Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green And Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




THE DYNAMITER




TO MESSRS. COLE AND COX, POLICE OFFICERS



Gentlemen,--In the volume now in your hands, the authors have
touched upon that ugly devil of crime, with which it is your glory
to have contended.  It were a waste of ink to do so in a serious
spirit.  Let us dedicate our horror to acts of a more mingled
strain, where crime preserves some features of nobility, and where
reason and humanity can still relish the temptation.  Horror, in
this case, is due to Mr. Parnell:  he sits before posterity silent,
Mr. Forster's appeal echoing down the ages.  Horror is due to
ourselves, in that we have so long coquetted with political crime;
not seriously weighing, not acutely following it from cause to
consequence; but with a generous, unfounded heat of sentiment, like
the schoolboy with the penny tale, applauding what was specious.
When it touched ourselves (truly in a vile shape), we proved false
to the imaginations; discovered, in a clap, that crime was no less
cruel and no less ugly under sounding names; and recoiled from our
false deities.

But seriousness comes most in place when we are to speak of our
defenders.  Whoever be in the right in this great and confused war
of politics; whatever elements of greed, whatever traits of the
bully, dishonour both parties in this inhuman contest;--your side,
your part, is at least pure of doubt.  Yours is the side of the
child, of the breeding woman, of individual pity and public trust.
If our society were the mere kingdom of the devil (as indeed it
wears some of his colours) it yet embraces many precious elements
and many innocent persons whom it is a glory to defend.  Courage
and devotion, so common in the ranks of the police, so little
recognised, so meagrely rewarded, have at length found their
commemoration in an historical act.  History, which will represent
Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of Mr. Forster, and
Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise, will not forget
Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his defenceless hands, nor Mr.
Cox coming coolly to his aid.

Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson



A NOTE FOR THE READER



It is within the bounds of possibility that you may take up this
volume, and yet be unacquainted with its predecessor:  the first
series of NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS.  The loss is yours--and mine; or to
be more exact, my publishers'.  But if you are thus unlucky, the
least I can do is to pass you a hint.  When you shall find a
reference in the following pages to one Theophilus Godall of the
Bohemian Cigar Divan in Rupert Street, Soho, you must be prepared
to recognise, under his features, no less a person than Prince
Florizel of Bohemia, formerly one of the magnates of Europe, now
dethroned, exiled, impoverished, and embarked in the tobacco trade.

R. L. S.



NEW ARABIAN NIGHTS

A SECOND SERIES

THE DYNAMITER




PROLOGUE OF THE CIGAR DIVAN



In the city of encounters, the Bagdad of the West, and, to be more
precise, on the broad northern pavement of Leicester Square, two
young men of five- or six-and-twenty met after years of separation.
The first, who was of a very smooth address and clothed in the best
fashion, hesitated to recognise the pinched and shabby air of his
companion.

'What!' he cried, 'Paul Somerset!'

'I am indeed Paul Somerset,' returned the other, 'or what remains
of him after a well-deserved experience of poverty and law.  But in
you, Challoner, I can perceive no change; and time may be said,
without hyperbole, to write no wrinkle on your azure brow.'

'All,' replied Challoner, 'is not gold that glitters.  But we are
here in an ill posture for confidences, and interrupt the movement
of these ladies.  Let us, if you please, find a more private
corner.'

'If you will allow me to guide you,' replied Somerset, 'I will
offer you the best cigar in London.'

And taking the arm of his companion, he led him in silence and at a
brisk pace to the door of a quiet establishment in Rupert Street,
Soho.  The entrance was adorned with one of those gigantic
Highlanders of wood which have almost risen to the standing of
antiquities; and across the window-glass, which sheltered the usual
display of pipes, tobacco, and cigars, there ran the gilded legend:
'Bohemian Cigar Divan, by T. Godall.'  The interior of the shop was
small, but commodious and ornate; the salesman grave, smiling, and
urbane; and the two young men, each puffing a select regalia, had
soon taken their places on a sofa of mouse-coloured plush and
proceeded to exchange their stories.

'I am now,' said Somerset, 'a barrister; but Providence and the
attorneys have hitherto denied me the opportunity to shine.  A
select society at the Cheshire Cheese engaged my evenings; my
afternoons, as Mr. Godall could testify, have been generally passed
in this divan; and my mornings, I have taken the precaution to
abbreviate by not rising before twelve.  At this rate, my little
patrimony was very rapidly, and I am proud to remember, most
agreeably expended.  Since then a gentleman, who has really nothing
else to recommend him beyond the fact of being my maternal uncle,
deals me the small sum of ten shillings a week; and if you behold
me once more revisiting the glimpses of the street lamps in my
favourite quarter, you will readily divine that I have come into a
fortune.'

'I should not have supposed so,' replied Challoner.  'But doubtless
I met you on the way to your tailors.'

'It is a visit that I purpose to delay,' returned Somerset, with a
smile.  'My fortune has definite limits.  It consists, or rather
this morning it consisted, of one hundred pounds.'

'That is certainly odd,' said Challoner; 'yes, certainly the
coincidence is strange.  I am myself reduced to the same margin.'

'You!' cried Somerset.  'And yet Solomon in all his glory--'

'Such is the fact.  I am, dear boy, on my last legs,' said
Challoner.  'Besides the clothes in which you see me, I have
scarcely a decent trouser in my wardrobe; and if I knew how, I
would this instant set about some sort of work or commerce.  With a
hundred pounds for capital, a man should push his way.'

'It may be,' returned Somerset; 'but what to do with mine is more
than I can fancy.  Mr. Godall,' he added, addressing the salesman,
'you are a man who knows the world:  what can a young fellow of
reasonable education do with a hundred pounds?'

'It depends,' replied the salesman, withdrawing his cheroot.  'The
power of money is an article of faith in which I profess myself a
sceptic.  A hundred pounds will with difficulty support you for a
year; with somewhat more difficulty you may spend it in a night;
and without any difficulty at all you may lose it in five minutes
on the Stock Exchange.  If you are of that stamp of man that rises,
a penny would be as useful; if you belong to those that fall, a
penny would be no more useless.  When I was myself thrown
unexpectedly upon the world, it was my fortune to possess an art:
I knew a good cigar.  Do you know nothing, Mr. Somerset?'

'Not even law,' was the reply.

'The answer is worthy of a sage,' returned Mr. Godall.  'And you,
sir,' he continued, turning to Challoner, 'as the friend of Mr.
Somerset, may I be allowed to address you the same question?'

'Well,' replied Challoner, 'I play a fair hand at whist.'

'How many persons are there in London,' returned the salesman, 'who
have two-and-thirty teeth?  Believe me, young gentleman, there are
more still who play a fair hand at whist.  Whist, sir, is wide as
the world; 'tis an accomplishment like breathing.  I once knew a
youth who announced that he was studying to be Chancellor of
England; the design was certainly ambitious; but I find it less
excessive than that of the man who aspires to make a livelihood by
whist.'

'Dear me,' said Challoner, 'I am afraid I shall have to fall to be
a working man.'

'Fall to be a working man?' echoed Mr. Godall.  'Suppose a rural
dean to be unfrocked, does he fall to be a major? suppose a captain
were cashiered, would he fall to be a puisne judge?  The ignorance
of your middle class surprises me.  Outside itself, it thinks the
world to lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common
degradation; but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to
stand in ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular
aptitudes and knowledge.  By the defects of your education you are
more disqualified to be a working man than to be the ruler of an
empire.  The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned arts--those
which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent laymen--are
those which give his title to the artisan.'

'This is a very pompous fellow,' said Challoner, in the ear of his
companion.

'He is immense,' said Somerset.

Just then the door of the divan was opened, and a third young
fellow made his appearance, and rather bashfully requested some
tobacco.  He was younger than the others; and, in a somewhat
meaningless and altogether English way, he was a handsome lad.
When he had been served, and had lighted his pipe and taken his
place upon the sofa, he recalled himself to Challoner by the name
of Desborough.

'Desborough, to be sure,' cried Challoner.  'Well, Desborough, and
what do you do?'

'The fact is,' said Desborough, 'that I am doing nothing.'

'A private fortune possibly?' inquired the other.

'Well, no,' replied Desborough, rather sulkily.  'The fact is that
I am waiting for something to turn up.'

'All in the same boat!' cried Somerset.  'And have you, too, one
hundred pounds?'

'Worse luck,' said Mr. Desborough.

'This is a very pathetic sight, Mr. Godall,' said Somerset:  'Three
futiles.'

'A character of this crowded age,' returned the salesman.

'Sir,' said Somerset, 'I deny that the age is crowded; I will admit
one fact, and one fact only:  that I am futile, that he is futile,
and that we are all three as futile as the devil.  What am I?  I
have smattered law, smattered letters, smattered geography,
smattered mathematics; I have even a working knowledge of judicial
astrology; and here I stand, all London roaring by at the street's
end, as impotent as any baby.  I have a prodigious contempt for my
maternal uncle; but without him, it is idle to deny it, I should
simply resolve into my elements like an unstable mixture.  I begin
to perceive that it is necessary to know some one thing to the
bottom--were it only literature.  And yet, sir, the man of the
world is a great feature of this age; he is possessed of an
extraordinary mass and variety of knowledge; he is everywhere at
home; he has seen life in all its phases; and it is impossible but
that this great habit of existence should bear fruit.  I count
myself a man of the world, accomplished, CAP-A-PIE.  So do you,
Challoner.  And you, Mr. Desborough?'

'Oh yes,' returned the young man.

'Well then, Mr. Godall, here we stand, three men of the world,
without a trade to cover us, but planted at the strategic centre of
the universe (for so you will allow me to call Rupert Street), in
the midst of the chief mass of people, and within ear-shot of the
most continuous chink of money on the surface of the globe.  Sir,
as civilised men, what do we do?  I will show you.  You take in a
paper?'

'I take,' said Mr. Godall solemnly, 'the best paper in the world,
the Standard.'

'Good,' resumed Somerset.  'I now hold it in my hand, the voice of
the world, a telephone repeating all men's wants.  I open it, and
where my eye first falls--well, no, not Morrison's Pills--but here,
sure enough, and but a little above, I find the joint that I was
seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour of society.  Here is a
want, a plaint, an offer of substantial gratitude:  "TWO HUNDRED
POUNDS REWARD.--The above reward will be paid to any person giving
information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man observed
yesterday in the neighbourhood of the Green Park.  He was over six
feet in height, with shoulders disproportionately broad, close
shaved, with black moustaches, and wearing a sealskin great-coat."
There, gentlemen, our fortune, if not made, is founded.'

'Do you then propose, dear boy, that we should turn detectives?'
inquired Challoner.

'Do I propose it?  No, sir,' cried Somerset.  'It is reason,
destiny, the plain face of the world, that commands and imposes it.
Here all our merits tell; our manners, habit of the world, powers
of conversation, vast stores of unconnected knowledge, all that we
are and have builds up the character of the complete detective.  It
is, in short, the only profession for a gentleman.'

'The proposition is perhaps excessive,' replied Challoner; 'for
hitherto I own I have regarded it as of all dirty, sneaking, and
ungentlemanly trades, the least and lowest.'

'To defend society?' asked Somerset; 'to stake one's life for
others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil?  I appeal to Mr.
Godall.  He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will
spit upon such philistine opinions.  He knows that the policeman,
as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that
both worse equipped and for a better cause, is in form and essence
a more noble hero than the soldier.  Do you, by any chance, deceive
yourself into supposing that a general would either ask or expect,
from the best army ever marshalled, and on the most momentous
battle-field, the conduct of a common constable at Peckham Rye?'
{1}

'I did not understand we were to join the force,' said Challoner.

'Nor shall we.  These are the hands; but here--here, sir, is the
head,' cried Somerset.  'Enough; it is decreed.  We shall hunt down
this miscreant in the sealskin coat.'

'Suppose that we agreed,' retorted Challoner, 'you have no plan, no
knowledge; you know not where to seek for a beginning.'

'Challoner!' cried Somerset, 'is it possible that you hold the
doctrine of Free Will?  And are you devoid of any tincture of
philosophy, that you should harp on such exploded fallacies?
Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan, rules this terrestrial
bustle; and in Chance I place my sole reliance.  Chance has brought
us three together; when we next separate and go forth our several
ways, Chance will continually drag before our careless eyes a
thousand eloquent clues, not to this mystery only, but to the
countless mysteries by which we live surrounded.  Then comes the
part of the man of the world, of the detective born and bred.  This
clue, which the whole town beholds without comprehension, swift as
a cat, he leaps upon it, makes it his, follows it with craft and
passion, and from one trifling circumstance divines a world.'

'Just so,' said Challoner; 'and I am delighted that you should
recognise these virtues in yourself.  But in the meanwhile, dear
boy, I own myself incapable of joining.  I was neither born nor
bred as a detective, but as a placable and very thirsty gentleman;
and, for my part, I begin to weary for a drink.  As for clues and
adventures, the only adventure that is ever likely to occur to me
will be an adventure with a bailiff.'

'Now there is the fallacy,' cried Somerset.  'There I catch the
secret of your futility in life.  The world teems and bubbles with
adventure; it besieges you along the street:  hands waving out of
windows, swindlers coming up and swearing they knew you when you
were abroad, affable and doubtful people of all sorts and
conditions begging and truckling for your notice.  But not you:
you turn away, you walk your seedy mill round, you must go the
dullest way.  Now here, I beg of you, the next adventure that
offers itself, embrace it in with both your arms; whatever it
looks, grimy or romantic, grasp it.  I will do the like; the devil
is in it, but at least we shall have fun; and each in turn we shall
narrate the story of our fortunes to my philosophic friend of the
divan, the great Godall, now hearing me with inward joy.  Come, is
it a bargain?  Will you, indeed, both promise to welcome every
chance that offers, to plunge boldly into every opening, and,
keeping the eye wary and the head composed, to study and piece
together all that happens?  Come, promise:  let me open to you the
doors of the great profession of intrigue.'

'It is not much in my way,' said Challoner, 'but, since you make a
point of it, amen.'

'I don't mind promising,' said Desborough, 'but nothing will happen
to me.'

'O faithless ones!' cried Somerset.  'But at least I have your
promises; and Godall, I perceive, is transported with delight.'

'I promise myself at least much pleasure from your various
narratives,' said the salesman, with the customary calm polish of
his manner.

'And now, gentlemen,' concluded Somerset, 'let us separate.  I
hasten to put myself in fortune's way.  Hark how, in this quiet
corner, London roars like the noise of battle; four million
destinies are here concentred; and in the strong panoply of one
hundred pounds, payable to the bearer, I am about to plunge into
that web.'



CHALLONER'S ADVENTURE:  THE SQUIRE OF DAMES



Mr. Edward Challoner had set up lodgings in the suburb of Putney,
where he enjoyed a parlour and bedroom and the sincere esteem of
the people of the house.  To this remote home he found himself, at
a very early hour in the morning of the next day, condemned to set
forth on foot.  He was a young man of a portly habit; no lover of
the exercises of the body; bland, sedentary, patient of delay, a
prop of omnibuses.  In happier days he would have chartered a cab;
but these luxuries were now denied him; and with what courage he
could muster he addressed himself to walk.

It was then the height of the season and the summer; the weather
was serene and cloudless; and as he paced under the blinded houses
and along the vacant streets, the chill of the dawn had fled, and
some of the warmth and all the brightness of the July day already
shone upon the city.  He walked at first in a profound abstraction,
bitterly reviewing and repenting his performances at whist; but as
he advanced into the labyrinth of the south-west, his ear was
gradually mastered by the silence.  Street after street looked down
upon his solitary figure, house after house echoed upon his passage
with a ghostly jar, shop after shop displayed its shuttered front
and its commercial legend; and meanwhile he steered his course,
under day's effulgent dome and through this encampment of diurnal
sleepers, lonely as a ship.

'Here,' he reflected, 'if I were like my scatter-brained companion,
here were indeed the scene where I might look for an adventure.
Here, in broad day, the streets are secret as in the blackest night
of January, and in the midst of some four million sleepers,
solitary as the woods of Yucatan.  If I but raise my voice I could
summon up the number of an army, and yet the grave is not more
silent than this city of sleep.'

He was still following these quaint and serious musings when he
came into a street of more mingled ingredients than was common in
the quarter.  Here, on the one hand, framed in walls and the green
tops of trees, were several of those discreet, bijou residences on
which propriety is apt to look askance.  Here, too, were many of
the brick-fronted barracks of the poor; a plaster cow, perhaps,
serving as ensign to a dairy, or a ticket announcing the business
of the mangler.  Before one such house, that stood a little
separate among walled gardens, a cat was playing with a straw, and
Challoner paused a moment, looking on this sleek and solitary
creature, who seemed an emblem of the neighbouring peace.  With the
cessation of the sound of his own steps the silence fell dead; the
house stood smokeless:  the blinds down, the whole machinery of
life arrested; and it seemed to Challoner that he should hear the
breathing of the sleepers.

As he so stood, he was startled by a dull and jarring detonation
from within.  This was followed by a monstrous hissing and
simmering as from a kettle of the bigness of St. Paul's; and at the
same time from every chink of door and window spirted an ill-
smelling vapour.  The cat disappeared with a cry.  Within the
lodging-house feet pounded on the stairs; the door flew back,
emitting clouds of smoke; and two men and an elegantly dressed
young lady tumbled forth into the street and fled without a word.
The hissing had already ceased, the smoke was melting in the air,
the whole event had come and gone as in a dream, and still
Challoner was rooted to the spot.  At last his reason and his fear
awoke together, and with the most unwonted energy he fell to
running.

Little by little this first dash relaxed, and presently he had
resumed his sober gait and begun to piece together, out of the
confused report of his senses, some theory of the occurrence.  But
the occasion of the sounds and stench that had so suddenly assailed
him, and the strange conjunction of fugitives whom he had seen to
issue from the house, were mysteries beyond his plummet.  With an
obscure awe he considered them in his mind, continuing, meanwhile,
to thread the web of streets, and once more alone in morning
sunshine.

In his first retreat he had entirely wandered; and now, steering
vaguely west, it was his luck to light upon an unpretending street,
which presently widened so as to admit a strip of gardens in the
midst.  Here was quite a stir of birds; even at that hour, the
shadow of the leaves was grateful; instead of the burnt atmosphere
of cities, there was something brisk and rural in the air; and
Challoner paced forward, his eyes upon the pavement and his mind
running upon distant scenes, till he was recalled, upon a sudden,
by a wall that blocked his further progress.  This street, whose
name I have forgotten, is no thoroughfare.

He was not the first who had wandered there that morning; for as he
raised his eyes with an agreeable deliberation, they alighted on
the figure of a girl, in whom he was struck to recognise the third
of the incongruous fugitives.  She had run there, seemingly,
blindfold; the wall had checked her career:  and being entirely
wearied, she had sunk upon the ground beside the garden railings,
soiling her dress among the summer dust.  Each saw the other in the
same instant of time; and she, with one wild look, sprang to her
feet and began to hurry from the scene.

Challoner was doubly startled to meet once more the heroine of his
adventure, and to observe the fear with which she shunned him.
Pity and alarm, in nearly equal forces, contested the possession of
his mind; and yet, in spite of both, he saw himself condemned to
follow in the lady's wake.  He did so gingerly, as fearing to
increase her terrors; but, tread as lightly as he might, his
footfalls eloquently echoed in the empty street.  Their sound
appeared to strike in her some strong emotion; for scarce had he
begun to follow ere she paused.  A second time she addressed
herself to flight; and a second time she paused.  Then she turned
about, and with doubtful steps and the most attractive appearance
of timidity, drew near to the young man.  He on his side continued
to advance with similar signals of distress and bashfulness.  At
length, when they were but some steps apart, he saw her eyes brim
over, and she reached out both her hands in eloquent appeal.

'Are you an English gentleman?' she cried.

The unhappy Challoner regarded her with consternation.  He was the
spirit of fine courtesy, and would have blushed to fail in his
devoirs to any lady; but, in the other scale, he was a man averse
from amorous adventures.  He looked east and west; but the houses
that looked down upon this interview remained inexorably shut; and
he saw himself, though in the full glare of the day's eye, cut off
from any human intervention.  His looks returned at last upon the
suppliant.  He remarked with irritation that she was charming both
in face and figure, elegantly dressed and gloved; a lady
undeniable; the picture of distress and innocence; weeping and lost
in the city of diurnal sleep.

'Madam,' he said, 'I protest you have no cause to fear intrusion;
and if I have appeared to follow you, the fault is in this street,
which has deceived us both.'  An unmistakable relief appeared upon
the lady's face.  'I might have guessed it!' she exclaimed.  'Thank
you a thousand times!  But at this hour, in this appalling silence,
and among all these staring windows, I am lost in terrors--oh, lost
in them!' she cried, her face blanching at the words.  'I beg you
to lend me your arm,' she added with the loveliest, suppliant
inflection.  'I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone--I had a shock,
oh, what a shock!  I beg of you to be my escort.'

'My dear madam,' responded Challoner heavily, 'my arm is at your
service.'


'She took it and clung to it for a moment, struggling with her
sobs; and the next, with feverish hurry, began to lead him in the
direction of the city.  One thing was plain, among so much that was
obscure:  it was plain her fears were genuine.  Still, as she went,
she spied around as if for dangers; and now she would shiver like a
person in a chill, and now clutch his arm in hers.  To Challoner
her terror was at once repugnant and infectious; it gained and
mastered, while it still offended him; and he wailed in spirit and
longed for release.

'Madam,' he said at last, 'I am, of course, charmed to be of use to
any lady; but I confess I was bound in a direction opposite to that
you follow, and a word of explanation--'

'Hush!' she sobbed, 'not here--not here!'

The blood of Challoner ran cold.  He might have thought the lady
mad; but his memory was charged with more perilous stuff; and in
view of the detonation, the smoke and the flight of the ill-
assorted trio, his mind was lost among mysteries.  So they
continued to thread the maze of streets in silence, with the speed
of a guilty flight, and both thrilling with incommunicable terrors.
In time, however, and above all by their quick pace of walking, the
pair began to rise to firmer spirits; the lady ceased to peer about
the corners; and Challoner, emboldened by the resonant tread and
distant figure of a constable, returned to the charge with more of
spirit and directness.

'I thought,' said he, in the tone of conversation, 'that I had
indistinctly perceived you leaving a villa in the company of two
gentlemen.'

'Oh!' she said, 'you need not fear to wound me by the truth.  You
saw me flee from a common lodging-house, and my companions were not
gentlemen.  In such a case, the best of compliments is to be
frank.'

'I thought,' resumed Challoner, encouraged as much as he was
surprised by the spirit of her reply, 'to have perceived, besides,
a certain odour.  A noise, too--I do not know to what I should
compare it--'

'Silence!' she cried.  'You do not know the danger you invoke.
Wait, only wait; and as soon as we have left those streets, and got
beyond the reach of listeners, all shall be explained.  Meanwhile,
avoid the topic.  What a sight is this sleeping city!' she
exclaimed; and then, with a most thrilling voice, '"Dear God," she
quoted, "the very houses seem asleep, and all that mighty heart is
lying still."'

'I perceive, madam,' said he, 'you are a reader.'

'I am more than that,' she answered, with a sigh.  'I am a girl
condemned to thoughts beyond her age; and so untoward is my fate,
that this walk upon the arm of a stranger is like an interlude of
peace.'

They had come by this time to the neighbourhood of the Victoria
Station and here, at a street corner, the young lady paused,
withdrew her arm from Challoner's, and looked up and down as though
in pain or indecision.  Then, with a lovely change of countenance,
and laying her gloved hand upon his arm -

'What you already think of me,' she said, 'I tremble to conceive;
yet I must here condemn myself still further.  Here I must leave
you, and here I beseech you to wait for my return.  Do not attempt
to follow me or spy upon my actions.  Suspend yet awhile your
judgment of a girl as innocent as your own sister; and do not,
above all, desert me.  Stranger as you are, I have none else to
look to.  You see me in sorrow and great fear; you are a gentleman,
courteous and kind:  and when I beg for a few minutes' patience, I
make sure beforehand you will not deny me.'

Challoner grudgingly promised; and the young lady, with a grateful
eye-shot, vanished round the corner.  But the force of her appeal
had been a little blunted; for the young man was not only destitute
of sisters, but of any female relative nearer than a great-aunt in
Wales.  Now he was alone, besides, the spell that he had hitherto
obeyed began to weaken; he considered his behaviour with a sneer;
and plucking up the spirit of revolt, he started in pursuit.  The
reader, if he has ever plied the fascinating trade of the
noctambulist, will not be unaware that, in the neighbourhood of the
great railway centres, certain early taverns inaugurate the
business of the day.  It was into one of these that Challoner,
coming round the corner of the block, beheld his charming companion
disappear.  To say he was surprised were inexact, for he had long
since left that sentiment behind him.  Acute disgust and
disappointment seized upon his soul; and with silent oaths, he
damned this commonplace enchantress.  She had scarce been gone a
second, ere the swing-doors reopened, and she appeared again in
company with a young man of mean and slouching attire.  For some
five or six exchanges they conversed together with an animated air;
then the fellow shouldered again into the tap; and the young lady,
with something swifter than a walk, retraced her steps towards
Challoner.  He saw her coming, a miracle of grace; her ankle, as
she hurried, flashing from her dress; her movements eloquent of
speed and youth; and though he still entertained some thoughts of
flight, they grew miserably fainter as the distance lessened.
Against mere beauty he was proof:  it was her unmistakable
gentility that now robbed him of the courage of his cowardice.
With a proved adventuress he had acted strictly on his right; with
one who, in spite of all, he could not quite deny to be a lady, he
found himself disarmed.  At the very corner from whence he had
spied upon her interview, she came upon him, still transfixed, and-
-'Ah!' she cried, with a bright flush of colour.  'Ah!
Ungenerous!'

The sharpness of the attack somewhat restored the Squire of Dames
to the possession of himself.

'Madam,' he returned, with a fair show of stoutness, 'I do not
think that hitherto you can complain of any lack of generosity; I
have suffered myself to be led over a considerable portion of the
metropolis; and if I now request you to discharge me of my office
of protector, you have friends at hand who will be glad of the
succession.'

She stood a moment dumb.

'It is well,' she said.  'Go! go, and may God help me!  You have
seen me--me, an innocent girl! fleeing from a dire catastrophe and
haunted by sinister men; and neither pity, curiosity, nor honour
move you to await my explanation or to help in my distress.  Go!'
she repeated.  'I am lost indeed.'  And with a passionate gesture
she turned and fled along the street.

Challoner observed her retreat and disappear, an almost intolerable
sense of guilt contending with the profound sense that he was being
gulled.  She was no sooner gone than the first of these feelings
took the upper hand; he felt, if he had done her less than justice,
that his conduct was a perfect model of the ungracious; the
cultured tone of her voice, her choice of language, and the elegant
decorum of her movements, cried out aloud against a harsh
construction; and between penitence and curiosity he began slowly
to follow in her wake.  At the corner he had her once more full in
view.  Her speed was failing like a stricken bird's.  Even as he
looked, she threw her arm out gropingly, and fell and leaned
against the wall.  At the spectacle, Challoner's fortitude gave
way.  In a few strides he overtook her and, for the first time
removing his hat, assured her in the most moving terms of his
entire respect and firm desire to help her.  He spoke at first
unheeded; but gradually it appeared that she began to comprehend
his words; she moved a little, and drew herself upright; and
finally, as with a sudden movement of forgiveness, turned on the
young man a countenance in which reproach and gratitude were
mingled.  'Ah, madam,' he cried, 'use me as you will!'  And once
more, but now with a great air of deference, he offered her the
conduct of his arm.  She took it with a sigh that struck him to the
heart; and they began once more to trace the deserted streets.  But
now her steps, as though exhausted by emotion, began to linger on
the way; she leaned the more heavily upon his arm; and he, like the
parent bird, stooped fondly above his drooping convoy.  Her
physical distress was not accompanied by any failing of her
spirits; and hearing her strike so soon into a playful and charming
vein of talk, Challoner could not sufficiently admire the
elasticity of his companion's nature.  'Let me forget,' she had
said, 'for one half hour, let me forget;' and sure enough, with the
very word, her sorrows appeared to be forgotten.  Before every
house she paused, invented a name for the proprietor, and sketched
his character:  here lived the old general whom she was to marry on
the fifth of the next month, there was the mansion of the rich
widow who had set her heart on Challoner; and though she still hung
wearily on the young man's arm, her laughter sounded low and
pleasant in his ears.  'Ah,' she sighed, by way of commentary, 'in
such a life as mine I must seize tight hold of any happiness that I
can find.'

When they arrived, in this leisurely manner, at the head of
Grosvenor Place, the gates of the park were opening and the
bedraggled company of night-walkers were being at last admitted
into that paradise of lawns.  Challoner and his companion followed
the movement, and walked for awhile in silence in that
tatterdemalion crowd; but as one after another, weary with the
night's patrolling of the city pavement, sank upon the benches or
wandered into separate paths, the vast extent of the park had soon
utterly swallowed up the last of these intruders; and the pair
proceeded on their way alone in the grateful quiet of the morning.

Presently they came in sight of a bench, standing very open on a
mound of turf.  The young lady looked about her with relief.

'Here,' she said, 'here at last we are secure from listeners.
Here, then, you shall learn and judge my history.  I could not bear
that we should part, and that you should still suppose your
kindness squandered upon one who was unworthy.'

Thereupon she sat down upon the bench, and motioning Challoner to
take a place immediately beside her, began in the following words,
and with the greatest appearance of enjoyment, to narrate the story
of her life.



STORY OF THE DESTROYING ANGEL



My father was a native of England, son of a cadet of a great,
ancient, but untitled family; and by some event, fault or
misfortune, he was driven to flee from the land of his birth and to
lay aside the name of his ancestors.  He sought the States; and
instead of lingering in effeminate cities, pushed at once into the
far West with an exploring party of frontiersmen.  He was no
ordinary traveller; for he was not only brave and impetuous by
character, but learned in many sciences, and above all in botany,
which he particularly loved.  Thus it fell that, before many
months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted
and bowed to his opinion.

They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of
the West.  For some time they followed the track of Mormon
caravans, guiding themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by
the skeletons of men and animals.  Then they inclined their route a
little to the north, and, losing even these dire memorials, came
into a country of forbidding stillness.

I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride:
rock, cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were very far
between; and neither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude.  On the
fortieth day they had already run so short of food that it was
judged advisable to call a halt and scatter upon all sides to hunt.
A great fire was built, that its smoke might serve to rally them;
and each man of the party mounted and struck off at a venture into
the surrounding desert.

My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the
one hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered
vale dotted with boulders like the site of some subverted city.  At
length he found the slot of a great animal, and from the claw-marks
and the hair among the brush, judged that he was on the track of a
cinnamon bear of most unusual size.  He quickened the pace of his
steed, and still following the quarry, came at last to the division
of two watersheds.  On the far side the country was exceeding
intricate and difficult, heaped with boulders, and dotted here and
there with a few pines, which seemed to indicate the neighbourhood
of water.  Here, then, he picketed his horse, and relying on his
trusty rifle, advanced alone into that wilderness.

Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the
sound of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction,
was rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos
strangely intermixed.  The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and
winding passage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for
miles together unscalable by man.  The water, when the stream was
swelled with rains, must have filled it from side to side; the
sun's rays only plumbed it in the hour of noon; the wind, in that
narrow and damp funnel, blew tempestuously.  And yet, in the bottom
of this den, immediately below my father's eyes as he leaned over
the margin of the cliff, a party of some half a hundred men, women,
and children lay scattered uneasily among the rocks.  They lay some
upon their backs, some prone, and not one stirring; their upturned
faces seemed all of an extraordinary paleness and emaciation; and
from time to time, above the washing of the stream, a faint sound
of moaning mounted to my father's ears.

While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet,
unwound his blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young
girl who sat hard by propped against a rock.  The girl did not seem
to be conscious of the act; and the old man, after having looked
upon her with the most engaging pity, returned to his former bed
and lay down again uncovered on the turf.  But the scene had not
passed without observation even in that starving camp.  From the
very outskirts of the party, a man with a white beard and seemingly
of venerable years, rose upon his knees, and came crawling
stealthily among the sleepers towards the girl; and judge of my
father's indignation, when he beheld this cowardly miscreant strip
from her both the coverings and return with them to his original
position.  Here he lay down for a while below his spoils, and, as
my father imagined, feigned to be asleep; but presently he had
raised himself again upon one elbow, looked with sharp scrutiny at
his companions, and then swiftly carried his hand into his bosom
and thence to his mouth.  By the movement of his jaws he must be
eating; in that camp of famine he had reserved a store of
nourishment; and while his companions lay in the stupor of
approaching death, secretly restored his powers.

My father was so incensed at what he saw that he raised his rifle;
and but for an accident, he has often declared, he would have shot
the fellow dead upon the spot.  How different would then have been
my history!  But it was not to be:  even as he raised the barrel,
his eye lighted on the bear, as it crawled along a ledge some way
below him; and ceding to the hunters instinct, it was at the brute,
not at the man, that he discharged his piece.  The bear leaped and
fell into a pool of the river; the canyon re-echoed the report; and
in a moment the camp was afoot.  With cries that were scarce human,
stumbling, falling and throwing each other down, these starving
people rushed upon the quarry; and before my father, climbing down
by the ledge, had time to reach the level of the stream, many were
already satisfying their hunger on the raw flesh, and a fire was
being built by the more dainty.

His arrival was for some time unremarked.  He stood in the midst of
these tottering and clay-faced marionettes; he was surrounded by
their cries; but their whole soul was fixed on the dead carcass;
even those who were too weak to move, lay, half-turned over, with
their eyes riveted upon the bear; and my father, seeing himself
stand as though invisible in the thick of this dreary hubbub, was
seized with a desire to weep.  A touch upon the arm restrained him.
Turning about, he found himself face to face with the old man he
had so nearly killed; and yet, at the second glance, recognised him
for no old man at all, but one in the full strength of his years,
and of a strong, speaking, and intellectual countenance stigmatised
by weariness and famine.  He beckoned my father near the cliff, and
there, in the most private whisper, begged for brandy.  My father
looked at him with scorn:  'You remind me,' he said, 'of a
neglected duty.  Here is my flask; it contains enough, I trust, to
revive the women of your party; and I will begin with her whom I
saw you robbing of her blankets.'  And with that, not heeding his
appeals, my father turned his back upon the egoist.

The girl still lay reclined against the rock; she lay too far sunk
in the first stage of death to have observed the bustle round her
couch; but when my father had raised her head, put the flask to her
lips, and forced or aided her to swallow some drops of the
restorative, she opened her languid eyes and smiled upon him
faintly.  Never was there a smile of a more touching sweetness;
never were eyes more deeply violet, more honestly eloquent of the
soul!  I speak with knowledge, for these were the same eyes that
smiled upon me in the cradle.  From her who was to be his wife, my
father, still jealously watched and followed by the man with the
grey beard, carried his attentions to all the women of the party,
and gave the last drainings of his flask to those among the men who
seemed in the most need.

'Is there none left? not a drop for me?' said the man with the
beard.

'Not one drop,' replied my father; 'and if you find yourself in
want, let me counsel you to put your hand into the pocket of your
coat.'

'Ah!' cried the other, 'you misjudge me.  You think me one who
clings to life for selfish and commonplace considerations.  But let
me tell you, that were all this caravan to perish, the world would
but be lightened of a weight.  These are but human insects,
pullulating, thick as May-flies, in the slums of European cities,
whom I myself have plucked from degradation and misery, from the
dung-heap and gin-palace door.  And you compare their lives with
mine!'

'You are then a Mormon missionary?' asked my father.

'Oh!' cried the man, with a strange smile, 'a Mormon missionary if
you will!  I value not the title.  Were I no more than that, I
could have died without a murmur.  But with my life as a physician
is bound up the knowledge of great secrets and the future of man.
This it was, when we missed the caravan, tried for a short cut and
wandered to this desolate ravine, that ate into my soul, and, in
five days, has changed my beard from ebony to silver.'

'And you are a physician,' mused my father, looking on his face,
'bound by oath to succour man in his distresses.'

'Sir,' returned the Mormon, 'my name is Grierson:  you will hear
that name again; and you will then understand that my duty was not
to this caravan of paupers, but to mankind at large.'

My father turned to the remainder of the party, who were now
sufficiently revived to hear; told them that he would set off at
once to bring help from his own party; 'and,' he added, 'if you be
again reduced to such extremities, look round you, and you will see
the earth strewn with assistance.  Here, for instance, growing on
the under side of fissures in this cliff, you will perceive a
yellow moss.  Trust me, it is both edible and excellent.'

'Ha!' said Doctor Grierson, 'you know botany!'

'Not I alone,' returned my father, lowering his voice; 'for see
where these have been scraped away.  Am I right?  Was that your
secret store?'

My father's comrades, he found, when he returned to the signal-
fire, had made a good day's hunting.  They were thus the more
easily persuaded to extend assistance to the Mormon caravan; and
the next day beheld both parties on the march for the frontiers of
Utah.  The distance to be traversed was not great; but the nature
of the country, and the difficulty of procuring food, extended the
time to nearly three weeks; and my father had thus ample leisure to
know and appreciate the girl whom he had succoured.  I will call my
mother Lucy.  Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is
one you would know well.  By what series of undeserved calamities
this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education,
ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the horrors of a
Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you.  Let it suffice, that
even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart worthy of
her own.  The ardour of attachment which united my father and
mother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their
meeting; it knew, at least, no bounds either divine or human; my
father, for her sake, determined to renounce his ambitions and
abjure his faith; and a week had not yet passed upon the march
before he had resigned from his party, accepted the Mormon
doctrine, and received the promise of my mother's hand on the
arrival of the party at Salt Lake.

The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring.  My father
prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my
mother; and though you may wonder to hear it, I believe there were
few happier homes in any country than that in which I saw the light
and grew to girlhood.  We were, indeed, and in spite of all our
wealth, avoided as heretics and half-believers by the more precise
and pious of the faithful:  Young himself, that formidable tyrant,
was known to look askance upon my father's riches; but of this I
had no guess.  I dwelt, indeed, under the Mormon system, with
perfect innocence and faith.  Some of our friends had many wives;
but such was the custom; and why should it surprise me more than
marriage itself?  From time to time one of our rich acquaintances
would disappear, his family be broken up, his wives and houses
shared among the elders of the Church, and his memory only recalled
with bated breath and dreadful headshakings.  When I had been very
still, and my presence perhaps was forgotten, some such topic would
arise among my elders by the evening fire; I would see them draw
the closer together and look behind them with scared eyes; and I
might gather from their whisperings how some one, rich, honoured,
healthy, and in the prime of his days, some one, perhaps, who had
taken me on his knees a week before, had in one hour been spirited
from home and family, and vanished like an image from a mirror,
leaving not a print behind.  It was terrible, indeed; but so was
death, the universal law.  And even if the talk should wax still
bolder, full of ominous silences and nods, and I should hear named
in a whisper the Destroying Angels, how was a child to understand
these mysteries?  I heard of a Destroying Angel as some more happy
child might hear in England of a bishop or a rural dean, with vague
respect and without the wish for further information.  Life
anywhere, in society as in nature, rests upon dread foundations; I
beheld safe roads, a garden blooming in the desert, pious people
crowding to worship; I was aware of my parents' tenderness and all
the harmless luxuries of my existence; and why should I pry beneath
this honest seeming surface for the mysteries on which it stood?

We dwelt originally in the city; but at an early date we moved to a
beautiful house in a green dingle, musical with splashing water,
and surrounded on almost every side by twenty miles of poisonous
and rocky desert.  The city was thirty miles away; there was but
one road, which went no further than my father's door; the rest
were bridle-tracks impassable in winter; and we thus dwelt in a
solitude inconceivable to the European.  Our only neighbour was Dr.
Grierson.  To my young eyes, after the hair-oiled, chin-bearded
elders of the city, and the ill-favoured and mentally stunted women
of their harems, there was something agreeable in the correct
manner, the fine bearing, the thin white hair and beard, and the
piercing looks of the old doctor.  Yet, though he was almost our
only visitor, I never wholly overcame a sense of fear in his
presence; and this disquietude was rather fed by the awful solitude
in which he lived and the obscurity that hung about his
occupations.  His house was but a mile or two from ours, but very
differently placed.  It stood overlooking the road on the summit of
a steep slope, and planted close against a range of overhanging
bluffs.  Nature, you would say, had here desired to imitate the
works of man; for the slope was even, like the glacis of a fort,
and the cliffs of a constant height, like the ramparts of a city.
Not even spring could change one feature of that desolate scene;
and the windows looked down across a plain, snowy with alkali, to
ranges of cold stone sierras on the north.  Twice or thrice I
remember passing within view of this forbidding residence; and
seeing it always shuttered, smokeless, and deserted, I remarked to
my parents that some day it would certainly be robbed.

'Ah, no,' said my father, 'never robbed;' and I observed a strange
conviction in his tone.