by Grant Allen
‘Very well,’ Linnell replied with perfect trustfulness. ‘Sir Austen let it be. We’ve met once or twice on neutral ground before, and we shall meet often enough now at Khartoum. I don’t like him, but I trust him implicitly. In matters of that sort, one can always trust an English gentleman.’
‘Not when you’ve seen as much of probate as I have,’ the lawyer interposed with quiet emphasis. ‘Where probate’s concerned, a man should never trust his own mother. But if you must go to Africa to-morrow, and if this will must be signed to-night, we must get whoever we can to attest it. Ten minutes to twelve, and it’s dated to-day. No time to be lost. I’ll go down again and bring up your cousin.’
Two minutes later Sir Austen came up, coldly polite.
‘Good-evening, Mr. Linnell,’ he said with a chilly bow. ‘Under other circumstances, I might perhaps have declined to undertake this little service. But we needn’t conceal from ourselves at present the fact that my cousin Frank’s sudden death, of which you have now of course already heard, has altered to some extent our relations towards one another. It’s no longer necessary for his sake to adopt the attitude I once felt constrained to adopt towards you. I have to thank you, too, for your letter in reply to mine, and for what under the circumstances I must certainly call your very generous and friendly conduct — now unfortunately of no avail. You sign, do you? Thank you: thank you. Where do I put my name? There? Ah, thanks. — Here, Watson, you put your signature under mine. — That concludes the business, I suppose? Very well, then, Burchell, the thing’s finished: now you can release us. — I understand, Mr. Linnell, you leave England to-morrow.’
‘For the Soudan, yes. Viâ Brindisi.’
Sir Austen started.
‘Why, how odd!’ he said. ‘A strange coincidence! I go by the same train. To the Soudan! Incredible. You’re not going out to join Gordon, then, are you?’
‘I’m going as special artist for the Porte-Crayon,’ Linnell answered quietly. ‘I didn’t think of it till this afternoon; but I met a friend who told me of the post, and I made up my mind at an hour’s notice; so now I’m off by to-morrow’s Oriental express.’
They stopped there talking for half an hour or so, Sir Austen’s iciness thawing a little when he learned that his cousin was to be thrown in with him so much for an indefinite period: and then, as the small-hours were closing in, they drove off separately to their various resting-places, to snatch a few hours’ sleep before to-morrow’s journey. At the foot of the club stairs, Sir Austen detained the lawyer a moment after Linnell had hailed a loitering hansom.
‘I say, Burchell,’ he said, lighting a cigar in the vestibule, ‘what’s your opinion of Charles Linnell’s condition to-night? Didn’t seem quite in testamentary form, did he? Odd he should want to make a will in such a precious hurry just now, isn’t it?’
‘Not at all,’ the lawyer answered with prompt decision. ‘You’ve settled up all your own affairs, no doubt, before leaving the country for so dangerous an expedition.’
‘Ah, but that’s different, you know. I’m going with her Majesty’s approbation on active service. This painter fellow’s chosen to visit Khartoum of his own accord, and he’s chosen to start at a moment’s notice; and as far as I could see — just glancing at the body of the will hurriedly — he’s left everything he possesses to some play-actress or somebody. Psyche Dumaresq, that was the name. Theatrical, obviously. It won’t hold water. The man’s in a very excited state of mind, that’s clear. He laughs and talks in a dreary, weary way. Miss Psyche Dumaresq must have thrown him overboard. And now he wants to set out for Khartoum and get shot through the head, for no other reason than just to make that faithless lady sensible of her error with a thumping legacy. He was always as mad as a hatter, this Yankee painter fellow, and to-night he’s more excited and madder than ever. I tell you what it is, Burchell: the will won’t stand. The next-of-kin will inherit the estate. Miss Psyche Dumaresq may whistle for her money.’
Mr. Burchell only shook his head in quiet dissent.
‘As sane as you are,’ he answered with a nod; ‘but a great deal too good for this world of ours in many ways. He doesn’t want to wait for dead men’s shoes. He doesn’t want to get anybody’s money.’ And he murmured to himself, as he went down the club steps in the summer drizzle: ‘If only I knew where Linnell was stopping, I’d go round to him now, late as it is, and advise him to make another will on spec. at Cairo or Alexandria. Sir Austen’s far too sharp for my taste. But Linnell forgot to tell me where he put up, and I can’t go round to every hotel in all London at this time of night and knock them up on the bare chance of finding him.’
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN A BELEAGUERED CITY.
The two Linnells and the correspondent Considine were the last Europeans who made their way into the lines of Khartoum before communications with the outer world were finally interrupted by the advance of the Mahdi. Three days after their arrival all ways were blocked; Omdurman was cut off, the river was surrounded, and a sea of rampant fanatical barbarism surged wildly up on every side round the undermanned ramparts of the doomed city.
It was a week or two later, under a tropical sky in one of the narrow lanes of the Nubian town, that two Europeans walked along slowly with doubtful tread among the eager and excited crowd of natives. Already the noise of artillery from the outlying forts thundered on the ear; already the hurry and scurry of a great siege were visible everywhere among the thronged bazaars. But the two Europeans walked on undismayed between the chattering negroes, engaged in strange talk amid that babel of voices. One of them was clad from head to foot in Arab costume, for Linnell invariably preferred that simple dress in the warm south; he had grown accustomed to it in his long camping-out expeditions on the frontiers of the desert, and it was better adapted, he said, than our cramping and close-fitting European garments to the needs and peculiarities of a hot climate. In face and figure, indeed, when so accoutred, he might easily have passed for an Arab himself; his dark hair, his regular oval face, his clear-cut features, and his rich brown complexion, still further bronzed by long exposure to the African sun, all helped to heighten his Oriental assumption and to turn him into a veritable son of the desert. Hardly a Mohammedan that passed but took him at a glance for one of the Faithful of Islam: mien and bearing were Oriental in the extreme: even at the mosques his behaviour passed muster; long usage had taught him with unerring skill when at Mecca to do as Mecca does.
The other man who stalked along by his side at a steady swing was the correspondent Considine, wearing European garb of the semi-tropical sort, in white helmet and linen jacket, and with the devil-may-care air of absolute assurance on his face which only the cosmopolitan Irishman in the journalistic service can ever assume to full perfection. The picture was symbolical of Khartoum itself during those short-lived days of its European culture. On the one hand, the tall white minarets and flat-topped houses of the native town; on the other hand, the great Government buildings in the meanest bastard Parisian style, the large hospitals, the European shops, the huge magazines, the guns, the ammunition, the telegraph, the printing-presses. But though those two were walking the streets of beleaguered Khartoum, their speech for the moment was not of Mahdis and assaults, but all of England. Haviland Dumaresq would have thought this indeed fame could he have heard the grave-looking Oriental in burnous and hood uttering his name with profound respect in the narrow and very malodorous alleys of that far African capital.
‘And you know Dumaresq, then!’ the Irishman exclaimed jauntily as he picked his way through the sloppy lane. ‘A wonderful man, and as learned as a library; but between you and me, you’ll admit, me boy, a wee little bit up in the clouds, for all that. Sure, I tried to read the “Encyclopædic Philosophy” meself once: it was at Peshawar, I remember, just after the outbreak of the Ali Musjid business, you know, when we were attacking the Khyber; and I found the book, in four volumes, in the library of the good civilian who put me up while I was arranging for my camels.
Says I to myself: “Considine, me boy, philosophy disdains the alarms of war: here’s a work that by all accounts you ought to know the inside of.” But when I took it up and began to read it, by George, sir, I hadn’t got through ten pages before I put it down again, staggered; not a blessed word of it could I understand. “Is it Persian it is?” says I to the civilian.— “No, sir,” says me host; “it’s meant for English.”— “Well, then,” says I, “if that’s philosophy, it’s not the proper mental pabulum, any way, for a descendant of fighting Considines of County Cavan.” And with that, I shut the book up right off with a bang, and devil another word of it do I mean to read as long as I’m left in the land of the living.’
‘That’s the real difficulty about Dumaresq’s fame,’ Linnell said quietly, adjusting his robe and stepping over a gutter. ‘He goes too deep for popular comprehension. If he were less great, he would seem to be greater. As it is, his work is oftener praised than looked at.’
‘To be sure,’ the Irishman assented with good-humoured acquiescence. ‘The book doesn’t sell. It’s caviare to the general. Macmurdo and White dropped a power of money over it at the first push off; and though the sales have pulled up a little of late years, owing to the reviews, it can’t have done much more yet than cover its expenses, for it’s a big venture. I know all about it, ye see, for I was a hack of Macmurdo’s meself, worse luck, when I first went to seek my fortune in London; slaved in the office from morning to night editing one of his children’s magazines — the Juvenile World, the old scamp called it; and a harder taskmaster than Sandy Macmurdo hasn’t been known in the world, I take it, since the children of Israel evacuated Egypt.’
‘It’s selling better now, I believe,’ Linnell continued with a quiet confidence. ‘A great many copies have been bought up lately — enough, I hope, to make Dumaresq comfortable for some time to come; at least, till other contingencies drop in to help him.’
‘Faith, it may make Sandy Macmurdo comfortable for a week or two in his neat little villa down at Wimbledon Hill,’ the Irishman answered with a boisterous laugh; ‘but sorrow a penny of it all will poor old Dumaresq ever finger. To me certain knowledge, he sold the copyright of the “Encyclopædic Philosophy” outright to Macmurdo and White for a very small trifle when I was working me fingers to the bone in the Juvenile World office.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ Linnell cried, stopping short in sudden dismay, and almost knocking over a fat old Nubian woman who was waddling behind them in her baggy clothes, unexpectant of the halt and the consequent blocking of the narrow alley.
‘Sure of it, is it? Why, I know it for a certainty,’ the Irishman answered. ‘I heard Macmurdo discussing the whole thing himself with the philosopher. He’s a sharp man of business, you know, is old Sandy Macmurdo: as good as three Jews or half a dozen Armenians: he sniffs a paying book as soon as he looks at it. Says Sandy: “This is a long investment, Mr. Dumaresq — a very long investment. If you hold on to it yourself, it’ll pay you in the end, I don’t deny: but it won’t begin to pay you a farthing for the next fifteen years or so. Let’s be fair and square. I’m a capitalist: you’re not. I can afford to wait: you can’t. I’m willing to bet on your chances of disciples. Better take a lump sum down now at once, than go on hoping and biding your time till you’re a man of seventy.” And Dumaresq saw he was right at a glance, so he closed with him then and there for a paltry cheque; for all the philosopher wanted himself was to get the book published and out somehow.’
‘Then sales at present don’t matter a bit to him!’ Linnell cried, profoundly disappointed.
‘No more than they do to us at Khartoum this minute,’ the Irishman answered with good-humoured ease. ‘Sorrow a penny does the poor old philosopher get from all his writings. So, if you’ve been giving away the book to your friends, as a Christmas present, to benefit the author, ye’ve just succeeded in supplying Macmurdo with extra pocket-money to lay on the favourite at Sandown Park Races.’
‘That’s exactly what I have been doing,’ Linnell blurted out with regretful annoyance.
‘And to what tune?’ Considine asked, amused.
Khartoum is a far cry from Petherton Episcopi; and Linnell, who would have shrunk as a man of honour from disclosing the facts of the case in England, found his modesty forsake him in the heart of Africa.
‘To the tune of eight hundred guineas or thereabouts,’ he answered with warmth.
The Irishman drew a very long breath.
‘Faith!’ he said, laughing, ‘I didn’t know ye had so much money about you. But I see your idea. Ye’re a generous fellow. Well, you’re quite mistaken. Macmurdo and White have divided every penny of it!’
To Linnell the disappointment was a very bitter one. He gnawed his heart at it. But he saw at a glance that Considine was right. The explanation cleared up at once whatever had seemed mysterious and unsatisfactory about Dumaresq’s conduct with regard to the money. With a start of regret, Linnell recognised now when it was all too late that Dumaresq must have paid for the picture of the Wren’s Nest out of his own pocket. He had meant to enrich the family by his nameless generosity, and he had only succeeded, after all, in making the poor old philosopher spend twenty guineas from his scanty stock upon a useless water-colour!
He hated his art in that moment of awakening. He wished he had never gone near Petherton. But then — he would never have known Psyche!
And here at Khartoum, surrounded and beleaguered, he had no chance even of setting things right again by word or letter. All ways were closed: no chance of escape. He must wait through the weary long months of the siege till relief arrived — if ever relief did arrive — from England.
But if relief never came at all, then Psyche at least would read his will, and know how much, after all, he loved her.
At Marquet’s shop in the European quarter, Considine paused and gazed into the window.
‘What are you looking for?’ Linnell asked carelessly.
‘For yourself, sure enough,’ the Irishman answered, with a sudden start of recognition.
A faint shudder passed over Linnell’s handsome face. He fancied he understood, yet hardly liked to confess it even to himself.
‘Why, what do you mean?’ he murmured incredulously.
‘For Linnell,’ the correspondent replied with cheerful alacrity. ‘Ye’ll know Linnell, surely?’
The painter froze up into himself once more.
‘No, I don’t feel sure I do,’ he answered, trembling.
‘Then you’ve missed the best medicine that ever was invented for a tropical climate,’ Considine exclaimed, with warmth, slapping his friend on the shoulder. ‘I’m going to secure some boxes for meself before they’re all gone, now supplies are cut off. Ye’d better let me get a couple for you. Linnell’s Pills — an American preparation. They’ve just driven Nile fever out of Khartoum. There’s nothing on earth like them for malarious diseases.’
‘Thank you,’ Linnell answered, drawing himself up stiffly; ‘I — I’m much obliged. I don’t think I’ll trouble you, though. I’m sure I don’t need them.’
‘Have ye ever heard of them?’ Considine asked, point-blank.
Linnell hesitated.
‘Yes,’ he said after a moment, overwhelmed with shame, but too much a man to deny the fact. ‘To tell you the simple truth — I live off them.’
Considine looked up at him with an amused smile.
‘An’ is it you, then, that makes them?’ he asked, with Irish quickness.
‘I did,’ Linnell answered, forcing himself bravely to speak the truth— ‘or at least my father did. We’ve sold the patent; but I live still on the proceeds of the invention.’
There was a long pause, while Considine went in and made his purchase. When he came out, he handed a little packet without a word to his friend, who slipped it guiltily into his waistcoat-pocket.
‘Linnell,’ the Irishman remarked with Hibernian candour, as they went on once more, ‘I never knew till to-day what a bit of a sn
ob ye were. Ye think pills are beneath the dignity of a member of an English bar’net’s family.’
The painter flushed up to his eyes at once, but not with anger.
‘I was just thinking to myself,’ he said quietly, ‘you might have put that utter misinterpretation upon my obvious embarrassment.’
‘Well, an’ why should a man be ashamed of having made his money in good sound pills?’ the Irishman asked with a confident air.
‘It’s not that,’ Linnell answered, quivering with sensitiveness— ‘though pills are at best a ludicrous sort of thing for a cultivated man to make his money out of; but I’ve always been afraid, to tell you the truth, I was living on the proceeds of pure quackery. It’s all a matter of rubbishing advertisement in the end, I fancy. I could never bring myself to use the money got from that source as if it were my own. As far as I could, I’ve tried to pay my way, myself, out of my immediate earnings from my own art, and held my father’s fortune apart as a sum at my disposal in trust for humanity.’
Considine paused and looked back at him astonished.
‘My dear fellow,’ he cried with convincing frankness, ‘if that’s your idea, I can assure ye, from me own personal knowledge, ye’re mistaken entirely. It isn’t quackery at all, at all. They’re the best pills that ever were compounded. Malarial fever goes down before them like grass. If ye won’t take me word for it, ye’ll take Gordon’s anny way; and ’twas Gordon that said to me only last night: “Considine, me boy,” said he, “wherever ye go in tropical climates, remember to take two things with ye — sulphate of quinine, and a gross of Linnell’s. The man that invented Linnell’s,” says he, “may never have had a statue put up to him, but he was the greatest benefactor of our species, after Jenner, in the nineteenth century.” That’s just what Gordon said to me himself; and he’s as likely, I should say, as anny man living to know what he’s talking about.’
The whole point of view was a novel one to Linnell.
