by Grant Allen
Harry lifted up his voice in one loud cry and wail of horror, and darted out of the room without another syllable.
“I know that cry,” the Colonel said in his own heart, trembling. “I have heard it before! It’s the very cry poor Walpole gave that night at Boolundshahr, just before he went out and shot himself!”
IV.
Harry had rushed out into the garden; of that, Sir Thomas felt certain. He followed him hastily, and saw him by the seat under the lime-trees in the far corner; he had something heavy in his right hand. Sir Thomas came closer and saw to his alarm and horror that it was indeed the small revolver from the old pistol-stand on the wall of the vestibule.
Even as the poor old soldier gazed, half petrified, the lad pushed a cartridge home feverishly into one of the chambers, and raised the weapon, with a stern resolution, up to his temple. Sir Thomas recognized in that very moment of awe and terror that it was the exact attitude and action of Harry’s dead father. The entire character and tragedy seemed to have handed itself down directly from father to son without a single change of detail or circumstance.
The old man darted forward with surprising haste, and caught Harry’s hand just as the finger rested upon the trigger.
“My boy! my boy!” he cried, wrenching the revolver easily from his trembling grasp, and flinging it, with a great curve, to the other end of the garden. “Not that way! Not that way! I haven’t reproached you with one word, Harry; but this is a bad return, indeed, for a life devoted to you. Oh, Harry! Harry! not by shuffling off your responsibilities and running away from them like a coward, not by that can you ever mend matters in the state you have got them into, but by living on, and fighting against your evil impulses and conquering them like a man — that’s the way, the right way, to get the better of them. Promise me, Harry, promise me, my boy, that whatever comes you won’t make away with yourself, as your father did; for my sake, live on and do better. I’m an old man, an old man, Harry, and I have but you in the world to care for or think about. Don’t let me be shamed in my old age by seeing the boy I have brought up and loved as a son dying in disgrace, a poltroon and a coward. Stand by your guns, my boy; stand by your guns, and fight it out to the last minute.”
Harry’s arm fell powerless to his side, and he broke down utterly, in his shame and self-abasement flinging himself wildly upon the seat beneath the lime-trees and covering his face with his hands to hide the hot tears that were bursting forth in a feverish torrent.
“I will go,” he said at last, in a choking voice, “I will go, uncle, and talk to Milly.”
“Do,” the Colonel said, soothing his arm tenderly. “Do, my boy. She’s a good girl, and she’ll advise you rightly. Go and speak to her; but before you go, promise me, promise me.”
Harry rose, and tried to shake off Sir Thomas’s heavy hand, laid with a fatherly pressure upon his struggling shoulder. But he couldn’t; the old soldier was still too strong for him. “Promise me,” he said once more caressingly, “promise me; promise me!”
Harry hesitated for a second, in his troubled mind; then, with an effort, he answered slowly, “I promise, uncle.”
Sir Thomas released him, and he rushed wildly away. “Remember,” the Colonel cried aloud, as he went in at the open folding windows, “remember, Harry, you are on your honour. If you break parole I shall think very badly, very badly indeed, of you.”
But as the old man turned back sadly into his lonely library, he thought to himself, “I wonder whether I oughtn’t to have dealt more harshly with him! I wonder whether I was right in letting him off so easily for two such extremely — such extremely grave breaches of military discipline!”
V.
“Then you think, Milly, that’s what I ought to do? You think I’d better go and never come back again till I feel quite sure of myself?”
“I think so, Harry, I think so.... I think so.... And yet ... it’s very hard not to see you for so long, Harry.”
“But I shall write to you every day, Milly, however long it may be; and if I conquer myself, why, then, Milly, I shall feel I can come back fit to marry you. I’m not fit now, and unless I feel that I’ve put myself straight with you and my uncle, I’ll never come back again — never, never, never!”
Milly’s lip trembled, but she only answered bravely, “That’s well, Harry; for then you’ll make all the more effort, and for my sake I’m sure you’ll conquer. But, Harry, I wish before you go you’d tell me plainly what else it is that you’ve been doing besides playing and losing your uncle’s money.”
“Oh, Milly, Milly, I can’t — I mustn’t. If I were to tell you that you could never again respect me — you could never love me.”
Milly was a wise girl, and pressed him no further. After all, there are some things it is better for none of us to know about one another, and this thing was just one of them.
So Harry Walpole went away from Cheltenham, nobody knew whither, except Milly; not daring to confide the secret of his whereabouts even to his uncle, nor seeing that sole friend once more before he went, but going away that very night, on his own resources, to seek his own fortune as best he might in the great world of London. “Tell my uncle why I have gone,” he said to Milly; “that it is in order to conquer myself; and tell him that I’ll write to you constantly, and that you will let him know from time to time whether I am well and making progress.”
It was a hard time for poor old Sir Thomas, no doubt, those four years that Harry was away from him, he knew not where, and he was left alone by himself in his dreary home; but he felt it was best so; he knew Harry was trying to conquer himself. How Harry lived or what he was doing he never heard; but once or twice Milly hinted to him that Harry seemed sorely in want of money, and Sir Thomas gave her some to send him, and every time it was at once returned, with a very firm but gentle message from Harry to say that he was able, happily, to do without it, and would not further trouble his uncle. It was only from Milly that Sir Thomas could learn anything about his dear boy, and he saw her and asked her about him so often that he learned at last to love her like a daughter.
Four years rolled slowly away, and at the end of them Sir Thomas was one day sitting in his little library, somewhat disconsolate, and reflecting to himself that he ought to have somebody living with him at his time of life, when suddenly there came a ring and a knock that made him start with surprise and pleasure, for he recognized them at once as being Harry’s. Next moment, the servant brought him a card, on which was engraved in small letters, “Dr. H. Walpole,” and down in the left-hand corner, “Surrey Hospital.”
Sir Thomas turned the card over and over with a momentary feeling of disappointment, for he had somehow fancied to himself that Harry had gone off covering himself with glory among Zulus or Afghans, and he couldn’t help feeling that beside that romantic dream of soldierly rehabilitation a plain doctor’s life was absurdly prosaic. Next moment, Harry himself was grasping his hand warmly, and prose and poetry were alike forgotten in that one vivid all-absorbing delight of his boy recovered.
As soon as the first flush of excitement was fairly over, and Harry had cried regretfully, “Why, uncle, how much older you’re looking!” and Sir Thomas had exclaimed in his fatherly joy, “Why, Harry, my boy, what a fine fellow you’ve turned out, God bless me!” Harry took a little bank bag of sovereigns from his coat pocket and laid it down, very red, upon the corner of the table. “These are yours, uncle,” he said simply.
Sir Thomas’s first impulse was to say, “No, no, my boy; keep them, keep them, and let us forget all about it,” but he checked himself just in time, for he saw that the best thing all round was to take them quietly and trouble poor Harry no more with the recollection. “Thank you, my boy,” the old soldier answered, taking them up and pocketing them as though it were merely the repayment of an ordinary debt. (“The School for the Orphan Children of Officers in the Army will be all the richer for it,” he thought to himself) “And now tell me, Harry, how have you been living, and what
have you been doing ever since I last saw you?”
“Uncle,” Harry cried — he hadn’t unlearnt to think of him and call him by that fond old name, then— “uncle, I’ve been conquering myself. From the day I left you I’ve never touched a card once — not once, uncle.”
“Except, I suppose, for a quiet rubber?” the old Colonel put in softly.
“Not even for a rubber, uncle,” Harry answered, half smiling; “nor a cue nor a dice-box either, nor anything like them. I’ve determined to steer clear of all the dangers that surround me by inheritance, and I’m not going to begin again as long as I live, uncle.”
“That’s well, Harry, that’s well. And you didn’t go in for a direct commission, then? I was in hopes, my boy, that you would still, in spite of everything, go into the Queen’s service.”
Harry’s face fell a little. “Uncle,” he said, “I’m sorry to have disappointed you; sorry to have been compelled to run counter to any little ambitions you might have had for me in that respect; but I felt, after all you told me that day, that the army would be a very dangerous profession for me; and though I didn’t want to be a coward and run away from danger, I didn’t want to be foolhardy and heedlessly expose myself to it. So I thought on the whole it would be wiser for me to give up the direct commission business altogether, and go in at once for being a doctor. It was safer, and therefore better in the end both for me and for you, uncle.”
Sir Thomas took the young man’s hand once more, and pressed it gently with a fatherly pressure. “My boy,” he said, “you are right, quite right — a great deal more right, indeed, than I was. But how on earth have you found money to keep yourself alive and pay for your education all these years — tell me Harry?”
Harry’s face flushed up again, this time with honest pride, as he answered bravely, “I’ve earned enough by teaching and drawing to pay my way the whole time, till I got qualified. I’ve been qualified now for nine months, and got a post as house-surgeon at our hospital; but I’ve waited to come and tell you till I’d saved up that money, you know, out of my salary, and now I’m coming back to settle down in practice here, uncle.”
Sir Thomas said nothing, but he rose from his chair and took both Harry’s hands in his with tears. For a few minutes, he looked at him tenderly and admiringly, then he said in his simple way, “God bless you! God bless you! I couldn’t have done it myself, my boy. I couldn’t have done it myself, Harry.”
There was a minute’s pause, and then Sir Thomas began again, “What a secretive little girl that dear little Miss Milly must be, never to have told me a word of all this, Harry. She kept as quiet about all details as if she was sworn to the utmost secrecy.”
Harry rose and opened the library door. “Milly!” he called out, and a light little figure glided in from the drawing-room opposite.
“We expect to be married in three weeks, uncle — as soon as the banns can be published,” Harry went on, presenting his future wife as it were to the Colonel. “Milly’s money will just be enough for us to live upon until I can scrape together a practice, and she has confidence enough in me to believe that in the end I shall manage to get one.”
Sir Thomas drew her down to his chair and kissed her forehead. “Milly,” he said, softly, “you have chosen well. Harry, you have done wisely. I shall have two children now instead of one. If you are to live near me I shall be very happy. But, Harry, you have proved yourself well. Now you must let me buy you a practice.”
THE END
Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece and Other Stories
CONTENTS
IVAN GREET’S MASTERPIECE.
KAREN.
PALLINGHURST BARROW.
THE ABBÉ’S REPENTANCE.
CLAUDE TYACK’S ORDEAL.
TOM’S WIFE.
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT.
THE MISSING LINK.
THE GREAT RUBY ROBBERY.
THE CONSCIENTIOUS BURGLAR.
THE POT-BOILER.
MELISSA’S TOUR.
A SOCIAL DIFFICULTY.
THE CHINESE PLAY AT THE HAYMARKET.
MY CIRCULAR TOUR.
THE MINOR POET.
The original frontispiece
PREFACE.
I have collected in this volume such of my more recent short stories as seemed to me to possess the best claim to literary treatment. They are mostly those which have been written more or less to please myself, and not to please the editor of this or that periodical. Others, however, are cast as a sop to Cerberus.
The first on the list, “Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece,” was originally published in the Graphic. I sent it, I confess, in fear and trembling, and was agreeably surprised when I found the editor had the boldness to print it unaltered. Two of the other stories here given to the world, however, met with less good fortune: “The Sixth Commandment” and “The Missing Link.” This is their first public appearance on any stage. They were sent round to every magazine in which they possessed the ghost of a chance; but, as usually happens when one writes anything in which one feels more than ordinary personal interest, they were unanimously declined by the whole press of London. Hitherto, I have been in the habit of cremating in one annual holocaust all such stillborn children of my imagination; henceforth I shall keep their poor little corpses by my side, and embalm them from time to time in an experimental volume of Rejected Efforts.
Of the other pieces here submitted to the reader, “Karen” first appeared in the Graphic; “Pallinghurst Barrow,” in the Illustrated London News; “The Abbé’s Repentance,” in the Contemporary Review; “Claude Tyack’s Ordeal,” “The Pot-boiler,” and “Melissa’s Tour,” in Longmans’ Magazine; “Tom’s Wife,” in the Novel Review; “The Great Ruby Robbery” and “The Conscientious Burglar,” in the Strand Magazine; “A Social Difficulty,” in the Cornhill; “The Chinese Play at the Haymarket” and “My Circular Tour,” in Belgravia; and “The Minor Poet,” in the Speaker. My thanks are due to the editors and proprietors of those periodicals for kind permission to reprint them here.
Many of these stories I like myself. I hope “The Pot-boiler” and “The Minor Poet” may soften the hard heart of the man who reviews me for the National Observer.
G. A.
Hotel du Cap, Antibes.
March, 1893.
IVAN GREET’S MASTERPIECE.
I.
’Twas at supper at Charlie Powell’s; every one there admitted Charlie was in splendid form. His audacity broke the record. He romanced away with even more than his usual brilliant recklessness. Truth and fiction blended well in his animated account of his day’s adventures. He had lunched that morning with the newly-appointed editor of a high-class journal for the home circle — circulation exceeding half a million — and had returned all agog with the glorious prospect of untold wealth opening fresh before him. So he discounted his success by inviting a dozen friends to champagne and lobster-salad at his rooms in St. James’s, and held forth to them, after his wont, in a rambling monologue.
“When I got to the house,” he said airily, poising a champagne-glass halfway up in his hand, “with the modest expectation of a chop and a pint of porter in the domestic ring — imagine my surprise at finding myself forthwith standing before the gates of an Oriental palace — small, undeniably small, a bijou in its way, but still, without doubt, a veritable palace. I touched the electric bell. Hi, presto! at my touch the door flew open as if by magic, and disclosed — a Circassian slave, in a becoming costume à la Liberty in Regent Street, and smiling like the advertisement of a patent dentifrice! I gasped out — —”
“But how did ye know she was a Circassian?” Paddy O’Connor inquired, interrupting him brusquely. (His name was really Francis Xavier O’Connor, but they called him “Paddy” for short, just to mark his Celtic origin.)
Charlie Powell smiled a contemptuously condescending smile. He was then on the boom, as chief literary lion. “How do I know ye’re an Oirishman, Paddy?” he answered, hardly heeding the interruption. “By her acce
nt, my dear boy; her pure, unadulterated Circassian accent! ‘Is Mr. Morrison at home?’ I gasped out to the Vision of Beauty. The Vision of Beauty smiled and nodded — her English being chiefly confined to smiles, with a Circassian flavour; and led me on by degrees into the great man’s presence. I mounted a stair, with a stained-glass window all yellows and browns, very fine and Burne-Jonesey; I passed through a drawing-room in the Stamboul style — couches, rugs, and draperies; and after various corridors — Byzantine, Persian, Moorish — I reached at last a sort of arcaded alcove at the further end, where two men lay reclining on an Eastern divan — one, a fez on his head, pulling hard at a chibouque; the other, bare-headed, burbling smoke through a hookah. The bare-headed one rose: ‘Mr. Powell,’ says he, waving his hand to present me, ‘My friend, Macpherson Psaha!’ I bowed, and looked unconcerned. I wanted them to think I’d lived all my life hob-nobbing with Pashas. Well, we talked for a while about the weather and the crops, and the murder at Mile End, and the state of Islam; when, presently, of a sudden, Morrison claps his hands — so — and another Circassian slave, still more beautiful, enters.
“‘Lunch, houri,’ says Morrison.
“‘The effendi is served,’ says the Circassian.
“And down we went to the dining-room. Bombay black-wood, every inch of it, inlaid with ivory. Venetian glass on the table; solid silver on the sideboard. Only us three, if you please, to lunch; but everything as spick and span as if the Prince was of the company. The three Circassian slaves, in Liberty caps, stood behind our chairs — one goddess apiece — and looked after us royally. Chops and porter, indeed! It was a banquet for a poet; Ivan Greet should have been there; he’d have mugged up an ode about it. Clear turtle and Chablis — the very best brand; then smelts and sweetbreads; next lamb and mint sauce; ortolans on toast; ice-pudding; fresh strawberries. A guinea each, strawberries, I give you my word, just now at Covent Garden. Oh, mamma! what a lunch, boys! The Hebes poured champagne from a golden flagon; that is to say, at any rate” — for Paddy’s eye was upon him— “the neck of the bottle was wrapped in gilt tinfoil. And all the time Morrison talked — great guns, how he talked! I never heard anything in my life to equal it. The man’s been everywhere, from Peru to Siberia. The man’s been everything, from a cowboy to a communard. My hair stood on end with half the things he said to me; and I haven’t got hair so easily raised as some people’s. Was I prepared to sell my soul for Saxon gold at the magnificent rate of five guineas a column? Was I prepared to jump out of my skin! I choked with delight. Hadn’t I sold it all along to the enemies of Wales for a miserable pittance of thirty shillings? What did he want me to do? Why, contribute third leaders — you know the kind of thing — tootles on the penny-trumpet about irrelevant items of non-political news — the wit and humour of the fair, best domestic style, informed throughout with wide general culture. An allusion to Aristophanes; a passing hint at Rabelais; what Lucian would have said to his friends on this theme; how the row at the School Board would have affected Sam Johnson.
