Chapter VII: Part 7

‘Moreover, and this should be noted,’ resumed the Holy Crow, ‘he who is by God’s grace even a little of a Humourist is above all men most likely to be misunderstood in this matter. For verily, I swear by this Holy Bottle, that when _I_ took no notice of the Gūrū, for which Shiva wished to send me to hell, ’twas not from vanity of great wisdom, (as those lying old devils the Brahmins declared), but just to see what sort of a rum face he would cut; and when I disputed with the son of Brahma as to the divine attributes of his father, I hope I may be split, salted and dried in hell like a fish, if it was that I pretended to know more about the Governor than he did, devil a bit! Nay, it was only that the fiend of Fun inspired me to a stupendous, palpable absurdity, which, rightly understood, was an act of the deepest reverence. But the Rishi was a fool, even as the Brahmins and old Vish himself were also, and Shiv into the bargain.’

‘I believe thee, O Crow,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and it is true that the dull world often attributes to self-conceit that which is truly an artistic or humorously inspired conception. Many a creator and artist have I seen carried away by pride or faith in his inspiration, who had, God wot! little pride in himself. But, O Dschim Crow, he had, as thou ever hast, the sublime enjoyment of the joke, or idea, albeit gods and men missed the point!’

‘Amen,’ quoth the Crow. ‘Let us drink!’

‘And now,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘that the sun shines, thou wilt, I suppose, begin to make hay, or lay up money for the rainy days.’

‘By the Wheel of Heaven, not I!’ exclaimed the Crow. ‘He that saves up money keeps it from circulating, which is a great crime, yea, a robbery of the widow and the orphan. Albeit, should such a chance occur of saving up money at another man’s expense, as once befell me, I will not say that I will utterly reject it. One ought to have cash in hand for holy charities and small treats.’

‘I pray thee, tell me the tale,’ answered Flaxius.

‘That will I,’ exclaimed the Crow, after a drink. ‘Once upon a time, when Bramadatta was reigning in Benares in Kasi, it befell that I was born, and when I grew up I had a small place under the treasurer, Bunder Shroff Kash.

‘One day I bewailed that I was poor, and the treasurer, overhearing me, told it to the king at his elbow; and the king, calling me, said:

‘“Excellent young man, it is very easy to get rich. Remember that _a penny saved is a penny earned_. Now to encourage, I will give thee an order on the treasury, commanding that when thou shalt have saved a penny it shall be doubled.”

‘“May your glory endure for ever, O Life of the World!” I replied; “but while you are about it, make it _pence_.”

‘He did so, and the order was written. But the king forgot to limit the payment! He thought I would only draw once, or a penny at a time, but I knew a trick worth two of that. I went with my penny and drew another.

‘The next day I came and said, “I have saved twopence, pray pay the equivalent.” The next day I brought fourpence, and the next eight; and so it went on, till ere long the treasurer begged for credit. Now I paid the treasurer a handsome percentage to keep quiet--and he quieted. But at last the thing got beyond all bounds, and the treasurer one day informed the king that he was bankrupt, and owed more than the whole kingdom was worth, and all the world with it. For the sum due me was: _Lakhs of Rupees_ 972,687,265,390,221.

‘Then the king got into a fine rage, and would fain have had me put to death. But the treasurer said, “Your majesty, it would be better to compromise with such a brilliant financier, and employ him to collect the taxes”; which was done.

‘When this lesson was ended, the Supreme Deity, the All-Knowing One himself, repeated this stanza:

‘“With humblest start on a trifling capital
A shrewd and able man will rise to wealth,
E’en as his breath can nurse a tiny flame.”

‘And there are many tables and fables in which something like this is to be found, or will be, as, for instance, _The Jātakas from the Pali_, edited by Professor E. B. Cowell, who will in a future age be known as a great, good, wise, illustrious, and learned Sanskritist, and in the Parables of _Buddhagosha and Dhammapady_ (or the Accused Irishman), and the _Divyāvadāna_, and the _Kathā Sārit Sāgara_. But mine, note ye, is the Original Jacobs, and the first true prototype, model, pattern, precedent, protoplast, mould, ensample, matrix, and paradigm of them all. All the rest of them being mere re-echoes, shadows, reflexes, apographs, and adumbrations of mine. _Selah!_’

‘And how long dost thou expect to remain here in clover, O Incarnation of Bhusanda, and favourite of Rama?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘I hope to run the machine of the Sacred College,’ replied the Crow, critically eyeing his liquor, ‘till a spring breaks, or a screw comes loose--or, what is quite as likely, till I find the affair is slow and the fun giving out--when I will start as a _yoghi_ on a pilgrimage, or a Banjari or Nāt--_jeckno covva miri hai_----’

‘’Tis all one to me,
Where on earth I be;
So I only pass the time in jollity,
Where the girls abound,
And good drink is found,
And a changing round of life I ever see.
With a tol-diddle,
And a rol-diddle,
And a tol-de-rol-de-rol-de diddle dee!

‘All-so, _camarado, buona sera_! Meet me again in life when life seems dull!’

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius, ‘that in this life we should not be too much guided by appearances. For, firstly, the Tale of Sakhara and Arjun as it occurs in the _Asiatic Journal_ of 1829, whence it was transferred by Grimm to his work on _Women’s Names derived from Plants_, might seem to many to have been the original source, whereas it is only a mutilated and abridged version, as appears from the fact that I, who had so much to do with the plot, am not mentioned in it, nor does Dschim Crow once occur in the story. Neither are there in it those beautiful specimens of Indian poetry in the original Romany, or Romanyana, dialect (allied to Sanskrit) which prove the fidelity of my text.

‘Secondly, that the king did not surmise that there was any “working of the oracle,” as regarded the shooting of the three arrows, or that the will of the gods is sometimes managed even by such characters as the Crow. For it was the Crow, indeed, who pulled all the wires, wrote the lady’s letter, and told all the needful lies on this occasion.

‘Thirdly, that it came not to the surface, neither did it appear to man, that Dschim Crow, who was an expert penman, added that little postscript to the old manuscript.

‘Fourthly, that it is most probable that the vast majority of my readers will fondly believe that I am the author of the old MS. _History of Bhusanda_, whereas it is really given in the _Ramayana_, and extracted therefrom by Nork in his _Symbolisches-mythologisches Real-Wörterbuch_, vol. i. p. 259.

‘Fifthly, that Brahma, Siva, Vishnu and Co., including all the saints, were utterly mistaken in the true character of the Crow [even as a reviewer sometimes is at the present day when he adventures into literature]. Now, this showing how the Hindoo Trinity made a fool of itself firstly, by putting Pantagruelism into a Crow, and then expecting to ever get it out, is, I am sure, one of those subtle sarcasms of the Pariah literature, which worked its way into the regular Scriptures, somewhat in the same way as the erotic, or erratic, melodrama of the Song of Solomon was insinuated (probably by some Hebrew joker) into the Old Testament.

‘Sixthly, that as there are substances, which to the vulgar sense seem to be one and the same, yet which chemistry shows are radically different elements, so there are natures like that of the Crow, which do not care twopence for applause, or what the world thinks of them, and yet are called _egoistic_ when their inspiration consists in yielding to influences which, had they guided them, might indeed have caused them to be called vain.

‘Seventhly, that the Crow, being incorrigible and incurable, will continue to manifest himself as a poor devil, and be considered as “a comic fella, doncher know,” and as nothing but a swell jester--until gods and saints get more sense.’

[9] This exquisitely beautiful incantation poem will be readily intelligible to every Sanskritist, with the exception perhaps of the last line, which is in a later vulgar dialect. It means, accurately translated: ‘I am a gypsy foot-traveller.’ In common dialect it would be, ‘_Ro-mani pat-engro shom_.’ _Omani_ for ‘Romany’ occurs in _The English Gypsies and their Language_.

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF MISS JESABELLE ROCKHARD

WITH A SERIOUS VINDICATION OF HER PROTOTYPES

OR FLAXIUS IN ENGLAND

‘And thus outspoke ye Oracle:
A very truth to thee I tell:
If thou canst a woman finde,
With such an earth-subduing minde
And with soule so stern and deepe,
That she can a secret keepe.
Then know of verie truth that she
A great Enchauntresse soon will be,
A queen in soothe or faery.’

IT was five o’clock tea at Lady Puddlebrooke’s--a somewhat famous weekly rendezvous, which many called ‘The Meet,’ because there assembled on the occasion so many gallant hunters of gossip, and harriers of character, who were soon let slip in full cry of the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the day. The which chronicle, be it remarked, by the way, is by far the most wonderful flying leaf, as such journals were once called, which was ever compiled, since every soul implicitly believes that there is in it the name of Everybody else, and that all which is said of others in it is true, while their own names are never there--or, if there, invariably attached to falsehoods, and out of place.

Now, while all the good Christians, philanthropists, nobly honest agnostics, angelic virgins who had been presented, dignified and ferocious matrons, clergymen, positivists, and other seekers after truth, were--as a nasty, cynical journalist who was present, remarked--‘ravening and battening on their garbage,’ which meant repeating what they had read in the society papers, or preparing what would soon appear in them, Flaxius had withdrawn to a quiet corner and an easy sofa, where he was joined by Miss Jesabelle Rockhard, a lady of whom all her friends said: ‘It certainly cannot be denied that she is good-looking’; others limiting this praise to ‘_distinguée_,’ while some reduced it to ‘striking,’ which she certainly was, being a hard hitter in conversation, and not above fibbing when it came to a scratch. That she was ‘highly intelligent’ and an _esprit fort_, gifted with the unscrupulousness which she herself graced with the name of Will, was manifested at a glance, and impressively set forth by the first utterance of her voice to any reader of the human heart.

She was between afternoon and twilight as regarded age, and of very limited means; facts which she stated with the utmost candour to everybody. Nor was she devoid of a certain intuition or clairvoyance as regarded ability in others, as she had creditably shown by divining that Flaxius was a character. She determined that she would draw him out to the last hair, and completely ascertain all there was in him. In forming this resolution she had, as the Americans express it, unconsciously, ‘taken out a mighty big contract,’ which was the further impeded by the fact that the party of the other part knew exactly how much stock she held, and what was her capital, while she--poor little soul--knew nothing at all as to the resources of the adversary.

But she came up to the assault gallantly. There was something in her very smile with its pinch in the lips, and in the ring of her keen voice, which seemed to say: ‘I’m arch and airy, with the gay, sarcastic tone of society; you must accept all my stings with a delighted air--and you’ll be in bad form if you don’t. Beware! beware!’

‘Ah, Mr. Flaxius, just as one would expect--withdrawn from the gossiping, frivolous crowd. You set up to be intellectual, I believe.’

There are certain very common and very silly speeches of this kind current, which tease sensible people, because they are hard to answer. So true is it that a fool can roll a stone into a well which fifty wise men cannot get out. But Flaxius replied with divine suavity:

‘If being out of the swim is a sign of setting up to be intellectual, then, I suppose, as you are here, that you also advance the same claim, and would fain remind me of it.’ Here the smile was beautifully genial, as if to say: ‘’Tis all my fun.’

‘Confound his cheeky impudence!’ thought Miss Jesabelle. And she promptly countered.

‘So you _do_ set up to be intellectual, then? Oh, you needn’t deny it--you’ve admitted it.’

‘True,’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘and I have heard from other people the same of you. And yet I am not sure,’ he added, in so dreamy, meditative a manner, that he seemed to be thinking of anything except Miss Rockhard, ‘that ’tis not better to be able to set oneself up independently--though ever so little--than to have to rely on others to do it for us!’

And looking at Miss Jesabelle with a smile that was child-like and bland, he added:

‘Ask me some more of those hard questions, please!’

‘I really believe,’ answered the lady with some acerbity (‘Aha!’ thought Flaxius, ‘the first blood drawn!’)--‘that you must have belonged to the Disagreeable Club, whose members make a practice of irritating and retorting, like cabmen.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘if I had not, I should have been indeed ill-qualified for conversation with an advanced young lady of the _fin de siècle_. How often she reminds me of a Spanish fairy-tale. May I tell it?’ he asked, like a little boy.

‘Oh, certainly, if it amuses you,’ replied the young lady in a tone half-contemptuously vexed, yet half interested in this extraordinary stranger.

‘Once upon a time,’ said Flaxius, ‘there were three brothers, and the two elder were a pair of awful blackguards.’

‘Truly, it begins beautifully!’ remarked Miss Rockhard scornfully.

‘Doesn’t it?’ quoth Flaxius gleefully. ‘And it’s nothing to what’s a-coming. Well, there was a king of the country, and he had a beautiful daughter--at least she was _distinguée_, or what you might call _stunning_, for she was awful at being disagreeable, and could shut up any man in chaff, or worse--not to draw it too fine. And if anybody dared to answer her--oh, then she became angry!

‘Now the king, finding that his daughter kept his court all the time in an uproar, issued a proclamation, saying that whoever could beat the princess in abuse should have her to wife, and welcome. Then the two elder brothers rejoiced, each being sure that he would win the prize. But the younger, who was a sort of Saint Johnny, with no great gift of the gab, went and sat sorrowfully in the woods, weeping to think he had no chance to win the princess, and wishing he had passed his boyhood in playing chuck-farthing, and hanging about the docks with other little guttersnipes, and had not wasted it in going to school and church and penny-readings.

‘And while he sat there weeping, and eating a great slice of water-melon, mingling his tears with the seeds, there came by an Irish fairy of his acquaintance.

‘“An’ what is it yees wape-in an’ bodderin’ about, _alanna_?” she asked kindly.

‘Then the youth told her his trouble, and how he would like to win the princess, but wanted that _copia verborum_, or elegant “fluency of sass,” as it is called in America, which was necessary to secure it.

‘“Och, _monoma diaoul!_ and tear and agers!” exclaimed the fairy, “sure, if it’s nothin’ but blay-gairdin’ is naded, it’s mesilf that’ll tache ye how to bate thim all intoirely. Pattherin’ an’ cantin’ is it! and me here that blissed the great Daniel O’Connell in his cradle, an’ gave him the illigant spache that shut up all the sass in Parliamint.

‘“Great O’Connell, the Libherather, An’ salvathor of Oireland’s oisle!

‘“Whoop! _Fa-na-ballah_, and Erin-go-braugh!” cried the fairy as she danced in a ring, brandishing her broom. “And now, ye divil, sit down till I give yees a lisson in polite litherature.”

‘I forbear for certain reasons to give you the conversation which occurred between the princess and the two brothers, in which they were utterly silenced. Then, turning to the youngest, she exclaimed scornfully:

‘“And I suppose you, with your white egg-fruit face of an idiotic scallawag, set up for being intellectual--intellectual enough to smash _me_--that is, if you know what the word means, you Number Three Mackerel with the head gone!”

‘“It is just like your ante-penultimate superfluitancy to mundivagate anent my candicancy,’ replied the youth indignantly. ‘Thou tramontarian tomboy-trollope and trull-cat, thou quadruplicate quean, mopsy minx, and metaphrastic harridame--reintegrated in thy deligration even to conquassentiality--thou mere projectile of an eolipile--nay, I go so far as to call thee a true ultimatum of the fourth effusion--dug up by a divarication of conduplicated metatarsity--thou art all this as thy conscience deterrates ... yea and thou art moreover addicted to _lipothymy_ and all such enormities and vices!”

‘Thereupon the princess gave it to him back, with all that there is in Grose’s _Slang Dictionary_, and Romany to boot--which was pretty bad; but when he retorted with a passage from Browning’s _Sordello_, she gave it up, and fell into a fit of rage, foaming at the mouth. And having recovered, she married him, and they lived like the devil ever after.’

Now Flaxius had the gift of voice, and with it that of the story-teller, to the degree of well-nigh transcending language itself; for one could read the full meaning of every word in his intonation, and eyes and gestures; these latter were never extravagant, but strangely significant, as they well might be, since he knew as only the priests of old knew the wonderful Sign Language which men have found of late years on every Etruscan vase--much of which is still found even among the peasant-children of Italy. And as a small group of guests had gathered round to hear the legend, there were roars of final laughter, in which Miss Jesabelle herself joined with a good-will, for she had begun to realise that there was a lion in this man, and as the story had been told for _her_, she shrewdly made the very best of it.

‘You tell a fairy-tale so well,’ she said to Flaxius, when they were again together, and no one near, ‘as to make one regret that there are no more fairies or magic, or rather that such fancies never were.’

‘And if there were,’ replied the sage, ‘you and the world would still necessarily remain in ignorance of them.’

‘Permit me,’ replied Miss Rockhard, ‘to differ with you. I _presume_,’ she added, with a slightly sarcastic expression, ‘that I am _quite_ as likely as you are to be acquainted, or possibly familiar, with all that has been investigated by science--the London Library and British Museum being open to all--and I can assure you that despite Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Sinnett and Colonel Olcott--very nice men they are--not the slightest scientific proof of the existence of fairies or magic has ever been detected.’

‘Very true,’ rejoined Flaxius imperturbably. ‘I did not say that they existed. I only assert that, from the very nature of things, if they do, they _must_ be concealed from man as he now is. The more indubitable proof of such occult matters would bring about a premature confusion in humanity which would have disastrous results.’

‘_I_ presume _not_, in certain minds at least,’ said Miss Rockhard, with an expression which denoted that she considered herself to be one of this favoured few. ‘How can you explain however,’ she added, ‘that few, if any, know the mysteries?’

‘Simply because there are so few people living who can keep a secret or hold their tongues. The one great or tremendous task of the ancient priesthoods, as of the modern Jesuits, was not to get great ideas, but to train men to keep quiet, and not to tell tales out of school.’

‘There again you are _quite_ wrong,’ remarked the lady. ‘If mere firm reticence would attract revelation, _I_, certainly, would be among the favoured. On that subject you need not speak further, for it simply does not admit discussion. I have kept,’ she added, ‘in my time a secret of vast importance, on which the fate of a great family depended, for many months, till it all blew over.’

‘And then,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘came the great blow-up in consequence of her blowing, or letting it out. I remember it all. Truly she deserves a lesson for all this. Do you know,’ he added amiably, ‘I think, Miss Rockhard, that this matter may possibly be tested. There is an ugly little old story about certain nuns who wanted a Pope to make female confessors, and he promised to do so if they would keep a box unopened for a day. They all swore on their salvation to do so; but the Pope was hardly out of the convent before they all ran to the box and lifted the lid, when out flew a bird, which vanished through the window.’

‘If you think that a silly and slanderous old tale, which is only disgraceful to one who tells it, is an _argument_,’ said the lady, ‘I have no more to say.’

‘But I have this to suggest,’ replied Flaxius. ‘I have heard--for I do not assert it--that there is even now in London a person who is endowed with such strangely supernatural gifts that she may be ranked with the witches or fairies.’

‘At a guinea a visit, I presume,’ remarked Miss Rockhard with her sarcastic smile more fully developed than ever. ‘_Merci_, my means do not permit of such expensive researches into occult philosophy.’

‘Ah, that is the most remarkable part of it all,’ replied Flaxius. ‘She takes nothing; nay, she invariably makes very valuable gifts; but on the strictest conditions of secrecy--and she is to the last degree exacting in this respect--as also that those whom she favours shall be gifted with superior intellects--not led by mere curiosity.’

‘And you expect me to believe this?’

‘Certainly not. I never said a word as to belief. I only say that _I_ believe you will incur no kind of risk or cost if you seek her.’

‘And you will obtain access for me to your witch?’

‘She is not _my_ witch, and I have no desire whatever to send you to her. I only say that if you will promise on your honour to observe sacred secrecy even as to knowing of her existence, I will give you her address.’

‘Very well, I swear!’

‘She lives in Devonshire Street, near Regent’s Park. There is her card. But I give you every warning. What you seek will require great truth, secrecy, and self-command. And remember’--here the face of Flaxius assumed an expression which Miss Rockhard had not seen before, and under which she for an instant quailed, it was so marvellously strange and dignified, as if he had forgotten himself into grandeur--‘remember that if you succeed, I shall expect no thanks, and if you fail, yours alone is the responsibility.’

‘Oh, I accept it,’ replied Miss Rockhard, recovering her flippancy. ‘Thanks awfully. I accept the _entire_ responsibility. What fun!’

And so with all her grace and vanity she swept away.

* * * * *

At four o’clock on the following afternoon--or ‘morning,’ as it is called by those who probably look for midnight at fourteen o’clock--Miss Rockhard found herself in Devonshire Street, seeking the dwelling of the witch-fairy. And it was very naturally with an intensely sarcastic smile that she finally discovered on a door a small silver plate bearing the words:

MISS ALBAN,

DRESSMAKER.

‘I might have expected it would be some humbug of the kind!’ thought the fair Jesabelle. ‘I wonder whether the fairy drops her h’s. But let us enter all the same into this Egyptian Hall and take a miracle or two.’

She rang, and was admitted by a very pretty maid to a hall which was somewhat singularly, but most artistically, decorated with antique objects, the real meaning of which was, however, hardly apparent; and was then conducted up a broad old staircase to a large _salon_, in which the visitor detected a most extraordinary and original taste, as regards furniture, without the least obtrusive sign of expenditure or cost. There was not a thing in the room which looked as if it had been the ‘gem’ of a bric-a-brac shop, or worthy a place in the great Rothschild pawnbroker collection of Frankfort, or bought at a Demiduffer sale, and many of the antiques would not have been valued at twopence by the Jew; but even Miss Rockhard, albeit her archæology was of the slenderest, save on Chippendale, lace, Japaneseries, Chineseries, crockeries, glass, Sèvres, and rococery in general, or trash in particular, could not help admitting that there was a hidden depth of knowledge and artistic taste in what she saw, which had nothing in common with bargains, fashion or the shop.

Suddenly looking up, Miss Rockhard saw before her a lady who, though beautiful, was not to be lightly described as ‘a beauty,’ considering the usual vulgar associations with the word. There was a depth of expression and moral truth, allied to strength of character, in her face which would have shamed into oblivion the charm of a Helen, who was (according to Flaxius) only a professional beauty of the popular kind after all. ‘And such,’ adds Flaxius, ‘I have invariably found all fashionable belles of the season (“whom every one is talking about”) to be.’

‘I am Miss Alban,’ said the lady to the visitor, ‘and I shall be pleased to aid you in the object of your call. You desire indubitable proof of the existence of supernatural or magical influences or beings, and I can supply it.’

‘You are, ahem! I believe, a--dressmaker,’ said Miss Rockhard, with considerable sarcasm. For she felt with every word and glance that Miss Alban was immeasurably her superior in exactly that in which she would have liked to be great herself: or in calm self-possession, penetration, and the terrible art of influencing others, and being invulnerable. Therefore it was with something like suppressed exasperation, wrapped up in a smile, that she exclaimed: ‘A dressmaker!’

‘I appear to every one,’ replied Miss Alban, looking the other clearly in the eyes, ‘as the ideal ministrant of what they most desire in life. What _you_ prize above everything is simply to appear well before everybody, be it in good looks or clothes as regards the body, and accomplishments and setting people down and “besting” them as regards the mind, which all amounts to mere show or dress, and therefore I appear to you as a _modiste_.’

‘I confess,’ declared Miss Rockhard, who had always, with all her failings, a substratum of frank courage as regarded her poverty and unavoidable defects, being therein no snob, ‘that as I have only one decent evening-dress in the world, and am getting to the end of my twenties, or to a time when dress becomes more needful, and as I live for society, I _do_ regard externals with love and envy. But as for the proof of enchantment----’

‘I promise,’ replied Miss Alban, ‘to fully and perfectly convince and satisfy you before you leave this room, that there is such a thing as magic, by which I mean simply to show you something absolutely inexplicable by _your_ knowledge of science.’

‘I ask no more than _that_ as regards your sorcery,’ said Miss Rockhard with a complacent smile.

‘While as to dress, I promise that you shall be at no expense, and for life, the best dressed woman in London, or even in New York or Paris. But on one condition.’

‘I know--absolute secrecy. That for me is a mere trifle.’

‘It is no “mere trifle,” as you will find, but, especially for you, a terribly difficult and onerous task. For know that the secrecy must be without speck or flaw. You are not to say that you have _heard_ of fairy dressmakers or jest with people who ask you whence you had your garments, in such a way as to cause surmises as to the truth; and if you fail you must not say, “_I thought_ this or that,” as people of weak minds always do. There is to be no allowance for thought, or prevarication, or independence, or misfortune or excuses. If you can persevere in merely keeping a secret to your own advantage, I promise you that dress shall not be the limit of my favours, and you shall lead a long and happy and highly-honoured life. But if you fail, that is, if by the _least_ inadvertency, or even accident, you betray the secret, you will incur a terrible disgrace, and a suffering and humiliated life. Consider well, and do not let your vanity lead you to ruin.’

‘I think,’ said Miss Rockhard, with the same old contemptuous smile, ‘that we may proceed to the proof. As I happen to know my own mind a little better than you probably do, I am better aware of my capacity for secrecy. I accept your conditions.’

‘The proof is very easy,’ replied Miss Alban, taking from a drawer in a cabinet what seemed to be a large walnut. ‘Did you ever hear of the famous wardrobe walnuts of the witch tree of Benevento? Legend says that a prince once filled a palace with the splendid garments in cloth of gold, ermine, velvet and pearls, which he drew from this one nut.[10] Now, are you ready?’

‘Certainly,’ replied the visitor.

‘And should I perform this miracle, you will, unconditionally once and for all accept it on your honour as a proof of magic power? If not, we will try something else.’

‘No,’ answered Jesabelle, who was thinking more of being beautifully attired than of all the miracles or oaths ever heard of. ‘The dress will be proof enough in all conscience.’

As she spoke, her outer garment fell off, and she stepped out of it, while Miss Alban, opening the walnut, drew from it what seemed at first to be a mere cobweb, which she shook and shook out into greater fulness, till she placed it on Miss Jesabelle who, to do her justice, had really a fine little figure, just made to be very well dressed, with the one drawback of large feet and hands.

‘Now tell me,’ said the dressmaker, ‘what colour or material or style would you prefer?’

‘Nothing extravagant as regards expense,’ replied Miss Rockhard, ‘no cloth of gold or pearl-embroideries or anything to make people wonder where the money came from, when all the world knows how poor I am. Grey silk will do; but as elegant, original, and beautiful in fit and fold as a robe can be.’

‘_C’est fait_,’ said Miss Alban. ‘Rise and look into yonder glass!’

Then Miss Rockhard looked and could hardly believe her own eyes, such a vision of beauty was before her. For, as has been already intimated, she was really very ‘good-looking,’ with a fine figure, both being of the kind which are incredibly improved by tasteful dress, so that she came out (like fireworks) in a grand ball, or at a fête, when fortune favoured her.

But never before, under the most benign influence of a grand cheque from her benevolent aunt, had she bloomed out like this. It was more than a fit, more than modelling to the form, more than artistic folds after any painting, for there was in the fluent grace and easy elegance of that skirt and bust an æsthetic apocalypse. ‘Which is,’ pencils Flaxius, ‘a big word for a man, but not too much, under the circumstances, for a woman.’

Even the fairy smiled, being feminine, at the success, and said:

‘There is still a trifle or two wanting.’ She took from the drawer a wisp of straw, a coarse cord, or circle of clothes-line, and a simply _horrid_ brooch of brass and glass, or of agate, which seemed, from afar off, to have been bought in a common toy shop in the Burlington Arcade, or under the cliff in Brighton, for threepence. She fastened the wisp of straw round the wrist of Jesabelle, and lo! it became a massy bracelet of gold in old Etruscan style, which would have maddened Castellani, and sent a whole ball-room into convulsions of envy. The brooch turned to a brilliant bouquet of diamonds, while the rope, with eccentric, yet pretty, taste, remained exactly as it was, but in pure gold, and, being tied in a bow-knot with folding ends, formed a very original and elegant head-dress.

The world hears a great deal about the tact of women, but there is a great deal to be said on the subject--for and against. For while she believed she had the keenest insight into everything, Miss Rockhard, like all of her class and kind, had no more tact than an oyster, or a hedge-hog, when it behoved her to suppress her needless pleonasms, sarcasms, and little spasms of ‘pure cussedness.’ And over and above all this, petty scepticism had so worked into all her being that as soon as she had got over the first flush of admiration at her dress, the old devil whispered in her ear not to show too much astonishment or gratitude, ‘which means,’ he said, ‘that she has been too much for you.’ Therefore, with exquisite good taste and characteristic refinement, she said:

‘Well, it’s an awfully clever bit of hanky-panky, I must say. I wonder how on earth you do it!’

The fairy looked at her gravely, and replied:

‘You said seriously, before I showed you this marvel, that if I could effect it you would accept it once and for all as a proof of my power, and your first words are an utter denial of it. You are neither spontaneously grateful at heart, nor graceful nor polite in words. Society and petty persiflage and small sneering and flippant sarcasm have killed in you every noble quality. But I will give you another proof which will defy doubt. Observe! Though your figure is good you have undeniably immense hands, and your shoes, as you are aware, really look like badly built gondolas. It is a great pity and it cuts you to the very soul. Now, if I reduce these extremities of yours to something like smallness and harmony with the rest, will you believe?’

What the reader may very well believe is that this speech was as gall, worm-wood, coloquintida, nux-vomica, rue, quassia, extract of aloes, acetic acid, verjuice, vitriol, and strychnine to the palate of Miss Rockhard, but the end thereof made her forget all these amaritudes, and she gasped out:

‘Yes.’

‘And I am to hear nothing more about “hanky-panky,” or “how it is done”?’

‘No.’

‘Then be it done!’ The fairy bade her be seated and took one of her hands in her own, and began to sing a spell in a tongue which sounded softly but strangely:

‘Tāni-rani, sove a lay!
Chovihani chivs apré!
Tiri waster, tiri piri,
Boro dukkerin mi-deary!
Me bitchava lende sā,
Tinkni-bitti, vel ajā!

Little lady, go to sleep!
Witch lays spell upon thee deep!
On thy hands and on thy feet,
Let the charm be strong and fleet!
So I order one and all
To become both neat and small!’

So Miss Rockhard did indeed go to sleep, and on awaking found herself in her own home, lying on the sofa in her own room.

‘She would have thought it all a dream,
Save that round her form
Was still the dress of the fairy queen,
Which fitted her “like a charm”;
And her hands and feet were extremely neat,
And become intensely small;
“’Tis well, ’tis well,” said Jesabelle,
“For now I shall beat them all.”’

It was not long before Miss Jesabelle Rockhard found that the fairy was right in declaring that it was not such an easy matter to keep a secret when its results are brilliantly paraded before society. Therefore the successful alchemists of the olden time were said to live so plainly, and to go in disguise, dodging about the world, as did Thomas Vaughan, to escape observation. And as even they found it a fearful task, it may be supposed that Miss Rockhard, who had a ten times harder secret to keep than theirs, with not one-tenth part of their sense or experience to keep it on, began to wonder anon whether she had not spoken over-hastily when she commended her own powers of discretion as a subject not open to discussion.

‘The female sex,’ writes Flaxius in his great Analysis, ‘differs from the male mostly in this, that it never takes naturally or instinctively to rum or tobacco, neither does it ever feel conscience or remorse. Fear of discovery it does indeed experience, and very sincere regret or sorrow at incurring punishment, but whether any one woman since Eve ever _regretted_ anything on principle, or _per se_, is as yet among the unfound-outs.

‘Wherein I discover,’ he observes, ‘a great and wise provision of nature. For when we consider what a vast quantity there is of confused conscience and misplaced remorse in man, we cannot be too thankful that woman is _not_ afflicted with the same calamity; it being very evident that if she were, humanity must needs take a fresh start on new principles. Therefore do I opine,’ he adds, ‘that “Things,” as Germans call the evolution of humanity, are going on best as they are, although I did have a tin of spoiled caviare brought to me this morning for breakfast.’

As regards the dress and jewellery of Miss Rockhard, it was a complete--or, as the French say, an insane--success. Her friends and the public admired it with an envy which, as she often perceived, amounted to agony; and there were peeresses who suffered the tortures of the damned, and with them millionairesses who panted like harts for the water-brook, with desire to learn the secret of those transcendental toilets; which was all like nectar and ambrosia to her small soul. And as she had the thin good sense and cautious taste to rarely use expensive fabrics, and was very chary with diamonds and the like; and being clever, soon acquired a stock of evasive phrases and satirical retorts for the most direct questions, she might have long escaped detection.

The first error which she committed was the very common one for all her kind, of ingratitude. For as regarded Flaxius, the very fact of her success irritated her, when she reflected that he had entirely established all his assertions, and completely got the better of her--after all her assumption of superior intelligence--and as she recalled him, every time she donned a dress, with renewed vexation, the feeling grew in time to tormenting hatred, there being no vindictiveness like that for benefits received. Nor was she any better disposed towards the fairy, since every time she was teased by questioners she said to herself: ‘Pest take the creature! why couldn’t she just as well have given me the clothes without any condition. ’Tis ever the way with these mysterious snobs, they always do everything by halves in a petty way, so as to render gratitude impossible. I believe that vulgar teasing is a part of their low nature.’

Now when the moral obligation to keep a secret is gone, and the buttresses are, so to speak, knocked away, it generally requires but a little push to overthrow the whole building. And this push came ere long from an unexpected quarter.

Miss Jesabelle Rockhard was born, and lived, in undeniably good society, but had never had more than very scanty sniffs of ‘the purer atmosphere of _Dukedom_.’ As the melancholy Jacques, with refined wit, remarks, even the word is ‘a spell to call fools together,’ albeit printers have spoiled his spelling. Now it befell that a duchess of twenty-four carats, a dame of irrepressible power, stronger at every point than poor Miss Jesabelle, and one whose _flamberg_ or six-feet two-handed sword was not to be lightly turned by the latter’s fencing foil--fenced she never so wisely--had set her whole soul on learning the secret of the exquisite toilets. Hitherto Miss Rockhard had only gentler breezes to resist, but now there was a cyclone brewing, before which, had she been wise, she would have fled unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

The duchess soon learned--indeed ’twas common talk--that the now famous Miss Rockhard guarded with great care the secret of her dresses. She made adroit, special, long-continued inquiry--who would not be detective for a duchess?--and the more she was confirmed in the report, the more obstinately was she determined to penetrate the mystery.

‘O thou poor Jesabelle,’ writes Flaxius, ‘whom I did greatly love with all thy faults--since devil a one was there of them thine own--all being drawn from good society--how gladly would I have averted from thee the fate which I saw gathering over thy graceful head; how gladly would I have clucked unto thee, as the cock clucketh unto the hen to come to him when he has found a grain, albeit he often swallows it ere she gets there!--or done anything in reason, to _paratonnerre_ away the crash and flash in the dark gathering cloud--it could not be! All that we _could_ do was to await the explosion, pick up the pieces, glue them together as well as possible and so, _en avant_!

‘It is written in the Babylonian chronicle of the great Rabbi Ganef Ben Nofgur, that “even as a monkey will, in doing mischief, manifest as much mind as would make him the equal of man, so a woman, to find out a secret which is none of her business, will show the genius of seven devils. For ten measures of intermeddling were sent down by Aschmodai upon earth, and the daughters of Israel got nine of them.”’

From which ye may understand that the duchess, finding that the treasure was deeply buried, and craftily enchanted, took great precaution and pains to disinter it. Firstly, she was merely affable to Miss Rockhard in the winsome way which shows that any one has taken a special, an _unconscious_ liking--which is a particular form of humbug treated more fully by Patrick Mac Iavel in his Treatise on the Art of Blarneying. She set on to Jesabelle an artless niece who Jesabelle thought was a fool, and who ended by fooling her--Miss Rockhard--completely. Then the duchess began a series of fondlings, pettings, little intimacies, and careful confidences, invitations to dinner and the opera--sending her carriage freely for her on all occasions. In a word, she wound round the victim such an insidious mesh of obligations that at last she judged that the roast was done to a turn, and ready to be served, carved and eaten.

So one night at a reception at the ducal palace, to which Jesabelle had come in consequence of most ingenious and urgent desire--in the utmost magnificence which she dared--her jewellery on this occasion being rather seriously splendid and dangerous--the hostess struck her _coup_ by displaying the most passionate admiration of her guest’s attire. Then with great adroitness she led the conversation to the fondness she had for Jesabelle, which subtly trained towards the obligations and kindnesses, which had by this time run up to an alarming sum. And then, suddenly recurring to the dress, she said:

‘If you are, indeed, as you say, deeply grateful to me for anything, and are sincere as I am in friendship, my dear, then acquit it all by a mere trifle, and tell me truly, without any equivocation, the secret of your marvellous dresses....’

Miss Rockhard would very much have preferred seeing an insane anarchist flourishing a bomb, and a carving-knife come dancing into her drawing-room, to this simple question from her dearest friend. And the agitation of her features showed it--almost fearfully. The duchess was delighted. ‘Now for an adroit _coup_,’ she thought, ‘and I have it.’

‘I dare say, my dear,’ she added with sweet persuasion, ‘that there is really no great mystery in it after all. You girls are so fond of making up romances. Perhaps I can even aid you with it, if perfect secrecy, experience, and love can aid. But it will not be confiding a secret, you know, for we two are one, and ’twill be as if you told it to yourself.’

When one feels a secret like an intolerable burden, or a pack of coals on one’s back--heavy as sin, and burning as remorse--the bearer catches at any excuse for betraying it. Nor was Jesabelle a little piqued by the artful hint: ‘I dare say there is really no great mystery in it after all.’ And, perhaps, the duchess, with her vast knowledge of life and invincible _prestige_, _could_ solve the mystery, so that no harm or loss could come of it; and driven to the wall as she was, and at her wits’ end, for a rupture with her Grace meant social ruin, she actually caught at the last straw--‘it will not be telling a secret, since we are one’--as if it had been a rope thrown by a life-buoyant philanthropist.

‘You will not say,’ remarked the duchess, somewhat sarcastically, ‘that it is a fairy-gift.’

At that word, Jesabelle in despair and anger exclaimed--’twas as if the very devil spoke for her and used her tongue:

‘It _is_ a fairy gift!’

The duchess uttered an appalled scream; there was a chorus of ‘Ha’s--ho’s--oh dear me’s!’ through all the gamut heard from those around--_Tableau_!

‘What is the matter?’ cried Jesabelle terrified.

‘_Look in the glass!_’ cried the duchess, pointing to a twenty-foot mirror opposite.

Miss Rockhard looked, and saw an awful sight. It was herself, arrayed in nothing but her under-garments, with a wisp of straw on her wrist, a piece of clothes-line rope about her head, and on her bosom a great threepenny brass and glass brooch. And amid her surroundings this costume looked ten times worse than it had done in Devonshire Street.

‘A lunatic! a mad woman! Wonder how she got in! Hope she won’t attack us! Wonder if she’s got a pistol? We shall all be killed! Run for the police!’ was heard on all sides. Miss Rockhard fainted. Some mysterious friend--she knew not who--stepped forward, wrapped her in a cloak, and conveyed her in a carriage to her home. Yet heavily as the blow fell on her, it struck the duchess at once almost as severely. For after all her pains, and after driving poor Jesabelle to the wall, and to insanity, all that she had got was, ‘It is a fairy-gift,’ at which even a child would laugh. She might well have exclaimed, ‘I have brought my pig to a fine market, to be sure!’ as the Princess Iona Mic Flanagan remarked, after she had driven a swine from Dublin to Cork, where it was eaten by a wolf; the incident was sung in Tara’s Psaltery, and recorded in the _Leabhair Ruad_, or Red-Book of the Nine Masters, in _Shelta_.

* * * * *

When Jesabelle came to herself in the morning, a brief half-hour of deadly, sickening despair was succeeded by a good healthy reaction of rage at the duchess, the fairy, Flaxius, and all mankind. Even as the hero Hans Breitmann ungratefully wished that his teacher, Professor Schmitzerl, ‘vas in hell’ for teaching him how to ride on a bicycle, did Miss Rockhard wish that all those whose favours, gifts, and applause she had once so anxiously sought were all at the bottom of Inferno, and the devil dancing on them, because they had given her in fullest measure what she most ardently desired, yea, perjured herself to obtain!

I have here arrived, _O lector benevole_, thou _best_ of readers, at what is to us, I trust, the most interesting point, that is to say the crisis in this eventful history. It happened once during the American War that after the Confederates had been defeated in a battle, certain gallant Southern ‘chivs’ or chivalric officers, attempted to account for the failure: one attributing it to a sudden rise in the river, and another to a division not coming up in time; till at last one startled them all by asking, ‘If they didn’t think the Yankees had something to do with it?’

Even so, after making out that everybody had been against her, and shown themselves a pack of contemptible wretches, did it occur to Miss Rockhard that she Herself had counted for something in the game, and had something to Do with It. And being now, as it were, thrown into solitude, and having a fine, vigorous mind, and being withdrawn from the society which had so fearfully warped it; she began, so to speak, to straighten out again morally, and recuperate. She felt no remorse at all, but she began to study that which had made her err: a society, with its ideals of the most adroit slander; knowledge of all that is none of our business, ostentation, wealth, rank, and birth, though ever so evilly sustained, or disgraced or dishonoured; the adroitness of shallow sarcasm and silly flippancy; and the real meaning of vogue and fashion; and finally the awkward, blundering manner in which even these wretched fancies were carried out by nine-tenths of their devotees, real and accomplished men and women of the world,--the true article being a great rarity even in Belgravia.

Her self-examination was long and searching, sparing herself no pang, being as pitiless to the Me as to the Them. Having no other on whom to exercise her sarcasms, she turned them all on her own follies--not raving in despair, and calling herself a fool, but, as she indeed always did, finding out what was in the object thus illuminated and shown up. And it did her an immense amount of good. She had an awful crust of old dead shells, and a fearful lot of foul sea-weed to scrape away from the ship, ere it would sail well; but she _did_ it!

For to do Jesabelle Rockhard justice, she had pluck and bottom, grit and endurance, and was not the kind of girl to throw up the game of life because she had lost a fairy wardrobe, or even the favour of a duchess; and not being French, but right valiant English of good fighting stock, she resolved to show fight, and put a good face on a bad game.

All at once it occurred to her that the long and earnest reflection which she had given to herself and to society had developed the serious and sustained analysis of character which forms the real power of the novelist, and that which elevates him above the story-teller. She was seated at Brighton in the shingle on a fine day at noon, under an umbrella, when it came into her mind that as a novelist she could enter on a new life. It was like a great revelation, for with her clear, vigorous, well-informed mind, she grasped all the possibilities of such a career, and its tremendous power.

Once in history, when women came a-cropper in any earthly way, they went into a convent; now they go into a publisher’s--that is to say, they write or re-write a novel.

All geniuses are white-washed.

A woman of genius may pawn her reputation when an obscurity dare not look over the fence.

Make yourself a celebrity, and society will do the rest.

Nine-tenths of notoriety consists not of what people know, but what they say about anybody.

If you have sinned, there are two ways to be forgiven. Either repent your evil deeds or describe those of others.

The most certain way to make two thousand a year by writing novels is to tell all your friends in confidence that you earn one thousand.

Understandest thou this--or what?

A gypsy woman of her acquaintance from whom she bought bouquets, and whose shrewd observations had often amused her, came up and gave her what is called in tramp slang a _lyover_, in Romany a _ruzhia_, and in English a flower.

‘Tell me, Amalthea Cooper,’ she inquired, ‘what do you understand by society? Give me a sixpence worth of information!’

‘When any kind of a lot of people gets together anyhow,’ replied Amalthea, after a grave pause, ‘it’s a mob. When there’s a-many that generally assembles, such as three or four _tans_ or families, it’s what we calls in our language the _Sweti_, or our world. But when they are of the same kind of folk, and are invited to a drop of tea or beer, or to have something and a talk--and one, may be, plays a tune on a fiddle--why, that’s society.’