'Very easy say Brown--Browndee--no' so easy after all!' cried Michael.
'Easy say; anything's easy say, when you can say it. What I don' like's
total disappearance of an uncle. Not businesslike.' And he wagged his
head.

'It is all perfectly simple,' returned Morris, with laborious calm.
'There is no mystery. He stays at Browndean, where he got a shake in the
accident.'

'Ah!' said Michael, 'got devil of a shake!'

'Why do you say that?' cried Morris sharply.

'Best possible authority. Told me so yourself,' said the lawyer. 'But if
you tell me contrary now, of course I'm bound to believe either the one
story or the other. Point is I've upset this bottle, still champagne's
exc'lent thing carpet--point is, is valuable uncle dead--an'--bury?'

Morris sprang from his seat. 'What's that you say?' he gasped.

'I say it's exc'lent thing carpet,' replied Michael, rising. 'Exc'lent
thing promote healthy action of the skin. Well, it's all one, anyway.
Give my love to Uncle Champagne.'

'You're not going away?' said Morris.

'Awf'ly sorry, ole man. Got to sit up sick friend,' said the wavering
Michael.

'You shall not go till you have explained your hints,' returned Morris
fiercely. 'What do you mean? What brought you here?'

'No offence, I trust,' said the lawyer, turning round as he opened the
door; 'only doing my duty as shemishery of Providence.'

Groping his way to the front-door, he opened it with some difficulty,
and descended the steps to the hansom. The tired driver looked up as he
approached, and asked where he was to go next.

Michael observed that Morris had followed him to the steps; a brilliant
inspiration came to him. 'Anything t' give pain,' he reflected. . . .
'Drive Shcotlan' Yard,' he added aloud, holding to the wheel to steady
himself; 'there's something devilish fishy, cabby, about those cousins.
Mush' be cleared up! Drive Shcotlan' Yard.'

'You don't mean that, sir,' said the man, with the ready sympathy of the
lower orders for an intoxicated gentleman. 'I had better take you home,
sir; you can go to Scotland Yard tomorrow.'

'Is it as friend or as perfessional man you advise me not to go
Shcotlan' Yard t'night?' enquired Michael. 'All righ', never min'
Shcotlan' Yard, drive Gaiety bar.'

'The Gaiety bar is closed,' said the man.

'Then home,' said Michael, with the same cheerfulness.

'Where to, sir?'

'I don't remember, I'm sure,' said Michael, entering the vehicle, 'drive
Shcotlan' Yard and ask.'

'But you'll have a card,' said the man, through the little aperture in
the top, 'give me your card-case.'

'What imagi--imagination in a cabby!' cried the lawyer, producing his
card-case, and handing it to the driver.

The man read it by the light of the lamp. 'Mr Michael Finsbury, 233
King's Road, Chelsea. Is that it, sir?'

'Right you are,' cried Michael, 'drive there if you can see way.'



CHAPTER X. Gideon Forsyth and the Broadwood Grand

The reader has perhaps read that remarkable work, Who Put Back the
Clock? by E. H. B., which appeared for several days upon the railway
bookstalls and then vanished entirely from the face of the earth.
Whether eating Time makes the chief of his diet out of old editions;
whether Providence has passed a special enactment on behalf of authors;
or whether these last have taken the law into their own hand, bound
themselves into a dark conspiracy with a password, which I would
die rather than reveal, and night after night sally forth under some
vigorous leader, such as Mr James Payn or Mr Walter Besant, on their
task of secret spoliation--certain it is, at least, that the old
editions pass, giving place to new. To the proof, it is believed there
are now only three copies extant of Who Put Back the Clock? one in
the British Museum, successfully concealed by a wrong entry in the
catalogue; another in one of the cellars (the cellar where the music
accumulates) of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh; and a third, bound
in morocco, in the possession of Gideon Forsyth. To account for the very
different fate attending this third exemplar, the readiest theory is
to suppose that Gideon admired the tale. How to explain that admiration
might appear (to those who have perused the work) more difficult; but
the weakness of a parent is extreme, and Gideon (and not his uncle,
whose initials he had humorously borrowed) was the author of Who Put
Back the Clock? He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate
friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and alarming
failure, the modesty of the novelist had become more pressing, and the
secret was now likely to be better kept than that of the authorship of
Waverley.

A copy of the work (for the date of my tale is already yesterday) still
figured in dusty solitude in the bookstall at Waterloo; and Gideon, as
he passed with his ticket for Hampton Court, smiled contemptuously at
the creature of his thoughts. What an idle ambition was the author's!
How far beneath him was the practice of that childish art! With his hand
closing on his first brief, he felt himself a man at last; and the
muse who presides over the police romance, a lady presumably of French
extraction, fled his neighbourhood, and returned to join the dance round
the springs of Helicon, among her Grecian sisters.

Robust, practical reflection still cheered the young barrister upon his
journey. Again and again he selected the little country-house in its
islet of great oaks, which he was to make his future home. Like a
prudent householder, he projected improvements as he passed; to one he
added a stable, to another a tennis-court, a third he supplied with a
becoming rustic boat-house.

'How little a while ago,' he could not but reflect, 'I was a careless
young dog with no thought but to be comfortable! I cared for nothing
but boating and detective novels. I would have passed an old-fashioned
country-house with large kitchen-garden, stabling, boat-house, and
spacious offices, without so much as a look, and certainly would have
made no enquiry as to the drains. How a man ripens with the years!'

The intelligent reader will perceive the ravages of Miss Hazeltine.
Gideon had carried Julia straight to Mr Bloomfield's house; and
that gentleman, having been led to understand she was the victim of
oppression, had noisily espoused her cause. He worked himself into
a fine breathing heat; in which, to a man of his temperament, action
became needful.

'I do not know which is the worse,' he cried, 'the fraudulent old
villain or the unmanly young cub. I will write to the Pall Mall and
expose them. Nonsense, sir; they must be exposed! It's a public duty.
Did you not tell me the fellow was a Tory? O, the uncle is a Radical
lecturer, is he? No doubt the uncle has been grossly wronged. But of
course, as you say, that makes a change; it becomes scarce so much a
public duty.'

And he sought and instantly found a fresh outlet for his alacrity. Miss
Hazeltine (he now perceived) must be kept out of the way; his houseboat
was lying ready--he had returned but a day or two before from his usual
cruise; there was no place like a houseboat for concealment; and that
very morning, in the teeth of the easterly gale, Mr and Mrs Bloomfield
and Miss Julia Hazeltine had started forth on their untimely voyage.
Gideon pled in vain to be allowed to join the party. 'No, Gid,' said his
uncle. 'You will be watched; you must keep away from us.' Nor had the
barrister ventured to contest this strange illusion; for he feared if
he rubbed off any of the romance, that Mr Bloomfield might weary of the
whole affair. And his discretion was rewarded; for the Squirradical,
laying a heavy hand upon his nephew's shoulder, had added these notable
expressions: 'I see what you are after, Gid. But if you're going to get
the girl, you have to work, sir.'

These pleasing sounds had cheered the barrister all day, as he sat
reading in chambers; they continued to form the ground-base of his manly
musings as he was whirled to Hampton Court; even when he landed at the
station, and began to pull himself together for his delicate interview,
the voice of Uncle Ned and the eyes of Julia were not forgotten.

But now it began to rain surprises: in all Hampton Court there was no
Kurnaul Villa, no Count Tarnow, and no count. This was strange; but,
viewed in the light of the incoherency of his instructions, not perhaps
inexplicable; Mr Dickson had been lunching, and he might have made some
fatal oversight in the address. What was the thoroughly prompt, manly,
and businesslike step? thought Gideon; and he answered himself at
once: 'A telegram, very laconic.' Speedily the wires were flashing the
following very important missive: 'Dickson, Langham Hotel. Villa and
persons both unknown here, suppose erroneous address; follow self next
train.--Forsyth.' And at the Langham Hotel, sure enough, with a brow
expressive of dispatch and intellectual effort, Gideon descended not
long after from a smoking hansom.

I do not suppose that Gideon will ever forget the Langham Hotel. No
Count Tarnow was one thing; no John Dickson and no Ezra Thomas, quite
another. How, why, and what next, danced in his bewildered brain; from
every centre of what we playfully call the human intellect incongruous
messages were telegraphed; and before the hubbub of dismay had quite
subsided, the barrister found himself driving furiously for his
chambers. There was at least a cave of refuge; it was at least a place
to think in; and he climbed the stair, put his key in the lock and
opened the door, with some approach to hope.

It was all dark within, for the night had some time fallen; but Gideon
knew his room, he knew where the matches stood on the end of the
chimney-piece; and he advanced boldly, and in so doing dashed himself
against a heavy body; where (slightly altering the expressions of the
song) no heavy body should have been. There had been nothing there when
Gideon went out; he had locked the door behind him, he had found it
locked on his return, no one could have entered, the furniture could not
have changed its own position. And yet undeniably there was a something
there. He thrust out his hands in the darkness. Yes, there was
something, something large, something smooth, something cold.

'Heaven forgive me!' said Gideon, 'it feels like a piano.'

And the next moment he remembered the vestas in his waistcoat pocket and
had struck a light.

It was indeed a piano that met his doubtful gaze; a vast and costly
instrument, stained with the rains of the afternoon and defaced
with recent scratches. The light of the vesta was reflected from the
varnished sides, like a staice in quiet water; and in the farther end of
the room the shadow of that strange visitor loomed bulkily and wavered
on the wall.

Gideon let the match burn to his fingers, and the darkness closed once
more on his bewilderment. Then with trembling hands he lit the lamp and
drew near. Near or far, there was no doubt of the fact: the thing was
a piano. There, where by all the laws of God and man it was impossible
that it should be--there the thing impudently stood. Gideon threw open
the keyboard and struck a chord. Not a sound disturbed the quiet of the
room. 'Is there anything wrong with me?' he thought, with a pang; and
drawing in a seat, obstinately persisted in his attempts to ravish
silence, now with sparkling arpeggios, now with a sonata of Beethoven's
which (in happier days) he knew to be one of the loudest pieces of that
powerful composer. Still not a sound. He gave the Broadwood two great
bangs with his clenched first. All was still as the grave. The young
barrister started to his feet.

'I am stark-staring mad,' he cried aloud, 'and no one knows it but
myself. God's worst curse has fallen on me.'

His fingers encountered his watch-chain; instantly he had plucked forth
his watch and held it to his ear. He could hear it ticking.

'I am not deaf,' he said aloud. 'I am only insane. My mind has quitted
me for ever.'

He looked uneasily about the room, and--gazed with lacklustre eyes at
the chair in which Mr Dickson had installed himself. The end of a cigar
lay near on the fender.

'No,' he thought, 'I don't believe that was a dream; but God knows
my mind is failing rapidly. I seem to be hungry, for instance; it's
probably another hallucination. Still I might try. I shall have one more
good meal; I shall go to the Cafe Royal, and may possibly be removed
from there direct to the asylum.'

He wondered with morbid interest, as he descended the stairs, how he
would first betray his terrible condition--would he attack a waiter? or
eat glass?--and when he had mounted into a cab, he bade the man drive to
Nichol's, with a lurking fear that there was no such place.

The flaring, gassy entrance of the cafe speedily set his mind at rest;
he was cheered besides to recognize his favourite waiter; his orders
appeared to be coherent; the dinner, when it came, was quite a sensible
meal, and he ate it with enjoyment. 'Upon my word,' he reflected, 'I
am about tempted to indulge a hope. Have I been hasty? Have I done what
Robert Skill would have done?' Robert Skill (I need scarcely mention)
was the name of the principal character in Who Put Back the Clock? It
had occurred to the author as a brilliant and probable invention; to
readers of a critical turn, Robert appeared scarce upon a level with his
surname; but it is the difficulty of the police romance, that the reader
is always a man of such vastly greater ingenuity than the writer. In the
eyes of his creator, however, Robert Skill was a word to conjure with;
the thought braced and spurred him; what that brilliant creature would
have done Gideon would do also. This frame of mind is not uncommon; the
distressed general, the baited divine, the hesitating author, decide
severally to do what Napoleon, what St Paul, what Shakespeare would
have done; and there remains only the minor question, What is that? In
Gideon's case one thing was clear: Skill was a man of singular decision,
he would have taken some step (whatever it was) at once; and the only
step that Gideon could think of was to return to his chambers.

This being achieved, all further inspiration failed him, and he stood
pitifully staring at the instrument of his confusion. To touch the keys
again was more than he durst venture on; whether they had maintained
their former silence, or responded with the tones of the last trump,
it would have equally dethroned his resolution. 'It may be a practical
jest,' he reflected, 'though it seems elaborate and costly. And yet what
else can it be? It MUST be a practical jest.' And just then his eye fell
upon a feature which seemed corroborative of that view: the pagoda of
cigars which Michael had erected ere he left the chambers. 'Why that?'
reflected Gideon. 'It seems entirely irresponsible.' And drawing near,
he gingerly demolished it. 'A key,' he thought. 'Why that? And why
so conspicuously placed?' He made the circuit of the instrument, and
perceived the keyhole at the back. 'Aha! this is what the key is for,'
said he. 'They wanted me to look inside. Stranger and stranger.' And
with that he turned the key and raised the lid.

In what antics of agony, in what fits of flighty resolution, in what
collapses of despair, Gideon consumed the night, it would be ungenerous
to enquire too closely.

That trill of tiny song with which the eaves-birds of London welcome
the approach of day found him limp and rumpled and bloodshot, and with a
mind still vacant of resource. He rose and looked forth unrejoicingly on
blinded windows, an empty street, and the grey daylight dotted with the
yellow lamps. There are mornings when the city seems to awake with a
sick headache; this was one of them; and still the twittering reveille
of the sparrows stirred in Gideon's spirit.

'Day here,' he thought, 'and I still helpless! This must come to an
end.' And he locked up the piano, put the key in his pocket, and set
forth in quest of coffee. As he went, his mind trudged for the hundredth
time a certain mill-road of terrors, misgivings, and regrets. To call
in the police, to give up the body, to cover London with handbills
describing John Dickson and Ezra Thomas, to fill the papers with
paragraphs, Mysterious Occurrence in the Temple--Mr Forsyth admitted to
bail, this was one course, an easy course, a safe course; but not, the
more he reflected on it, not a pleasant one. For, was it not to publish
abroad a number of singular facts about himself? A child ought to
have seen through the story of these adventurers, and he had gaped and
swallowed it. A barrister of the least self-respect should have refused
to listen to clients who came before him in a manner so irregular, and
he had listened. And O, if he had only listened; but he had gone upon
their errand--he, a barrister, uninstructed even by the shadow of
a solicitor--upon an errand fit only for a private detective; and
alas!--and for the hundredth time the blood surged to his brow--he had
taken their money! 'No,' said he, 'the thing is as plain as St Paul's. I
shall be dishonoured! I have smashed my career for a five-pound note.'

Between the possibility of being hanged in all innocence, and the
certainty of a public and merited disgrace, no gentleman of spirit
could long hesitate. After three gulps of that hot, snuffy, and muddy
beverage, that passes on the streets of London for a decoction of the
coffee berry, Gideon's mind was made up. He would do without the police.
He must face the other side of the dilemma, and be Robert Skill in
earnest. What would Robert Skill have done? How does a gentleman dispose
of a dead body, honestly come by? He remembered the inimitable story
of the hunchback; reviewed its course, and dismissed it for a worthless
guide. It was impossible to prop a corpse on the corner of Tottenham
Court Road without arousing fatal curiosity in the bosoms of the
passers-by; as for lowering it down a London chimney, the physical
obstacles were insurmountable. To get it on board a train and drop it
out, or on the top of an omnibus and drop it off, were equally out
of the question. To get it on a yacht and drop it overboard, was more
conceivable; but for a man of moderate means it seemed extravagant. The
hire of the yacht was in itself a consideration; the subsequent support
of the whole crew (which seemed a necessary consequence) was simply
not to be thought of. His uncle and the houseboat here occurred in very
luminous colours to his mind. A musical composer (say, of the name of
Jimson) might very well suffer, like Hogarth's musician before him, from
the disturbances of London. He might very well be pressed for time to
finish an opera--say the comic opera Orange Pekoe--Orange Pekoe, music
by Jimson--'this young maestro, one of the most promising of our
recent English school'--vigorous entrance of the drums, etc.--the whole
character of Jimson and his music arose in bulk before the mind of
Gideon. What more likely than Jimson's arrival with a grand piano (say,
at Padwick), and his residence in a houseboat alone with the unfinished
score of Orange Pekoe? His subsequent disappearance, leaving nothing
behind but an empty piano case, it might be more difficult to account
for. And yet even that was susceptible of explanation. For, suppose
Jimson had gone mad over a fugal passage, and had thereupon destroyed
the accomplice of his infamy, and plunged into the welcome river? What
end, on the whole, more probable for a modern musician?

'By Jove, I'll do it,' cried Gideon. 'Jimson is the boy!'



CHAPTER XI. The Maestro Jimson

Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield having announced his intention to stay in the
neighbourhood of Maidenhead, what more probable than that the Maestro
Jimson should turn his mind toward Padwick? Near this pleasant riverside
village he remembered to have observed an ancient, weedy houseboat lying
moored beside a tuft of willows. It had stirred in him, in his careless
hours, as he pulled down the river under a more familiar name, a certain
sense of the romantic; and when the nice contrivance of his story was
already complete in his mind, he had come near pulling it all down
again, like an ungrateful clock, in order to introduce a chapter in
which Richard Skill (who was always being decoyed somewhere) should
be decoyed on board that lonely hulk by Lord Bellew and the American
desperado Gin Sling. It was fortunate he had not done so, he reflected,
since the hulk was now required for very different purposes.

Jimson, a man of inconspicuous costume, but insinuating manners,
had little difficulty in finding the hireling who had charge of the
houseboat, and still less in persuading him to resign his care. The rent
was almost nominal, the entry immediate, the key was exchanged against a
suitable advance in money, and Jimson returned to town by the afternoon
train to see about dispatching his piano.

'I will be down tomorrow,' he had said reassuringly. 'My opera is waited
for with such impatience, you know.'

And, sure enough, about the hour of noon on the following day, Jimson
might have been observed ascending the riverside road that goes from
Padwick to Great Haverham, carrying in one hand a basket of provisions,
and under the other arm a leather case containing (it is to be
conjectured) the score of Orange Pekoe. It was October weather; the
stone-grey sky was full of larks, the leaden mirror of the Thames
brightened with autumnal foliage, and the fallen leaves of the chestnuts
chirped under the composer's footing. There is no time of the year
in England more courageous; and Jimson, though he was not without his
troubles, whistled as he went.

A little above Padwick the river lies very solitary. On the opposite
shore the trees of a private park enclose the view, the chimneys of the
mansion just pricking forth above their clusters; on the near side the
path is bordered by willows. Close among these lay the houseboat, a
thing so soiled by the tears of the overhanging willows, so grown upon
with parasites, so decayed, so battered, so neglected, such a haunt of
rats, so advertised a storehouse of rheumatic agonies, that the heart
of an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying
drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for
Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this
unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the
abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain;
the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It
could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in
beloved toil; how much less for a young gentleman haunted by alarms and
awaiting the arrival of a corpse!

He sat down, cleared away a piece of the table, and attacked the cold
luncheon in his basket. In case of any subsequent inquiry into the fate
of Jimson, It was desirable he should be little seen: in other words,
that he should spend the day entirely in the house. To this end, and
further to corroborate his fable, he had brought in the leather case not
only writing materials, but a ream of large-size music paper, such as he
considered suitable for an ambitious character like Jimson's. 'And now
to work,' said he, when he had satisfied his appetite. 'We must leave
traces of the wretched man's activity.' And he wrote in bold characters:

     ORANGE PEKOE.
     Op. 17.
     J. B. JIMSON.
     Vocal and p. f. score.

'I suppose they never do begin like this,' reflected Gideon; 'but then
it's quite out of the question for me to tackle a full score, and
Jimson was so unconventional. A dedication would be found convincing, I
believe. "Dedicated to" (let me see) "to William Ewart Gladstone, by his
obedient servant the composer." And now some music: I had better avoid
the overture; it seems to present difficulties. Let's give an air for
the tenor: key--O, something modern!--seven sharps.' And he made a
businesslike signature across the staves, and then paused and browsed
for a while on the handle of his pen. Melody, with no better inspiration
than a sheet of paper, is not usually found to spring unbidden in the
mind of the amateur; nor is the key of seven sharps a place of much
repose to the untried. He cast away that sheet. 'It will help to build
up the character of Jimson,' Gideon remarked, and again waited on
the muse, in various keys and on divers sheets of paper, but all with
results so inconsiderable that he stood aghast. 'It's very odd,' thought
he. 'I seem to have less fancy than I thought, or this is an off-day
with me; yet Jimson must leave something.' And again he bent himself to
the task.

Presently the penetrating chill of the houseboat began to attack the
very seat of life. He desisted from his unremunerative trial, and, to
the audible annoyance of the rats, walked briskly up and down the cabin.
Still he was cold. 'This is all nonsense,' said he. 'I don't care about
the risk, but I will not catch a catarrh. I must get out of this den.'

He stepped on deck, and passing to the bow of his embarkation, looked
for the first time up the river. He started. Only a few hundred yards
above another houseboat lay moored among the willows. It was very
spick-and-span, an elegant canoe hung at the stern, the windows were
concealed by snowy curtains, a flag floated from a staff. The more
Gideon looked at it, the more there mingled with his disgust a sense
of impotent surprise. It was very like his uncle's houseboat; it was
exceedingly like--it was identical. But for two circumstances, he
could have sworn it was the same. The first, that his uncle had gone to
Maidenhead, might be explained away by that flightiness of purpose which
is so common a trait among the more than usually manly. The second,
however, was conclusive: it was not in the least like Mr Bloomfield to
display a banner on his floating residence; and if he ever did, it
would certainly be dyed in hues of emblematical propriety. Now the
Squirradical, like the vast majority of the more manly, had drawn
knowledge at the wells of Cambridge--he was wooden spoon in the year
1850; and the flag upon the houseboat streamed on the afternoon air with
the colours of that seat of Toryism, that cradle of Puseyism, that
home of the inexact and the effete Oxford. Still it was strangely like,
thought Gideon.

And as he thus looked and thought, the door opened, and a young lady
stepped forth on deck. The barrister dropped and fled into his cabin--it
was Julia Hazeltine! Through the window he watched her draw in the
canoe, get on board of it, cast off, and come dropping downstream in his
direction.

'Well, all is up now,' said he, and he fell on a seat.

'Good-afternoon, miss,' said a voice on the water. Gideon knew it for
the voice of his landlord.

'Good-afternoon,' replied Julia, 'but I don't know who you are; do I? O
yes, I do though. You are the nice man that gave us leave to sketch from
the old houseboat.'

Gideon's heart leaped with fear.

'That's it,' returned the man. 'And what I wanted to say was as you
couldn't do it any more. You see I've let it.'

'Let it!' cried Julia.

'Let it for a month,' said the man. 'Seems strange, don't it? Can't see
what the party wants with it?'

'It seems very romantic of him, I think,' said Julia, 'What sort of a
person is he?'

Julia in her canoe, the landlord in his wherry, were close alongside,
and holding on by the gunwale of the houseboat; so that not a word was
lost on Gideon.

'He's a music-man,' said the landlord, 'or at least that's what he told
me, miss; come down here to write an op'ra.'

'Really!' cried Julia, 'I never heard of anything so delightful! Why, we
shall be able to slip down at night and hear him improvise! What' is his
name?'

'Jimson,' said the man.

'Jimson?' repeated Julia, and interrogated her memory in vain. But
indeed our rising school of English music boasts so many professors that
we rarely hear of one till he is made a baronet. 'Are you sure you have
it right?'

'Made him spell it to me,' replied the landlord. 'J-I-M-S-O-N--Jimson;
and his op'ra's called--some kind of tea.'

'SOME KIND OF TEA!' cried the girl. 'What a very singular name for an
opera! What can it be about?' And Gideon heard her pretty laughter flow
abroad. 'We must try to get acquainted with this Mr Jimson; I feel sure
he must be nice.'

'Well, miss, I'm afraid I must be going on. I've got to be at Haverham,
you see.'

'O, don't let me keep you, you kind man!' said Julia. 'Good afternoon.'

'Good afternoon to you, miss.'

Gideon sat in the cabin a prey to the most harrowing thoughts. Here he
was anchored to a rotting houseboat, soon to be anchored to it still
more emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and here was the
country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure
parties to surround his house at night. Well, that meant the gallows;
and much he cared for that. What troubled him now was Julia's
indescribable levity. That girl would scrape acquaintance with anybody;
she had no reserve, none of the enamel of the lady. She was familiar
with a brute like his landlord; she took an immediate interest (which
she lacked even the delicacy to conceal) in a creature like Jimson! He
could conceive her asking Jimson to have tea with her! And it was for a
girl like this that a man like Gideon--Down, manly heart!

He was interrupted by a sound that sent him whipping behind the door in
a trice. Miss Hazeltine had stepped on board the houseboat. Her sketch
was promising; judging from the stillness, she supposed Jimson not yet
come; and she had decided to seize occasion and complete the work
of art. Down she sat therefore in the bow, produced her block and
water-colours, and was soon singing over (what used to be called) the
ladylike accomplishment. Now and then indeed her song was interrupted,
as she searched in her memory for some of the odious little receipts
by means of which the game is practised--or used to be practised in the
brave days of old; they say the world, and those ornaments of the world,
young ladies, are become more sophisticated now; but Julia had probably
studied under Pitman, and she stood firm in the old ways.

Gideon, meanwhile, stood behind the door, afraid to move, afraid to
breathe, afraid to think of what must follow, racked by confinement and
borne to the ground with tedium. This particular phase, he felt with
gratitude, could not last for ever; whatever impended (even the gallows,
he bitterly and perhaps erroneously reflected) could not fail to be
a relief. To calculate cubes occurred to him as an ingenious and even
profitable refuge from distressing thoughts, and he threw his manhood
into that dreary exercise.

Thus, then, were these two young persons occupied--Gideon attacking the
perfect number with resolution; Julia vigorously stippling incongruous
colours on her block, when Providence dispatched into these waters a
steam-launch asthmatically panting up the Thames. All along the banks
the water swelled and fell, and the reeds rustled. The houseboat itself,
that ancient stationary creature, became suddenly imbued with life, and
rolled briskly at her moorings, like a sea-going ship when she begins
to smell the harbour bar. The wash had nearly died away, and the quick
panting of the launch sounded already faint and far off, when Gideon was
startled by a cry from Julia. Peering through the window, he beheld
her staring disconsolately downstream at the fast-vanishing canoe.
The barrister (whatever were his faults) displayed on this occasion a
promptitude worthy of his hero, Robert Skill; with one effort of his
mind he foresaw what was about to follow; with one movement of his body
he dropped to the floor and crawled under the table.

Julia, on her part, was not yet alive to her position. She saw she had
lost the canoe, and she looked forward with something less than avidity
to her next interview with Mr Bloomfield; but she had no idea that she
was imprisoned, for she knew of the plank bridge.

She made the circuit of the house, and found the door open and the
bridge withdrawn. It was plain, then, that Jimson must have come;
plain, too, that he must be on board. He must be a very shy man to
have suffered this invasion of his residence, and made no sign; and her
courage rose higher at the thought. He must come now, she must force him
from his privacy, for the plank was too heavy for her single strength;
so she tapped upon the open door. Then she tapped again.

'Mr Jimson,' she cried, 'Mr Jimson! here, come!--you must come, you
know, sooner or later, for I can't get off without you. O, don't be so
exceedingly silly! O, please, come!'

Still there was no reply.

'If he is here he must be mad,' she thought, with a little fear. And the
next moment she remembered he had probably gone aboard like herself in
a boat. In that case she might as well see the houseboat, and she pushed
open the door and stepped in. Under the table, where he lay smothered
with dust, Gideon's heart stood still.

There were the remains of Jimson's lunch. 'He likes rather nice things
to eat,' she thought. 'O, I am sure he is quite a delightful man. I
wonder if he is as good-looking as Mr Forsyth. Mrs Jimson--I don't
believe it sounds as nice as Mrs Forsyth; but then "Gideon" is so really
odious! And here is some of his music too; this is delightful. Orange
Pekoe--O, that's what he meant by some kind of tea.' And she trilled
with laughter. 'Adagio molto espressivo, sempre legato,' she read
next. (For the literary part of a composer's business Gideon was well
equipped.) 'How very strange to have all these directions, and
only three or four notes! O, here's another with some more. Andante
patetico.' And she began to glance over the music. 'O dear me,' she
thought, 'he must be terribly modern! It all seems discords to me. Let's
try the air. It is very strange, it seems familiar.' She began to sing
it, and suddenly broke off with laughter. 'Why, it's "Tommy make room
for your Uncle!"' she cried aloud, so that the soul of Gideon was filled
with bitterness. 'Andante patetico, indeed! The man must be a mere
impostor.'

And just at this moment there came a confused, scuffling sound from
underneath the table; a strange note, like that of a barn-door fowl,
ushered in a most explosive sneeze; the head of the sufferer was at
the same time brought smartly in contact with the boards above; and the
sneeze was followed by a hollow groan.

Julia fled to the door, and there, with the salutary instinct of the
brave, turned and faced the danger. There was no pursuit. The sounds
continued; below the table a crouching figure was indistinctly to be
seen jostled by the throes of a sneezing-fit; and that was all.

'Surely,' thought Julia, 'this is most unusual behaviour. He cannot be a
man of the world!'

Meanwhile the dust of years had been disturbed by the young barrister's
convulsions; and the sneezing-fit was succeeded by a passionate access
of coughing.

Julia began to feel a certain interest. 'I am afraid you are really
quite ill,' she said, drawing a little nearer. 'Please don't let me put
you out, and do not stay under that table, Mr Jimson. Indeed it cannot
be good for you.'

Mr Jimson only answered by a distressing cough; and the next moment
the girl was on her knees, and their faces had almost knocked together
under the table.

'O, my gracious goodness!' exclaimed Miss Hazeltine, and sprang to her
feet. 'Mr Forsyth gone mad!'

'I am not mad,' said the gentleman ruefully, extricating himself from
his position. 'Dearest. Miss Hazeltine, I vow to you upon my knees I am
not mad!'

'You are not!' she cried, panting.

'I know,' he said, 'that to a superficial eye my conduct may appear
unconventional.'

'If you are not mad, it was no conduct at all,' cried the girl, with
a flash of colour, 'and showed you did not care one penny for my
feelings!'

'This is the very devil and all. I know--I admit that,' cried Gideon,
with a great effort of manly candour.

'It was abominable conduct!' said Julia, with energy.

'I know it must have shaken your esteem,' said the barrister. 'But,
dearest Miss Hazeltine, I beg of you to hear me out; my behaviour,
strange as it may seem, is not unsusceptible of explanation; and I
positively cannot and will not consent to continue to try to exist
without--without the esteem of one whom I admire--the moment is ill
chosen, I am well aware of that; but I repeat the expression--one whom I
admire.'

A touch of amusement appeared on Miss Hazeltine's face. 'Very well, I
said she, 'come out of this dreadfully cold place, and let us sit down
on deck.' The barrister dolefully followed her. 'Now,' said she, making
herself comfortable against the end of the house, 'go on. I will hear
you out.' And then, seeing him stand before her with so much obvious
disrelish to the task, she was suddenly overcome with laughter. Julia's
laugh was a thing to ravish lovers; she rolled her mirthful descant with
the freedom and the melody of a blackbird's song upon the river, and
repeated by the echoes of the farther bank. It seemed a thing in its own
place and a sound native to the open air. There was only one creature
who heard it without joy, and that was her unfortunate admirer.

'Miss Hazeltine,' he said, in a voice that tottered with annoyance, 'I
speak as your sincere well-wisher, but this can only be called levity.'

Julia made great eyes at him.

'I can't withdraw the word,' he said: 'already the freedom with which I
heard you hobnobbing with a boatman gave me exquisite pain. Then there
was a want of reserve about Jimson--'

'But Jimson appears to be yourself,' objected Julia.

'I am far from denying that,' cried the barrister, 'but you did not
know it at the time. What could Jimson be to you? Who was Jimson? Miss
Hazeltine, it cut me to the heart.'

'Really this seems to me to be very silly,' returned Julia, with severe
decision. 'You have behaved in the most extraordinary manner; you
pretend you are able to explain your conduct, and instead of doing so
you begin to attack me.'

'I am well aware of that,' replied Gideon. 'I--I will make a clean
breast of it. When you know all the circumstances you will be able to
excuse me.

And sitting down beside her on the deck, he poured forth his miserable
history.

'O, Mr Forsyth,' she cried, when he had done, 'I am--so--sorry! wish
I hadn't laughed at you--only you know you really were so exceedingly
funny. But I wish I hadn't, and I wouldn't either if I had only known.'
And she gave him her hand.

Gideon kept it in his own. 'You do not think the worse of me for this?'
he asked tenderly.

'Because you have been so silly and got into such dreadful trouble? you
poor boy, no!' cried Julia; and, in the warmth of the moment, reached
him her other hand; 'you may count on me,' she added.

'Really?' said Gideon.

'Really and really!' replied the girl.

'I do then, and I will,' cried the young man. 'I admit the moment is not
well chosen; but I have no friends--to speak of.'

'No more have I,' said Julia. 'But don't you think it's perhaps time you
gave me back my hands?'

'La ci darem la mano,' said the barrister, 'the merest moment more! I
have so few friends,' he added.

'I thought it was considered such a bad account of a young man to have
no friends,' observed Julia.

'O, but I have crowds of FRIENDS!' cried Gideon. 'That's not what I
mean. I feel the moment is ill chosen; but O, Julia, if you could only
see yourself!'

'Mr Forsyth--'

'Don't call me by that beastly name!' cried the youth. 'Call me Gideon!'

'O, never that,' from Julia. 'Besides, we have known each other such a
short time.'

'Not at all!' protested Gideon. 'We met at Bournemouth ever so long ago.
I never forgot you since. Say you never forgot me. Say you never forgot
me, and call me Gideon!'

'Isn't this rather--a want of reserve about Jimson?' enquired the girl.

'O, I know I am an ass,' cried the barrister, 'and I don't care a
halfpenny! I know I'm an ass, and you may laugh at me to your heart's
delight.' And as Julia's lips opened with a smile, he once more dropped
into music. 'There's the Land of Cherry Isle!' he sang, courting her
with his eyes.

'It's like an opera,' said Julia, rather faintly.

'What should it be?' said Gideon. 'Am I not Jimson? It would be strange
if I did not serenade my love. O yes, I mean the word, my Julia; and I
mean to win you. I am in dreadful trouble, and I have not a penny of
my own, and I have cut the silliest figure; and yet I mean to win you,
Julia. Look at me, if you can, and tell me no!'

She looked at him; and whatever her eyes may have told him, it is to be
supposed he took a pleasure in the message, for he read it a long while.

'And Uncle Ned will give us some money to go on upon in the meanwhile,'
he said at last.

'Well, I call that cool!' said a cheerful voice at his elbow.

Gideon and Julia sprang apart with wonderful alacrity; the latter
annoyed to observe that although they had never moved since they sat
down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a
very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That
gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant
canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon
Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds
with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless
culprits, the pleasant human instinct of the matchmaker softened his
heart.

'Well, I call that cool,' he repeated; 'you seem to count very securely
upon Uncle Ned. But look here, Gid, I thought I had told you to keep
away?'

'To keep away from Maidenhead,' replied Gid. 'But how should I expect to
find you here?'

'There is something in that,' Mr Bloomfield admitted. 'You see I thought
it better that even you should be ignorant of my address; those rascals,
the Finsburys, would have wormed it out of you. And just to put them off
the scent I hoisted these abominable colours. But that is not all,
Gid; you promised me to work, and here I find you playing the fool at
Padwick.'

'Please, Mr Bloomfield, you must not be hard on Mr Forsyth,' said Julia.
'Poor boy, he is in dreadful straits.'

'What's this, Gid?' enquired the uncle. 'Have you been fighting? or is
it a bill?'

These, in the opinion of the Squirradical, were the two misfortunes
incident to gentlemen; and indeed both were culled from his own career.
He had once put his name (as a matter of form) on a friend's paper; it
had cost him a cool thousand; and the friend had gone about with the
fear of death upon him ever since, and never turned a corner without
scouting in front of him for Mr Bloomfield and the oaken staff. As for
fighting, the Squirradical was always on the brink of it; and once, when
(in the character of president of a Radical club) he had cleared out
the hall of his opponents, things had gone even further. Mr Holtum,
the Conservative candidate, who lay so long on the bed of sickness, was
prepared to swear to Mr Bloomfield. 'I will swear to it in any court--it
was the hand of that brute that struck me down,' he was reported to have
said; and when he was thought to be sinking, it was known that he had
made an ante-mortem statement in that sense. It was a cheerful day for
the Squirradical when Holtum was restored to his brewery.

'It's much worse than that,' said Gideon; 'a combination of
circumstances really providentially unjust--a--in fact, a syndicate of
murderers seem to have perceived my latent ability to rid them of the
traces of their crime. It's a legal study after all, you see!' And with
these words, Gideon, for the second time that day, began to describe the
adventures of the Broadwood Grand.

'I must write to The Times,' cried Mr Bloomfield.

'Do you want to get me disbarred?' asked Gideon.

'Disbarred! Come, it can't be as bad as that,' said his uncle. 'It's
a good, honest, Liberal Government that's in, and they would certainly
move at my request. Thank God, the days of Tory jobbery are at an end.'

'It wouldn't do, Uncle Ned,' said Gideon.

'But you're not mad enough,' cried Mr Bloomfield, 'to persist in trying
to dispose of it yourself?'

'There is no other path open to me,' said Gideon.

'It's not common sense, and I will not hear of it,' cried Mr Bloomfield.
'I command you, positively, Gid, to desist from this criminal
interference.'

'Very well, then, I hand it over to you,' said Gideon, 'and you can do
what you like with the dead body.'

'God forbid!' ejaculated the president of the Radical Club, 'I'll have
nothing to do with it.'

'Then you must allow me to do the best I can,' returned his nephew.
'Believe me, I have a distinct talent for this sort of difficulty.'

'We might forward it to that pest-house, the Conservative Club,'
observed Mr Bloomfield. 'It might damage them in the eyes of their
constituents; and it could be profitably worked up in the local
journal.'

'If you see any political capital in the thing,' said Gideon, 'you may
have it for me.'

'No, no, Gid--no, no, I thought you might. I will have no hand in the
thing. On reflection, it's highly undesirable that either I or Miss
Hazeltine should linger here. We might be observed,' said the
president, looking up and down the river; 'and in my public position
the consequences would be painful for the party. And, at any rate, it's
dinner-time.'

'What?' cried Gideon, plunging for his watch. 'And so it is! Great
heaven, the piano should have been here hours ago!'

Mr Bloomfield was clambering back into his boat; but at these words he
paused.

'I saw it arrive myself at the station; I hired a carrier man; he had a
round to make, but he was to be here by four at the latest,' cried the
barrister. 'No doubt the piano is open, and the body found.'

'You must fly at once,' cried Mr Bloomfield, 'it's the only manly step.'

'But suppose it's all right?' wailed Gideon. 'Suppose the piano comes,
and I am not here to receive it? I shall have hanged myself by my
cowardice. No, Uncle Ned, enquiries must be made in Padwick; I dare
not go, of course; but you may--you could hang about the police office,
don't you see?'

'No, Gid--no, my dear nephew,' said Mr Bloomfield, with the voice of one
on the rack. 'I regard you with the most sacred affection; and I thank
God I am an Englishman--and all that. But not--not the police, Gid.'

'Then you desert me?' said Gideon. 'Say it plainly.'

'Far from it! far from it!' protested Mr Bloomfield. 'I only propose
caution. Common sense, Gid, should always be an Englishman's guide.'

'Will you let me speak?' said Julia. 'I think Gideon had better leave
this dreadful houseboat, and wait among the willows over there. If the
piano comes, then he could step out and take it in; and if the police
come, he could slip into our houseboat, and there needn't be any
more Jimson at all. He could go to bed, and we could burn his clothes
(couldn't we?) in the steam-launch; and then really it seems as if it
would be all right. Mr Bloomfield is so respectable, you know, and such
a leading character, it would be quite impossible even to fancy that he
could be mixed up with it.'

'This young lady has strong common sense,' said the Squirradical.

'O, I don't think I'm at all a fool,' said Julia, with conviction.

'But what if neither of them come?' asked Gideon; 'what shall I do
then?'

'Why then,' said she, 'you had better go down to the village after dark;
and I can go with you, and then I am sure you could never be suspected;
and even if you were, I could tell them it was altogether a mistake.'

'I will not permit that--I will not suffer Miss Hazeltine to go,' cried
Mr Bloomfield.

'Why?' asked Julia.

Mr Bloomfield had not the least desire to tell her why, for it was
simply a craven fear of being drawn himself into the imbroglio; but with
the usual tactics of a man who is ashamed of himself, he took the high
hand. 'God forbid, my dear Miss Hazeltine, that I should dictate to a
lady on the question of propriety--' he began.

'O, is that all?' interrupted Julia. 'Then we must go all three.'

'Caught!' thought the Squirradical.



CHAPTER XII. Positively the Last Appearance of the Broadwood Grand

England is supposed to be unmusical; but without dwelling on the
patronage extended to the organ-grinder, without seeking to found any
argument on the prevalence of the jew's trump, there is surely one
instrument that may be said to be national in the fullest acceptance
of the word. The herdboy in the broom, already musical in the days of
Father Chaucer, startles (and perhaps pains) the lark with this exiguous
pipe; and in the hands of the skilled bricklayer,

'The thing becomes a trumpet, whence he blows'

(as a general rule) either 'The British Grenadiers' or 'Cherry Ripe'.
The latter air is indeed the shibboleth and diploma piece of the
penny whistler; I hazard a guess it was originally composed for this
instrument. It is singular enough that a man should be able to gain
a livelihood, or even to tide over a period of unemployment, by the
display of his proficiency upon the penny whistle; still more so, that
the professional should almost invariably confine himself to 'Cherry
Ripe'. But indeed, singularities surround the subject, thick like
blackberries. Why, for instance, should the pipe be called a penny
whistle? I think no one ever bought it for a penny. Why should the
alternative name be tin whistle? I am grossly deceived if it be made
of tin. Lastly, in what deaf catacomb, in what earless desert, does the
beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship? We have
all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but
the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from
observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps
alarmed by the works of Mr Mallock) defends human hearing from his first
attempts upon the upper octave.

A really noteworthy thing was taking place in a green lane, not far from
Padwick. On the bench of a carrier's cart there sat a tow-headed, lanky,
modest-looking youth; the reins were on his lap; the whip lay behind
him in the interior of the cart; the horse proceeded without guidance
or encouragement; the carrier (or the carrier's man), rapt into a higher
sphere than that of his daily occupations, his looks dwelling on the
skies, devoted himself wholly to a brand-new D penny whistle, whence he
diffidently endeavoured to elicit that pleasing melody 'The Ploughboy'.
To any observant person who should have chanced to saunter in that lane,
the hour would have been thrilling. 'Here at last,' he would have said,
'is the beginner.'