The Orchard of Tears E-Book

Sax Rohmer

• Herausgeber: anamsaleem
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In a marked departure from the genre mysteries that brought him literary fame, Fu Manchu creator Sax Rohmer switches gears and crafts a pastoral idyll in the sophisticated romance novel The Orchard of Tears. Prone to intellectual musings, protagonist Paul Merle spends his days critically analyzing the world around him. Will he ever find room for an affair of the heart?

Leseprobe

The Orchard of Tears

Sax Rohmer

.

I

It was high noon of a perfect summer's day. Beneath green sun blinds, upon the terrace overlooking the lawns, Paul Mario, having finished his lunch, lay back against the cushions of a white deck-chair and studied the prospect. Sloping turf, rose-gay paths, and lichened brick steps, hollowed with age, zigzagging leisurely down to the fir avenue, carried the eye onward again to where the river wound its way through verdant banks toward the distant town.

A lark wooed the day with sweet music. Higher and ever higher rose the little sun-worshipper, pouring out his rapturous hymn to Apollo. Swallows, who but lately had crossed the battlefields of southern Europe, glided around Hatton Towers, describing mystic figures in the air, whilst the high feeble chirping of the younger generation sounded from the nests beneath the eaves. Amid the climbing roses bees were busy, their communal labours an object-lesson for self-seeking man; and almost at Mario's feet a company of ants swarmed over the yet writhing body of an unfortunate caterpillar, who had dropped from an apple-tree to fall a prey to that savage natural law of death to the weak. The harsh voice of a sentinel crow spoke from a neighbouring cornfield, and a cloud of dusky marauders took the air instantly, and before the sharp crack of the farmer's fowling-piece came to confirm the warning. In the hush of noon the tones of some haymakers at their patriarchal labours in a meadow beyond the stream were clearly audible--and the atmosphere constantly vibrated with remote booming of guns on the Western front.

Paul Mario was sufficiently distinguished in appearance to have been a person of no importance. His virile, curling black hair had the raven's-wing sheen betraying remote Italian forebears, and for that matter there was in his entire cast of countenance and the poise of his fine head something statuesquely Roman, Southern, exotic. His large but deep-set eyes were of so dark a blue as very generally to pass for "black"; and whilst in some moods they were soft and dreamy, in others, notably in moments of enthusiasm, they burnt darkly fierce in his pale olive face. In profile there was a certain resemblance to the Vatican head of Julius Caesar, save for the mouth, which had more gentle curves, and which was not unlike that of Dante; but seen full-face, and allowing for the fact that Paul Mario was clean-shaven, the likeness of feature to the traditional Christ was startling. This resemblance is equally notable in the face of Shakespeare.

Rather above medium height, well but slightly proportioned, the uneasy spirit of the man ever looking out of those arresting eyes so wholly dominated him as to create a false impression of fragility, of a casket too frail to confine the burning, eager soul within. His emotions were dynamic, and in his every mannerism there was distinction. The vein of femininity which is found in all creative artists betrayed itself in one item of Mario's attire: a white French knot, which slightly overlay the lapels of his well-worn Norfolk jacket.

To the world's caricaturists, when Paul Mario, at the age of twenty-six, had swept across the literary terrain, storming line after line, the white knot had proved a boon. Delilah, a lyrical drama, written in French, and first published in Paris, achieved for this darling of Minerva a reputation which no man is entitled to expect during his lifetime. Within twelve months of the date of publication it had appeared in almost every civilised language, and had been staged in New York, where it created a furore. Of Madame Caligula, a novel, which followed it, thirty-one editions were subscribed in six days! 

The miracle of Paul Mario's success was perhaps to be explained by the neutrality of his genius. A passionate, elemental sympathy with all nature, a seeming capacity to hear the language of the flowers, the voices of the stars and to love and understand the lowliest things that God has made, bore him straight to the heart of England as surely as it swept his name into the holy of holies of artistic France, spoke to Russia's sombre soul and temporarily revolutionised the literature of the United States. His work belonged to no "school," and its charm was not due to "style"; therefore his books lost little in translation, for true genius speaks to every man in his own tongue.

Sympathetic atmosphere was as necessary to Paul Mario as pure air to the general. Deliberate ugliness hurt him, and the ugliness which is the handiwork of God aroused within him a yearning sorrow for poor humanity who might be of the White Company, were it not for avarice, hate and lust. The war, even in its earlier phases, stirred the ultimate deeps of his nature, and knowing himself, since genius cannot be blind, for what he was, a world power, a spiritual sword, he chafed and fretted in enforced inactivity, striving valiantly to reconcile himself to the ugliness of military life. Courted as only poets and actors are courted, he was offered posts and commissions in bewildering variety; but all of them he scornfully rejected. The insane injustice of such selection enraged him.

A severe nervous lesion freed him from the galley-bench of a training-camp, and sent him on a weary pilgrimage through the military hospitals to discharge--and freedom; freedom, which to that ardent nature proved to be irksome. For whilst the very springs of his genius were dammed by the agony of a world in travail, he found himself outside the mighty theatre, a mere bystander having no part in the rebirth of humanity.

II

Someone was approaching along the path consecrated by a million weary feet and still known as the Pilgrim's Way, someone who wore the ugly uniform of a Guards officer (which is a sort of du Maurier survival demanding Dundreary whiskers). He seemed to hesitate ere he turned aside, opened the gate and began to mount those hundred and twenty mossy steps which led up to the terrace.

The newcomer, whose tunic had seen much service, was a man perhaps two or three years Paul Mario's senior, and already the bleaching hand of Time had brushed his temples with furtive fingers. He was dark but of sanguine colouring, now overlaid with a deep tan, wore a short military moustache and possessed those humorous grey eyes which seem to detect in all creation hues roseate and pleasing; eyes made for laughter and which no man other than a good fellow ever owned.

Gaining the terrace and raising his hand to his cap in salute, the officer smiled, and his smile fulfilled all the promise of the grey eyes and would have brought a ray of sunshine into the deepest and darkest cell of the Bastille itself.

"I believe I am trespassing," he began--then, as Paul Mario rose: "By all that's gracious and wonderful, it's Paul!"

"Don!" exclaimed the other, and sprang forward in his own impetuous fashion, grasping the newcomer by both shoulders and staring eagerly into the suntanned face. "Dear old Don! A thousand welcomes, boy!" And releasing his grip on the shoulders, he seized both hands and shook them with a vigour that was not assumed but was merely an outlet for his brimming emotions.

"Some kindly coy dryad of the woods has guided my footsteps to this blessed spot," declared Don. "The last inn which I passed--observe my selection of the word, passed--known, I believe, as the 'Pig and Something-or-other,' is fully three sunny miles behind me. From the arid and dusty path below I observed the siphon on your table----"

"And you determined to become a trespasser?" cried Paul Mario joyously, pushing his friend into the cane rest-chair and preparing a drink for him. "I will build an altar to your dryad, Don; for there is certainly something miraculous in your appearance at Hatton Towers."

"When I have suitably reduced my temperature I will explain. But I have yet to learn what you are doing here. I had always understood that Hatton Towers----" 

"My dear fellow, it's mine!" cried Paul excitedly. "My Uncle Jacques dramatically bequeathed this wonderful place to me, altering his will on the day that I renounced the pen and entered an officer's training corps. He was a remarkable old bachelor, Don----"

Don raised his hand, checking Paul's speech. "My dear Paul, you cannot possibly amplify your own description of Sir Jacques, with which you entertained us one evening in a certain top set at Oxford. Do you remember those rooms, Paul?"

"Do I remember them!"

"I do, and I remember your account of the saintly Uncle, for your acquaintance had begun and terminated during a week of the previous long vacation which you had spent here at Hatton. 'Uncle Jacques,' you informed us, 'is a delightful survival, bearing a really remarkable resemblance to a camel. Excepting his weakness for classic statuary and studies in the nude, his life is of Mayflower purity. He made his fortune on the Baltic Exchange, was knighted owing to a clerical error, and built the appalling church at Mid Hatton.'" 

Paul laughed boyishly. "At least we were sincere in our youthful cynicism, Don. You may add the note to your very accurate recollections of Sir Jacques that on the publication of Delilah he instructed his butler to say that he was abroad whenever I might call!" 

Fascinated as of old by his whimsical language, the cap-and-bells which he loved to assume, Paul watched affectionately the smiling face of Donald Courtier. Momentarily a faint tinge of melancholy had clouded the gaiety of Don's grey eyes; for this chance meeting had conjured up memories of a youth already slipping from his grasp, devoured by the all-consuming war; memories of many a careless hour treasured now as exquisite relics are treasured, of many a good fellow who would never again load his pipe from Paul Mario's capacious, celebrated and hospitable tobacco jar, as he, Don, was doing; of days of sheer indolent joy, of nights of wild and carefree gladness.

"Good old Paul," he murmured, raising his glass. "Here's to the late Sir Jacques. So you are out of it?"

Paul Mario nodded and took from the pocket of his threadbare golf jacket the very twin of Don's curved and blackened briar, drawing towards him the tobacco jar upon the table--a Mycenæan vase from the tomb of Rameses III. A short silence fell between them.

"Frankly, I envy you," said Don suddenly, breaking the spell, "although I realise that actually you have suffered as deeply as many a man who has spent two years in the trenches. One cannot imagine the lyre of Apollo attuned to What's-the-name's marches."

"Two years," echoed Paul; "is it really two years since we met?"

"Two years on June the twenty-second. On June the twenty-second, nineteen hundred and fifteen, you saw me off from Victoria of hateful memory. I have been home six or seven times in the interval, but somehow or other have always missed you. I was appalled when I heard you had joined. God knows we need such brains as yours, but they would be wasted on the Somme; and genius is too rare to be exposed to the sniper's bullet. What are you doing?"

The sympathy between the two was so perfect that Paul Mario knew the question to refer not to his private plans but to his part in the world drama.

"Beyond daily descending lower in my own esteem--nothing."

"Yet you might do so much."

"I know," said Paul Mario. "But--it awes me."

If his work had not already proved him, the genius of the man must have been rendered apparent by his entire lack of false modesty. Praise and censure alike left him uninfluenced--although few artists can exist without a modicum of the former: he knew himself born to sway the minds of millions and was half fearful of his self-knowledge. "I know," he said, and pipe in hand he gazed wistfully across the valley.

A faint breeze crept through the fir avenue, bearing with it a muffled booming sound which was sufficient to raise the curtain of distance--never truly opaque for such as he--and to display to that acute inner vision a reeking battlefield. Before his shuddering soul defiled men maimed, blind, bleeding from ghastly hurts; men long dead. Women he saw in lowly hovels, weeping over cots fashioned from rough boxes; women, dry-eyed, mutely tragic, surrounded by softness, luxury and servitude, wearing love gifts of a hand for ever stilled, dreaming of lover-words whispered in a voice for ever mute. He seemed to float spiritually over the whole world upon that wave of sound and to find the whole world stricken, desolate, its fairness mockery and its music a sob.

"At the moment, no doubt," said Don, "you feel as though you had been knocked out of the ring in the first round. But this phase will pass. The point is, that you never had any business in the ring at all. No quarrel ever actually begins with a blow, and no quarrel was ever terminated by one. Genius--perverted, I'll grant you, but nevertheless genius--started this war; and we are English enough to think that we can end it by brute force. Pass the matches."

"You are really of opinion," asked Paul dreamily, "that I should be doing my utmost if I stuck to my last?"

"Unquestionably. There are a thousand and one things of vital interest to all humanity which have not been said yet, which only you can say, a thousand and one aspects of the Deluge not yet presented to the world. Above all, Paul, there are millions of poor bereaved souls who suffer dumbly and vaguely wonder for what crime they are being punished."

"Would you have me tell them that their faith, their churches, are to blame?"

"Not necessarily. The churches will receive many a hard knock without you adding your quota. Merry England has always nourished the 'Down-wither'; we breed the 'Down-withers'; and they will raise their slogan of 'Down with everything' soon enough. I see your part, Paul, as that of a reconstructor rather than a 'Down-wither.' Any fool can smash a Ming pot but no man living to-day can make one. You think that the churches have failed?"

"On the whole, yes. If we here in England are firm in our spiritual faith, why are the churches empty at such an hour as this and the salons of the crystal-gazers full?"

"Because we are not firm in our spiritual faith. But many of us know and admit that. The point is, can you tell us why, and indicate a remedy?" 

Paul Mario's expression grew wrapt, and he stared out over the valley into a land which it is given to few ever to explore. "I believe I can," he answered softly; "but I dare not attempt such a task without the unshakable conviction that mine is the chosen hand."

"I am glad to hear you say it; those doubts prove to me that you recognise the power of your pen. They are fools who hold that a ton of high-explosive is worth all the rhetoric of Cicero. It was not Krupps who plunged the Central Empires into the pit, Paul, but Bernhardi, Nietzsche and What's-his-name. Wagner's music has done more to form the German character than Bismarck's diplomacy. Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth means more to England than Magna Charta." 

"I agree."

"When the last of our marshals has stuck the last of his pins in the last war map, all the belligerents will still be of the same opinion as before the war began. The statesman of to-day is perhaps past praying for, but your book will help to form the statesman of to-morrow."

"You dazzle me. You would make me the spiritual father of a new Europe."

"And a new America. Why not? You have heard the call and you are not the man to shirk it. Lesser men than you have tried--all honour to them if they were sincere--to voice the yearnings, the questions, the doubts, of a generation that has outgrown its spiritual garments. All the world feels, knows, that a new voice must come soon. The world is waiting for you, Paul." 

III

Flamby Duveen lay flat amid the bluebells, one hand outstretched before her and resting lightly upon a little mound of moss. It was a small brown hand and she held it in such a manner, knuckles upward, and imparted to it so cunning and peculiar a movement that it assumed quite an uncanny resemblance to a tiny and shrinking hare.

Some four feet in front of her, at the edge of a small clearing in the bluebell forest, from a clump of ferns two long silky ears upstood, motionless, like twin sentries, and from between the thick stalks of the flowers which intermingled with the ferns one round bright eye regarded the moving hand fascinatedly.

Flamby's lips were pursed up and a soft low whistle quite peculiar in tone caused the silky ears of the watching hare to twitch sharply. But the little animal remained otherwise motionless and continued to study the odd billowy motions of the brown hand with that eager wonder-bright eye. The whistling continued, and the hare ventured forth from cover, coming fully twelve inches nearer to Flamby. Flamby constrained her breathing as much as was consistent with maintaining the magical whistle. Her hand wriggled insinuatingly forward, revealing a round bare arm, brown as a nut upon its outer curves and creamy on the inner.

The hypnotised subject ventured a foot nearer. Flamby's siren song grew almost inaudible above the bird-calls of the surrounding wood, but it held its sway over the fascinated hare, for the animal suddenly sprang across the space intervening between himself and the mysterious hand and sat studying that phenomenon at close quarters.

A little finger softly caressed one furry forepaw. Up went the hare's ears again and his whole body grew rigid. The caress was continued, however, and the animal grew to like it. Two gentle fingers passed lightly along his back and he was thrilled ecstatically. Now, his silky ears were grasped, firmly, confidently; and unresisting, he allowed himself to be couched in the crook of a soft arm. His heart was beating rapidly, but with a kind of joyous fear hitherto unknown and to which he resigned himself without a struggle.

Flamby wriggled up on to her knees and holding the hare in her lap petted the wild thing as though it had been some docile kitten. "Sweet little Silk Ears," she whispered endearingly. "What a funny tiny tail!"

Quite contentedly now, the hare crouched, rubbing its blunt nose against her hands and peering furtively up into her face and quickly down again. Flamby studied the little creature with an oddly critical eye.

"Your funny ears go this way and that way," she murmured, raising one hand and drawing imaginary lines in the air to illustrate her words; "so and so. I never noticed before those little specks in your fur, Silk Ears. They only show in some lights but they are there right enough. Now I am going to study your tiny toes, Silky, and you don't have to be afraid...."

Raising one of the hare's feet, Flamby peered at it closely, at the same time continuing to caress the perfectly happy animal. She was so engaged when suddenly up went the long ears, and uttering a faint cry resembling an infant's whimper the hare sprang from her lap into the sea of bluebells and instantly disappeared. A harsh grip fastened upon Flamby's shoulder.

Lithely as one of the wild things with whom she was half kin and who seemed to recognise the kinship, Flamby came to her feet, shaking off the restraining hand, turned and confronted the man who had crept up behind her.

He was an undersized, foxy fellow, dressed as a gamekeeper and carrying a fowling-piece under one arm. His small eyes regarded her through narrowed lids.

"So I've caught you at last, have I," he said; "caught you red-handed."

He suddenly seized her wrist and dragged her towards him. The bright colour fled from Flamby's cheeks leaving her evenly dusky; but her grey eyes flashed dangerously.

"Poachin', eh?" sneered the gamekeeper. "Same as your father."

Deliberately, and with calculated intent, Flamby raised her right foot, shod in a clumsy, thick-soled shoe, and kicked the speaker on the knee. He uttered a half-stifled cry of pain, releasing her wrist and clenching his fist. But she leapt back from him with all the easy agility of a young antelope.

"You're a blasted liar!" she screamed, her oval face now flushing darkly so that her eyes seemed supernormally bright. "I wasn't poaching. My father may have poached, but you hadn't the pluck to try and stop him. Guy Fawkes! Why don't you go and fight like he did?" 

Fawkes--for this was indeed the keeper's name--sprang at her clumsily; his knee was badly bruised. But Flamby eluded him with ease, gliding behind the trunk of a friendly oak and peering out at the enraged man elfishly.

"When are they going to burn you?" she inquired.

Fawkes laid his gun upon the ground, without removing his gaze from the flushed mocking face, and began cautiously to advance. He was a man for whom Flamby in the ordinary way entertained a profound contempt, but there was that in his slinking foxy manner which vaguely disturbed her. For long enough there had been wordy warfare between them, but to-day Flamby realised that she had aroused something within the man which had never hitherto shown upon the surface; and into his eyes had come a light which since she had passed her thirteenth year she had sometimes seen and hated in the eyes of men, but had never thought to see and fear in the eyes of Fawkes. For the first time within her memory she realised that Bluebell Hollow was a very lonely spot.

"You daren't hit me," she said, rather breathlessly. "I'd play hell."

"I don't want to hit you," replied Fawkes, still advancing; "but you're goin' to pay for that kick."

"I'll pay with another," snapped Flamby, her fiery nature reasserting itself momentarily.

But despite the bravado, she was half fearful, and therefore some of her inherent woodcraft deserted her, so much so that not noting a tuft of ferns which uprose almost at her heels, she stepped quickly back, stumbled, and Fawkes had his arms about her, holding her close.

"Now what can you do?" he sneered, his crafty face very close to hers.

"This," breathed Flamby, her colour departing again.

She seized his ear in her teeth and bit him savagely. Fawkes uttered a hoarse scream of pain, and a second time released her, clapping his hand to the wounded member.

"You damned witch cat," he said. "I could kill you."

Flamby leapt from him, panting. "You couldn't!" she taunted. "All you can kill is rabbits!"

Through an opening in the dense greenwood a ray of sunlight spilled its gold upon the carpet of Bluebell Hollow, and Flamby stood, defiant, head thrown back, where the edge of the ray touched her wonderful, disordered hair and magically turned it to sombre fire. Venomous yet, but doubtful, Fawkes confronted her, now holding his handkerchief to his ear. And so the pair were posed when Paul Mario and Donald Courtier came down the steep path skirting the dell. Don grasped Paul by the arm.

"As I live," he said, "there surely is my kindly coy nymph of the woods--now divinely visible--who led me to your doors!"

Together they stood, enchanted by the girl's wild beauty, which that wonderful setting enhanced. But Flamby had heard their approach, and, flinging one rapid glance in their direction, she ran off up a sloping aisle of greenwood and was lost to view.

At the same moment Fawkes, hitherto invisible from the path, stooped to recover his fowling-piece and turned, looking up at the intruders. Recognising Paul Mario, he raised the peak of his cap and began to climb the dell-side, head lowered shamefacedly.

"It's Fawkes," said Paul--"Uncle Jacques' gamekeeper. Presumably this wood belonged to him."

"Lucky man," replied Don. "Did he also own the wood-nymphs?"

Paul laughed suddenly and boyishly, as was his wont, and nodded to Fawkes when the latter climbed up on to the path beside them. "You are Luke Fawkes, are you not?" he asked. "I recall seeing you yesterday with the others."

"Yes, sir," answered Fawkes, again raising the peak of his cap.

Having so spoken Fawkes become like a man of stone, standing before them, gaze averted, as a detected criminal. One might have supposed that a bloody secret gnawed at the bosom of Fawkes; but his private life was blameless and his past above reproach. His wife acted as charwoman at the church built by Sir Jacques.

"Did you not observe a certain nymph among the bluebells, Fawkes?" asked Don whimsically.

At the first syllable Fawkes sprang into an attitude of alert and fearful attention, listened as to the pronouncement of a foreman juror, and replied, "No, sir," with the relieved air of a man surprised to find himself still living. "I see Flamby Duveen, I did," he continued, in his reedy voice--"poachin', same as her father...."

"Poachin'--same as her father," came a weird echo from the wood.

Paul and Don stared at one another questioningly, but Fawkes' sandy countenance assumed a deeper hue.

"She's the worst character in these parts," he went on hastily. "Bad as her father, she is."

"Father, she is," mocked the echo.

"She'll come to a bad end," declared the now scarlet Fawkes.

"A bad end," concurred the magical echo, its accent and intonation eerily reproducing those of the gamekeeper. Then: "Whose wife stole the key of the poor-box?" inquired the spirit voice, and finally: "When are they going to burn you?"

At that Don succumbed to uncontrollable laughter, and Paul had much ado to preserve his gravity.

"She appears to be very young, Fawkes," he said gently; "little more than a child. High spirits are proper and natural after all; but, of course I appreciate the difficulties of your position. Good day."

"Good day, sir," said Fawkes, again momentarily relieved apparently from the sense of impending harm. "Good day, sir." He raised the peak of his cap, turned and resumed his slinking progress.

"A strange coincidence," commented Don, taking Paul's arm.

"You are pursuing your fancy about the nymph visible and invisible?"

"Not entirely, Paul. But you may remember, if the incident has not banished the fact from your mind, that you are at present conducting me, at my request, to Something-or-other Cottage, which I had failed to find unassisted."

"Quite so. We are almost there. Yonder is Babylon Lane, which I understand is part of my legacy. Dovelands Cottage, I believe, is situated about half-way along it."

"Babylon Lane," mused Don. "Why so named?"

"That I cannot tell you. The name of Babylon invariably conjures up strange pictures of pagan feasts, don't you find? The mere sound of the word is sufficient to transport us to the great temple of Ishtar, and to dazzle our imagination with processions of flower-crowned priestesses. Heaven alone knows by what odd freak this peaceful lane was named after the city of Semiramis. But you were speaking of a coincidence."

"Yes, it is the mother of the nymph, Flamby, that I am going to visit; the Widow Duveen."

"Then this girl with the siren hair is she of whom you spoke?"

"Evidently none other. I told you, Paul, that I bore a message from her father, given to me under pledge of secrecy as he lay dying, to her mother. Paul, the man's life was a romance--a tragic romance. I cannot divulge his secrets, but his name was not Duveen; he was a cadet of one of the oldest families in Ireland."

"You interest me intensely. He seems to have been a wild fellow."

"Wild, indeed; and drink was his ruin. But he was a man, and by birth a gentleman. I am anxious to meet his widow."

"Of course, she knows of his death?"

"Oh, you need fear no distressing scenes, Paul. I remember how the grief of others affects you. He died six months ago."

"It affects me, Don, when I can do nothing to lessen it. Before helpless grief I find myself abashed, afraid, as before a great mystery--which it is. Only one day last week, passing through a poor quarter of South London, my cab was delayed almost beside a solitary funeral coach which followed a hearse. The coffin bore one poor humble little wreath. In the coach sat a woman, a young woman, alone--and hers was the wreath upon the coffin, her husband's coffin. He had died after discharge from a military hospital; so much I learned from the cabman, who had known the couple. She sat there dry-eyed and staring straight before her. No one took the slightest notice of the hearse, or of the lonely mourner. Don, that woman's face still haunts me. Perhaps he had been a blackguard--I gathered that he had; but he was her man, and she had lost him, and the world was empty for her. No pompous state funeral could have embodied such tragedy as that solitary figure following the spectre of her vanished joy."

Don turned impulsively to the speaker. "You dear old sentimentalist," he said; "do you really continue to believe in the faith of woman?"

Paul glanced aside at him. "Had I ever doubted it, Yvonne would have reassured me. Wait until you meet a Yvonne, old man; then I shall ask you if you really continue to believe in the faith of woman. Here we are." 

IV

A trellis-covered path canopied with roses led up to the door of Dovelands Cottage. On the left was a low lichened wall, and on the right a bed of flowers bordering a trimly kept lawn, which faced the rustic porch. Dovelands Cottage was entirely screened from the view of anyone passing along Babylon Lane by a high and dense privet hedge, which carried on its unbroken barrier to the end of the tiny orchard and kitchen-garden flanking the bungalow building on the left.

As Paul opened the white gate a cattle-bell attached to it jangled warningly, and out into the porch Mrs. Duveen came to meet them. She was a tiny woman, having a complexion like a shrivelled pippin, and the general appearance of a Zingari, for she wore huge ear-rings and possessed shrewd eyes of Oriental shape and colour. There was a bluish tinge about her lips, and she had a trick of pressing one labour-gnarled hand to her breast. She curtsied quaintly.

Paul greeted her with the charming courtesy which he observed towards everyone.

"Mrs. Duveen, I believe? I am Paul Mario, and this is Captain Courtier, who has a message to give to you. I fear we may have come at an awkward hour, but Captain Courtier's time is unfortunately limited."

Mrs. Duveen repeated the curtsey. "Will it please you to step in, sirs," she said, her eyes fixed upon Don's face in a sort of eager scrutiny. "It is surely kind of you to come, sir"--to Don.

They entered a small living room, stuffy because of the characteristically closed windows, but marked by a neatness of its appointments for which the gipsy appearance of Mrs. Duveen had not prepared them. There were several unframed drawings in pastel and water-colour, of birds and animals, upon the walls, and above the little mantelshelf hung a gleaming German helmet, surmounted by a golden eagle. On the mantelshelf itself were fuses, bombs and shell-cases, a china clock under a glass dome, and a cabinet photograph of a handsome man in the uniform of a sergeant of Irish Guards. Before the clock, and resting against it so as to occupy the place of honour, was a silver cigarette case.

Don's eyes, as his gaze fell on this last ornament, grew unaccountably misty, and he turned aside, staring out of the low window. Mrs. Duveen, who throughout the time that she had been placing chairs for her visitors (first dusting the seats with her apron) had watched the captain constantly, at the same moment burst into tears.

"God bless you for coming, sir," she sobbed. "Michael loved the ground you walked on, and he'd have been a happy man to-day to have seen you here in his own house."

Don made no reply, continuing to stare out of the window, and Mrs. Duveen cried, silently now. Presently Paul caught his friend's eye and mutely conveying warning of his intention, rose.

"Your grief does you honour, Mrs. Duveen," he said. "Your husband was one I should have been proud to call my friend, and I envy Captain Courtier the memory of such a comrade. There are confidences upon which it is not proper that I should intrude; therefore, with your permission, I am going to admire your charming garden until you wish me to rejoin you."

Bareheaded, he stepped out through the porch and on to the trim lawn, noting in passing that the home-made bookshelf beside the door bore copies of Shakespeare, Homer, Horace and other volumes rarely found in a workman's abode. Lémpriére's Classical Dictionary was there, and Kipling's Jungle Book, Darwin's Origin of Species, and Selous' Romance of Insect Life. Assuredly, Sergeant Duveen had been a strange man. 

* * * * *

Some twenty minutes later the widow came out, followed by Don. Mrs. Duveen's eyes were red, but she had recovered her composure, and now held in her hand the silver cigarette case from the mantelpiece.

"May I show you this, sir," she said, repeating her quaint curtsey to Paul. "Michael valued it more than anything he possessed."

Paul took the case from her hand and examined the inscription:

To Sergeant Michael Duveen, -- Company, Irish Guards, from Captain Donald Courtier, in memory of February 9th, 1916.

Opening the case, he found it to contain a photograph of Don. The latter, who was watching him, spoke:

"My affairs would have terminated on February the ninth, Paul, if Duveen had not been there. He was pipped twice."

"His honour doesn't tell you, sir," added Mrs. Duveen, "that he brought Michael in on his back with the bullets thick around him."

"Oh! oh!" cried Don gaily. "So that's the story, is it! Well, never mind, Mrs. Duveen; it was all in the day's work. What the Sergeant did deserved the V.C., and he'd have had it if I could have got it for him. What I did was no more than the duty of a stretcher-bearer."

Mrs. Duveen shook her head, smiling wanly, the thin hand pressed to her breast. "I'm sorry you couldn't meet Flamby, sir," she said. "She should have been home before this."

"No matter," replied Don. "I shall look forward to meeting her on my next visit."

They took their departure, Mrs. Duveen accompanying them to the gate and watching Don as long as he remained in sight.

"Did you observe the drawings on the wall?" he asked Paul, as they pursued their way along Babylon Lane.

"I did. They were original and seemed to be interesting."

"Remarkably so; and they are the work of our wood nymph."

"Really! Where can she have acquired her art?"

"From her father, I gather. Paul, I am keenly disappointed to have missed Flamby. The child of such singularly ill-assorted parents could not well fail to be unusual. I wonder if the girl suspects that her father was not what he seemed? Mrs. Duveen has always taken the fact for granted that her husband was a nobleman in disguise! It may account for her adoration of a man who seems to have led her a hell of a life. I have placed in her hands a certain locket which Duveen wore attached to a chain about his neck; I believe that it contains evidence of his real identity, but he clearly intended his wife to remain in perpetual ignorance of this, for the locket is never to be opened except by Flamby, and only by Flamby on the day of her wedding. I fear this popular-novel theme will offend your æsthetic sensibilities, Paul!"

"My dear fellow, I am rapidly approaching the conclusion that life is made up more of melodrama than of psychological hair-splitting and that the penmen dear to the servants' hall more truly portray it than Henry James ever hoped to do or Meredith attempted. The art of to-day is the art of deliberate avoidance of the violent, and many critics persist in confusing it with truth. There is nothing precious about selfish, covetous, lustful humanity; therefore, good literature creates a refined humanity of its own, which converses in polished periods and never comes to blows."

"What of Madame Caligula? And what of the critics who hailed Francesca of the Lilies as a tragedy worthy to name with Othello!" 

"Primitive passions are acceptable if clothed in doublet and hose, Don. My quarrel with to-day is that it pretends to have lived them down."

"Let us give credit where credit is due. Prussia has not hesitated to proclaim her sympathy with the primitive. Did you observe an eagle-crowned helmet above Mrs. Duveen's fireplace?"

"Yes; you know its history?"

"Some part of its history. It was worn by a huge Prussian officer, who, together with his staff, was surprised and captured during the operations of March 1st, 1916; a delightful little coup. I believe I told you that Sergeant Duveen had been degraded, but had afterwards recovered his stripes?"

"You did, yes."

"It was this incident which led to his losing them. He was taking particulars of rank and so forth of the prisoners, and this imposing fellow with the golden helmet stood in front of all the others, arms folded, head aloft, disdainfully surveying his surroundings. He spoke perfect English and when Duveen asked him his name and rank and requested him to hand over the sword he was wearing, he bluntly refused to have any dealings whatever with a 'damned common sergeant.' Those were his own words.

"Duveen very patiently pointed out that he was merely performing a duty for which he had been detailed and added that he resented the Prussian's language and should have resented it from one of his own officers. He then repeated the request. The Prussian replied that if he had him in his own lines he would tie him to a gun and flog him to death.

"Duveen stood up and walked around the empty case which was doing service as a table. He stepped up to take the sword which the other had refused to surrender; whereupon the Prussian very promptly and skilfully knocked him down. Immediately some of the boys made a rush, but Duveen, staggering to his feet, waved them back. He deliberately unbuttoned his tunic, took off his cap and unhitching his braces, fastened his belt around his waist. To everybody's surprise the lordly Prussian did likewise. A ring was formed and a fight began that would have brought in the roof of the National Sporting Club!

"Feeling ran high against the Prussian, but he was a bigger man than Duveen and a magnificent boxer. Excited betting was in full swing when I appeared on the scene. Of course my duty was plain. But I had young Conroy with me and he pulled me aside before the men saw us.

"'Five to one in fivers on the sergeant!' he said.

"I declined the bet, for I knew something of Duveen's form; but I did not interrupt the fight! And, by gad! it was a splendid fight! It lasted for seventeen minutes without an interval, and Duveen could never have stayed another two, I'll swear, when the Prussian made the mistake of closing with him. I knew it was finished then. Duveen got in his pet hook with the right and fairly lifted his opponent out of the sentient world.

"I felt like cheering; but before I could retire Duveen turned, a bloody sight, and looked at me, out of puffy eyes. He sprang to attention, and 'I am your prisoner, sir,' said he.

"That left me no way out, and I had to put him under arrest. Just as he was staggering off between his guards the Prussian recovered consciousness and managed to get upon his feet. His gaze falling on Duveen, he held out one huge hand to him--"

"Good! he was a sportsman after all!"

"Duveen took it--and the Prussian, grasping that dangerous right of the sergeant's in his iron grip, struck him under the ear with his left and knocked him insensible across the improvised table!"

Paul pulled up in the roadway, his dark eyes flashing: "The swine!" he exclaimed--"the--ee swine!"

"I had all my work cut out then to keep the men off the fellow. But finally a car came for him he was the Grand Duke of Something or other--and he was driven back to the base. He had resumed his golden helmet, and he sat, in spite of his bloody face, scornfully glancing at the hostile group about the car, like a conquering pagan emperor. Then the car moved off out of the heap of rubbish, once a village, amid which the incident had taken place. At the same moment, a brick, accurately thrown, sent the golden helmet spinning into the road!

"Search was made for it, but the helmet was never found. I don't know who threw the brick, Paul (Duveen was under arrest at the time), but that is the helmet above his widow's mantelpiece! The men who have witnessed incidents of this kind will no longer continue to believe in the veneer of modern life, for they will know that the true savage lies hidden somewhere underneath." 

* * * * *