"To-morrow morning I must go away," I murmured to her at dinner. I fancied she grew paler, but I could not be sure, for Jones at that moment changed my plate.
"I am sorry," she said simply. "Must you go?"
"Yes," I answered sadly. "My beautiful holiday is over. To-morrow, to work."
"I thought, for you lords, life was one long holiday," she said, surprised.
I was glad of the reminder. My love was hopeless. A struggling doctor could not ask for the hand of an heiress. Even if he could, it would be a poor recommendation to start with a confession of imposture. To ask, without confessing, were to become a scoundrel and a fortune-hunter of the lowest type. No; better to pass from her ken, leaving her memory of me untainted by suspicion—leaving my memory of her an idyllic, unfinished dream. And yet I could not help reflecting, with agony, that if I had not begun under false colours, if I had come to her only as what I was, I might have dared to ask for her love—yea, and perhaps have won it. Oh, how weak I had been not to tell her from the first! As if she would not have appreciated the joke! As if she would not have enrolled herself joyously in the campaign against Jones!
"Ah! my life will be anything but a long holiday, I fear," I sighed.
"Say, you're not an hereditary legislator?" she asked.
"Legislation is not the hereditary disease I complain of," I said evasively.
"What then?"
"Love!" I replied desperately.
She laughed gaily.
"I guess that's an original view of love."
"Why? My parents suffered from it: at least, I hope they did."
"Doubtful! Your Upper Ten is usually supposed to have cured marriage of it."
She bent her head over her plate, so that I strove in vain to read her eyes.
"Well, it's a beastly shame," I said. "Don't you thinkso, Miss Harper—Ethelberta? May I call you Ethelberta?"
"If it gives you any comfort," she said plumply.
"It gives me more than comfort," I rejoined.
A wild hope flamed in my breast. What if she loved me after all! I would speak the word. But no! If she did, I had won her love under a false glamour of nobility. Better, far better, to keep both my secrets in my own breast. Besides, had I not seen she was a flirt? I continued to call her Ethelberta, but that was all. When we rose from table I had not spoken; knowing that my friends would claim my society for the rest of the evening, I held out my hand in final farewell. She took it. Her own hand was hot. I clasped it for a moment, gazing into the wonderful blue eyes; then I let it go, and all was over.
"I do believe Teddy is hit!" Towers said when I came into our room, whither they had preceded me.
"Rot!" I said, turning my face away. "A seasoned bachelor like me. Heigho! I shall be awfully glad to get to work again to-morrow."
"Yes," said the Infant. "I see from the statistics that the mortality of your district has declined frightfully. That Robins must be a regular duffer."
"I'll soon set that right!" I exclaimed, with a forced grin.
"She certainly is a stunner," Towers mused.
"Hullo! I'm afraid it's Merton that's damaged," I laughed boisterously.
"Well, if she wasn't an heiress—" began Towers slowly.
"She might have you," finished the Infant. "But I say, boys, we'd better ask for our bills; we've got to be off in the morning by the 8.5. Jones mightn't be up when we leave."
The room echoed with sardonic laughter at the idea. There was no need to ring for Jones; he found two pretexts an hour to come and gaze upon me. When my bill came, I went to the window for air and to hide my face from Jones.
"All right, Jones!" cried the Infant, guessing what was up. "We'll leave it on the table before we go to bed."
"Well?" my friends enquired eagerly, when Jones had crawled off.
"Twenty-seven pounds two and tenpence!" I groaned, letting the accursed paper drift helplessly to the floor.
"D——d reasonable!" said the Infant.
"You would go it!" Towers added soothingly.
"Reasonable or not," I said, "I've only got six pounds in my pockets."
"You said you brought ten," said Towers.
"Yes! but what of carriage-sails and yacht-drives?" I cried agitatedly.
"You're drunk," said the Infant brutally. "However, I suppose, before going into dividing exes we must get together the gross sum."
It was easier said than done. When every farthing had been scraped together, we were thirteen pounds short on the three bills. We held a long council of war, discussing the possibilities of surreptitious pledging—the unspeakable Jones, playing his blindfold game, had reduced us to pawn—but even these were impracticable.
"Confound you!" cried Merton Towers. "Why didn't you think of the bill before?"
As if I had not better things to think of!
The horror of facing Jones in the morning drove us to the most desperate devices; but none seemed workable.
"There's only one way left of getting the coin, Teddy," said the Infant at last.
"What's that?" I cried eagerly.
"Ask the heiress."
It was an ambiguous phrase, but in whatever sense he meant it, it was a cruel and unmanly thrust; in my indignation I saw light.
"What fools we have been!" I shouted. "It's as easy as A B C. I'm not in an office like you, bound to be back to the day—I stay on over to-morrow, and you send me on the money from town."
"Where are we to get it from?" growled Towers.
"Anywhere! anybody!" I cried excitedly; "I'll write to Robins at once for it."
"Why not wire?" said the Infant.
"I don't see the necessity for wasting sixpence," I said; "we must be economical. Besides, Jones would read the wire."
THE WINNING MOVE.
Time slipped on; but I could not tear myself away from this enchanted hotel. The departure of my friends allowed me to be nearly all day with Ethelberta.
I had drowned reason and conscience: day followed day in a golden languor and the longer I stopped, the harder it was to go. At last Robins's telegrams became too imperative to be disregarded, and even my second supply of money would not suffice for another day.
The bitter experience of parting had to be faced again; the miserable evening, when I had first called her Ethelberta, had to be repeated. We spoke little at dinner; afterwards, as I had not my friends to go to this time, we leftMrs. Windpeg sitting over her dessert, and paced up and down in the little cultivated enclosure which separated the hotel from the parade. It was a balmy evening; the moon was up, silvering the greenery, stretching a rippling band across the sea, and touching Ethelberta's face to a more marvellous fairness. The air was heavy with perfume; everything combined to soften my mood. Tears came into my eyes as I thought that this was the very last respite. Those tears seemed to purge my vision: I saw the beauty of truth and sincerity, and felt that I could not go away without telling her who I really was; then, in future years, whatever she thought of me, I, at least, could think of her sacredly, with no cloud of falseness between me and her.
"Ethelberta!" I said, in low trembling tones.
"Lord Everett!" she murmured responsively.
"I have a confession to make."
She flushed and lowered her eyes.
"No, no!" she said agitatedly; "spare me that confession. I have heard it so often; it is so conventional. Let us part friends."
She looked up into my face with that frank, heavenly glance of hers. It shook my resolution, but I recovered myself and went on:
"It is not a conventional confession. I was not going to say I love you."
"No?" she murmured.
Was it the tricksy play of the moon among the clouds, or did a shade of disappointment flit across her face? Were her words genuine, or was she only a coquette? I stopped not to analyse; I paused not to enquire; I forgot everything but the loveliness that intoxicated me.
"I—I—mean I was!" I stammered awkwardly; "I have loved you from the first moment I saw you."
I strove to take her hand; but she drew it away haughtily.
"Lord Everett, it is impossible! Say no more."
The twang dropped from her speech in her dignity; her accents rang pure and sweet.
"Why not?" I cried passionately. "Why is it impossible? You seemed to care for me."
She was silent; at last she answered slowly:
"You are a lord! I cannot marry a lord."
My heart gave a great leap, then I felt cold as ice.
"Because I am a lord?" I murmured wonderingly.
"Yes! I—I—flirted with you at first out of pure fun—believe me, that was the truth. If I loved you now," her words were tremulous and almost inaudible, "it would be right that I should be punished. We must never meet again. Good-bye!"
She stood still and extended her hand.
I touched it with my icy fingers.
"Oh! if you had only let me confess just now what I wanted to!" I cried in agony.
"Confess what?" she said. "Have you not confessed?"
"No! You may disbelieve me now; but I wanted to tell you that I am not a lord at all, that I only became one through Jones."
Her lovely eyes dilated with surprise. I explained briefly, confusedly.
She laughed, but there was a catch in her voice.
"Listen!" she said hurriedly, starting pacing again; "I, too, have a confession to make. Jones has corrupted me too. I'm not an heiress at all, nor even an American—just a moderately successful London actress, resting a few weeks, and Mrs. Windpeg is only my companion and general factotum, the widow of a drunken stage-carpenter, who left her without resources, poor thing. But we had hardlycrossed the steps of the hotel, before Jones mentioned Lord Everett was in the place, and buzzed the name so in our ears that the idea of a wild frolic flashed into my head. I am a great flirt, you know, and I thought that while I had the chance I would test the belief that English lords always fall in love with American heiresses."
"It was no test," I interrupted. "A Chinese Mandarin would fall in love with you equally."
"I let Mrs. Windpeg tell Jones all about me—imaginatively," she went on with a sad smile; "I told her to call me Harper, becauseHarper's Magazinecame into my mind. But it was Jones who seated us together. I will believe that you took a genuine liking to me; still, it was a foolish freak on both sides, and we must both forget it as soon as possible."
"I can never forget it!" I said passionately; "I love you; and I dare to think you care for me, though while you fancied I was a peer you stifled the feeling that had grown up despite you. Believe me, I understand the purity of your motives, and love you the more for them."
She shook her head.
"Good-bye!" she faltered.
"I will not say 'good-bye'! I have little to offer you, but it includes a heart that is aching for you. There is no reason now why we should part."
Her lips were white in the moonlight.
"I never said I loved you," she murmured.
"Not in so many words," I admitted; "but why did you let me call you Ethelberta?" I asked passionately.
"Because it is not my name," she answered; and a ghost of the old gay smile lit up the lovely features.
I stood for a moment dumbfounded. Unconsciously we had come to a standstill under the window of the dining-room.
She took advantage of my consternation to say more lightly:
"Come, let us part friends."
I dimly understood that, in some subtle way I was too coarse to comprehend, she was ashamed of the part she had played throughout, that she would punish herself by renunciation. I knew not what to say; I saw the happiness of my life fading before my eyes. She held out her hand for the last time and I clasped it mechanically. So we stood, silent.
"What does that matter, Mrs. Windpeg? You're a real lady, that's enough for me. It wasn't because I thought you had money that I ventured to raise my eyes to you."
We started. It was the voice of Jones. Mrs. Windpeg had evidently lingered too long over her dessert.
"But I tell you I have nothing at all—nothing!" came the voice of Mrs. Windpeg.
"I don't want it. You see, I'm like you—not what I seem. This place belongs to me, only I was born and bred a waiter in this very hotel, and I don't see why the 'ouse shouldn't profit by the tips instead of a stranger. My son does the show part; but he ain't fit for anything but reading Dickens and other low-class writers, and I feel the want of a real lady, knowing the ways of the aristocrats. What with Lord Porchester and Lord Everett, it looks as if this hotel is going to be fashionable and I know there's lots of 'igh-class wrinkles I ain't picked up yet. Only lately I was flummoxed by a gent asking for a liqueur I'd never 'eard of. You're mixed up with tip-top swells; I loved you from the moment I saw you fold your firstserviette. I'm a widower, you're a widow. Let bygones be bygones. Why shouldn't we make a match of it?"
We looked at each other and laughed; false subtleties were swept away by a wave of mutual merriment.
"'Let bygones be bygones. Why shouldn't we make a match of it?'" I echoed. "Jones is right." I tightened my grasp of her hand and drew her towards me, almost without resistance. "You're going to lose your companion, you'll want another."
Her lovely face came nearer and nearer.
"Besides," I said gaily, "I understand you're out of an engagement."
"Thanks," she said; "I don't care for an engagement in the Provinces, and I have sworn never to marry in the profession: they're a bad lot."
"Call me an actor?"
My lips were almost on hers.
"You played Lord Dundreary—not unforgivably."
Our lips met!
"Oh, Augustus," came the voice of Mrs. Windpeg, "I feel so faint with happiness!"
"Loose your arms a moment, my popsy. I'll fetch you a drop of Damtidam!" answered the voice of Jones.
To sit out a play is a bore; to sit out a dance demands less patience. Even when you do it merely to prevent your partner dancing with you, it is the less disagreeable alternative. But it sometimes makes you giddier than galoping. Frank Redhill lost his head—a well-built head—completely through indulging in it; and without the head to look after it, the heart soon goes. He held Lucy's little hand in his hot clasp. She wished he would get himself gloves large enough not to split at the thumbs, and felt quite affectionate towards the dear, untidy boy. As a woman almost out of her teens, she could permit herself a motherly feeling for a lad who had but just attained his majority. The little thing looked very sweet in a demure dress of nun's veiling, which Frank would have described as "white robes." For he was only an undergraduate. Some undergraduates are past masters in the science and art of woman; but Frank was not in that set. Nor did he herd with the athletic, who drift mainly into the unpaid magistracy, nor with the worldly, who usually go in for the church. He was a reading man. Only he did not stick to the curriculum, but fed himself on the conceits of the poets, and thirsted to redeem mankind. So he got a second-class. But this is anticipating. Perhaps Lucy had been anticipating, too. At any rate she went through the scene as admirably as ifshe had rehearsed for it. And yet it was presumably the first time she had been asked to say: "I love you"—that wonderful little phrase, so easy to say and so hard to believe. Still, Lucy said and Frank believed it.
Not that Lucy did not share his belief. It must be for love that she was conceding Frank her hand—since her mother objected to the match. As the nephew of a peer, Frank could give her rather better society than she now enjoyed, even if he could not give her that of the peer, who had an hereditary feud with him. Of course she could not marry him yet, he was quite too poor for that, but he was a young man of considerable talents—which are after all gold pieces. When fame and fortune came to him, Lucy would come and join the party.En attendant, their souls would be wed. They kissed each other passionately, sealing the contract of souls with the red sealing-wax of burning lips. To them in Paradise entered the Guardian Angel with flaming countenance, and drove them into the outer darkness of the brilliant ball-room.
"My dear," said the Guardian Angel, who was Lucy Grayling's mother, "there is going to be an interval, and Mrs. Bayswater is so anxious for you to give that sweet recitation from Racine."
So Lucy declaimed one of Athalie's terrible speeches in a way that enthralled those who understood it, and made those who didn't, enthusiastic.
The applause did not seem to gratify the Guardian Angel as much as usual. Lucy wondered how much she had seen, and, disliking useless domestic discussion, extorted a promise of secrecy from her lover before they parted. He did not care about keeping anything from his father—especially something of which his approval was dubious. Still, all's fair and honourable in love—or love makes it seem so.
Frank took a solemn view of engagement, and embraced Lucy in his general scheme for the redemption of mankind. He felt she was a sacred as well as a precious charge, and he promised himself to attend to her spiritual salvation in so far as her pure instincts needed guidance. He directed her reading in bulky letters bearing the Oxford post-mark. Meantime, Lucy disapproved of his neckties. She thought he would be even nicer with a loving wife to look after his wardrobe.
When Frank achieved the indistinction of a second-class, as prematurely revealed, he went to Canada, and became a farm-pupil. It was not that his physique warranted the work, but there seemed no way in the old country of making enough money to marry Lucy (much less to redeem mankind) on. He was suffering, too, at the moment from a disgust with the schools, and a sentimental yearning to "return to nature."
The parting with Lucy was bitter, but he carried her bright image in his heart, and wrote to her by every mail. In Canada he did not look at a woman, as the saying goes; true, the opportunities were scant on the lonely log-farm. Absence, distance, lent the last touch of idealisation and enchantment to his conception of Lucy. She stood to him not only for Womanhood and Purity, but for England, Home, and Beauty. Nay, the thought of her was even Culture, when the evening found him too worn with physical toil to read a page of the small library he had brought with him. He saw his way to profitable farming on his own account in a few years' time. Then Lucy would come out to him, if they should be too impatient to wait till he had made money enough to go to her.
Lucy's letters did nothing to disabuse him of his ideals or his aims. They were charming, affectionate, and intellectual. Midway, in the batch he treasured more than eastern jewels, the sheets began to wear mourning for Lucy's mother. The Guardian Angel was gone—whether to continue the rôle none could say. Frank comforted the orphaned girl as best he could with epistolary kisses and condolences, and hoped she would get along pleasantly with her aunt till the necessity for that good relative vanished. And so the correspondence went on, Lucy's mind improving visibly under her lover's solicitous guidance. Then one day Redhill the elder cabled that by the death of his brother and nephew within a few days of each other, he had become Lord Redhill, and Frank consequently heir to a fine old peerage, and with an heir's income. Whereupon Frank returned forthwith from nature to civilisation. Now he could marry Lucy (and redeem mankind) immediately. Only he did not tell Lucy he was coming. He could not deny himself (or her) the pleasure of so pleasurable a surprise.
It was a cold evening in early November when Frank's hansom drove up to the little house near Bond Street, where Lucy's aunt resided. He had not been to see his father yet; Lucy's angel-face hovered before him, warming the wintry air, and drawing him onwards towards the roof that sheltered her. The house was new to him; and as he paused outside for a moment, striving to still his emotion, his eye caught sight of a little placard in the window of the ground floor, inscribed "Apartments." He shuddered, a pang akin to self-reproach shot through him. Lucy'saunt was poor, was reduced to letting lodgings. Lucy herself had, perhaps, been left penniless. Delicacy had restrained her from alluding to her poverty in her letter. He had taken everything too much for granted—surely, straitened as were his means, he should have proffered her some assistance. A suspicion that he lacked worldly wisdom dawned upon him for the first time, as he rang the bell. Poor little Lucy! Well, whatever she had gone through, the bright days were come at last. The ocean which had severed them for so many weary moons no longer rolled between them—thank God, only the panels of the street-door divided them now. In another instant that darling head—no more the haunting elusive phantom of dream—would be upon his breast. Then as the door opened, the thought flashed upon him that she might not be in—the idea of waiting a single moment longer for her turned him sick. But his fears vanished at the encouraging expression on the face of the maid servant who opened the door.
"Miss Gray's upstairs," she mumbled, without waiting for him to speak. And, all intelligent reflection swamped by a great wave of joy, he followed her up one narrow flight of stairs, and passed eagerly into a room to which she pointed. It was a bright, cosy room, prettily furnished, and a cheerful fire crackled on the hearth. There were books and flowers about, and engravings on the walls. The little round table was laid for tea. Everything smiled "welcome." But these details only gradually penetrated Frank's consciousness—for the moment all he saw was thatShewas not there. Then he became aware of the fire, and moved involuntarily towards it, and held his hands over it, for they were almost numbed with the cold. Straightening himself again, he was startled by his own white face in the glass.
He gazed at it dreamily, and beyond it towards the folding-doors,which led into an adjoining room. His eyes fixed themselves fascinated upon these reflected doors, and strayed no more. It was through them that she would come.
Suddenly a dreadful thought occurred to him. When she came through those doors, what would be the effect of his presence upon her? Would not the sudden shock, joyful though it was, upset the fragile little beauty? Had he not even heard of people dying from joy? Why had he not prepared her for his return, if only to the tiniest extent? The suspicion that he lacked worldly wisdom gained in force. Tumultuous suggestions of retreat crossed his mind—but before he could move, the folding-doors in the mirror flew apart, and a radiant image dashed lightly through them. It was a vision of dazzling splendour that made his eyes blink—a beautiful glittering figure in tights and tinsel, the prancing prince of pantomime. For an infinitesimal fraction of a second, Frank had the horror of the thought that he had come into the wrong house.
"Good evening, George," the Prince cried: "I had almost given you up."
Great God! Was the voice, indeed, Lucy's? Frank grasped at the mantel, sick and blind, the world tumbling about his ears. The suspicion that he lacked worldly wisdom became a certainty. Slowly he turned his head to face the waves of dazzling colour that tossed before his dizzy eyes.
The Prince's outstretched hand dropped suddenly. A startled shriek broke from the painted lips. The re-united lovers stood staring half blindly at each other. More than the Atlantic rolled between them.
Lucy broke the terrible silence.
"Brute!"
It was his welcome home.
"Brute?" he echoed interrogatively, in a low, hoarse whisper.
"Brute and cad!" said the Prince vehemently, the musical tones strident with anger. "Is this your faith, your loyalty—to sneak back home like a thief—to peep through the keyhole to see if I was a good little girl—?"
"Lucy! Don't!" he interrupted in anguished tones. "As there is a heaven above us, I had no suspicion—"
"But you have now," the Prince interrupted with a bitter laugh. Neither made any attempt to touch the other, though they were but a few inches apart. "Out with it!"
"Lucy, I have nothing to say against you. How should I? I know nothing. It is for you to speak. For pity's sake tell me all. What is this masquerade?"
"This masquerade?" She touched her pink tights—he shuddered at the touch. "These are—" She paused. Why not tell the easy lie and be done with the whole business, and marry the dear, devoted boy? But the mad instinct of revolt and resentment swept over her in a flood that dragged the truth from her heart and hurled it at him. "These are the legs of Prince Prettypet. If I am lucky, I shall stand on them in the pantomime ofThe Enchanted Princess;or, Harlequin Dick Turpin, at the Oriental Theatre. The man who has the casting of the part is coming to see how I look."
"You have gone on the stage?"
"Yes; I couldn't live on your lectures," Prince Prettypet said, still in the same resentful tone. "I couldn't fritter away the little capital I had when mamma died, and then wait for starvation. I had no useful accomplishments. I could only recite—Athalie."
"But surely your aunt—"
"Is a fiction. Had she been a fact it would have been all the same. I had had enough of mamma. No more leading-strings!"
"Lucy! And you wept over her so in your letters?"
"Crocodile's tears. Heavens, are women to have no lives of their own?"
"Oh, why did you not write to me of your difficulties?" he groaned. "I would have come over and fetched you—we would have borne poverty together."
"Yes," the Prince said mockingly. "''E was werry good to me, 'e was.' Do you think I could submit to government by a prig?"
He started as if stung. The little tinselled figure, looking taller in its swashbuckling habits, stared at him defiantly.
"Tell me," he said brokenly, "have you made a living?"
"No. If truth must be told, Lucy Gray—docked at the tail, sir—hasn't made enough to keep Lucy Grayling in theatrical costumes. I got plenty of kudos in the Provinces, but two of my managers were bogus."
"Yes?" he said vaguely.
"No treasury, don't you know? Ghost didn't walk. No oof, rhino, shiners, coin, cash, salary!"
"Do I understand you have travelled about the country by yourself?"
"By myself! What, in a company? You've picked up Irish in America. Ha! ha! ha!"
"You know what I mean, Lucy." It seemed strange to call this new person Lucy, but "Miss Grayling" would have sounded just as strange.
"Oh, there was sure to be a married lady—with her husband—in the troupe, poor thing!" The Prince had a roguish twinkle in the eye. "And surely I am old enough to take care of myself. Still, I felt you wouldn't like it.That's why I was anxious to get a London appearance—if only in East-end pantomime. The money's safe, and your notices are more valuable. I only want a show to take the town. I do hope George won't disappoint me. I thought you were he."
"Who is George?" he said slowly, as if in pain.
The shrill clamour of the bell answered him.
"There he is!" said the Prince joyfully. "George is only Georgie Spanner, stage-manager of the Oriental. I have been besieging him for two days. Bella Bright, who had to play Prince Prettypet, has gone and eloped with the property-man, and as soon as I heard of it, I got a letter of introduction to Georgie Spanner, and he said I was too little, and I said that was nonsense—that I had played in burlesque at Eastbourne—Come in!"
THE STAGE-MANAGER.
"Are you at home, miss?" said the maid, putting her head inside the door.
"Certainly, Fanny. That's Mr. Spanner I told you of—" The girl's head looked puzzled as it removed itself. "And so he said if I would put my things on, he would try and run down for an hour this evening, and see if I looked the part."
"And couldn't all that be done at the theatre?"
"Of course it could. But it's ten times more convenient for me here. And it's very considerate of Georgie to come all this way—he's a very busy man, I can tell you."
The street-door slammed loudly.
A sudden paroxysm shook Frank's frame. "Lucy, send this man away—for God's sake." In his excitement he came nearer, he laid his hand pleadingly upon the glittering shoulder. The Prince trembled a little under his touch, and stood as in silent hesitancy. The stairs creaked under heavy footsteps.
"Go to your room," he said more imperatively. Even in the wreck of his ideal, it was an added bitterness to think that limbs whose shapeliness had never even occurred to him, should be made a public spectacle. "Put on decent clothes."
It was the wrong chord to touch. The Prince burst into a boisterous laugh. "Silly old MacDougall!"
The footsteps were painfully near.
"You are mad," Frank whispered hoarsely. "You are killing me—you whom I throned as an angel of light; you who were the first woman in the world—"
"And now I'm going to be the Principal Boy," she laughed quietly back. "Is that you, dear old chap? Come in, George."
The door opened—Frank, disgusted, heart-broken, moved back towards the window-curtains. A corpulent, beef-faced, double-chinned man, with a fat cigar and a fur overcoat, came in.
"How do, Lucy? Cold, eh? What, in your togs? That's right."
"There, you bad man! Don't I look ripping?"
"Stunning, Lucy," he said, approaching her.
"Well, then, down on your knees, George, and apologise for saying I was too little."
"Well, I see more of you now, he! he! he! Yes, you'll do. What swell diggings!"
"Come to the fire. Take that easy-chair. There, that's right, old man. Now, what is it to be? There's tea laid—you've let it get cold, unpunctual ruffian. Perhaps you'd like a brandy and soda better?"
"M' yes."
She rang the bell. "So glad—because there's only tea for two, and I know my friend would prefer tea," with asneering intonation. "Let me introduce you—Mr. Redhill, Mr. Spanner, you have heard of Mr. Spanner, the celebrated author and stage-manager?"
The celebrated author and stage-manager half rose in his easy-chair, startled, and not over-pleased. The pale-faced rival visitor, half hidden in the curtains, inclined his head stiffly, then moved towards the door.
"Oh, no, don't run away like that, without a cup of tea, in this bitter weather. Mr. Spanner won't mind talking business before you, will you, George? Such a dear old friend, you know."
It was a merry tea-party. Lucy rattled away bewitchingly, overpowering Mr. Spanner like an embodied brandy and soda. The slang of the green room and the sporting papers rolled musically off her tongue, grating on Frank's ear like the scraping of slate pencils. He had not insight enough to divine that she was accentuating her vulgar acquirements to torture him. Spanner went at last—for the Oriental boards claimed him—leaving behind him as nearly definite a promise of the part as a stage-manager can ever bring himself to utter. Lucy accompanied him downstairs. When she returned, Frank was still sitting as she had left him—one hand playing with the spoon in his cup, the rest of the body lethargic, immobile. She bent over him tenderly.
"Frank!" she whispered.
He shivered and looked up at the lovely face, daubed with rouge and pencilled at the eyebrows with black—as for the edification of the distant "gods." He lowered his eyes again, and said slowly: "Lucy, I have come back to marry you. What date will be most convenient to you?"
"You want to marry me," she echoed in low tones. "All the same!" A strange wonderful light came into her eyes. The big lashes were threaded with glistening tears.She put her little hand caressingly upon his hair, and was silent.
"Yes! it is an old promise. It shall be kept."
"Ah!" She drew her hand away with an inarticulate cry. "Like a duty dance, but you do not love me?"
He ignored the point. "I am rich now—my father has unexpectedly become Lord Redhill—you probably heard it!"
"You don't love me! You can't love me!" It sounded like the cry of a soul in despair.
"So there's no need for either of us to earn a living."
"But you don't love me! You only want to save me."
"Well, of course Lord Redhill wouldn't like his daughter-in-law to be—"
"The Principal Boy—ha! ha! ha! But what—ho! ho! ho! I must laugh, Frank, old man, itisso funny—what about the Principal Boy? Do you think he'd cotton to the idea of marrying a peer in embryo! Not if Lucy Gray knows it; no, by Jove! Why, when your coronet came along, I should have to leave the stage, or else people 'ud be saying I couldn't act worth a cent. They'd class me with Lady London and Lady Hansard—oh, Lord! Fancy me on the Drury Lane bills—Prince Prettypet, Lady Redhill. And then, great Scot, think whom they'd class you with. Ha! ha! ha! No, my boy, I'm not going to marry a microcephalous idiot. Ho! ho! ho! I wish somebody would put all this in a farce."
"Do I understand that you wish to break off the engagement?" Frank said slowly, a note of surprise in his voice.
"You've hit it—now that I hear about this peerage business—why didn't you tell me before? I'm out of all the gossip of court circles, and it wasn't in theEra. No, I might have redeemed my promise to a commoner, but alord, ugh! I never had your sense of duty, Frank, and must really cry 'quits.' Now you see the value of secret engagements—ours is off, and nobody will be the wiser—or the worse. Now get thee to his lordship—concealment, like a worm i' the bud, no longer preying upon thy damask cheek. I was alway sorry you had to keep it from the old buffer. But it was for the best, wasn't it?—ha! ha!—it was for the best! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!"
Frank fled down the staircase followed by long peals of musical laughter. They followed him into the bleak night, which had no frost for him; but they became less musical as they rang on, and as the terrified maid and the landlady strove in vain to allay the hysterical tempest.
The Oriental, on Boxing Night, was like a baker's oven for temperature, and an unopened sardine-barrel for populousness. The East-end had poured its rollicking multitudes into the vast theatre, which seethed over with noisy vitality. There was much traffic in ginger beer, oranges, Banbury cakes, and "bitter." The great audience roared itself hoarse over old choruses with new words. Lucy Gray, as Prince Prettypet, made an instant success. The mashers of the Oriental ogled her in silent flattery. Her clear elocution, her charming singing voice, her sprightly dancing, herchic, her frank vulgarity, when she "let herself go," took every heart captive. Every heart, that is, save one, which was filled with sickness and anguish, and covered with a veil of fine linen. The heir of the house of Redhill cowered at the back of the O.P. stage-box—the only place in the house disengaged when he drove up in a mistakendress-suit. It was the first time he had seen Prince Prettypet since the merry tea-party, and he did not know why he was seeing her now. He hoped she did not see him. She pirouetted up to the front of his box pretty often during the evening, and several times hurled ancient wheezes at the riotous funnymen from that coign of vantage. Spoken so near his ear, the vulgar jokes tingled through him like lashes from a whip. Once she sang a chorus, winking in his direction. But that was the business of the song, and impersonal. He saw no sure signs of recognition, and was glad.
THE ORIENTAL ON BOXING NIGHT.
When, during the gradual but gorgeous evolution of the Transformation Scene, he received a note from her, he remained glad. It ran, "The bearer will take you behind. I have no one to see me home. Always your friend—Lucy." He went "behind," following his guide through a confusion of coatless carpenters waving torches of blue and green fire from the wings, and gauzy, highly coloured Whitechapel girls ensconcing themselves in uncomfortable attitudes on wooden pedestals, which were mounting and descending.
Georgie Spanner was bustling about, half crazed, amid a hubbub perfectly inaudible from the front; but he found time to scowl at Frank, as that gentleman stumbled over the pantaloon and fell against a little iron lever, whose turning might have plunged the stage in darkness. Frank found Lucy in a tiny cellar with whitewashed walls and a rough counter, on which stood a tin basin and a litter of "make up" materials. She had "changed" before he came. It was the first time for years he had seen her in her true womanly envelope. Assuredly she had grown far lovelier, and her face was flushed with triumph; otherwise it was the old Lucy. The Prince was washed off with the paint.
Frank's eyes filled with tears. How hard he had been on her! Nay, had he not misjudged her? She looked so frail, so little, so childish, what guile could she know? It was all mere surface-froth on her lips! How narrow to set up his life, his ideals, as models, patterns! The poor little thing had her own tastes, her own individuality! How hard she worked to earn her own living! He bent down and kissed her forehead, remorsefully, as one might kiss an overscoldedchild. She drew his head down lower and kissed him—passionately—on the lips. "Let us wait a little," she said, as he spoke of sending for a hansom. "Sloman, the lessee, gives a little supper on the stage after the show—he'll be annoyed if I don't stay. He'll be delighted to have you."
The pantomime had gone better than anyone had expected. It had been insufficiently rehearsed, and though everybody had said "it'll be all right at night"—in the immemorial phrase of the profession—they had said it more automatically than confidently. Consequently everyone was in high feather, and agreeably surprised at the accuracy of the prophesying. Even Georgie Spanner ceased to scowl under the genial influences of success and Sloman's very decent champagne. The air was full of laughter and gaiety, and everybody (except the clown) cracked jokes. The leading ladies made themselves pleasant, and did not swear. Everybody seemed to have acquired a new respect for Lucy, seeing her with such a real Belgravian swell. Probably she would soon have a theatre of her own.
It was the Prig's first excursion into Bohemia, and he thought the natives very civil-spoken, naïve, and cordial. Frank had no doubt now that Lucy was right, that he was a Prig to want to redeem mankind. And the conviction that he lacked worldly wisdom was sealed for aye.
So he married her.
It was the most curious case of croup I had ever attended. Not that there was anything unusual about the symptoms—they were so correct as to be devoid of the slightest interest. Certainly they were not worth while being called up for in the middle of the night. The patient it was that attracted my attention. He was a handsome baby of one year and nine months—by name Willy Streetside—with such an expression of candour and intelligence that I was moved to see him suffer. I sat down by his bedside, took his poor little feverish hand, and felt the weak quick pulse, and knew it had not much longer to beat. I put the glass of barley and water to his lips, and he drank eagerly. He seemed to be an orphan, in charge of a strange, silent serving-man, apparently the only other occupant of the luxurious and artistically furnished flat. I judged Downton to be a man of some culture, from the latest magazines strewn about the bedroom; but I could not help thinking that a female, more familiar with infantile ailments, might have been more useful. Apathetic and torpid though I was, from eighteen hours' continuous activity in a hundred sickrooms, my eyes filled with tears, and I sat for an instant, holding the little hand, listening to the poor child's painful breathing, and speculating on the mystery of that existence so early recalled. All his organs were sound. But for this accidental croup, I told myself, he might have lived tilleighty. "Poor Willy Streetside!" I murmured, for his curious name clung to my memory.
Suddenly the baby turned his blue eyes full on me, and said:
"I suppose it's all up, doctor?"
I started violently, and let go his hand. The words were perhaps not altogether beyond the capacity of an infant; but the air of manly resignation with which they were uttered was astonishing. For more reasons than one, I hesitated.
"You need not be afraid to tell me the truth," said the baby, with a wistful smile; "I'm not afraid to hear it."
"Well—well, you're pretty bad," I stammered.
"Ah! thank you," the child replied gratefully. "How many hours do you give me?"
The baby's gravity took my breath away. He spoke with an old-world courtesy and the ingenuous stateliness of an infant prince.
"It may not be quite hopeless," I murmured.
Willy shook his head, the pretty, wan features distorted by a quaint grimace.
"I suppose I'm too young to rally," he said quietly, and closed his eyes.
Presently he re-opened them, and added:
"But I should have liked to live to see the Irish question settled."
"You would?" I ejaculated, overwhelmed.
"Yes," he said, adding with a whimsical expression in the wee blue eyes: "You mustn't think I crave for earthly immortality. I use 'settled' in a merely rough sense. My mother was an Irish poetess, over whose songs impetuous Celts still break their hearts and their heads."
I gazed speechless at this wonder-child, pushing thegolden locks back from his feverish baby-brow, as if to assure myself by touching him that he was not a phantom.
"Ah, well!" he finished, "it doesn't matter. I have had my day, and mustn't grumble. I scarcely thought, when I witnessed the dissolution of the third Gladstone Government, that I should have lived to see him Premier a fourth time. Three doctors told me I was breaking up fast."
I began to be frightened of this extraordinary infant, divining some wizardry behind the candid little face—some latter-day mystery of re-incarnation, esoteric Buddhism, what-not. The child perceived my perturbation.
"You are thinking I have packed a good deal into my short life," he said, with an amused smile. "And yet some men will make a Gladstone bag hold as much as a portmanteau. Gladstone has done so; and why not I, in my humble degree?"
"True," I answered; "but you cannot begin to pack before you are born."
"You are entirely mistaken," replied the baby, "if you think I have done anything so precocious as that."
"Then you must have lived an odd life," I said, puzzled.
"You have hit it!" exclaimed the child, with a suspicion of eagerness, not unmingled with surprise. "I did not mean to tell anyone; but since you are a man of science and I am on the point of death, you may as well know you have guessed the truth."
"Have I?" I said, more bewildered than ever.
"Yes. In all these years no one has suspected it. It has been carefully kept from outsiders. But now it would, perhaps, be childish folly to be reticent about it. It is the truth—the plain, literal truth—I have lived an odd life."
"How did it begin?" I asked, scarce knowing what I said or what I meant.
"You shall know all," said Willy. "I must begin before I was born—before I could begin packing, as you put it."
His breath came and went painfully. Overwrought with curiosity as I was, I experienced a pang of compunction.
"No, no; never mind," I said; "you have not the strength to speak much—you must not waste what you have."
"It can only cost me a few minutes of life—I can spare the time," he answered, almost peevishly.
Now that he had been strung up to speaking point, he seemed to resent my diminished interest.
I put the glass of barley and water to his lips, and forced him to moisten his throat.
"I can spare the time," he repeated, while an air of grim satisfaction came over the tiny features. "I have stolen plenty—I have outwitted the arch-thief himself. I have survived my own death."
"What!" I gasped. "Have you already died?"
"No, no," he replied fretfully; "I am only just going to die. That is how I have survived my death. How dull you are!"
"You were going to begin at the beginning," I murmured feebly.
"No! What is the use of beginning at the beginning?" thisenfant terribleenquired, in the same peevish tones. "I was going to begin before the beginning."
"Yes, yes," I said soothingly, patting his golden curls; "you were going to begin before you were born."
"With my mother," he said more gently. "She did not lead a very happy life—it enabled her to hymn the wrongs of her country. Her childhood was a succession of sorrows, her girlhood a mass of misfortunes; and when she married the man she loved, she found herself deserted by him a fewmonths later. It was then that she first conceived the thought that has changed my life. It came to her in a moment of tears, as she sat over the ashes of her happiness. From that moment the thought never left her."
There was a wild look in the baby's eyes. I began to suspect him of premature insanity.
"What was this thought?" I murmured.
"I am coming to it. There came into her head suddenly the refrain of a song she had learnt at school: 'Life like a river with constant motion.' 'The river of life! The stream of life! How true it is!' she mused. 'How much more than mere metaphors these phrases are! Verily, one's life flows on towards the dark ocean of death, irresistibly, unrestingly, willy-nilly—whether swift or slow, whether long or short—whether it flows through pleasant champaigns or dreary marshes, past romantic castled crags, or by bleak quarries. What is the use of experience, of knowledge of past bits of the route, when no two bits are ever really alike, when the future course is hidden and is always a panorama of surprises, when no life-stream knows what awaits it round the corner every time it turns, when the scenery of the source avails one nothing in one's resistless progress towards the scenery of the mouth? What is life but a series of mistakes, whose fruit is wisdom, maybe, but wisdom overripe? We do not pluck the fruit till it will no longer serve our appetites. Nothing repeats itself on the stage of existence—always new situations and new follies.Experientia docet.Experience teaches, indeed; but her lesson is that nothing can be learnt.'"
The baby paused, and reached out his wasted hand for the glass. His pinafore and his tiny shoes on the chest of drawers caught my eye, and moistened it with the thought he would never don them again.
"As my mother brooded upon this bitter truth," he resumed, when he had refreshed himself, "and saw how sad an illustration of it was her own life—with its sufferings and its mistakes—she could not help wishing existence had been ordered otherwise. If we had had at least two lives, we might profit in the second by the first. But, she told herself, with a sigh, this was vain day-dreaming. Then suddenlythethought flashed upon her. Granting that more than one life was impossible upon this planet, why should it not be differently distributed? Suppose, instead of flowing on like a stream, one's life progressed like a London street—the odd numbers on the one side and the even on the other, so that after doing the numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, &c., &c., one could return and do the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, &c., &c. Without craving from Providence more than man's allotted span, what if, by a slight re-arrangement of the years, it were possible to extort an infinitely greater degree of happiness from one's lifetime! What if it were possible to live the odd years, gleaning experience as well as joys, and then to return to the even years, armed with all the wisdom of one's age! What ifherchild could enjoy this inestimable privilege! The thought haunted her, she brooded on it day and night; and when I was born, she drew me eagerly towards her, as if to see some mark of promise written on my forehead. But a year passed before she dared to think her wish had found fulfilment. On the eve of my first birthday she measured and weighed me with intense anxiety, though pretending to herself she only wished to keep a register of my growth. In the morning I was more by a year's inches and pounds. I had shot up at a bound into my third year, and manifested sudden symptoms of walking and talking. She almost fainted with joy when my unexpected teeth bit her finger. She could not get myshoes on me, nor my frock. But, although my mother had made no preparations for my changed condition, she welcomed the trouble I put her to, and carefully laid aside my useless garments, knowing I should want them again. The neighbours noticed nothing; they thought me a big boy for my age, and extremely precocious. When I was in my fifth year I went on the stage as an 'infant phenomenon,' my age being attested by my certificate of birth, though you will of course see that I was really in my ninth. In the next few years I made enough money to gild my mother's few declining years; and when I retired temporarily from the boards at the advice of my critics, it was of course with the intention of studying and returning to the stage when I was younger. And so I advanced to manhood, skipping the alternate years. I rejoice to say that my mother, though she died when I was seventy-three, had the satisfaction of knowing what felicity her unselfish aspiration had brought into my life. She told me of my strange exemption from the common burden of continuous existence, as soon as I had skipped into years of discretion. Not for me did Time pass with that tragic footstep which never returns on itself; for me he was not the irrevocable, the relentless. I regretted my lost youth—but it was not with hopeless, passionate tears, with mutinous yearnings after the impossible; it was as one who waves a regretful adieu to a charming girl he will meet again."
"Ah! but you will not meet her again," I said softly.
"No; but the feeling was the same. Of course, when I was thirty I did not know I should die before I was two. I had no more privilege of prescience than the ordinary mortal. But in everything else how enviable was my lot compared to his whom every day is sweeping towards Death, for whom no vision of renewed youth gleams behindthe black hangings! Oh! the glory of growing old without dread, with the assurance that age, which is ripening you, is not ripening you for the Gleaner, that the years will add wisdom without eternally subtracting the capacity for joy, and that every tottering step is bringing you nearer, not the Grave, but the joyous resurrection of your youth!"
"And you have experienced that?" I cried, with envious incredulity.
"Yes," answered the baby solemnly. "Of course I prepared for the Great Change. Not that Nature did not herself smooth the metamorphosis. The loss of teeth, the gradual baldness, the feeble limbs, everything pointed to the proximity of my Second Childhood. I knew that my odd life had not much longer to run, that at any moment the transformation might take place and the even numbers begin. Giving out that I was going to explore the African deserts, and accompanied only by my faithful body-servant, Downton, I retired to Egypt to await the great event, having previously ordered baby-linen and the various requisites of infantile toilette. I had at one time meditated providing myself with parents, but ultimately concluded that they would prove too troublesome to manage, and that it would be better to trust myself entirely to the management of Downton, since I had already placed myself in his power by leaving him all my money."
"But what necessity was there for that?" I enquired.
"Every necessity," he replied gravely. "Do you not see that I had to arrange all my affairs and make my will before being born again, because afterwards I should not be of legal age for ten years. At first I thought of leaving all my money to myself and passing as my own child, but there would have been difficulties. I was unmarried and seventy-seven. Downton could easily pretend his septuagenarian masterhad died in the African deserts, but he could not so easily patch up a marriage there. I had no option, therefore, but to make Downton my heir, and I have never had occasion to regret it from the day of my rebirth to this, the day of my death. As soon as I was born we returned to England, and I wrote my obituary and drove to the Press Association with it. Downton took it into the office while I waited in Fleet Street in the hansom. I can scarcely hope to convey to you an idea of the intensity and agreeableness of my sensations at this unprecedented epoch. The variegated life of Fleet Street gave me the keenest joy: every sight and every sound—beautiful or sordid—thrilled my nerves to rapture. I was interested in everything. Imagine the delicious freshness of one's second year supervening upon the jaded sensibilities of seventy-seven. All my wide and varied knowledge of life lay in my soul as before, but transfigured. Over my large experience of men and things was shed a stream of sunshine which irradiated everything with divine light; every streak of cynicism faded. I had the wisdom of an old man and the heart of a little child. I believed in man again, and even in woman. I shed tears of pure ecstasy; and when I heard a female of the lower classes say: 'Poor little thing! What a shame to leave it crying in a cab!' I laughed aloud in glee. She exclaimed: 'Ah! now it's laughing, my petsy-wootsy!' Her conversation saddened me again, and I was glad I had not burdened myself with a mother, and that I took my milk from a bottle instead of a doting nurse. And how exquisite was this same apparently monotonous menu of milk to an epicurean who had ruined his digestion! I felt I was recuperating on a vegetarian diet, and I rejoiced to think some years must elapse before I would care for champagne or re-acquire a taste for full-flavoured Manillas. Perhaps somewhat unreasonably,I was proud of my strength of will, which had enabled me in one day to abandon tobacco without a pang, and seven-course dinners without repining. I slept a good deal, too, at this period, whereas I had previously been greatly exercised by insomnia. But these joys of the senses were as nothing to the joys of the intellect. An exquisite curiosity played like a sea-breeze about my long-stagnant soul. All my early interests revived; worldly propositions I had thought settled showed themselves unstable and volant; everything was shaken by the moving spirit of youth. Theology, poetry, and even metaphysics became alive; all sorts of unpractical questions became suddenly burning. I saw in myself the seeds of a great thinker: a felicitous congruity of opposite capacities that had never before met in a single man—the sobriety of age tempered by the audacity of youth, fire and water, judgment and inspiration. I was revolutionist and reactionary in one. I read all the new books, and agreed with all the old."
"All you tell me only makes the pathos of your premature death more intolerable," I said in moved accents. "You are, like Keats and Chatterton,—only an earlier edition,—an inheritor of unfulfilled renown."
The little blue eyes smiled wistfully at me.
"Not at all," said the wee rose-lips, with a quiver. "Don't you see, I have already dodged Death? Evidently, if I had taken my second year in its natural order, I should have been cut short by croup at the outset. Apparently I had enough vital energy in me to have lasted till seventy-seven, if I could only get over the croup. I think one ought to be satisfied with having survived himself by thirty odd years."
"Yes, if you put it like that, the pathos lightens," I admitted. "Of course I saw from the first that you wereconsiderably in advance of your age. Did you assure your life?" I asked, with a sudden thought.
"I did; but by an oversight I let the policy be invalidated by my imaginary expedition to the African deserts. Downton has, however, taken out a fresh policy for my new life."
"What a baffling complex of probabilities would be added to Life Assurances if your way of living were to become general!" I observed. "Downton will probably more than recoup himself for his first loss. Have you always been a bachelor, by the way?" I asked.
"Yes," said the baby, with a sigh. "I missed marriage; it probably fell in an even year."
"Poor child!" I cried, my eyes growing humid again. To think, too, of that beautiful young girl, that fond wife, waiting for him who would never come; that innocent maiden cheated of love and happiness because her appointed husband had not lived in the other alternate series of years,—to think of this tangled tragedy moved me to fresh tears, not a few of which were for the husband who never was.
"Nay, do not pity me," said the baby, and his tones were hushed and low, and in his heavenly blue eyes I seemed to read the high sorrowful wisdom of the ages; "for, since I have lain here on this bed of sickness with no spectacular whirl to claim my thoughts, with four walls for my horizon, and the agony of death in my throat, the darker side of my dual existence has been borne in upon me. I see the shadow cast by the sunshine of my privilege of double birth; I see the curse which is the obverse of the blessing my mother's prayers brought me; I see myself dissipating a youth which I knew would recur, throwing away a manhood which I knew would come again, and sinking into a sensual senility which I knew would pass into an innocent infancy.I see myself rejecting the best gifts and the highest duties of To-Day for the illusory felicities and the far-away virtues of the Day-After-To-Morrow. I see myself passing by Love with the reflection that I should be passing again; putting off Purity with the thought that I should be round that way presently; and waving to Duty an amicable salute of 'Expect me soon.' And in this moment of clear vision I see not only my past, I realise what my future would be if I lived. I see the influx of fresh feeling gradually exhausted, overcome, ousted, and finally replaced by a satiety more horrible than that of the septuagenarian, as I came to realise that life for me held no surprises, no lures to curiosity, that the future was no enchanted realm of mysterious possibilities, that the white clouds revealed no seraph shapes on the horizon, that Hope did not stand like a veiled bride with beckoning finger, that fairies were not lurking round every corner nor magic palaces waiting to start up at every turn. I see life stretching before me like old ground I had been over—in my mother's image like a street one side of which I had walked down. What could the other offer of fresh, of delightful? It is so rarely one side differs from the other: a church for a public-house, a grocer's instead of a bookshop. Conceive the horror of foreknowledge: of having no sensations to learn and few new emotions to feel; to have, moreover, the enthusiasm of youth sicklied over with the prescience of senile cynicism, and the healthy vigour of manhood made flaccid by anticipations of the dodderings of age! I foresee the ever-growing dismay at the leaps and bounds with which my youth was fleeting. I see myself, instead of profiting by my experience, feverishly clutching at every pleasure on my path, as a drowning man, borne along by a torrent, snatches at every scrap of flotsam and jetsam. I see manhood arrive only to pass away, as anexpress passes through a petty station, full speed for the terminus. I see a panic terror close upon me with every hurrying year at the knowledge that my hours were thirty minutes and my months virtually fortnights, and that I was leading the fastest life on record. Add to this the anguish of feeling myself torn from the bosom of the wife I loved and hurried away from the embraces of the children whose careers it would be my solicitude to watch over. Imagine the agony if I had been cruelly spared to my seventy-eighthyear—the agony of a condemned criminal who does not know on what day he is to be execu—"