossed his legs. ‘By the way, as I have no Aaron and Hur to help me to hold up my hands, may I drop them? The attitude, though reassuring, is fatiguing.’
‘If you won’t mind first allowing me to remove your muff,’ said the doctor. It lay on the table in front of Merton.
‘By all means, no gun in my muff,’ said Merton.‘In fact I think the whole pistol business is overdone, and second rate.’
‘I presume that I have the honour to speak to Mr. Merton?’ asked the doctor. ‘You slipped through the cordon?’
‘Yes, I was the intoxicated miner,’ said Merton. ‘No doubt you have received a report from your agents?’
‘Stupid fellows,’ said the doctor.
‘You are not flattering to me, but let us come to business. How much?’
‘I need hardly ask,’ said the doctor, ‘it would be an insult to your intelligence, whether you have taken the usual precautions?’
Merton, whose chair was tilted, threw himself violently backwards, upsetting his chair, and then scrambled nimbly to his feet. Between him and the table yawned a square black hole of unknown depth.
‘Hardly fair, Dr. Melville,’ said he, picking up the chair, and placing it on the carpet, ‘besides, Ihavetaken the ordinary precautions. The house is surrounded—Ned Mahony’s lambs—the usual statement is in the safe of a friend. We must really come to the point. Time is flying,’ and he looked at his watch. ‘I can give you twenty minutes.’
‘Have you anything in the way of terms to propose?’ asked the doctor, filling his pipe.
‘Well, first, absolute secrecy. I alone know the state of the case.’
‘Has Mr. Logan no guess?’
‘Not the faintest suspicion. The detectives, when I left Kirkburn, had not even found the trap door, youunderstand. You hit on its discovery through knowing the priest’s hole at Oxburgh Hall, I suppose?’
The doctor nodded.
‘You can guarantee absolute secrecy?’ he asked.
‘Naturally, the knowledge is confined to me, you, and your partners. I want the secrecy in Mr. Logan’s interests, and you know why.’
‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘that is point one. So far I am with you.’
‘Then, to enter on odious details,’ said Merton, ‘had you thought of any terms?’
‘The old man was stiff,’ said the doctor, ‘and your side only offered to double him in your advertisement, you know.’
‘That was merely a way of speaking,’ said Merton. ‘What did the marquis propose?’
‘Well, as his offer is not a basis of negotiation?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Merton.
‘Five hundred he offered, out of which we were to pay his fare back to Scotland.’
Both men laughed.
‘But you have your own ideas?’ said Merton.
‘I had thought of 15,000l. and leaving England. He is a multimillionaire, the marquis.’
‘It is rather a pull,’ said Merton. ‘Now speaking as a professional man, and on honour, howishis lordship?’ Merton asked.
‘Speaking as a professional man, hemaylive a year; he cannot live eighteen months, I stake my reputation on that.’
Merton mused.
‘I’ll tell you what we can do,’ he said. ‘We canguarantee the interest, at a fancy rate, say five per cent, during the marquis’s life, which you reckon as good for a year and a half, at most. The lump sum we can pay on his decease.’
The doctor mused in his turn.
‘I don’t like it. He may alter his will, and then—where do I come in?’
‘Of course that is an objection,’ said Merton. ‘But where do you come in if you refuse? Logan, I can assure you (I have read up the Scots law since I came to town), is the heir if the marquis dies intestate. Suppose that I do not leave this house in a few minutes, Logan won’t bargain with you; we settledthat; and really you will have taken a great deal of trouble to your own considerable risk. You see the usual document, my statement, is lodged with a friend.’
‘There is certainly a good deal in what you say,’ remarked the doctor.
‘Then, to take a more cheerful view,’ said Merton, ‘I have medical authority for stating that any will made now, or later, by the marquis, would probably be upset, on the ground of mental unsoundness, you know. So Logan would succeed, in spite of a later will.’
The doctor smiled. ‘That point I grant. Well, one must chance something. I accept your proposals. You will give me a written agreement, signed by Mr. Logan, for the arrangement.’
‘Yes, I have power to act.’
‘Then, Mr. Merton, why in the world did you not let your friend walk in Burlington Arcade, and see thelady? He would have been met with the same terms, and could have proposed the same modifications.’
‘Well, Dr. Melville, first, I was afraid that he might accidentally discover the real state of the case, as I surmised that it existed—that might have led to family inconveniences, you know.’
‘Yes,’ the doctor admitted, ‘I have felt that. My poor daughter, a good girl, sir! It wrung my heartstrings, I assure you.’
‘I have the warmest sympathy with you,’ said Merton, going on. ‘Well, in the second place, I was not sure that I could trust Mr. Logan, who has rather a warm temper, to conduct the negotiations. Thirdly, I fear I must confess that I did what I have done—well, “for human pleasure.”’
‘Ah, you are young,’ said the doctor, sighing.
‘Now,’ said Merton, ‘shall I sign a promise? We can call Dr. Fogarty up to witness it. By the bye, what about “value received”? Shall we say that we purchase your ethnological collection?’
The doctor grinned, and assented, the deed was written, signed, and witnessed by Dr. Fogarty, who hastily retreated.
‘Now about restoring the marquis,’ said Merton. ‘He’s here, of course; it was easy enough to get him into an asylum. Might I suggest a gag, if by chance you have such a thing about you? To be removed, of course, when once I get him into the house of a friend. And the usual bandage over his eyes: he must never know where he has been.’
‘You think of everything, Mr. Merton,’ said the doctor. ‘But, how are you to account for the marquis’s reappearance alive?’ he asked.
‘Ohthat—easily! My first theory, which I fortunately mentioned to his medical attendant, Dr. Douglas, in the train, before I reached Kirkburn, was that he had recovered from catalepsy, and had secretly absconded, for the purpose of watching Mr. Logan’s conduct. We shall make him believe that this is the fact, and the old woman who watched him—’
‘Plucky old woman,’ said the doctor.
‘Will swear to anything that he chooses to say.’
‘Well, that is your affair,’ said the doctor.
‘Now,’ said Merton, ‘give me a receipt for 750l.; we shall tell the marquis that we had to spring 250l. on his original offer.’
The doctor wrote out, stamped, and signed the receipt. ‘Perhaps I had better walk in front of you down stairs?’ he asked Merton.
‘Perhaps it really would be more hospitable,’ Merton acquiesced.
Merton was ushered again into Dr. Fogarty’s room on the ground floor. Presently the other doctor reappeared, leading a bent and much muffled up figure, who preserved total silence—for excellent reasons. The doctor handed to Merton a sealed envelope, obviously the marquis’s will. Merton looked closely into the face of the old marquis, whose eyes, dropping senile tears, showed no sign of recognition.
Dr. Fogarty next adjusted a silken bandage, over a wad of cotton wool, which he placed on the eyes of the prisoner.
Merton then took farewell of Dr. Melville (aliasMarkham); he and Dr. Fogarty supported the totteringsteps of Lord Restalrig, and they led him to the gate.
‘Tell the porter to call my brougham,’ said Merton to Dr. Fogarty.
The brougham was called and came to the gate, evading a coal-cart which was about to enter the lane. Merton aided the marquis to enter, and said ‘Home.’ A few rough fellows, who were loitering in the lane, looked curiously on. In half an hour the marquis, his gag and the bandage round his eyes removed, was sitting in Trevor’s smoking-room, attended to by Miss Trevor.
It is probably needless to describe the simple and obvious process (rather like that of the Man, the Goose, and the Fox) by which Mrs. Lumley, with her portmanteau, left Trevor’s house that evening to pay another visit, while Merton himself arrived, in evening dress, to dinner at a quarter past eight. He had telegraphed to Logan: ‘Entirely successful. Come up by the 11.30 to-night, and bring Mrs. Bower.’
The marquis did not appear at dinner. He was in bed, and, thanks to a sleeping potion, slumbered soundly. He awoke about nine in the morning to find Mrs. Bower by his bedside.
‘Eh, marquis, finely we have jinked them,’ said Mrs. Bower; and she went on to recount the ingenious measures by which the marquis, recovering from his ‘dwawm,’ had secretly withdrawn himself.
‘I mind nothing of it, Jeanie, my woman,’ said the marquis. ‘I thought I wakened with some deevil running a knife into me; he might have gone further,and I might have fared worse. He asked for money, but, faith, we niffered long and came to no bargain. And a woman brought me away. Who was the woman?’
‘Oh, dreams,’ said Mrs. Bower. ‘Ye had another sair fit o’ the dwawming, and we brought you here to see the London doctors. Hoo could ony mortal speerit ye away, let be it was the fairies, and me watching you a’ the time! A fine gliff ye gie’d me when ye sat up and askit for sma’ yill’ (small beer).
‘I mind nothing of it,’ replied the marquis. However, Mrs. Bower stuck to her guns, and the marquis was, or appeared to be, resigned to accept her explanation. He dozed throughout the day, but next day he asked for Merton. Their interview was satisfactory; Merton begged leave to introduce Logan, and the marquis, quite broken down, received his kinsman with tears, and said nothing about his marriage.
‘I’m a dying man,’ he remarked finally, ‘but I’ll live long enough to chouse the taxes.’
His sole idea was to hand over (in the old Scottish fashion) the main part of his property to Logan,inter vivos, and then to live long enough to evade the death-duties. Merton and Logan knew well enough the unsoundness of any such proceedings, especially considering the mental debility of the old gentleman. However, the papers were made out. The marquis retired to one of his English seats, after which event his reappearance was made known to the world. In his English home Logan sedulously nursed him. A more generous diet than he had ever known beforedid wonders for the marquis, though he peevishly remonstrated against every bottle of wine that was uncorked. He did live for the span which he deemed necessary for his patriotic purpose, and peacefully expired, his last words being ‘Nae grand funeral.’
Public curiosity, of course, was keenly excited about the mysterious reappearance of the marquis in life. But the interviewers could extract nothing from Mrs. Bower, and Logan declined to be interviewed. To paragraphists the mystery of the marquis was ‘a two months’ feast,’ like the case of Elizabeth Canning, long ago.
Logan inherited under the marquis’s original will, and, of course, the Exchequer benefitted in the way which Lord Restalrig had tried to frustrate.
Miss Markham (whose father is now the distinguished head of the ethnological department in an American museum) did not persist in her determination never to see Logan again. The beautiful Lady Fastcastle never allows her photograph to appear in the illustrated weekly papers. Logan, or rather Fastcastle, does not unto this day, know the secret of the Emu’s feathers, though, later, he sorely tried the secretiveness of Merton, as shall be shown in the following narrative.
‘How vain a thing is wealth,’ said Merton. ‘How little it can give of what we really desire, while of all that is lost and longed for it can restore nothing—except churches—and to dothatought to be made a capital offence.’
‘Why do you contemplate life as a whole, Mr. Merton? Why are you so moral? If you think it is amusing you are very much mistaken! Isn’t the scenery, isn’t the weather, beautiful enough for you?Icould gaze for ever at the “unquiet bright Atlantic plain,” the rocky isles, those cliffs of basalt on either hand, while I listened to the crystal stream that slips into the sea, and waves the yellow fringes of the seaweed. Don’t be melancholy, or I go back to the castle. Try another line!’
‘Ah, I doubt that I shall never wet one here,’ said Merton.
‘As to the crystal stream, what business has it to be crystal? That is just what I complain of. Salmon and sea-trout are waiting out there in the bay and they can’t come up! Not a drop of rain to call rain for the last three weeks. That is what I meant bymoralising about wealth. You can buy half a county, if you have the money; you can take half a dozen rivers, but all the millions of our host cannot purchase us a spate, and without a spate you might as well break the law by fishing in the Round Pond as in the river.’
‘Luckily for me Alured does not much care for fishing,’ said Lady Bude, who was Merton’s companion. The Countess had abandoned, much to her lord’s regret, the coloured and figurative language of her maiden days, the American slang. Now (as may have been observed) her style was of that polished character which can only be heard to perfection in circles socially elevated and intellectually cultured—‘in that Garden of the Souls’—to quote Tennyson.
The spot where Merton and Lady Bude were seated was beautiful indeed. They reclined on the short sea grass above a shore where long tresses of saffron-hued seaweed clothed the boulders, and the bright sea pinks blossomed. On their right the Skrae, now clearer than amber, mingled its waters with the sea loch. On their left was a steep bank clad with bracken, climbing up to perpendicular cliffs of basalt. These ended abruptly above the valley and the cove, and permitted a view of the Atlantic, in which, far away, the isle of the Lewis lay like a golden shield in the faint haze of the early sunset. On the other side of the sea loch, whose restless waters ever rushed in or out like a rapid river, with the change of tides, was a small village of white thatched cottages, the homes of fishermen and crofters. The neat crofts lay behind, in oblong strips, on the side of the hill. Suchwas the scene of a character common on the remote west coast of Sutherland.
‘Alured is no maniac for fishing, luckily,’ Lady Bude was saying. ‘To-day he is cat-hunting.’
‘I regret it,’ said Merton; ‘I profess myself the friend of cats.’
‘He is only trying to photograph a wild cat at home in the hills; they are very scarce.’
‘In fact he is Jones Harvey, the naturalist again, for the nonce, not the sportsman,’ said Merton.
‘It was as Jones Harvey that he—’ said Lady Bude, and, blushing, stopped.
‘That he grasped the skirts of happy chance,’ said Merton.
‘Why don’tyougrasp the skirts, Mr. Merton?’ asked Lady Bude. ‘Chance, or rather Lady Fortune, who wears the skirts, would, I think, be happy to have them grasped.’
‘Whose skirts do you allude to?’
‘The skirts, short enough in the Highlands, of Miss Macrae,’ said Lady Bude; ‘she is a nice girl, and a pretty girl, and a clever girl, and, after all, there are worse things than millions.’
Miss Emmeline Macrae was the daughter of the host with whom the Budes and Merton were staying at Skrae Castle, on Loch Skrae, only an easy mile and a half from the sea and the cove beside which Merton and Lady Bude were sitting.
‘There is a seal crawling out on to the shore of the little island!’ said Merton. ‘What a brute a man must be who shoots a seal! I could watch them all day—on a day like this.’
‘That is not answering my question,’ said Lady Bude. ‘What do you think of Miss Macrae? Iknowwhat you think!’
‘Can a humble person like myself aspire to the daughter of the greatest living millionaire? Our host can do almost anything but bring a spate, and eventhathe could do by putting a dam with a sluice at the foot of Loch Skrae: a matter of a few thousands only. As for the lady, her heart it is another’s, it never can be mine.’
‘Whose it is?’ asked Lady Bude.
‘Is it not, or do my trained instincts deceive me, that of young Blake, the new poet? Is she not “the girl who gives to song what gold could never buy”? He is as handsome as a man has no business to be.’
‘He uses belladonna for his eyes,’ said Lady Bude. ‘I am sure of it.’
‘Well, she does not know, or does not mind, and they are pretty inseparable the last day or two.’
‘That is your own fault,’ said Lady Bude; ‘you banter the poet so cruelly. She pities him.’
‘I wonder that our host lets the fellow keep staying here,’ said Merton. ‘If Mr. Macrae has a foible, except that of the pedigree of the Macraes (who were here before the Macdonalds or Mackenzies, and have come back in his person), it is scientific inventions, electric lighting, and his new toy, the wireless telegraph box in the observatory. You can see the tower from here, and the pole with box on top. I don’t care for that kind of thing myself, but Macrae thinks it Paradise to get messages from the Central News and the Stock Exchange up here, fifty milesfrom a telegraph post. Well, yesterday Blake was sneering at the whole affair.’
‘What is this wireless machine? Explain it to me,’ said Lady Bude.
‘How can you be so cruel?’ asked Merton.
‘Why cruel?’
‘Oh, you know very well how your sex receives explanations. You have three ways of doing it.’
‘Explainthem!’
‘Well, the first way is, if a man tries to explain what “per cent” means, or the difference of “odds on,” or “odds against,” that is, if they don’t gamble, they cast their hands desperately abroad, and cry, “Oh, don’t, I nevercanunderstand!” The second way is to sit and smile, and look intelligent, and think of their dressmaker, or their children, or their young man, and then to say, “Thank you, you have made it all so clear!”’
‘And the third way?’
‘The third way is for you to make it plain to the explainer that he does not understand what he is explaining.’
‘Well, try me; how does the wireless machine work?’
‘Then, to begin with a simple example in ordinary life, you know what telepathy is?’
‘Of course, but tell me.’
‘Suppose Jones is thinking of Smith, or rather of Smith’s sister. Jones is dying, or in a row, in India. Miss Smith is in Bayswater. She sees Jones in her drawing-room. The thought of Jones has struck a receiver of some sort in the brain, say, of Miss Smith.ButMiss Smith may not see him, somebody else may, say her aunt, or the footman. That is because the aunt or the footman has the properly tuned receiver in her or his brain, and Miss Smith has not.’
‘I see, so far—but the machine?’
‘That is an electric apparatus charged with a message. The message is not conducted by wires, but is merely carried along on a new sort of waves, “Hertz waves,” I think, but that does not matter. They roam through space, these waves, and wherever they meet another machine of the same kind, a receiver, they communicate it.’
‘Then everybody who has such a machine as Mr. Macrae’s gets all Mr. Macrae’s messages for nothing?’ asked Lady Bude.
‘They would get them,’ said Merton. ‘But that is where the artfulness comes in. Two Italian magicians, or electricians, Messrs. Gianesi and Giambresi, have invented an improvement suggested by a dodge of the Indians on the Amazon River. They make machines which are only in tune with each other. Their machine fires off a message which no other machine can receive or tap except that of their customer, say Mr. Macrae. The other receivers all over the world don’t get it, they are not in tune. It is as if Jones could only appear as a wraith to Miss Smith, andvice versa.’
‘How is it done?’
‘Oh, don’t ask me! Besides, I fancy it is a trade secret, the tuning. There’s one good thing about it, you know how Highland landscape is spoiled by telegraph posts?’
‘Yes, everywhere there is always a telegraph post in the foreground.’
‘Well, Mr. Macrae had them when he was here first, but he has had them all cut down, bless him, since he got the new dodge. He was explaining it all to Blake and me, and Blake only scoffed, would not understand, showed he was bored.’
‘I think it delightful! What did Mr. Blake say?’
‘Oh, his usual stuff. Science is an expensive and inadequate substitute for poetry and the poetic gifts of the natural man, who is still extant in Ireland.Hecan flash his thoughts, and any trifles of news he may pick up, across oceans and continents, with no machinery at all. What is done in Khartoum is known the same day in Cairo.’
‘What did Mr. Macrae say?’
‘He asked why the Cairo people did not make fortunes on the Stock Exchange.’
‘And Mr. Blake?’
‘He looked a great deal, but he said nothing. Then, as I said, he showed that he was bored when Macrae exhibited to us the machine and tried to teach us how it worked, and the philosophy of it. Blake did not understand it, nor do I, really, but of course I displayed an intelligent interest. He didn’t display any. He said that the telegraph thing only brought us nearer to all that a child of nature—’
‘Hea child of nature, with his belladonna!’
‘To all that a child of nature wanted to forget. The machine emitted a serpent of tape, news of Surreyv. Yorkshire, and something about Kaffirs, and Macrae was enormously pleased, for such are thesimple joys of the millionaire, really a child of nature. Some of them keep automatic hydraulic organs and beastly machines that sing. Now Macrae is not a man of that sort, and he has only one motor up here, and only usesthatfor practical purposes to bring luggage and supplies, but the wireless thing is the apple of his eye. And Blake sneered.’
‘He is usually very civil indeed, almost grovelling, to the father,’ said Lady Bude. ‘But I tell you for your benefit, Mr. Merton, that he has no chance with the daughter. I know it for certain. He only amuses her. Now here, you are clever.’
Merton bowed.
‘Clever, or you would not have diverted me from my question with all that science. You are not ill looking.’
‘Spare my blushes,’ said Merton; adding, ‘Lady Bude, if you must be answered,youare clever enough to have found me out.’
‘That needed less acuteness than you suppose,’ said the lady.
‘I am very sorry to hear it,’ said Merton. ‘You know how utterly hopeless it is.’
‘There I don’t agree with you,’ said Lady Bude.
Merton blushed. ‘If you are right,’ he said, ‘then I have no business to be here. What am I in the eyes of a man like Mr. Macrae? An adventurer, that is what he would think me. I did think that I had done nothing, said nothing, looked nothing, but having the chance—well, I could not keep away from her. It is not honourable. I must go. . . . I love her.’
Merton turned away and gazed at the sunset without seeing it.
Lady Bude put forth her hand and laid it on his. ‘Has this gone on long?’ she asked.
‘Rather an old story,’ said Merton. ‘I am a fool. That is the chief reason why I was praying for rain. She fishes, very keen on it. I would have been on the loch or the river with her. Blake does not fish, and hates getting wet.’
‘You might have more of her company, if you would not torment the poet so. The green-eyed monster, jealousy, is on your back.’
Merton groaned. ‘I bar the fellow, anyhow,’ he said. ‘But, in any case, now that I knowyouhave found me out, I must be going. If only she were as poor as I am!’
‘You can’t go to-morrow, to-morrow is Sunday,’ said Lady Bude. ‘Oh, I am sorry for you. Can’t we think of something? Cannot you find an opening? Do something great! Get her upset on the loch, and save her from drowning! Mr. Macrae dotes on her; he would be grateful.’
‘Yes, I might take the pin out of the bottom of the boat,’ said Merton. ‘It is an idea! But she swims at least as well as I do. Besides—hardly sportsmanlike.’
Lady Bude tried to comfort him; it is the mission of young matrons. He must not be in such a hurry to go away. As to Mr. Blake, she could entirely reassure him. It was a beautiful evening, the lady was fair and friendly; Nature, fragrant of heather and of the sea, was hushed in a golden repose. The twotalked long, and the glow of sunset was fading; the eyes of Lady Bude were a little moist, and Merton was feeling rather consoled when they rose and walked back towards Skrae Castle. It had been an ancient seat of the Macraes, a clan in relatively modern times, say 1745, rather wild, impoverished, and dirty; but Mr. Macrae, the great Canadian millionaire, had bought the old place, with many thousands of acres ‘where victual never grew.’
Though a landlord in the Highlands he was beloved, for he was the friend of crofters, as rent was no object to him, and he did not particularly care for sport. He accepted the argument, dear to the Celt, that salmon are ground game, and free to all, while the natives were allowed to use ancient flint-locked fusils on his black cocks. Mr. Macrae was a thoroughly generous man, and a tall, clean-shaved, graceful personage. His public gifts were large. He had just given 500,000l. to Oxford to endow chairs and students of Psychical Research, while the rest of the million was bestowed on Cambridge, to supply teaching in Elementary Logic. His way of life was comfortable, but simple, except where the comforts of science and modern improvements were concerned. There were lifts, or elevators, now in the castle of Skrae, though Blake always went by the old black corkscrew staircases, holding on by the guiding rope, after the poetical manner of our ancestors.
On a knowe which commanded the castle, in a manner that would have pained Sir Dugald Dalgetty, Mr. Macrae had erected, not a ‘sconce,’ but an observatory, with a telescope that ‘licked the Lickthing,’ as he said. Indeed it was his foible ‘to see the Americans and go one better,’ and he spoke without tolerance of the late boss American millionaire, the celebrated J. P. van Huytens, recently deceased.
Duke Humphrey greater wealth computes,And sticks, they say, at nothing,
Duke Humphrey greater wealth computes,And sticks, they say, at nothing,
sings the poet. Mr. Macrae computed greater wealth than Mr. van Huytens, though avoiding ostentation; he did not
Wear a pair of golden boots,And silver underclothing.
Wear a pair of golden boots,And silver underclothing.
The late J. P. van Huytens he regarded with moral scorn. This rival millionaire had made his wealth by the process (apparently peaceful and horticultural) of ‘watering stocks,’ and by the seemingly misplaced generosity of overcapitalising enterprises, and ‘grabbing side shows.’ The nature of these and other financial misdemeanours Merton did not understand. But he learned from Mr. Macrae that thereby J. P. van Huytens had scooped in the widow, the orphan, the clergyman, and the colonel. The two men had met in the most exclusive circles of American society; with the young van Huytenses the daughter of the millionaire had even been on friendly terms, but Mr. Macrae retired to Europe, and put a stop to all that. To do so, indeed, was one of his motives for returning to the home of his ancestors, the remote and inaccessible Castle Skrae.The Sportsman’s Guide to Scotlandsays, as to Loch Skrae: ‘Railway to Lairg, then walk or hire forty-five miles.’The young van Huytenses were not invited to walk or hire.
Van Huytens had been ostentatious, Mr. Macrae was the reverse. His costume was of the simplest, his favourite drink (of which he took little) was what humorists call ‘the light wine of the country,’ drowned in Apollinaris water. His establishment was refined, but not gaudy or luxurious, and the chief sign of wealth at Skrae was the great observatory with the laboratory, and the surmounting ‘pole with box on top,’ as Merton described the apparatus for the new kind of telegraphy. In the basement of the observatory was lodged the hugest balloon known to history, and a skilled expert was busied with novel experiments in aerial navigation. Happily he could swim, and his repeated descents into Loch Skrae did not daunt his soaring genius.
Above the basement of the observatory were rooms for bachelors, a smoking-room, a billiard-room, and a scientific library. The wireless telegraphy machine (looking like two boxes, one on the top of the other, to the eye of ignorance) was installed in the smoking-room, and a wire to Mr. Macrae’s own rooms informed him, by ringing a bell (it also rang in the smoking-room), when the machine began to spread itself out in tape conveying the latest news. The machine communicated with another in the establishment of its vendors, Messrs. Gianesi, Giambresi & Co., in Oxford Street. Thus the millionaire, though residing nearly fifty miles from the nearest station at Lairg, was as well and promptly informed as if he dwelt in Fleet Street, and he could issue, withouta moment’s procrastination, his commands to sell and buy, and to do such other things as pertain to the nature of millionaires. When we add that a steam yacht of great size and comfort, doing an incredible number of knots an hour on the turbine system, lay at anchor in the sea loch, we have indicated the main peculiarities of Mr. Macrae’s rural establishment. Wealth, though Merton thought so poorly of it, had supplied these potentialities of enjoyment; but, alas! disease had ‘decimated’ the grouse on the moors (of course to decimate now means almost to extirpate), and the crofters had increased the pleasures of stalking by making the stags excessively shy, thus adding to the arduous enjoyment of the true sportsman.
To Castle Skrae, being such as we have described, Lady Bude and Merton returned from their sentimental prowl. They found Miss Macrae, in a very short skirt of the Macrae tartan, trying to teach Mr. Blake to play ping-pong in the great hall.
We must describe the young lady, though her charms outdo the powers of the vehicle of prose. She was tall, slim, and graceful, light of foot as a deer on the corrie. Her hair was black, save when the sun shone on it and revealed strands of golden brown; it was simply arrayed, and knotted on the whitest and shapeliest neck in Christendom. Her eyebrows were dark, her eyes large and lucid,
The greyest of things blue,The bluest of things grey.
The greyest of things blue,The bluest of things grey.
Her complexion was of a clear pallor, like the white rose beloved by her ancestors; her features were allbut classic, with the charm of romance; but what made her unique was her mouth. It was faintly upturned at the corners, as in archaic Greek art; she had, in the slightest and most gracious degree, what Logan, describing her once, called ‘the Æginetan grin.’ This gave her an air peculiarly gay and winsome, brilliant, joyous, and alert. In brief, to use Chaucer’s phrase,
She was as wincy as a wanton colt,Sweet as a flower, and upright as a bolt.
She was as wincy as a wanton colt,Sweet as a flower, and upright as a bolt.
She was the girl who was teaching the poet the elements of ping-pong. The poet usually missed the ball, for he was averse to and unapt for anything requiring quickness of eye and dexterity of hand. On a seat lay open a volume of thePoetry of the Celtic Renascence, which Blake had been reading to Miss Macrae till she used the vulgar phrase ‘footle,’ and invited him to be educated in ping-pong. Of these circumstances she cheerfully informed the new-comers, adding that Lord Bude had returned happy, having photographed a wild cat in its lair.
‘Did he shoot it?’ asked Blake.
‘No. He’s a sportsman!’ said Miss Macrae.
‘That is why I supposed he must have shot the cat,’ answered Blake.
‘What is Gaelic for a wild cat, Blake?’ asked Merton unkindly.
Like other modern Celtic poets Mr. Blake was entirely ignorant of the melodious language of his ancestors, though it had often been stated in the literary papers that he was ‘going to begin’ to take lessons.
‘Sans purr,’ answered Blake; ‘the Celtic wild cat has not the servile accomplishment of purring. The words, a little altered, are the motto of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders. This is the country of the wild cat.’
‘I thought the “wild cat” was a peculiarly American financial animal,’ said Merton.
Miss Macrae laughed, and, the gong sounding (by electricity, the wire being connected with the Greenwich Observatory), she ran lightly up the central staircase. Lady Bude had hurried to rejoin her lord; Merton and Blake sauntered out to their rooms in the observatory, Blake with an air of fatigue and languor.
‘Learning ping-pong easily?’ asked Merton.
‘I have more hopes of teaching Miss Macrae the essential and intimate elements of Celtic poetry,’ said Blake. ‘One box of books I brought with me, another arrived to-day. I am about to begin on my Celtic drama of “Con of the Hundred Battles.”’
‘Have you the works of the ancient Sennachie, Macfootle?’ asked Merton. He was jealous, and his usual urbanity was sorely tried by the Irish bard. In short, he was rude; stupid, too.
However, Blake had his revenge after dinner, on the roof of the observatory, where the ladies gathered round him in the faint silver light, looking over the sleeping sea. ‘Far away to the west,’ he said, ‘lies the Celtic paradise, the Isle of Apples!’
‘American apples are excellent,’ said Merton, but the beauty of the scene and natural courtesy caused Miss Macrae to whisper ‘Hush!’
The poet went on, ‘May I speak to you the words of the emissary from the lovely land?’
‘The mysterious female?’ said Merton brutally. ‘Dr. Hyde calls her “a mysterious female.” It is in hisLiterary History of Ireland.’
‘Pray let us hear the poem, Mr. Merton,’ said Miss Macrae, attuned to the charm of the hour and the scene.
‘She came to Bran’s Court,’ said Blake, ‘from the Isle of Apples, and no man knew whence she came, and she chanted to them.’
‘Twenty-eight quatrains, no less, a hundred and twelve lines,’ said the insufferable Merton. ‘Could you give us them in Gaelic?’
The bard went on, not noticing the interruption, ‘I shall translate
‘There is a distant isleAround which sea horses glisten,A fair course against the white swelling surge,Four feet uphold it.’‘Feet of white bronze under it.’
‘There is a distant isleAround which sea horses glisten,A fair course against the white swelling surge,Four feet uphold it.’
‘Feet of white bronze under it.’
‘White bronze, what’s that, eh?’ asked the practical Mr. Macrae.
‘Glittering through beautiful ages!Lovely land through the world’s age,On which the white blossoms drop.’
‘Glittering through beautiful ages!Lovely land through the world’s age,On which the white blossoms drop.’
‘Beautiful!’ said Miss Macrae.
‘There are twenty-six more quatrains,’ said Merton.
The bard went on,
‘A beautiful game, most delightfulThey play—’
‘A beautiful game, most delightfulThey play—’
‘Ping-pong?’ murmured Merton.
‘Hush!’ said Lady Bude.
Miss Macrae turned to the poet.
‘They play, sitting at the luxurious wine,Men and gentle women under a bush,Without sin, without crime.’
‘They play, sitting at the luxurious wine,Men and gentle women under a bush,Without sin, without crime.’
‘They are playing still,’ Blake added. ‘Unbeheld, undisturbed! I verily believe there is no Gael even now who would not in his heart of hearts let drift by him the Elysiums of Virgil, Dante, and Milton, to grasp at the Moy Mell, the Apple Isle, of the unknown Irish pagan! And then to play sitting at the luxurious wine,
‘Men and gentle women under a bush!’
‘Men and gentle women under a bush!’
‘It really cannot have been ping-pong that they played at,sitting. Bridge, more likely,’ said Merton. ‘And “good wine needs no bush!”’
The bard moved away, accompanied by his young hostess, who resented Merton’s cynicism
‘Tell me more of that lovely poem, Mr. Blake,’ she said.
‘I am jangled and out of tune,’ said Blake wildly. ‘The Sassenach is my torture! Let me take your hand, it is cool as the hands of the foam-footed maidens of—of—what’s the name of the place?’
‘Was it Clonmell?’ asked Miss Macrae, letting him take her hand.
He pressed it against his burning brow.
‘Though you laugh at me,’ said Blake, ‘sometimes you are kind! I am upset—I hardly know myself.What is yonder shape skirting the lawn? Is it the Daoine Sidh?’
‘Why do you call her “the downy she”? She is no more artful than other people. She is my maid, Elspeth Mackay,’ answered Miss Macrae, puzzled. They were alone, separated from the others by the breadth of the roof.
‘I said theDaoine Sidh,’ replied the poet, spelling the words. ‘It means the People of Peace.’
‘Quakers?’
‘No, the fairies,’ groaned the misunderstood bard. ‘Do you know nothing of your ancestral tongue? Do you call yourself a Gael?’
‘Of course I call myself a girl,’ answered Miss Macrae. ‘Do you want me to call myself a young lady?’
The poet sighed. ‘I thoughtyouunderstood me,’ he said. ‘Ah, how to escape, how to reach the undiscovered West!’
‘But Columbus discovered it,’ said Miss Macrae.
‘The undiscovered West of the Celtic heart’s desire,’ explained the bard; ‘the West below the waters! Thither could we twain sail in the magic boat of Bran! Ah see, the sky opens like a flower!’
Indeed, there was a sudden glow of summer lightning.
‘That looks more like rain,’ said Merton, who was standing with the Budes at an opposite corner of the roof.
‘I say, Merton,’ asked Bude, ‘how can you be so uncivil to that man? He took it very well.’
‘A rotter,’ said Merton. ‘He has just got thatstuff by heart, the verse and a lot of the prose, out of a book that I brought down myself, and left in the smoking-room. I can show you the place if you like.’
‘Do, Mr. Merton. But how foolish you are!dobe civil to the man,’ whispered Lady Bude, who shared his disbelief in Blake; and at that moment the tinkle of an electric bell in the smoking-room below reached the expectant ears of Mr. Macrae.
‘Come down, all of you,’ he said. ‘The wireless telegraphy is at work.’
He waited till they were all in the smoking-room, and feverishly examined the tape.
‘Escape of De Wet,’ he read. ‘Disasters to the Imperial Yeomanry. Strike of Cigarette Makers. Great Fire at Hackney.’
‘There!’ he exclaimed triumphantly. ‘We might have gone to bed in London, and not known all that till we got the morning papers to-morrow. And here we are fifty miles from a railway station or a telegraph office—no, we’re nearer Inchnadampf.’
‘Would that I were in the Isle of Apples, Mell Moy, far, far from civilisation!’ said Blake.
“There shall be no grief there or sorrow,” so sings the minstrel ofThe Wooing of Etain.
“Fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou have with me then, fair lady,” Merton read out from the book he had been speaking of to the Budes.
‘Jolly place, the Celtic Paradise! Fresh flesh of swine, banquets of ale and new milk.Quel luxe!’
‘Is that the kind of entertainment you were offering me, Mr. Blake?’ asked Miss Macrae gaily. ‘Mr.Blake,’ she went on, ‘has been inviting me to fly to the undiscovered West beneath the waters, in the magic boat of Bran.’
‘Did Bran invent the submarine?’ asked Mr. Macrae, and then the company saw what they had never seen before, the bard blushing. He seemed so discomposed that Miss Macrae took compassion on him.
‘Never mind my father, Mr. Blake,’ she said, ‘he is a very good Highlander, and believes in Eachain of the Hairy Arm as much as the crofters do. Have you heard of Eachain, Mr. Blake? He is a spectre in full Highland costume, attached to our clan. When we came here first, to look round, we had only horses hired from Edinburgh, and a Lowlander—mark you, aLowlander—to drive. He was in the stable one afternoon—the old stable, we have pulled it down—when suddenly the horses began to kick and rear. He looked round to the open door, and there stood a huge Highlander in our tartans, with musket, pistols, claymore, dirk, skian, and all, and soft brogues of untanned leather on his feet. The coachman, in a panic, made a blind rush at the figure, but behold, there was nobody, and a boy outside had seen no man. The horses were trembling and foaming. Now it was a Lowlander from Teviotdale that saw the man, and the crofters were delighted. They said the figure was the chief that fell at Culloden, come to welcome us back. So you must not despair of us, Mr. Blake, and you, that have “the sight,” may see Eachain yourself, who knows?’