Chapter VIII: Act IV: Scene I.--PUPPENSPIELE

To have a wife, and to be father of children, bring many troubles into life.--_Menander_.

While rain was falling upon just and unjust, Herbert Juxon sat in his gas-lit office up a gloomy court, struggling to conquer the London which roared around him. A clock indicated half-past-three. The stockbroker was working excitedly, because he believed that the combination which might restore him much that he had lost was nearly made.

Without lifting his eyes from the file of letters and the pencilled notes before him, he held out his hand to take a message from his clerk; and at that moment the door opened noisily, and a man hurried in, hatless and unannounced. He was a lawyer, well-known in the city, and one of Juxon’s friends. The son of parchment bent over the desk, and making himself on this occasion a man of few words, whispered into the stockbroker’s ear. Juxon’s face went white for a moment, then he recovered, and jerked out a nervous laugh.

“It is impossible,” he muttered. “The business is a small one, but it has been established for so long. I have heard rumours. They did not come from a reliable source, and I could not trust them. I had no time to think of them. But my little nest-egg is there.”

“Get it out. You have just time--if it is not already too late,” whispered the counsellor; and then he left, as hurriedly as he had entered.

Juxon pounced upon his cheque-book, filled a form, then, glancing up at the clock, caught at his hat and raced from his office and the court. He dodged breathlessly along the crowded streets, until he came to a dark lane, which he entered at the double, and turned in at the door of a private bank where his money was deposited. He had always banked there, having no suspicion regarding its stability, and the manager was a personal friend of long standing, who, he firmly believed, would have given him a word of warning had any crisis been impending. He noticed, as he passed the threshold, a group of men discussing in low tones.

The cashier himself received Juxon’s cheque, but he did not say a word; nor did he once raise his eyes, after a nervous word of greeting and one hasty glance upon the stockbroker’s heated face. His own face twitched, in spite of himself, when he glanced at the figures on the slip of paper. He flung open a drawer and produced a handful of gold, which he swept towards the client, so fiercely that some of the coins rolled away along the floor; and then he rushed round to the door, locked and bolted it. There was a crash of broken glass, followed by an outcry and an uproar at the head of the lane. It was twelve minutes to four; and the little bank had failed.

Juxon received the blow with the patience which was part of his nature. He said nothing, but slipped clear of the crowd assembling rapidly before the bankrupt premises, and escaped into the comparative silence of his office. He believed in being quiet under affliction. He was not religious in the accepted sense of the word; but he was strong and upright, for his mind was unobscured by any perplexing creed; just as the faith of the savage, who kneels beneath the sun, amid the wonders of nature, may be at least as pure as that of the priest, standing before an altar, bound and tied by superstitions of man’s creation. Had Juxon been a scholar, he would probably have uttered the consoling words of Philemon the dramatist, “If thou couldst only know the evils which others suffer, thou wouldst gladly submit to thine own.”

Four hours later Juxon was hurrying from a suburban station, between parallel rows of lamp-posts, along numerous streets, past endless red villas exasperatingly alike. In a street, which differed from others only in name, he drew up before a house which was made dissimilar to its neighbours by the possession of a distinctive number. He knocked, waited impatiently, and knocked again; and then an elderly woman, attired in the uniform of a nurse, admitted him to the little house, and ushered him into a tiny room, where pretty four-year-old child was sitting up in her cot playing with a doll’s house.

“Daddy!” cried the child in an ecstasy, holding out two pink arms.

“Here he is again,” laughed the stockbroker. “Like a bad old battered shilling.”

The tiny lady, who was already wonderfully like Maude in appearance, received his caresses, returned them with interest, and straightway demanded with odd severity:

“Where’s Mummy?”

“Far away in the country, little Peggy,” said the father. “Only Daddy left. Are you glad to see him, sweetheart?”

“Vewy,” lisped the dainty miss. “Here’s a wose-bud for you.” She collected a white rose, somewhat the worse for ill-treatment, from the quilt, and lifted it laughing to his lips. “Put it in you coat. Here’s one for Mummy, a pwettier one, but Mummy won’t have it. You shall have it instead, Daddy. My Mummy is pwettier than my Daddy,” she announced generally to a family of small dolls. “But I love my Daddy most, ’cause he comes to see me, and my Mummy don’t. Oh, Daddy!”

Thereupon a pair of cherubic lips parted, and a chocolate disappeared between two rows of pretty teeth. “But you must have one too--the greatest one,” came from the little mouth in action.

“I was afraid you would be asleep, my Daisy,” said the father. “How you are growing, miss! You are getting quite a giantess. Do you know what a giantess is, darling?”

The fair curls were shaken violently.

“Well, a giantess is a great tall lady, who has to stoop whenever she comes into a house, lest she should knock the roof off. If you go on growing so fast, you will be like that some day, Miss Peggy, and you will look down, and pat me on the head, and say, ‘Poor old Daddy, what a long way down you are.’ Now, Daisy, shut your eyes, and open your mouth just as wide as ever you can.”

“Don’t tell Nursie,” adjured the smallest of the transgressors.

“Of course not. It would never do to be caught by Nurse, or she might slap us both. What were you doing before I came, sweetheart?”

“Talking to my dollies,” said Peggy, munching busily and pointing to the doll’s house.

“You was answering me lots, but Mummy wouldn’t speak. Naughty Mummy!” She picked up a little pink doll, with flaxen hair and scarlet cheeks, and scolded it scrupulously. “And Mummy don’t stand up nice a bit.”

“Why can’t she stand up, Peggy?” asked the father.

“I stooded her up, and down she went--so! It is silly of her, isn’t it? P’raps she ain’t vewy stwong, poor Mummy! I’ll put her on the sofa. She looks pwetty on the sofa, doing nothing, cept laugh. This is you, Daddy. You’re so drefful busy you ain’t got time to talk much, and when you laugh it’s quick--so! And then you go on working.”

“That is quite true, Peggy. You see I have you and Mummy to work for, so I mustn’t be idle. And now I must run off again, and work, and work.”

There were protestations and tearful blue eyes, but the former were checked by the promise of a visit the very next evening, and the latter were kissed bright again. But before the stockbroker left his little daughter, he bent over her, and said in a whisper, “When I am gone, Daisy, say over and over again, until you go to sleep, ‘God help Mummy.’”

“God help dear Daddy and Mummy,” a small voice amended.

The honest man caught his treasure in his arms and kissed her many times.

“Good-night, sweet Daisy.”

“Come again vewy quick, Daddy.”

When in the street again there was an elasticity in Juxon’s step which had not been apparent earlier in the evening. There were heavy odds facing him. Many men would have shrunk from the difficult task of restoring the ruined fabric. A few cowards might even have sought the easiest way out; but quiet Mr. Juxon was prepared to go on playing the game. Although outwardly commonplace, and lacking in originality, he was not an ordinary man. His character could not be better revealed than by the statement that he did not entertain a single bitter thought towards his absent wife.

He did not intend that she should hear the truth, and he was resolved that she should not want even the least of those luxuries which she had hitherto enjoyed. He argued that she had a right to look to him for these things, and because he was true of heart he determined she should have them, if only he could avert that imminent and final disaster by hard work.

He reached his lonely office in the deserted city, leaving far behind the voices of paper-vendors screaming in malicious enjoyment the news of the bank failure. He turned up the gas, removed his coat, and wrapped a moistened handkerchief round his forehead. He smiled at the excessive plainness of his careworn face when it met his eyes in the glass. Was it possible that any woman could care for him, if he were poor? That smile was still upon his lips when he sat down to his desk. “There is still a chance,” he muttered. “The veriest loophole, but I may struggle through yet. I can fight, and I will fight, and I will go down, if that be my destiny, fighting all the time.”

It was close upon midnight when Juxon pushed aside his business books and papers, and began the composition of a letter to a client who was encumbered with wealth in very much the same proportion as Egypt was once troubled with flies. Upon this letter much depended, as without financial assistance he would have to declare himself a defaulter. All the securities which he had to offer were hidden in his safe. They were not so valuable as he could have wished, but he believed they might prove sufficient for his purpose. He wrote quickly, the pen held loosely in his tired fingers, winking his eyes often to dispel the black spots which rose persistently between his face and the sheet of paper.

The clocks chimed over the city of Mammon, which was empty, but not silent. Wind was howling along the deserted streets, and a heavy rain lashed the window. The noise of business was not there, but while men slept Nature awoke to traffic in storm and tempest. Instead of the rolling of carts came the rush of rain water, and the cries of the wind arose in the stead of the voices of men. Round the corners, where by day traffic crushed, nature in wet garments shouted and bustled; and in that one room, which made an eye of light in the solitude of buildings, Juxon went on writing.

How exhausted he was he did not know, until the knowledge came that he had lost control over his pen, which for some moments had scratched upon the paper without any apparent assistance from his hand. There was a coldness in his arm. He dropped the pen and rose, opening and closing his stiffened fingers. Then he brought the paper up to his tired eyes and read what he had written.

It was an ordinary business letter. There was nothing remarkable about it until he came to the last sentence; and there the writer must have lost control over his pen for a few moments. He was very tired. He had hardly known whether he was writing sense or nonsense. Certainly he had not the slightest idea that he had concluded his letter with the extraordinary sentence, “Go to the Strath.” These four words however were staring at him from the paper. There was no sense in them. He did not know what they meant. He had no memory of having written them. He only knew that they were there in his own crabbed handwriting.

“I must be careful,” Juxon whispered. “This sort of thing won’t do. This is what some people might call insanity. I have been working too much.”

He went into the corner of the office, dipped the hot handkerchief which had been around his forehead into cold water, wrung it out, and replaced it. Then he said:--

“My wife is living in the country, and in the neighbourhood stands a house about which strange things are said. That house is called the Strath.”

Scene II.--LYRICAL DITHYRAMB

It often happens that those who try to avoid their fate run directly upon it.--_Titus Livius_.

The day of Maude’s introduction to the Strath arrived. The careless little lady, to whom the future state was a terrible black cloud, had taken it upon herself to fix a date for their festivities within that house; and as the day was near she deemed it necessary to attend in person and make arrangements upon the spot. Accordingly she decked herself out in a vesture of pink wrought about with divers laces, drove into Thorlund in usual state, and requisitioned the services of Dr. Berry as companion and guide.

The scholar was in a silent mood that calm sunless afternoon. His sleep had been much broken of late, and fear had crept about his bed. He was exceedingly sensitive to every outside influence, and thus had foreseen evil impending, but its nature was not revealed. The thought occurred to the rector that he had wasted his life in selfish pursuits, that punishment was in store; and therefore he was afraid.

Maude prattled joyously as she walked towards the wall, having, as she firmly believed, no sins to be sorry for. It was true she trembled when she set foot inside the garden, and caught at her companion’s arm; but Flora had told her strange stories concerning that haunted ground, and for at least the first minute she had a right to be nervous. It was natural weakness, she assured herself, but she was relieved when the sensation passed, as it did suddenly; and to show her relief she laughed, boldly and defiantly, the first foolish laugh that had sounded in that garden for many more years than any living man could look back upon.

There was a dead tree lying within the shadow of the house, its trunk mantled with moss, its few remaining branches smothered in the mud of the moat.

There Conway was seated. He looked up with vacant eyes when the visitors approached, and invited them to sit beside him and listen while he read; and when Maude demurred, after a glance at the heavy moss, he removed his cloak, a quaint blue garment lined with scarlet cloth, and spread it across the trunk. Then the little lady condescended to take her ease, and looked about with disapproval and disappointment.

“What a dirty tumbling-down old place!” she observed. “I think you ought to have the garden put into some sort of order; and as for the house it must be full of rats and spiders. I suppose it looks all right when it is lighted up, but by daylight--”

“If you please you must not say these things,” Conway interrupted.

“What!” Maude laughed. “Why, what nonsense!”

“You must remember, my friend,” said the scholar gently, “this lady has a mind superior to ours. The perfect beauty in art alone appeals to her. She finds her present environment unusual, not having been here before, but time will bring appreciation. What book is that you are holding?”

Conway held out the journal, its pages tinted lightly with ink as yellow as dead grass, and replied, “I will read to you if you will.”

“I want to see the house,” said Maude.

“Listen a few minutes to a voice from the past,” Conway entreated.

Maude, who was accustomed to having her own way, was about to reply indignantly, when she heard a rustling against the side of the house, and turning beheld Drayton gazing at her from between the creepers. The expression on his face silenced her, and the colour began to leave her cheeks. Before she was able to assert herself, the master of the Strath bent his head over the pages which contained the sad record of Winifred Hooper’s short life, and his voice came into her ears, ringing sad echoes of the past:

“I have been ill, and have not written in my book for days. I have been lying on my bed, listening to the wind in the trees, and seeing by the light of the harvest-moon forms and faces in the mirror opposite. I am well again now, and wondering why I was so foolish as to spend so long a time out of the air and sunshine, for indeed nothing ailed me except sorrow. Already it seems a long time since I went out, in a white dress, with a thick shawl about me, and my hair hanging down because I was too sick at heart to bind it, and yet it was scarce a week ago. Now we are in autumn, cold and blustering, but is it not always cold when one is sorrowing?

“How true was Mr. Spencer when he wrote, ‘for every dram of honey found in love a pound of gall doth over it redound.’ I could almost be sorry that I love you, Geoffrey. Love has visited me of late with dreams, when I would find myself struggling with my heart up a steep mountain, knowing that if I might reach the summit I should gain happiness. But at a certain point my strength would always fail. I have read that love requited gives perfect rest, but is it so? Wise Sophocles has better described it as a storm in the heart, which all must endure, even the gods. This written page can only speak. It conveys no feeling. I may write down ‘sorrow,’ but what can the word convey? A lacerated finger, a pain in the head--no more; and I may so easily, if I will, run my pen through the word, and write instead ‘love,’ and still nothing is conveyed. Love requited becomes a restless pain, when the loved one is far away. How shall lovers when separated express their feelings? It is the presence that speaks, not the tongue. One look is more eloquent than a life of letters.

“My dog has placed his paws upon my knee and looks up with soft brown eyes. He loves me, and yet speaks only with his eyes. I have seen so little of the world, and my reading of its doings come but rarely, but ’tis enough to humiliate me into a half-belief that the purest love is not in us, but in the animals. Have you watched a mother thrush feeding her fluffy chicks? Or an owl fighting a cotter for the sake of her offspring? Or a dog dying broken-hearted upon his dead master’s coat? Are we exceptions, Geoffrey, you and I? Do we love too much, and is it for that cause we are separated, least we should be too happy and thus anticipate the joys of Heaven?

“These are wandering and foolish thoughts. I should turn my mind towards the white hills and the woods, and note the beauty of the changing leaves; but, when I strive to do so, I see the wind whirling the dry foliage down the slopes and around the tombs of the old churchyard. Even when I look across the scenery it is upon the cypress and yew that my eyes are fixed. And yet so strange a creature am I that I would rather suffer than forego the privilege of having won your love.

“I keep this journal in a secret place where my father would not think to look. I must hide it now more securely than ever before, because I have done a dangerous and fearful thing. I have given information against my own father. It is horrible. It is unnatural. It may even happen that he shall be hanged through me. I shall thank Heaven for giving me liberty. I shall go forth to seek you, Geoffrey, and to find you, even if you be in the land of fables known as India. Yesterday I chanced upon Mr. Price along the highway where the road branches to Queensmore village; and when he stopped and spoke to me I was unable to contain my tongue, and before I knew had told him concerning those dark midnight rides. He heard me with amazement, and when I had done placed his hand upon the hilt of his sword, and said, ‘Very well indeed. We will see to this. A most notorious highwayman has long been the terror of these roads. To-morrow I will myself ride to town and place this information before the Sheriff, and promise that the Strath shall be soon more closely watched than you are now. Do not forget, child, that Kingsmore house stands open to give you shelter whensoever you may require it.’

“I supposed that I had passed secure from observation during that interview with worthy Mr. Price, but I was mistaken. Late last night a step came upon my passage, the door gave, and the man Reed advanced one step into my room. He was half-drunken, but I dared not order him out, menial though he be, for he is master here. He told me that my father had given orders I was to be confined in the garden, and if I ventured to disobey I would be brought back and locked within my chamber. I would not shame myself by showing weakness before him, but when I was again alone my silly heart seemed to break, and I fell upon my bed and wept a long hour. No more wanderings upon the solitary hills. My home is now my prison and my grave.

“I have not spoken to my father for more than a week. Last night, after Reed left me, I heard loud oaths and the sounds of fighting; and Deborah to-day told me she saw the squire standing in the hall, very drunk, with blood dripping from his head. There will be violent death in this house if these brawlings endure. Pray God I shall not see it. Even the sight of a mouse’s body sets me a-shivering. And so, Geoffrey, I have taken my last walk into the woods. There is a kind of wild pleasure in even that thought. When I go forth again, if I do go forth, you will be at my side, and there will be no winter any more, but I will be your summer, and you shall be my spring, and we will stand together once again where the daffodils grow.

“If it be folly to write so, it is a joy to think it. There is a book already written for each one, with the future set forth. Mine is indeed a small record, a few pages of love, and then a tomb; but yours, I like to think, is a long and noble tale, containing very much that is glorious: victories, rewards, and honours on each page, and then a sweet home and a loving wife--be very good to her for my sake--and smiling old age such as Mr. Addison has portrayed. That is how I read your future, beloved, without the aid of stars or omens. I desire for you a full and perfect life, flowing steadily on gathering strength and nobleness, like the river increasing as it nears the sea. Mine is a little impress upon the sands, which the rising tide smooths silently away.”

Dr. Berry moved suddenly forward, sweeping the book out of Conway’s hand. Maude had fainted.

Unaided the scholar carried her into the house. He placed his burden upon a sofa and fanned the white face, until a sigh escaped its lips, and the eyelids quivered. Another moment and Maude rose stiffly like a sleep-walker, stared about her with wild eyes, and said in a cold hard voice, as though in continuation of a tragic conversation which had been interrupted by her loss of consciousness, “Then there is nothing left, and I must drown myself.”

He tried to hold her, but she shook him off with a tragic gesture and moaned, “I see my fate before me. I must go to it. Do not touch me. Keep away from me. You do not know what I have done.”

She covered her face with her hands, and screamed, “I feel the eyes of the dead.”

“Dear lady,” the scholar interjected. “We are indeed surrounded by the dead, but they are invisible. Let me lead you into the garden.”

He took her hand, which was cold and lifeless, and she went with him into the open air; and there sank down in the long grass, shuddering and afraid, shrinking from his consoling touch.

“I have a right to share your suffering,” he said.

“You!” she exclaimed, beating her hands together. “What have you done? I can only sink into the stream, and die, and be forgotten. Leave me to myself. Why do you follow me? Why do you touch me? Look at your hands and see how I have soiled them.”

“Beloved sister,” spoke the tragedian. “I will never forsake you. Remember how our souls were united at the birth of song. You and I, poetess and poet, are joined together for all time by the double bond of art and of love. Your sin is mine also. If punishment must fall, let it fall on us together. It is happiness to suffer with those we love.”

“Let me show you,” she gasped, with a laugh, as unlike her own empty sound of mirth as the storm wind differs from the whirring of a wing. “Listen! I had a child, and a husband. One night I went into my daughter’s room. The child slept, one little hand reaching out towards me, her bright hair tumbling over the pillow, her little bosom rising and falling gently. I seized the pillow, and pressed it over the innocent face, and--and I stood looking down upon a little waxen face which never moved again.”

The choregus bent over her, and returned the philosophic answer which the laws of the drama required:

“It was the madness of jealousy. Under somewhat similar circumstances Medea murdered her children. It is as destiny appoints. Nature is exceedingly cruel. You were merely the instrument called upon to remove the child.”

“Hear me out,” she screamed. “I passed from that room to my husband’s side. He was a good man, noble, unselfish, and kind, having one fault only and that his love for me. I discovered him at work. He was always working, that he might provide me with those luxuries which my soul coveted. When I came near, he looked up and said, ‘Is our little girl asleep?’ And I smiled at him and said, ‘I have just come from her, and she is asleep.’”

“For a parallel--” the spell-bound listener interposed; but before he could say more she drowned his voice.

“Then my husband said, ‘I have been working all night, and my head pains me.’ So I took a handkerchief, and tied it round his head, and went and brought him a cup of wine. He drank it, pressing my hand, and I watched his head fall forward, and his hands shaking, and his strength going from him. And then I helped him to his room and left him, and in the night I heard him call me, but I put my fingers in my ears and turned away, and left him to die of the poison which I had given him.”

“Surely,” said the actor, “these things happened long ago. The poisoned cup and the suffocation of a sleeper are suggested to us again and again as orthodox punishments of an enemy.”

“I myself am guilty,” she raved. “With these hands I killed my husband and my child. Look at them, and see how the shadow lies upon them. The sun has not warmed them since.”

He took her hands which she had frantically extended. He lifted them and pressed first one and then the other to his lips with the adoration of a monk for holy relics. She was staring above the trees to where the vapoury hills were outlined. This was no longer the silent country dividing two lonely hamlets, but the resounding hills of despair rising above the hell of classical belief, and the autumnal fog was steam escaping from the crater beneath.

“Knowledge of the past comes without study,” the scholar proclaimed. “Who teaches the new-born child its prehensile grip? We arrive in this world well equipped. Mind is brought back from beyond, stored with knowledge. The young see visions, but as time passes, and the cares of the world enter, memory weakens, and finally there is nothing left but a craving to learn the future. Yet the past speaks in us all our lives. We return by the same way that we came. Could we look back we should understand all things; but, lest we should grow too wise, we are made to look forward, and so belief declines through half-belief and superstition to unbelief, and we return less learned than when we came. The deeds of others live on in us, and their sins are visited upon our heads.”

“You do not speak of hope,” she muttered. “You dare not.”

“Even while you speak in despair I see the light of hope dawning in your eyes,” he answered. “The husband and the child, for whom, in the tenderness of your heart, you mourn, met their death a very great time ago by other hands than these, perhaps in lofty Corinth, or amid the sands of Heliopolis, or beside the stubborn walls of Troy. Can you believe that to you alone appear these visions? There are sins upon the souls of all, there are sins upon my soul, the sins of long ago. I will speak of one. I was then, as now, a priest. It was my duty to interpret signs, and the inspired words which proceeded from the mouths of seers; but not as now to instruct the people respecting the nature of religion. Religion then consisted in the performance of certain mysteries, the secret of which was handed on from father to son, and guarded jealously from the people. The ground allotted to me was small, but beyond was a beautiful garden, wherein I would often wander to weave poetic fancies. For many years this ground was mine, but one day I came upon one who told me it was his, and that it was his intention to cultivate the ground, tear up the flowers, and remove the arbors. He was a rough unlearned man. When he closed the garden against me I hated him, and planned how I might destroy him. Night and day I pondered beside the oracle, watching the incense smoke. At length I went forth. Moonlight was upon the garden. I saw my enemy and crept upon him. I seized his neck, and strangled him. The garden was mine again. Shall I suffer for this memory? Not so. These hands are not guilty. My soul, less sentient than yours, is also less capable of suffering.”

“My friend,” she moaned. “Are you indeed my friend?”

“Your more than friend,” he rapturously replied.

“Then you will obey me. Leave me here.”

“It is my duty to watch over you. Alone you may do yourself some harm.”

“You may watch me. I will go beneath the trees.”

As the poet followed out her bidding he recited the second antistrophe of the second stasimon of the Agamemnon, that magnificent song concerning dreams and destiny in the house. Maude heard and trembled when the new understanding interpreted for her the meaning of those words. Genuine suffering was hers at last. She believed that her husband and child were dead, murdered as she had described. She saw in that enchanted atmosphere the lines of her fate written across the sky in letters of fire, even as Alcephron had read his warning in the flaming gardens of Osiris. No ray of hope lighted the way, and all that came was the dark assurance of the implacable nature of that destiny she had fought against. And the advice suggested by the sinister influence was that she should destroy herself.

Yet, in the very act of punishment, the didactic force brought out all the moral strength and latent good which might be enshrined within its victim. Thus Maude, when compelled to fight, manifested powers the existence of which she had never suspected. She resolutely refused to take the path of cowardice. She longed to live for better things. Instead of a hindrance she would become a help. But whom should she help? At that self-set question she shuddered again, knowing the resolution to have come too late, because those who had loved her were gone. Yet there were others who needed assistance, who might be led on by one so worthless as herself. She would seek them out. She would cover her pink dress with the sister’s robes of white and black, and dispense charity for her soul’s sake. So comedy and tragedy went on fighting over Maude; and the scholar looked on, chanting his lyric Greek.

Could she awake and find that horror only a dream, her husband and child yet living, what a world of happiness might still be hers. How joyously would she tread, though it were on the path of poverty, towards the life which seeks no recompense beyond a smile. Could it be that the choregus yonder had spoken the truth? Had the double crime which wrenched her heart been committed in a past age, by hands long vanished into earth?

As such questions as these quivered like meteoric flashes across her brain the heavily-charged atmosphere lifted, the mists dissolved, and through a golden fissure in a fast-floating cloud a ray of sunlight darted down the hills. A breath of wind followed, and as the influence withdrew Maude beheld Drayton standing in the grass, throwing up an apple, and catching it as it fell. It was the turn of the dramatic tide. Burlesque was laughing down the tragic frown.

SCENE-SHIFTING

Time, that sees everything, and hears everything, brings all things to light.--_Sophocles_.

The following letter, written by the proprietor of a curiosity shop in central London, was handed in at the toy-shop of one Emmanuel Falk in a by-way of the city of Nuremberg, and perused by the light of a yellow candle:--

“Dear Mr. Falk. I have pleasure in informing you that copies of the masks which belonged to the Biron family have come as pledges into my hands. They are genuine I have no doubt, because I find the name Joseph Falk engraved upon their backs. Permit me to state the incidents connected with this discovery.

“Yesterday a middle-aged Englishman, well-dressed, but apparently pressed for money, entered my shop and requested me to make him an advance, offering as security the pair of masks. Let me tell you he was well aware of their value. He asked for £5 and when I had handed him that amount he left hurriedly. I called my boy Jacob, pointed the man out, and bade him follow. Jacob went after the Englishman to his home. Very soon the man came out with a bag, which Jacob was permitted to carry for some coppers to the underground station. Jacob accompanied the man to Paddington, and standing close behind heard him ask for a ticket to a small town some distance from the metropolis. Not having sufficient money upon him to follow the man to his destination, Jacob returned. In the afternoon I called at the house, which the Englishman had entered after leaving my shop, told the woman who answered my ring that I was a tax-collector, and so managed to discover the name of the man who pawned the masks.

“You know where Mr. Biron can be found. Will you then write to him, letting him know of my discovery, and telling him that I will grant further information if he will communicate with me? The masks cannot leave my shop, as I may be ordered to give them up any day, but if he can visit me I will produce them for his inspection. I presume that the reward which he has offered for so long still holds good, if the information I am able to give may lead to the discovery of the originals? If you will forward this letter I will pay you five per cent upon the transaction, should the affair be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and to this effect I enclose my commission note duly signed and stamped. If you are not content with my offer, remember, I can certainly discover Mr. Biron through advertisements in the Italian papers; but this would require time, and the masks may be redeemed to-morrow. I must not fail to produce them, because the English law is severe.

“I am, my dear sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

“Francesco Cerutti.”

The old toy-maker spluttered through his beard until the candle guttered.

“The thief! the rogue!” he shouted, “The son of a dog to offer me his five per cent. I will not help him. Not for twenty. Let him give me my fifty per cent, and I will do business. The vampire! How he would suck my blood. The toad! the fox! Would that I might put him in the Iron Virgin. Would that I might poison the Pegnitz and make him drink of the water.”

The candlelight fell with weird effect among stacks of toys, striking a thousand glassy eyes into a semblance of life. There were legions of dolls stuffed with mechanism; there were animals, birds, and realistic reptiles, quivering and mouthing at their long-bearded Frankenstein. Their eyes were so many points of light glinting all colours, tawny-red, yellow, black, green, winking and leering and grinning. These eyes appeared to the toy-maker to expand during the night and to contract by day. When the sun entered the shop the eyes were small and yellow, having each one a narrow line of black for pupil. Towards evening these pupils were enlarged, and by night became round and far-seeing. Here was a doll whose eyes by the candlelight were unduly large; they might have been disfigured by the use of drugs. Here was another with optic nerves shuddering; and there another with eyes distorted, as it were by some external influence, the refracting surfaces being marred by a shadow cast across the retina. Emmanuel Falk loved those glinting glassy eyes. He felt a creator when he looked at them. He settled himself between the candle and the eyes, and indited a letter to Signore Eugene Biron, at the Strada Nuova di Poggio Reale, Napoli.

A fortnight passed without bringing any reply. A month followed, during which time the Italian Jew and the citizen of Nuremberg exchanged letters, which were impatient on the one side, and indignant on the other. But one day a very thin man entered the crooked street, stopped at the gabled toy-shop, and confronted the proprietor with the intelligence that his name was Eugene Biron.

The toy-maker thought at first that the Lord of all the Dolls had taken life and come to haunt him. Mr. Biron did not appear to darken the doorway as he entered, so hopelessly devoid was he of flesh. He was so thin that the perfect outline of his skull could be traced distinctly. For all that his face was pleasant, because it happened to possess two singularly kind eyes. His head was as bald as an apple. He had neither eyebrows nor beard. He might have been thirty, or he might have been seventy.

“By Gott!” whispered the toy-maker. “What a model! I will make a doll like him by San. Nicholas’ Day. He will make the children scream.”

Then he welcomed the visitor, and brought him into the sanctity of the work-shop where the toy marvels were planned and composed. Bringing forward a chair, which with a sweep of the hand he cleared of dolls in embryo, he begged his guest to be seated, and floundering to a cupboard produced a bottle of thin wine and two beautiful Venetian glasses chased in blue.

“I have been travelling lately, and while in this neighbourhood happened to write to Italy for my letters,” the visitor explained in fluent German. “Having just received your communication, I take the earliest opportunity of visiting you, on the chance of your having some information to add to that which your letter gave.”

“But I have nothing,” wailed Emmanuel. “That Jew in London did write last week and say that the masks were still in bond. I have used already many postage-stamps upon the man. I did only meet him once, and then he talked me into an arrangement by which I did lose and he did gain--may Gott confound him! He calls himself my humble and obedient servant every time, and next time I write I will sign myself his lofty and unyielding master, by Gott I will. I will be even with that Jew. I would give one hundred of my best dolls to choke him in the Schöne Brunnen. I drink now to your long life, Mr. Biron, and to the increased prosperity of the toy business.”

“If you have nothing more to tell me I shall start for England to-night,” said the man of no nationality. “I have been searching all my life for these masks, and I may be now on the point of succeeding. Your great-grandfather made, I believe, several copies from the originals--”

“And he did die of it,” interrupted the toy-maker excitedly. “Gott in Heaven! They did kill him. Come up these stairs, and I will show you at the top of the house a great iron hook where he did hang himself and die.”

“I am afraid the masks may have killed others besides old Joseph Falk,” said the visitor solemnly. “That is why I want to discover them.”

The bearded toy-maker stared at his hairless guest with open mouth and eyes like two full moons behind his glasses. “And then what you do with them?” he demanded.

“Cremate them,” came the reply. “Or give them Christian burial.”

“Give to them Christian burial. Mine holy Gott!”

“Surely you know their history?”

“But I do not know,” shouted the toy-maker, snatching up a doll and screwing off its head, unmindful of the sawdust which snowed upon his slippers. “I know how Joseph Falk lost his brains and thought himself an actor, and would stand on these stairs reciting poetry. I know this old house was once the terror of all the strasse, and those who came here would sometimes stand and laugh as though the very devil of comedy was in them, and sometimes they would stamp and frown like Faustus at the opera. When Joseph Falk hanged himself Mr. Biron came and took the masks away. I know nothing more, except that these things happened more than a hundred years ago. Bah! they could not make my dolls in those days.”

“Falk begged for the masks to be returned to him after he had sold them,” said Biron slowly, “I believe he was compelled by his extraordinary nature to love them. He must have been a remarkable man. He called himself a toy-maker, but his toys were the products of a diseased and morbid imagination. He made a clock which, instead of ticking, groaned the seconds, and a candle with machinery attached which caused the flame to burn blue at midnight. Finally he made the masks.”

“And they did kill him,” muttered the great-grandson. “But he did sell them first to Mr. Biron.”

“To my great-grandfather, a man whose mind had suffered through intercourse with Joseph Falk. But is it possible that you, the present head of the family, do not know how the masks were made?”

“By Gott, I do know,” cried Emmanuel. “They were made of the skin of animals, treated with human blood. Bah! I will not talk about it. The thought gives me cold feelings here.” The toy-maker clapped his hand upon his spine.

“You are wrong,” said Biron. “They were made of skin certainly, but not the skin of animals. We will not go closely into details, because, as I have said, Joseph Falk’s mind was not a healthy one; but it was the skin of human beings that was used in the making of the masks.”

“That is one big lie,” roared the toy-maker; and as he uttered these words all the clocks in the establishment, above, around, and below, struck the hour together solemnly.

“I am sorry to say it is true,” said Biron quietly. “My great-grandfather’s notes leave no doubt on the matter. I will give you a few details concerning the composition of the masks. The idea was suggested to Joseph Falk one night at the opera. He was exceedingly fond of the stage, and his visits were as frequent as business would permit. One night he was attracted by a representation of the masks of Tragedy and Comedy modelled upon the proscenium; and straightway the idea entered his mind of creating two such masks, which should be influential types of the respective branches of the drama which they are supposed to represent. You know that he succeeded in carrying out this project; and you shall now hear how he did so.”

“Then he, my great-grandfather, was a devil,” cried the toy-maker. “I will forget him. He is not worthy to lie within a stone’s cast of the great Dürer. Bah! I will never again pray for him upon All Souls’ Day, and I will go no more to the cemetery of St. John to put immortelles upon his grave.”

“This is a story of the eighteenth century,” went on the visitor. “One of the institutions of this city was the College of Surgeons, which was placed hard by the prison, and distinguished from the buildings surrounding it by a gilded globe which satirists were fond of calling a globule--the only form of medicine which physicians of that day could, or would, dispense. Superstition ruled the art of healing to such an extraordinary extent that astrology was one of the important subjects for examination, and even barbers were required to pass in surgery before being licensed to shave chins. Anyone could be a surgeon in those days. It was in fact as easy as enlisting in the army, or, as a wit has said, as difficult to avoid as the press-gang; and knowing this you will not be surprised to hear that Joseph Falk became enrolled a member of the College, not because he wished to acquire the art of the physicians, but because his membership entitled him to a place in the dissecting-theatre, which was kept well supplied with material by the adjacent prison where executions were frequent.”

“Is it not true what I say, that this Joseph Falk prostituted the noble art of toy-making?” cried the great-grandson appealingly to his creations.

“Had he turned his talents in the right direction it is certain he would have produced many useful models of mechanism,” Biron went on. “Unfortunately his mind was bent towards the horrible. It happened that fortune favoured him. I do not suppose you have heard of the criminal Cagliari, who perpetrated his villainies in this and many another country during the last half of the eighteenth century; but according to my great-grandfather’s notes he seems to have been the most inhuman murderer that has ever troubled the world. This man made a living by decoying youths and young women into secret places, and killing them for the sake of what money and jewellery they possessed. It is said that he despatched some twenty victims in this manner, burying the bodies in a lonely wood which he named the Cagliari Cemetery. Strangely enough he was a well-educated man, of good appearance and address, although entirely lacking in all moral sense. It was however argued at the autopsy that the development of his head showed that he was not a natural creature. Being at last convicted and executed, his body was brought in due course to the dissecting-hall of the College of Surgeons. Joseph Falk managed to secure the malefactor’s abnormal head.”

“Mine Gott, I do not yet understand these things,” muttered the toy-maker.

“From that head he extracted the materials for compounding his mask of Tragedy.”

The listener’s jaw dropped, and his tongue protruded, but no sound proceeded therefrom. He stared along the vista of glass-eyed dolls, and the orbs stared back and winked knowingly.

“That same year the body of Quillebeuf came into the hands of old Falk,” went on the visitor hurriedly. “This man was a little mountebank of unusual talent, who roamed from country to country, miming and jesting, and giving entertainments full of drollery by the way-side. He had never an opportunity of appearing before the better classes, indeed it is said that he rarely entered the large towns. He loved the country, and wandered there with tabor and drum, an itinerant maker of mirth, delighting the simple people by his artistic foolery. Had he been given a chance of appearing upon the stage, he must have made his mark as a comedian, but opportunity was not his, and he died a failure. One day he was arrested on suspicion of theft and sent to prison; there he was taken ill and died, wearing to the end a laugh on his comic face. It was subsequently discovered that he had been innocent of the theft, and to do what poor justice was then possible a memorial was subscribed for, and set up in the place where he was born, a memorial which could not have been of any permanent nature, for when I went to see it a few years ago it had disappeared. Quillebeuf’s body was sent from the prison to the dissecting-room; and thus Joseph Falk obtained material for his mask of Comedy. There,” Biron concluded, “you have the story, as I know it, of the two masks which your great-grandfather made and mine bought.”

“Find them, I do beseech you, Mr. Biron,” muttered the frightened little toy-maker. “Bury them deep, and get a holy priest to exorcise the evil spirits. Holy Gott! There are horrible things in this world. I shall tremble when I make my dolls. I shall feel that they may go from my hands with the power to work evil upon the minds of little children. I will leave my business, Mr. Biron, and come with you. I do not want my five per cent. I will give it to charity, and more besides, when you have destroyed those awful things.”

“I thank you for your offer of help,” said the visitor, as he rose carefully from the rickety chair. “But I shall not require it. I am upon the right track I believe. Unfortunately my great-grandfather’s notes finish abruptly. There is indeed a tragedy suggested about that termination, and it is curious that no authenticated record exists in my family concerning how, when, or where the old man came to his end. There is however a rumour, entirely unsupported by proof, to the effect that Mr. Biron went to live for a time in a manor-house situated in a lonely English valley, and there left the masks built up inside a cellar, and the harmless copies made by Joseph Falk disposed about the rooms. The latter point is of the greatest importance, for, if there be any truth in the rumour, this pledging of the copies may well lead to the discovery of the originals. England is not a large country, but there are many lonely valleys about the island, and thousands of manor-houses. My grandfather and father both searched in vain for the masks, and bequeathed the duty to me. I have done what little I could, but up to the present without success. Is it not strange that they should now break through the long silence of more than a hundred years?”

“You will find them, Mr. Biron,” said the toy-maker with religious confidence. “Cerutti the Jew knows more than he has told to me, and his mouth will open when you show him money. He would not rest until he had found out everything. By this time he has discovered that house, and can point out to you the cellar where the masks are hidden, and directly you go into his shop he will bring before you a receipt for five hundred pounds English money, the reward which your father offered, and you renewed, and will say to you, ‘I have the information you require. Give me my money.’ Yes, by Gott, he will, and he will not give me my five per cent unless I frighten him with the law.”

The toy-maker of Nuremberg unfairly judged the London dealer in curios, but he was prejudiced against the man who had once got the better of him in trade. His estimation of the Jew’s shrewdness was, how ever, not at fault. When, less than a week later, the shadowy figure of Biron flitted across the threshold of the curiosity shop and revealed its identity the shrewd Italian made no mention of the reward, but merely bowed obsequiously, and in a business-like manner produced from his pocket a slip of paper, which he handed to the visitor with a second obeisance deeper than the first. Across this piece of paper was written the three pregnant words, “Thorlund. The Strath.”