There was nothing about the outside of the Dragon to indicate so large a percentage of sentiment. It was a mere every-day Dragon, with the usual squamous hide, glittering like silver armour, a commonplace crested head with a forked tongue, a tail like a barbed arrow, a pair of fan-shaped wings, and four indifferently ferocious claws, one per foot. How it came to be so susceptible you shall hear, and then, perhaps, you will be less surprised at its unprecedented and undragonlike behaviour.Once upon a time, as the good old chronicler, Richard Johnson, relateth, Egypt was oppressed by a Dragon who made a plaguy to-do unless given a virgin daily for dinner. For twenty-four years the menu was practicable; then the supply gave out. There was absolutely no virgin left in the realm save Sabra, the king's daughter. As 365 × 24 only = 8760, I suspect that the girls were anxious to dodge the Dragon by marrying in haste. The government of the day seems to have been quite unworthy of confidence and utterly unable to grapple with the situation, and poor Ptolemy was reduced to parting with the Princess, though even so destruction was only staved off for a day, as virgins would bealtogether "off" on the morrow. So short-sighted was the Egyptian policy that this does not appear to have occurred to anybody. At the last moment an English tourist from Coventry, known as George (and afterwards sainted by an outgoing administration sent to his native borough by the country), resolved to tackle the monster. The chivalrous Englishman came to grief in the encounter, but by rolling under an orange tree he was safe from the Dragon so long as he chose to stay there, and so in the end had no difficulty in despatching the creature; which suggests that the soothsayers and the magicians would have been much better occupied in planting orange trees than in sacrificing virgins. Thus far the story, which is improbable enough to be an allegory.
There was nothing about the outside of the Dragon to indicate so large a percentage of sentiment. It was a mere every-day Dragon, with the usual squamous hide, glittering like silver armour, a commonplace crested head with a forked tongue, a tail like a barbed arrow, a pair of fan-shaped wings, and four indifferently ferocious claws, one per foot. How it came to be so susceptible you shall hear, and then, perhaps, you will be less surprised at its unprecedented and undragonlike behaviour.
Once upon a time, as the good old chronicler, Richard Johnson, relateth, Egypt was oppressed by a Dragon who made a plaguy to-do unless given a virgin daily for dinner. For twenty-four years the menu was practicable; then the supply gave out. There was absolutely no virgin left in the realm save Sabra, the king's daughter. As 365 × 24 only = 8760, I suspect that the girls were anxious to dodge the Dragon by marrying in haste. The government of the day seems to have been quite unworthy of confidence and utterly unable to grapple with the situation, and poor Ptolemy was reduced to parting with the Princess, though even so destruction was only staved off for a day, as virgins would bealtogether "off" on the morrow. So short-sighted was the Egyptian policy that this does not appear to have occurred to anybody. At the last moment an English tourist from Coventry, known as George (and afterwards sainted by an outgoing administration sent to his native borough by the country), resolved to tackle the monster. The chivalrous Englishman came to grief in the encounter, but by rolling under an orange tree he was safe from the Dragon so long as he chose to stay there, and so in the end had no difficulty in despatching the creature; which suggests that the soothsayers and the magicians would have been much better occupied in planting orange trees than in sacrificing virgins. Thus far the story, which is improbable enough to be an allegory.
Now many centuries after these events did not happen, a certain worthy citizen, an illiterate fellow, but none the worse for that, made them into a pantomime—to wit,St. George and the Dragon; or, Harlequin Tom Thumb. And the same was duly played at a provincial theatre, with a lightly clad chorus of Egyptian lasses, in glaring contradiction of the dearth of such in the fable, and a Sabra who sang to them a topical song about the County Council.
Curiously enough, in private life, Sabra, although her name was Miss on the posters, was really a Miss. She was quite as young and pretty as she looked, too, and only rouged herself for the sake of stage perspective. I don't mean to say she was as beautiful as the Egyptian princess, who was as straight as a cedar and wore her auburn hair in wanton ringlets, but she was a sprightly little body with sparkling eyes and a complexion that would have been a good advertisement to any soap on earth. But better than Sabra's skin was Sabra's heart, which though as yet untouched by man was full of love and tenderness, and did not faint under the burden of supporting her mother andthe household. For instead of having a king for a sire, Sabra had a drunken scene-shifter for a father. Everybody about the theatre liked Sabra, from the actor-manager (who played St. George) to the stage door-keeper (who played St. Peter). Even her under-study did not wish her ill.
"INSTEAD OF HAVING A KING FOR A SIRE, SABRA HAD A DRUNKEN SCENE-SHIFTER FOR A FATHER."
Needless, therefore, to say it was Sabra who made the Dragon semi-sentimental. Not in the "book," of course, where his desire to eat her remained purely literal. Real Dragons keep themselves aloof from sentiment, but a stage Dragon is only human. Such a one may be entirely the slave of sentiment, and it was perhaps to the credit of our Dragon that only half of him was in the bonds. The other half—and that the better half—was saturnine and teetotal, and answered to the name of Davie Brigg.
Davie was the head man on the Dragon. He played the anterior parts, waggled the head and flapped the wings and sent gruesome grunts and penny squibs through the "firebreathing" jaws. He was a dour middle-aged, but stagestruck, Scot, very proud of his rapid rise in the profession, for he had begun as a dramatist.
The rear of the Dragon was simply known as Jimmy.
Jimmy was a wreck. His past was a mystery. His face was a brief record of baleful experiences, and he had the aspirates of a gentleman. He had gone on the stage to be out of the snow and the rain. Not knowing this, the actor-manager paid him ninepence a night. His wages just kept him in beer-money. The original Sabra tamed two lions, but perhaps it was a greater feat to tame this half of a Dragon.
Jimmy's tenderness for Sabra began at rehearsal, when he saw a good deal of her, and felicitated himself on the fact that they were on in the same scenes. After a while, however, he perceived this to be a doleful drawback, for whereas at rehearsal he could jump out of his skin and breathe himself and feast his eyes on Sabra when the Dragon was disengaged, on the stage he was forced to remain cramped in darkness while Ptolemy was clowning or St. George executing a step dance. Sabra was invisible, except for an oddmoment or so between the scenes when he caught sight of her gliding to her dressing-room like a streak of discreet sunshine. Still he had his compensations; her dulcet notes reached his darkness (mellowed by the painted canvas and the tin scales sewn over it), as the chant of the unseen cuckoo reaches the woodland wanderer. Sometimes, when she sang that song about the County Council, he forgot to wag his tail.
"SOMETIMES, WHEN SHE SANG THAT SONG ABOUT THE COUNTY COUNCIL, HE FORGOT TO WAG HIS TAIL."
Thus was Love blind, while Indifference in the person of Davie Brigg looked its full through the mask that stood for the monster's head. After a bit Jimmy conceived a mad envy of his superior's privileges; he longed to see Sabra through the Dragon's mouth. He was so weary of the little strip of stage under the Dragon's belly, which, even if he peered through the breathing-holes in the patch of paint-disguised gauze let into its paunch, was the most he could see. One night he asked Davie to change places with him.Davie's look of surprise and consternation was beautiful to see.
"Do I hear aricht?" he asked.
"Just for a night," said Jimmy, abashed.
"But d'ye no ken this is a speakin' part?"
"'BUT D'YE NO KENTHIS A SPEAKIN' PART?'"
"I did—not—know—that," faltered Jimmy.
"Where's your ears, mon?" inquired Davie sternly. "Dinna ye hear me growlin' and grizzlin' and squealin' and skirlin'?"
"Y—e—s," said Jimmy. "But I thought you did it at random."
"Thocht I did it at random!" cried Davie, holding up his hands in horror. "And mebbe also ye thocht onybody could do't!"
Jimmy's shamed silence gave consent also to this unflinching interpretation of his thought.
"Ah weel!" said Davie, with melancholy resignation, "this is the artist's reward for his sweat and labour. Why, mon, let me tell ye, ilka note is not ainly timed but modulatit to the dramatic eenterest o' the moment, and that I hae practised the squeak hours at a time wi' a bagpiper. Tak' my place, indeed! Are ye fou again, or hae ye tint your senses?"
"But you could do the words all the same. I only want to see for once."
"And how d'ye think the words should sound, coming from the creature's belly? And what should ye see! You should nae ken where to go, I warrant. Come, I'll spier ye. Where d'ye come in for the fight with St. George—is it R 2 E or L U E?"
"L U E," replied Jimmy feebly.
"Ye donnered auld runt!" cried Davie triumphantly. "'Tis neither one nor t'other. 'Tis R C. Why, ye're capable of deein' up stage instead of down! Ye'd spoil mygreat scene. And ye are to remember I wad bear the wyte for 't, for naebody but our two sel's should ken the truth. Nay, nay, my mon. I hae my responsibeelities to the management. Ye're all verra weel in a subordinate position, but dinna ye aspire to more than beseems your abeelities. I am richt glad ye spoke me. Eh, but it would be an awfu' thing if I was taken bad and naebody to play the part. I'll warn the manager to put on an under-study betimes."
"Oh, but letmebe the under-study, then," pleaded Jimmy.
Davie sniffed scornfully.
"'Tis a braw thing, ambeetion," he said, "but there's a proverb about it ye ken, mebbe."
"But I'll notice everything you do, and exactly how you do it!"
Davie relented a little.
"Ah, weel," he said cautiously, "I'll bide a wee before speaking to the manager."
But Davie remained doggedly robust, and so Jimmy still walked in darkness. He often argued the matter out with his superior, maintaining that they ought to toss for theposition—head or tail. Failing to convince Davie, he offered him fourpence a night for the accommodation, but Davie saw in this extravagance evidence of a determined design to supplant him. In despair Jimmy watched for a chance of slipping into the wire framework before Davie, but the conscientious artist was always at his post first. They held dialogues on the subject, while with pantomimic license the chorus of Egyptian lasses was dancing round the Dragon as if it were a maypole. Their angry messages to each other vibrated along the wires of their prison-house, rending the Dragon with intestinal war. Weave your cloud-wrought Utopias, O social reformer, but wherever men inhabit, there jealousy and disunion shall creep in, and this gaudy canvas tent with its tin roofing was a hotbed of envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. Yet Love was there, too—a stranger, purer passion than the battered Jimmy had ever known; for it had the unselfishness of a love that can never be more than a dream, that the beloved can never even know of. Perhaps, if Jimmy had met Sabra before he left off being a gentleman—!
The silent, hopeless longing, the chivalrous devotion yearning dumbly within him, did not stop his beer; he drank more to drown his thoughts. Every night he entered into his part gladly, knowing himself elevated in the zoological scale, not degraded, by an assumption that made him only half a beast. It was kind of Providence to hide him wholly away from her vision, so that her bright eyes might not be sullied by the sight of his foulness. None of the grinning audience suspected the tragedy of the hind legs of the Dragon, as blindly following their leader, they went "galumphing" about the stage. The innocent children marvelled at the monster, in wide-eyed excitement, unsuspecting even its humanity, much less its double nature; only Davie knewthat in that Dragon there were the ruins of a man and the makings of a great actor!
"Why are ye sae anxious to stand in my shoon?" he would ask, when the hind legs became too obstreperous.
"I don't want to be in your shoes; I only want to see the stage for once."
But Davie would shake his head incredulously, making the Dragon's mask wobble at the wrong cues. At last, once when Sabra was singing, poor Jimmy, driven to extremities, confessed the truth, and had the mortification of feeling the wires vibrate with the Scotchman's silent laughter. He blushed unseen.
But it transpired that Davie's amusement was not so much scornful as sceptical. He still suspected the tail of a sinister intention to wag the Dragon.
"Nae, nae," he said, "ye shallna get me to swallow that. Ye're an unco puir creature, but ye're no sa daft as to want the moon. She's a bonnie lassie, and I willna be surprised if she catches a coronet in the end, when she makes a name in Lunnon; for the swells here, though I see a wheen foolish faces nicht after nicht in the stalls, are but a puir lot. Eh, but it's a gey grand tocher is a pretty face. In the meanwhiles, like a canny girl, she's settin' her cap at the chief."
"Hold your tongue!" hissed the hind legs. "She's as pure as an angel."
"Hoot-toot!" answered the head. "Dinna leebel the angels. It's no an angel that lets her manager give her sly squeezes and saft kisses that are nae in the stage directions."
"Then she can't know he's a married man," said the hind legs hoarsely.
"Dinna fash yoursel'—she kens that full weel and a thocht or two more. Dod! Ye should just see how she and St. George carry on after my death scene, when he's supposit to ha' rescued her and they fall a-cuddlin'."
"You're a liar!" said the hind legs.
Davie roared and breathed burning squibs and capered about, and Jimmy had to prance after him in involuntary pursuit. He felt choking in his stuffy hot black rollicking dungeon. The thought of this bloated sexagenarian faked up as ajeune premier, pawing that sweet little girl, sickened him.
"Dom'd leear yersel!" resumed Davie, coming to a standstill. "I maun believe my own eyes, what they tell me nicht after nicht."
"Then let me see for myself, and I'll believe you."
"Ye dinna catch me like that," said Davie, chuckling.
After that poor Jimmy's anxiety to see the stage became feverish. He even meditated malingering and going in front of the house, but could only have got a distant view, and at the risk of losing his place in an overcrowded profession. His opportunity came at length, but not till the pantomime was half run out and the actor-manager sought to galvanise it by a "second edition," which in sum meant a new lot of the variety entertainers who came on and played copophones before Ptolemy, did card-tricks in the desert, and exhibited trained poodles to the palm-trees. But Davie, determined to rise to the occasion, thought out a fresh conception of his part, involving three new grunts, and was so busy rehearsing them at home that he forgot the flight of the hours and arrived at the theatre only in time to take second place in the Dragon that was just waiting, half-manned, at the wing. He was so flustered that he did not even think of protesting for the first few minutes. When he did protest, Jimmy said, "What are you jawing about? This is a second edition, isn't it?" and caracoled around, dragging the unhappy Davie in his train.
"I'll tell the chief," groaned the hind legs.
"All right, let him know you were late," answered the head cheerfully.
"Eh, but it's pit-mirk, here. I canna see onything."
"You see I'm no liar. Shall I send a squib your way?"
"Nay, nay, nae larking. Mind the business or you'll ruin my reputation."
"Mind my business, I'll mind yours," replied Jimmy joyously, for the lovely Sabra was smiling right in his eyes. A Dragon divided against itself cannot stand, so Davie had to wait till the beast came off. To his horror Jimmy refused to budge from his shell. He begged for just one "keek" at the stage, but Jimmy replied: "You don't catch me like that." Davie said little more, but he matured a crafty plan, and in the next scene he whispered:—
"Jimmy!"
"Shut up, Davie; I'm busy."
"I've got a pin, and if ye shallna promise to restore me my richts after the next exit, ye shall feel the taste of it."
"You'll just stay where you are," came back the peremptory reply.
Deep went the pin in Jimmy's rear, and the Dragon gave such a howl that Davie's blood ran cold. Too late he remembered that it was not the Dragon's cue, and that he was making havoc of his own professional reputation. Through the canvas he felt the stern gaze of the actor-manager. He thought of pricking Jimmy only at the howling cues, but then the howl thus produced was so superior to his own, that if Jimmy chose to claim it, he might be at once engaged to replace him in the part. What a dilemma!
Poor Davie! As if it was not enough to be cut off from all the brilliant spectacle, pent in pitchy gloom and robbed of all his "fat" and his painfully rehearsed "second edition" touches. He felt like one of those fallen archangels of thefootlights who live to bear Ophelia's bier on boards where they once played Hamlet.
Far different emotions were felt at the Dragon's head, where Jimmy's joy faded gradually away, replaced by a passion of indignation, as with love-sharpened eyes he ascertained for himself the true relations of the actor-manager with his "principal girl." He saw from his coign of vantage the poor modest little thing shrinking before the cowardly advances of her employer, who took every possible advantage of the stage potentialities, in ways the audience could not discriminate from the acting. Alas! what could the gentle little bread-winner do? But Jimmy's blood was boiling. Davie's great scene arrived: the battle royal between St. George and the Dragon. Sabra, bewitchingly radiant in white Arabian silk, stood under the orange-tree where the pendent fruit was labelled three a penny. Here St. George, in knightly armour clad, retired between the rounds, to be sponged by the fair Sabra, from whose lips he took the opportunity of drinking encouragement. When the umpire cried "Time!" Jimmy uttered inarticulate cries of real rage and malediction, vomiting his squibs straight at the champion's eyes with intent to do him grievous bodily injury. But squibs have their own ways of jumping, and the actor-manager's face was protected by his glittering burgonet.
At last Jimmy and Davie were duly despatched by St. George's trusty sword, Ascalon, which passed right between them and stuck out on the other side amid the frantic applause of the house. The Dragon reeled cumbrously sideways and bit the dust, of which there was plenty. Then Sabra rushed forward from under the orange-tree and encircled her hero's hauberk with a stage embrace, while St. George, lifting up his visor, rained kiss after kiss on Sabra's scarlet face, and the "gods" went hoarse with joy.
"Oh, sir!" Jimmy heard the still small voice of the bread-winner protest feebly again and again amid the thunder, as she tried to withdraw herself from her employer's grasp. This was the last straw. Anger and the foul air of his prison wrought up Jimmy to asphyxiation point. What wonder if the Dragon lost his head completely?
Davie will never forget the horror of that moment when he felt himself dragged upwards as by an irresistible tornado, and knew himself for a ruined actor. Mechanically he essayed to cling to the ground, but in vain. The dead Dragon was on its feet in a moment; in another, Jimmy had thrown off the mask, showing a shock of hair and a blotched crimson face, spotted with great beads of perspiration. Unconscious of this culminating outrage, Davie made desperate prods with his pin, but Jimmy was equally unconscious of the pricks. The thunder died abruptly. A dead silence fell upon the whole house—you could have heard Davie's pin drop. St. George, in amazed consternation, released his hold of Sabra and cowered back before the wild glare of the bloodshot eyes. "How dare you?" rang out in hoarse screaming accents from the protruding head, and with one terrific blow of its right fore-leg the hybrid monster felled Sabra's insulter to the ground.
The astonished St. George lay on his back, staring up vacantly at the flies.
"I'll teach you how to behave to a lady!" roared the Dragon.
Then Davie tugged him frantically backwards, but Jimmy cavorted obstinately in the centre of the stage, which the actor-manager had taken even in his fall, so that the Dragon's hind legs trampled blindly on Davie's prostrate chief, amid the hysterical convulsions of the house.
Next morning the local papers were loud in their praises of the "Second Edition" ofSt. George and the Dragon, especially of the "genuinely burlesque and topsy-turvy episode in which the Dragon rises from the dead to read St. George a lesson in chivalry; a really side-splitting conception, made funnier by the grotesque revelation of the constituents of the Dragon, just before it retires for the night."
The actor-manager had no option but to adopt this reading, so had to be hoofed and publicly reprimanded every evening during the rest of the season, glad enough to get off so cheaply.
Of course, Jimmy was dismissed, but St. George was painfully polite to Sabra ever after, not knowing but what Jimmy was in the gallery with a brickbat, and perhaps not unimpressed by the lesson in chivalry he was receiving every evening.
Perhaps you think the Dragon deserved to marry Sabra, but that would be really too topsy-turvy, and the sentimental beast himself was quite satisfied to have rescued her from St. George.
But the person who profited most by Jimmy's sacrifice was Davie, who stepped into a real speaking part, emerged from the obscurity of his surroundings, burst his swaddling clothes, and made his appearance on the stage—a thing he could scarcely be said to have done in the Dragon's womb.
And so the world wags.
Louis Maunders was writing an anonymous novel, and a large circle of friends and acquaintances expected it to make a big hit. Louis Maunders was so modest that he distrusted his own opinion, and was glad to find his friends sharing it in this matter. It strengthened him. He carried the manuscript unostentatiously about in a long brief bag, while the book was writing, and worked at it during all his spare moments. Even in omnibuses he was to be seen scribbling hard with a stylus, and neglecting to attend to the conductor. The plot of the story was sad and heartrending, for Louis was only twenty-one. Louis refused to give those roseate pictures of life which the conventional novelist turns out to please the public. He objected to "happy endings." In real life, he said, no story ends happily; for the end of everybody's story is Death. In this book he said some bitter things about Life which it would have winced to hear, had it been alive. As for Death, he doubted whether it was worth dying. Towards Nature he took a tone of haughty superiority, and expressed himself disrespectfully on the subject of Fate. He mocked at it through the lips of his hero, and altogether seemed qualifying for the liver complaint, which is the Prometheus myth done into modern English. He taught that the only Peace for man lies in snapping the fingers at Fortune, taking her buffets and her favours with equal contempt, and generally teaching her to know her place. The soul of the Philosopher,he said, would stand grinning cynically though the planetary system were sold off by auction. These lessons were taught with great tragic power in Maunders' novel, and he was looking forward to the time when it should be in print, and on all the carpets of conversation. He was extremely gratified to find his friends thinking so well of its prospects, for it was pleasing to him to discover that he had chosen his circle so well, and had such intelligent friends. It did not seem to him at all unlikely that he would make his fortune with this novel; and he hurried on with it, till the masterpiece needed only a few final touches and a few last insults to Fate. Then he left the bag in a hansom cab. When he remembered his forgetfulness, he was distracted. He raved like a maniac—and like a maniac did not even write his ravings down for after use. He applied at Scotland Yard, but the superintendent said that drivers brought there only articles of value. He sent paragraphs to the papers, asking even of theEchowhere his lost novel was. But theEchoanswered not. Several spiteful papers insinuated that he was a liar, and a high-class comic paper went out of its way to make a joke, and to call his book "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab." The annoying part of the business was that after getting all this gratuitous advertisement, in itself enough to sell two editions, the book still refused to come up for publication. Maunders was too heart-broken to write another. For months he went about, a changed being. He had put the whole of himself into that book, and it was lost. He mourned for the departed manuscript, and generously extolled its virtues. For years he remained faithful to its memory; and its pages were made less dry with his tears. But the most intemperate grief wears itself out at last; and after a few years of melancholy, Maunders rallied and became a critic.
THE GREAT CRITIC.
As a critic he set in with great severity, and by carefully refraining from doing anything himself, gained a great reputation far and wide. In due course he joined the staff of theAcadæum, where his signed contributions came to be looked for with profound respect by the public and with fear and trembling by authors. For Maunders' criticism was so very superior, even for theAcadæum, of which the trade motto was "Stop here for Criticism—superior to anything in the literary market." Maunders flayed and excoriated Marsyas till the world accepted him as Apollo.
What Maunders was most down upon was novel-writing. Not having to follow them himself, he had high ideals of art; and woe to the unfortunate author who thought he had literary and artistic instinct when he had only pen and paper. Maunders was especially severe upon the novels of young authors, with their affected style and jejune ideas. Perhaps the most brilliant criticism he ever wrote was a merciless dissection of a book of this sort, reeking with the insincerityand crudity of youth, full of accumulated ignorance of life, and brazening it out by flashy cynicism.
A week after this notice appeared, his oldest and dearest friend called upon him and asked him for an explanation.
"What do you mean?" said Maunders.
"When I read your slashing notice of 'A Fingersnap for Fate,' I at once got the book."
"What! After I had disembowelled it; after I had shown it was a stale sausage stuffed with old and putrid ideas?"
"Well, to tell the truth," said his friend, a little crestfallen at having to confess, "I always get the books you pitch into. So do lots of people. We are only plain, ordinary, homespun people, you know; so we feel sure that whatever you praise will be too superior for us, while what you condemn will suit us to at. That is why the great public studies and respects your criticisms. You are our literary pastor and monitor. Your condemnation is our guide-post, and your praise is ourIndex Expurgatorius. But for you we should be lost in the wilderness of new books."
"And this is all the result of my years of laborious criticism," fumed theAcadæumcritic. "Proceed, sir."
"Well, what I came to say was, that if my memory does not play me a trick after all these years, 'A Fingersnap for Fate' is your long-lost novel."
"What!" shrieked the great critic; "my long-lost child! Impossible."
"Yes," persisted his oldest and dearest friend. "I recognised it by the strawberry mark in Cap. II., where the hero compares the younger generation to fresh strawberries smothered in stale cream. I remember your reading it to me!"
"Heavens! The whole thing comes back to me," cried the critic. "Now I know why I damned it so unmercifully for plagiarism! All the while I was reading it, there was a strange, haunting sense of familiarity."
"But, surely you will expose the thief!"
"How can I? It would mean confessing that I wrote the book myself. That I slated it savagely, is nothing. That will pass as a good joke, if not a piece of rare modesty. But confess myself the author of such a wretched failure!"
"Excuse me," said his friend. "It is not a failure. It is a very popular success. It is selling like wildfire. Excuse the inaccurate simile; but you know what I mean. Your notice has sent the sale up tremendously. Ever since your notice appeared, the printing presses have been going day and night and are utterly unable to cope with the demand. Oh, you must not let a rogue make a fortune out of you like this. That would be too sinful."
So the great critic sought out the thief. And they divided the profits. And then the thief, who was a fool as well as a rogue, wrote another book—all out of his own head this time. And the critic slated it. And they divided the profits.
Not much before midnight in a midland town—a thriving commercial town, whose dingy back streets swarmed with poverty and piety—a man in a soft felt hat and a white tie was hurrying home over a bridge that spanned a dark crowded river. He had missed the tram, and did not care to be seen out late, but he could not afford a cab. Suddenly he felt a tug at his long black coat-tail. Vaguely alarmed and definitely annoyed, he turned round quickly. A breathless, roughly-clad, rugged-featured man loosed his hold of the skirt.
"'Scuse me, sir—I've been running," gasped the stranger, placing his horny hand on his breast and panting.
"What is it? What do you want?" said the gentleman impatiently.
"My wife's dying," jerked the man.
"I'm very sorry," murmured the gentleman incredulously, expecting some conventional street-plea.
"Awful sudden attack—this last of hers—only came on an hour ago."
"I'm not a doctor."
"No, sir, I know. I don't want a doctor. He's there and only gives her ten minutes to live. Come with me at once, please."
"Come with you? Why, what good can I do?"
"You're a clergyman!"
"A clergyman!" repeated the other.
"Yes—aren't you?"
The wearer of the white tie looked embarrassed.
"Ye-es," he stammered. "In a—in a way. But I'm not the sort of clergyman your wife will be wanting."
"No?" said the man, puzzled and pained. Then with a sudden dread in his voice: "You're not a Catholic clergyman?"
"No," was the unhesitating reply.
"Oh, then it's all right!" cried the man, relieved. "Come with me, sir, for God's sake. Don't let us waste time." His face was lit up with anxious appeal.
But still the clergyman hesitated.
"You're making a mistake," he murmured. "I am not a Christian clergyman." He turned to resume his walk.
"Not a Christian clergyman!" exclaimed the man, as who should say "not a black negro!"
"No—I am a Jewish minister."
"That don't matter," broke in the man, almost before he could finish the sentence. "As long as you're not a Catholic. Oh, don't go away now, sir!" His voice broke piteously. "Don't go away after I've been chasing you for five minutes—I saw your rig-out—I beg pardon, your coat and hat—in the distance just as I came out of the house. Walk back with me, anyhow," he pleaded, seeing the Jew's hesitation, "Oh! for pity's sake, walk back with me at once and we can discuss it as we go along. I know I should never get hold of another parson in time at this hour of the night."
The man's accents were so poignant, his anxiety was so apparently sincere, that the minister's humanity could scarcely resist the solicitation to walk back at least. He would still have time to decide whether to enter the house or not—whether the case were genuine or a mere trapconcealing robbery or worse. The man took a short cut through evil-looking slums that did not increase the minister's confidence. He wondered what his flock would think if they saw their pastor in such company. He was a young unmarried minister, and the reputation of such in provincial Jewish congregations, overflowing with religion and tittle-tattle, is as a pretty unprotected orphan girl's.
"Why don't you go to your own clergyman?" he asked.
"I've got none," said the man half-apologetically. "I don't believe in nothing myself. But you know what women are!"
The minister sniffed, but did not deny the weakness of the sex.
"Betsy goes to some place or other every Sunday almost; sometimes she's there and back from a service before I'm up, and so long as the breakfast's ready I don't mind. I don't ask her no questions, and in return she don't bother about my soul—leastways, not for these ten years, ever since she's had kids to convert. We get along all right, the missus and me and the kids. Oh, but it's all come to an end now," he concluded, with a sob.
"Yes, but my good fellow," protested the minister, "I told you you were making a mistake. You know nothing about religion; but what your wife wants is some one to talk to her of Jesus, or to give her the Sacrament, or the Confession, or something, for I confess I'm not very clear about the forms of Christianity; and I haven't got any wafers or things of that sort. No, I couldn't do it, even if I had a mind to. It would ruin my position if it were known. But apart from that, I really can't do it. I wouldn't know what to say, and I couldn't bring my tongue to say it if I did."
"Oh, but you believe insomething?" persisted the man piteously.
"H'm! Yes, I can't deny that," said the minister; "but it's not the same something that your wife believes in."
"You believe in a God, don't you?"
The minister felt a bit chagrined at being catechised in the elements of his religion.
"Of course!" he said fretfully.
"There! I knew it," cried the man in triumph. "None of us do in our shop; but, of course, clergymen are different. But if you believe in a God, that's enough, ain't it? You're both religious folk."
"No, it isn't enough—at least, not for your wife."
"Oh, well, you needn't let out, sir, need you? So long as you talk of God and keep clear of the Pope. I've heard her going on about a Scarlet Woman to the kids. (God bless their little hearts! I wonder what they'll do without her!) She'll never know, sir, and she'll die happy. I've done my duty. She whispered I wasn't to bring a Roman Catholic, poor thing. I fancy I heard her say once they're even worse than Jews. Oh, I don't mean that, sir. You're sure you're not a Roman Catholic?" he concluded anxiously.
"Quite sure."
"Well, sir, you'll keep the rest dark, won't you? There's no call to let out you don't believe the same other things as her."
"I shall tell no lie," said the minister firmly. "You have called me in to give consolation to your dying wife, and I shall do my duty as best I can. Is this the house?"
"Yes, sir—right at the top."
The minister conquered a last impulse of mistrust, and looked round cautiously to be sure he was unobserved. Charity was not a strong point with his flock, and certainly his proceedings were suspicious. Even if they learnt the truth, he was not at all sure they would not consider hispraying with a dying Christian akin to blasphemy. On the whole he must be credited with some courage in mounting that black, ill-smelling, interminable staircase. He found himself in a gloomy garret at last, lighted by an oil-lamp. A haggard woman lay with shut eyes on an iron bed, her chilling hands clasping the hands of the "converted" kids, a boy of ten and a girl of seven, who stood blubbering in their night-attire. The doctor leaned against the head of the bed, the ungainly shadows of the group sprawling across the blank wall. He had done all he could—without hope of payment—to ease the poor woman's last moments. He was a big-brained, large-hearted Irishman, a Roman Catholic, who thought science and religion might be the best of friends. The husband looked at him in frantic interrogation.
"You are not too late," replied the doctor.
"Thank God!" said the atheist. "Betsy, old girl, here is the clergyman."
The cloud seemed to pass off the blind face, and a wave of wan sunlight to traverse it; slowly the eyes opened, the hands withdrew themselves from the children's grasp, and the palms met for prayer.
"Christ Jesus—" began the lips mechanically.
The minister was hot with confusion and a-quiver with emotion. He knew not what to say, as automatically he drew out a Hebrew prayer-book from his pocket and began reading the Deathbed Confession in the English version that appeared on the alternate pages.
"I acknowledge unto Thee, O Lord, my God, and the God of my fathers, that both my cure and my death are in Thy hands...." As he read, the dying lips moved, mumbling the words after him. How often had those white lips prayed that the stiff-necked Jews might find grace and be saved from damnation; how often had those poor, roughhands put pennies into conversionist collecting-boxes after toiling hard to scrape them together; so that only she might suffer by their diversion from the household treasury.
The prayer went on, the mournful monotone thrilling through the hot, dim, oil-reeking attic, and awing the weeping children into silence. The atheist stood by reverently, torn by conflicting emotions; glad the poor foolish creature had her wish, and on thorns lest she should live long enough to discover the deception. There was no room in his overcharged heart for personal grief just then. "Make known to me the path of life; in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." An ecstatic look overspread the plain, careworn face, she stretched out her arms as if to embrace some unseen vision.
"Yes, I am coming ... Jesus," she murmured. Then her hands dropped heavily upon her breast; the face grew rigid, the eyes closed. Involuntarily the minister seized the hand nearest him. He felt it respond faintly to his clasp in unconsciousness of the pagan pollution of his touch. He read on, "Thou who art the Father of the fatherless and the Judge of the widow, protect my beloved kindred with whose soul my own is knit."
The lips still echoed him almost imperceptibly, the departing spirit lulled into peace by the prayer of the unbeliever. "Into Thy hand I commend my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. Amen and Amen."
And in that last Amen, with a final gleam of blessedness flitting across her sightless face, the poor Christian toiler breathed out her life of pain, holding the Jew's hand. There was a moment of solemn silence, the three men becoming as the little children in the presence of the eternal mystery.
It leaked out, as everything did in that gossipy town, and among that gossipy Jewish congregation. To the minister's relief, his flock took it better than he expected.
"What a blessed privilege for that heathen female!" was all their comment.
When I moved into better quarters on the strength of the success of my first novel, I little dreamt that I was about to be the innocent instrument of a new epoch in telepathy. My poor Geraldine—but I must be calm; it would be madness to let them suspect I am insane. No, these last words must be final. I cannot afford to have them discredited. I cannot afford any luxuries now.
Would to Heaven I had never written that first novel! Then I might still have been a poor, unhappy, struggling, realistic novelist; I might still have been residing at 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras. But I do not blame Providence. I knew the book was conventional even before it succeeded. My only consolation is that Geraldine was part-author of my misfortunes, if not of my novel. She it was who urged me to abandon my high ideals, to marry her, and live happily ever afterwards. She said if I wrote only one bad book it would be enough to establish my reputation; that I could then command my own terms for the good ones. I fell in with her proposal, the banns were published, and we were bound together. I wrote a rose-tinted romance, which no circulating library could be without, instead of the veracious picture of life I longed to paint; and I moved from 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras, to 22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster.
"URGED ME TO ABANDON MY HIGH IDEALS."
A few days after we had sent out the cards, I met myfriend O'Donovan, late member for Blackthorn. He was an Irishman by birth and profession, but the recent General Election had thrown him out of work. The promise of his boyhood and of his successful career at Trinity College was great, but in later years he began to manifest grave symptoms of genius. I have heard whispers that it was in the family, though he kept it from his wife. Possibly I ought not to have sent him a card and have taken the opportunity of dropping his acquaintance. But Geraldine argued that he was not dangerous, and that we ought to be kind to him just after he had come out of Parliament.
O'Donovan was in a rage.
"O'DONOVAN WAS IN A RAGE."
"I never thought it of you!" he said angrily, when I asked him how he was. He had a good Irish accent, but he only used it when addressing his constituents.
"Never thought what?" I enquired in amazement.
"That you would treat your friends so shabbily."
"Wh-what, didn't you g-get a card?" I stammered. "I'm sure the wife—"
"Don't be a fool!" he interrupted. "Of course I got a card. That's what I complain of."
I stared at him blankly. The social experiences resulting from my marriage had convinced me that it was impossible to avoid giving offence. I had no reason to be surprised, but I was.
"What right have you to move and put all your friends to trouble?" he enquired savagely.
"I have put myself to trouble," I said, "but I fail to see how I have taxedyourfriendship."
"No, of course not," he growled. "I didn't expect you to see. You're just as inconsiderate as everybody else. Don't you think I had enough trouble to commit to memory '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras,' without being unexpectedly set to study '21, Victoria Flats—?'"
"22, Albert Flats," I interrupted mildly.
"There you are!" he snarled. "You see already how it harasses my poor brain. I shall never remember it."
"Oh yes, you will," I said deprecatingly. "It is much easier than the old address. Listen here! '22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster.' 22—a symmetrical number, the first double even number; the first is two, the second is two, too, and the whole is two, two, too—quite æsthetical, you know. Then all the rest is royal—Albert, Albert the Good, see. Victoria—the Queen. Westminster—Westminster Palace. And the other words—geometrical terms, Flat, Square. Why, there never was such an easy address since the days of Adam before he moved out of Eden," I concluded enthusiastically.
"'THERE NEVER WAS SUCHAN EASY ADDRESS.'"
"It's easy enough for you, no doubt," he said, unappeased. "But do you think you're the only acquaintance who's not contented with his street and number? Bless my soul, with a large circle like mine, I find myself charged with a new schoolboy task twice a month. I shall have to migrate to a village where people have more stability of character. Heavens! Why have snails been privileged with a domiciliary constancy denied to human beings?"
"But you ought to be grateful," I urged feebly. "Think of 22, Albert Flats, Victoria Square, Westminster, and then think of what I might have moved to. If I have given you an imposition, at least admit it is a light one."
"It isn't so much the new address I complain of, it's the old. Just imagine what a weary grind it has been to master—'109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras.' For the last eighteen months I have been grappling with it, and now, just as I am letter perfect and postcard secure, behold all my labour destroyed, all my pains made ridiculous. It's the waste that vexes me. Here is a piece of information, slowly and laboriously acquired, yet absolutely useless. Nay, worse than useless; a positive hindrance. For I am just as slow at forgetting as at picking up. Whenever I want to think of your address, up it will spring, '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras.' It cannot be scotched—it must lie there blocking up my brains, a heavy, uncouth mass, always ready to spring at the wrong moment; a possession of no value to anyone but the owner, and not the least use tohim."
He paused, brooding on the thought in moody silence. Suddenly his face changed.
"But isn't it of value to anybodybutthe owner?" he exclaimed excitedly. "Are there not persons in the world who would jump at the chance of acquiring it? Don't stare at me as if I was a comet. Look here! Suppose some one had come to me eighteen months ago and said, 'Patrick, old man, I have a memory I don't want. It's 109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras! You're welcome to it, if it's any use to you.' Don't you think I would have fallen on that man's—or woman's—neck, and watered it with my tears? Just think what a saving of brain-force it would have been to me—how many petty vexations it would have spared me! See here, then! Is your last place let?"
"Yes," I said. "A Mr. Marrow has it now."
"Ha!" he said, with satisfaction. "Now there must be lots of Mr. Marrow's friends in the same predicament as Iwas—people whose brains are softening in the effort to accommodate '109, Little Turncot Street, Chapelby Road, St. Pancras.' Psychical science has made such great strides in this age that with a little ingenuity it should surely not be impossible to transfer the memory of it from my brain to theirs."