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Based on an antique painting
The Elks Magazine, May 1926,
with "The Man Who Was a Miser"
IT WAS late afternoon when Mr. Prosper Fair, perched, as usual, upon the upper works of Stolid Joe with Patience ambling along under the lee of the big elephant, caught up with a steam-roller that appeared to be rolling leisurely home after a hard day's work.
The wanderers were traveling rather faster than usual, as they were anxious to find a sheltered camping site before dusk.
Prosper, noting that neither the engine-driver nor his "mate" seemed to have observed his approach, and consequently still clung to the middle of the road, shouted to attract their attention.
But they had traveled a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile before one of them—the mate—looked round. Prosper perceived that he was a person of one-eyed aspect with a heavy, rather dirty, and decidedly sullen face. He was smoking a clay pipe very industriously indeed.
Prosper signed to him to have the engine steered into the side of the road. The one-eyed man merely stared. "The gentleman does not appear to have seen an elephant before," said Prosper "Let him gaze his fill."
He waited a few moments, while the one-eyed man, presumably having assured himself that his eye was not deceiving him, dug his elbow into the engine-driver's back, and proceeded to indicate with a jerk of the thumb, the little expedition behind.
The engine-driver turned and treated himself to a stare.
"You are the cynosure of all eyes, Joseph mine," said Prosper. "How does it feel to be a cynosure? I wish the gentleman would be so civil as to make way."
He waved his arm as politely as possible, but the "mate" merely continued to smoke and dreamily gaze at Stolid Joe and Patience. Once he said something over his shoulder. Evidently it was extremely witty, for the engine-driver turned, his mouth wide open, seeming to be convulsed with mirth. It was inaudible, of course.
A cinder from the smoke-stack of the steam-roller blew into Prosper's eye and stung sharply.
The gentleman of the steam-roller continued to be amused. Clearly they did not propose to make way for quite a considerable while—because it was funny to keep a man who rode about on an elephant awaiting their condescension. They were enjoying it. The engine-driver carefully ran his clattering earth-shaker a little further into the middle of the road just, to make quite sure.
Prosper carefully rubbed the cinder out of his eye.
"We are being butchered to provide a steam-roller's holiday, my children," he said, mildly. "I fear me that these waggish ones do not know the difference between wit and boorishness. What shall we do about, it? After all, I suppose quite a number of people find us a novel sight."
He smiled friendlily enough at the one-eyed man, and again waved his arm, as though to indicate that there was room and plenty to spare for his passing.
The one-eyed man spat carelessly into the road, yawned and re-lighted his pipe.
"That was deliberate—studied, Joseph!" said Prosper, in an oddly changed voice. The elephant must have felt the sudden stiffening up of Prosper's body, for his great ears swung forward—much to the One Eye's interest and amusement. He drove his elbow once more into the driver's back to draw his attention to the phenomenon.
He would have done more wisely to have concentrated his gaze and mental faculties, if indeed he possessed any, upon Prosper Fair's face, which had flushed slightly and hardened beyond recognition. But the man was a natural boor—and what the average boor usually fails to note is, as usually, the thing most worth looking for.
Now, Prosper Fair was a civil man and fair-spoken. He was, indeed, considered by many to be too much so. He could suffer gladly fools, dolts, ninnies and oafs. Most of these appealed to his intelligence as creatures afflicted, or possessed of devils. He always felt that he could afford to space them his compassion. But brutes, boors and bullies he could not tolerate.
AN EXTREMELY civil, mild-mannered man himself, nothing enraged
him more than a cold-blooded, studied, long-drawn-out insult. And
it is a curious psychological fact—though one easily
capable of explanation—that it is far, far safer to insult
an habitually rude, noisy, insulting man, than a very civil,
quiet, polite man. For the simple reason that your rude man is
usually paid in his own verbal coin and becomes accustomed to it,
whereas your studiously civil man, once grossly insulted, feels
himself to be as outraged as a man who has been "stuck" with five
bad sovereigns in return for a perfectly good five-pound
note.
So that, in one brief but decisive moment, Prosper Fair had suddenly changed from a tolerant, friendly, indulgent person into a bloodhound of the grimmest type. He settled comfortably down, lit a cigarette, and prepared to follow the gentleman of the steam roller for ever and a day, if necessary. He purposed to chastise them according to their merits.
They all rolled onwards.
About half a mile further on a camping site revealed itself to the left of the road—a shallow but well-sheltered chalk-pit, long disused and overgrown. There was a ruined windmill upon its brow. Prosper steered Stolid Joe into it, the steam-roller men waving a derisive farewell.
Prosper smiled back at them, a bleak, rather pitying smile. Swiftly he wheeled the caravan into position, detached Joseph from it, requested Patience and Plutus to wait for him there, and headed out on to the main road again, the elephant traveling like a liner.
In five minutes he had overhauled the steam-roller. The one-eyed man and the driver seemed rather astonished to see him again, and, oddly enough, not at all amused. They made way quite politely for him this time, but now it did not matter. Stolid Joe was vastly more mobile now than when he was drawing the big caravan.
"Mind your feet, Joseph!" said Prosper. "We will now proceed to grapple with the foe."
HE RANGED alongside the steam-roller as a pirate craft might
range alongside its prey, and an apprehensive expression made its
appearance upon the faces of the men. Prosper edged Stolid Joe
close in front of the big driving-wheels and, leaning over, asked
in a voice that could be heard above the tumult, why they had
obstructed the road.
One-Eye replied sullenly that they had not done so "on purpose"—the usual idiotic defense—and Prosper, leaning over at a perilous angle caught him a stinging open-handed slap upon his sullen jaw. The engine-driver turned with a jump just in time, to get a well-judged open back-hander of about the same force.
They snarled meaninglessly, rubbing their countenances. Despite the sullen appearance of One-Eye, it was the driver who had the most courage. He stopped his engine and scrambled down.
But Prosper was down before him. One-Eye diplomatically remained where he was, merely taking the precaution of arming himself with the coal-shovel.
The driver, a big, husky, but clumsily-built oaf, leaped at Prosper, howling. He had better have leaped into a well. Prosper met him with one of his patent piston-shots to the jaw that half-stunned him, and followed it with another that spread-eagled him across the ditch like a fallen, half-thawed snowman. He remained there, burbling. Then Mr. Fair turned to One-Eye but One-Eye had abandoned his shovel and was over the hedge and apparently half-way home—and still traveling.
The driver painfully rose to his feet and stared, white-eyed, at Prosper.
"I am afraid I am going to be weak enough to let you off with that," said Mr. Fair reluctantly. "I ought, really, to give you much more. However—are you cured of blocking the road?"
The man mumbled.
"Please do not growl at me," said Prosper. "Are you cured?"
"Yes," said the man.
"You will never do it again?"
"Not likely. What do you take me for?"
"And you will promise to cure your cheery-visaged assistant?"
"Yes. I'll cure him or kill him."
"Mount your clamour-factory and go in peace," said Prosper, and turned to Stolid Joe.
"Come along, Joseph."
He was about to mount when, from a footpath close by, stepped a man with a gray, straggly beard who, at first glance, seemed to be in hard training for an attempt to win the world's Living Scarecrow Championship. He was quite obviously already the world's champion Living Skeleton. This individual—who wore an overcoat, contrived, not ineptly, of old sacks—extended a bony claw to Prosper.
"Thank you, sir," he said in a rather high voice which, in spite of his appearance, was not that of an uneducated man. "Allow me, on behalf of all users of England's Highways, to thank you for the service you have rendered them."
HIS eye fell on a tiny lump of coal which One-Eye in his
hasty flight had knocked off the steam-roller to the ground.
"Excuse me," he said, and pounced upon the coal, which he carefully put into his pocket.
"The need for frugality is pressing—to a man in my position," he said in explanation. "I have learned to despise nothing of value," he added and picked up and stowed away the quarter of a cigarette which Prosper had dropped when receiving the onslaught of the engine-driver.
He stared down the road after the departing engine.
"The men who drive that machine are notorious boors," he said. "I assume that they deliberately refused to make way for you. It is their hobby."
Prosper nodded.
"It was their hobby," he corrected mildly, and the man gave a grim cackle of laughter.
"Quite so—quite so!" he agreed. He glanced at Stolid Joe.
"An elephant, I perceive," he said. Prosper admitted it.
"A very interesting companion, sir—but hardly frugal. Still—we can not all be frugal. Do you go this way? Perhaps you will have no objection to my company as far as the old windmill."
"I shall be charmed," said Prosper.
"Thank you," replied the other.
"Do you live near the windmill?" enquired Prosper as they started.
"I live in it," explained the man. "I am the local miser—the legitimate butt, as no doubt you will understand, of the population of the villages for some miles round—the unfrugal, wasteful hounds!" he concluded.
And Prosper perceived that, with his usual good fortune, he had met yet once more with an individuality which might well repay study.
"I, too, am a frugal man," he said. "And it is a very great pleasure to me to make your acquaintance, my dear Mr. ——"
"Humphrey Turnable," said the miser, with a slight bow.
Prosper returned it and introduced himself.
Mr. Turnable drew his "overcoat" close about him.
"The wind becomes chilly, Mr. Fair," he said.
"Yes, indeed—let us hurry to warmer quarters," suggested Prosper.
"Thank you, thank you." replied Mr. Turnable. "I thank you for your invitation, and accept it with pleasure."
He appeared to think that he had been invited somewhere—doubtless to have something. He was, as has been explained, a frugal man.
IT WAS abundantly evident as they proceeded upon their way that whatever else the miser was frugal about, he was not economical of words.
He prattled away as busily as a child going to a pantomime. He explained this.
"I take a very great delight in meeting and conversing with a man of education, intelligence and breeding—such a man as I imagine you to be," he said. "The society worth cultivating in the village is very limited in extent, and what there is, naturally, is painfully limited in its views. It is a narrow-minded community."
He sighed. Presumably he considered himself broad-minded.
"And again one has to confess that the reputation of being an unusually competent miser is not the kind of reputation which attracts to its owner any excess of cordiality or hospitality. One finds that one is apt to be left out in the cold. Unjust, of course. For of all the virtues frugality and self-denial are, to my mind, the most beautiful."
"Within limits, yes," said Prosper.
The miser twitched his sacks closer about him and regarded Mr. Fair with some severity.
"My dear sir, there should be no limits to frugality," he said in a tone of rebuke.
"But," objected Prosper, mildly, "but in that case one would die of starvation."
The miser stopped short, staring at Prosper as though he could hardly believe the evidence of his own ears.
"I can not conceive it possible," he said, warmly, "that in an enlightened country such as England rightly claims to be, any man would be permitted by the community to perish of starvation—more miserably than the beasts of the field. Even they have grass!"
Prosper was delighted. A more lopsided argument he had never heard, and he loved lopsided men—when the lop was rare and unusual.
"I quite see your point, my dear Mr. Turnable," he said. "But the community might say—not without reason—that the too frugal man should support himself. What would he reply to that?"
"He would say—as I, myself, should—that it is not entirely convenient to support himself," replied Mr. Turnable, with dignity. "For instance, I am at this moment worth perhaps twenty thousand pounds. But I do not wish to break in upon it merely to procure such things as bread, bacon, coal, and so forth. I—ah I—in short. I need the money."
Prosper glanced at him to assure himself that the man was not joking.
"Yes—I need the money," he repeated firmly. His brows knitted. "At—least, I may need it at any moment. It can not be long now—not long," he added, musingly, as if talking mainly to himself.
Prosper perceived that there was a mystery somewhere. This was no ordinary miser. He was more probably a man saving desperately for some special purpose, who had adopted the tone of an ordinary miser for defensive purposes. He decided to angle for the mystery. Even if he failed, doubtless Mr. Turnable's conversation would go far to compensate him.
"I should be delighted if you will dine with us," he said. "Quite a small party—you, myself, Stolid Joe—the little elephant—Patience, my small donkey, whom I will introduce to you presently, and Plutus, my dog, who will introduce himself."
Mr. Turnable accepted, enthusiastically, and so they arrived at the entry to the chalk-pit.
A little gray form was awaiting them, gazing wistfully down the road.
It was, of course, Patience.
"Patience, my little, this gentleman is Mr. Humphrey Turnable, who will do us the honor of sharing our evening meal."
The donkey uttered a queer, whispering sound, half a snuffle and half a whispered bray. It sounded friendly.
Mr. Turnable gently patted her neck.
"You are a very pretty little donkey, my dear," he said. "Very pretty, and I have no doubt that you are equally intelligent. Though I fear that you must cost a pretty penny to support—a pretty penny, yes, indeed."
Prosper, pleased at the easy way in which Mr. Turnable entered into the spirit of things—always exclusive of their financial side—explained that Patience was surprisingly frugal in her tastes and habits, and Mr. Turnable said, quite sincerely, that he was glad to hear it.
Then Plutus hurled himself at Prosper.
"My little dog," said he, introductorywise.
MR. TURNABLE looked reproachfully at Prosper.
"A licensed pet!" he said. "I apprehend, Mr. Fair, that you must be a very wealthy man." But he fondled Plutus like a man who understood something of dogs and doggishness.
"I am thankful to say that I have sufficient for my modest needs," replied Prosper, gaily. "I don't ask for much, you know. Give me a good, staunch little elephant, a well-designed caravan, fitted with rubber tires, electric light and one or two similar necessities, a little, wise donkey, a three-legged dog, and a few pounds always in my pocket, and I envy no man. Won't you have a cigar while I get dinner?"
He offered the man in sackcloth his case. Mr. Turnable took one and, carefully cutting off the end with a knife borrowed from Prosper, lit it. There was a remote air of hunger about him as he did so.
At the first puff his eyes glowed. He reverently removed the cigar and looked at it respectfully.
"A fine—a very fine—cigar," he said. "I have not smoked such a cigar for ten years."
"I am glad you like it. They were chosen for me by a man who understands cigars thoroughly," answered Prosper and, having pulled a chair for his guest out of the caravan, busied himself in building a fire—in which operation he was very kindly aided by Stolid Joe who recently had developed a habit (thanks to a little teaching from Prosper) of wandering round their camp collecting dried sticks.
The miser watched, sitting raptly over his cigar. Presently a spasm passed over his thin face as of some unwonted emotion. He moved his hand to one of the big fat pockets on his coat, hesitated, then, with an effort, plunged his hand into the pocket and produced—the lump of coal he had picked up.
"IF THIS would he of any use to you, my dear sir, I should be
glad to—part with it," he said, with a sort of shy
awkwardness which was abundant evidence of how markedly he lacked
practice in the art of giving.
Prosper accepted the coal quite seriously....
Mr. Turnable proved himself to be a past master of the science of making a cigar last—so brilliantly economical was he, indeed, that when, considerably over an hour later, Prosper had fed his companions, cooked several attractive dishes, and made all ready, the miser had at least five-sixteenths of an inch of the cigar left. Prosper, not without a friendly little argument, prevailed upon him to abandon it, and they proceeded to dine.
"I perceive for the thousandth time that what is one man's conception of frugality may be another man's conception of unparalleled lavishness," observed Mr. Turnable presently, passing his plate for some more of the alleged real turtle soup which Prosper had produced from a big bottle.
"I am really ashamed of my appetite," he added—as though the disposal of one plate of soup constituted greed and the intention to tackle another was simple gluttony.
But Prosper had only just begun on the man. He plied him for the next hour and a half—not neglecting himself—and finally brought him safely to the stage where a bottle of Benedictine made its appearance from the caravan.
They lit cigarettes and for a few moments smoked in silence.
Then Prosper went over and stirred up the fire with his foot. He came back to his stool and, in the light of the revived flame, made the painful discovery that tears were trickling down Mr. Turnable's furrowed face, narrowly missing his glass of Benedictine.
Prosper, not surprised, for his guest's manner had been growing much less formal and reserved throughout the meal, leaned across the folding table.
"I am afraid you are in trouble, my dear Turnable," he said gently. "It has been my good fortune to find myself able to help several people in the course of my perambulations, and it may even be that I can help you. Who knows? You may be sure that even if I can not help you I shall never hurt or hinder you."
For a moment the miser was silent. Then, wiping his eyes furtively with his sleeve—handkerchiefs, clearly, were outside his limits of frugality—he said, quickly:
"I will tell you my story. It is the shortest story on earth to tell, the longest to live. I had a wife. We were poor. She left me because of a quarrel due to two tempers embittered by undeserved poverty. That was seven years ago. She has not returned. Half an hour after she was gone I wished her back. Now, seven years after, I still wish her back. I am no longer poor—I have made myself well off in seven years. But she does not return—and so I am poorer than ever. That is all. For five years I have lived here, miserishly. For four years and nine months not one person has treated me as anything but an outcast—except you. I did not mind—I had become accustomed to it. I warmed my soul in the warmth of my increasing hoard—I basked in the rays of my bank book. Then you—you come drifting out of Nowhere—riding royally upon an elephant—and you are hospitable, kind, generous, sympathetic, tolerant—and it all caught me off my guard—upset me."
He stared at Prosper with great eyes that seemed to fill half his pinched face.
"Either you have done me a great service or a great injury. I don't know which—yet," he said. "You—your generosity—has made it clear to me that the time has come when I must cry halt to my present mode of existence. The savour of decent food, the aroma of that grand cigar—when you have starved yourself for as long as I have, you will understand the potency of their arguments, Mr. Fair. The thought of comfortable clothes, good linen, a house for a home, not a half-ruined windmill! I intend henceforward to enjoy these things—share them with my wife if she will come back."
PROSPER nodded, waiting for more.
"How old would you say I look?" asked Mr. Turnable abruptly.
Prosper looked at him closely in the light of the electric lantern he had now switched on.
"Sixty!" he said.
Mr. Turnable shuddered.
"I am thirty-three!" he said bleakly....
Prosper did not probe too deeply those old wounds. He became brisk—no one knew better than he when matter-of-fact briskness was as valuable as medicine.
"And you wish to enter upon a new and more comfortable habit of life with your wife?"
"If she will return to me," replied Mr. Turnable.
"In that case, my dear man, set your mind quite at rest. I will fetch her to-morrow," said Prosper easily, and finished his Benedictine.
Mr. Turnable stared. But Prosper's brown clear-cut face, very plain to be seen in the sudden glare of the match with which he was lighting another cigarette, was utterly unruffled, perfectly serious, even a little grave.
"You will provide me with her address if you know it (in order to save me the trouble of finding it for myself) and—all will be well. Leave it, my dear Turnable, entirely to me. I am a student of humanity, and, if I may say so (since there is no one here to say it for me) I am accustomed to deal with problems of every size, hue and complexity."
He rose.
"If your wife lives far from here—"
"Near London," said Mr. Turnable, his eyes flaring as with suddenly awakened hope.
"Ah, London! Then it will be necessary for me to send a telegram. And I must leave you for a few minutes while I proceed to the village before the post-office closes. Meantime, do you make yourself comfortable here—there is the Benedictine, here are the cigars—and await my return."
He patted Mr. Turnable on the shoulder, a friendly little touch, and addressing a few mystic instructions to Stolid Joe, quietly disappeared out of the chalk-pit, Patience and Plutus trotting with him.
He strode toward the village, one hand resting on Patience's wise little head.
"We knew, my dear, didn't we? That poor chap was never cut out for a miser—and we knew it almost at once. Do you hear that, Plutus mine? Who are they who are always right and never wrong, Plutus? Say it—not too loud—'Patience and Prosper.' Of course!"
He swung buoyantly down upon the hamlet.
MESSRS. Fair and Turnable talked long together that night, both at Prosper's camp and, later, in the gloomy ground-floor apartment of the ruined windmill inhabited by the "miser" (who had bought it for next to nothing) and, in its upper regions, an elderly owl of morose disposition and unmelodious voice.
Bit by bit Prosper gleaned the details of Mr. Turnable's tragedy.
It was the not uncommon story of a writer marrying too soon a woman whom unwisely he had allowed to believe completely that his success was already an accomplished fact. She had loved him genuinely enough—at the beginning at any rate—but three months of adversity had worn her down. For it had been adversity. Within a month of their marriage they had begun to encounter disappointment, and, as is usual, the bad luck came en masse. Turnable lost two regular contracts for weekly columns in papers, one of which went out of business, and the other changed hands. He was not able to secure regular work to take their place so that, even before the end of their honeymoon, the little wife perceived two hundred a year disappear over the horizon. Then a cleverer man ousted Turnable from a column of criticism for another paper—away went fifty guineas a year. Then Fate took a "hack" at the Turnable pièce de résistance—namely, Turnable's novel, which had won through three editions, and for the royalties on which Turnable expected a big check. He called for the check two days after it should have been paid but the publisher's name had figured in the lists of those filing bankruptcy petitions on the previous day. These matters, and a run of ill-success with short stories, upset all the Turnables' plans. The cosy flat in town was let, and the couple went into a less cosy flat farther out. The ill luck continued steadily. Turnable got flurried. This did not improve his work. He grew frightened. This seriously impaired it. He worried himself into a month's illness, and emerged therefrom shaken and ill-equipped to start again. He found his wife altered a little, too, and a cousin had appeared on the scene—a prosperous person who sold clothing somewhere. This one had always adored Ella.
She had borrowed money from the cousin during Turnable's illness—and, absurdly, in these circumstances, Turnable, always fiercely jealous, had been bitter about the borrowing. He had said so and she had defended herself. Neither was wrong from their individual point, but they did not consider this. "One word led to another," and before they quite knew what had happened each, white and trembling with anger, was striving furiously to hurt with barbed words the other. Absurd statements that one would laugh at if uttered in prosperity have a knack of cutting like broken glass when flung recklessly in times of naked stress, and both the Turnables succeeded in hurting each other so thoroughly that it seemed to be quite natural to separate then and there. They did so.
The wife of three months had walked out of the dingy rooms, en route to a relative's, and Turnable had let her go. But the memory of some of her scornful accusations had remained with him. Among other things she had quoted the clothier cousin to the effect that "no writer ever grew moderately well off, much less rich," though upon what authority the worthy mercer had said so, did not appear. He had replied furiously to the effect, that every imaginative writer is, in the nature of things, rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
He may be hungry or in rags and entirely without money, but his imagination made him rich.
"I see," she had said, icily. "You are rich in your mind. And your wives go hungry—in their bodies! I prefer the kind of wealth they accept over counters!"...
He had remembered the exact phrase for seven years. It was all very hopeless....
So he had sworn—for he was, then, very young—to prove everybody wrong but himself. He had got a little money together, and started to work like a slave and to save like a miser. A few short years of this had produced a result which staggered him. He had discovered that to work incessantly gets easier and easier as one becomes inured to it, and, further, it is never all wasted; and, better still, he ran to ground the undeniable though not generally realised truth that a hard-working man who contents himself (if he can) with buying only bare necessities can hardly avoid becoming well off. He had passed seven years in adapting himself more and more sternly to these truths. And now he had the money—and wanted his wife back. There need be no more penury. She need have no fear of that.
"If she would come...." was the burden of his cry to Prosper.
"After all it's at least a thousand a year... That is enough for any reasonable woman. Don't you agree?"
"Quite—quite," said Prosper soothingly. "You will see, to-morrow...."
He had not seen her for seven years but he had gleaned from somewhere that she was a nurse in a Home for the Blind near Croydon.
That was all Prosper wanted to know. But the telling of his story had agitated the man strangely. His mood was akin to that of an intellectual convict on the last night of a seven years' sentence in prison. He was looking back on the time of slavery with a sort of incredulous horror, and to the future of leisure and happiness with something that was almost timidity.
Prosper had dealt with this mood, too, and when, presently, he made his way back to the caravan, Mr. Turnable was asleep on the pallet which seven years' practice had made endurable if not comfortable.
"A sorrowful story, Joseph, my little friend," said Prosper to the big elephant as he smoked a final cigarette on the threshold of the caravan.
But Stolid Joe only rocked slightly in the moonlight. He was fast asleep and it was no affair of his. Patience only wagged a drowsy ear at the sound of Prosper's voice, and Plutus was already in the caravan.
So Prosper, too, went to bed.
MR. TURNABLE breakfasted at dawn with Prosper and Co. But he
was a new man.
Prosper had lent him shaving tackle and similar things, and he had shaved off his beard and about fifteen years of age therewith. Also, wonderful to relate, he was decently clad in a blue serge suit, with tolerable boots, a reasonable though rather old-fashioned hat, and not too absurd linen.
"The suit I wear when I go to London on business," he had said with modest pride. "I bought it for my honeymoon!"
"It has worn well," said Prosper, without the flicker of a smile.
"I have treated it well," replied Mr. Turnable absently. He was occupied with his breakfast. As on the previous evening, Prosper did him well in the circumstances—anchovy toast, eggs and bacon, a grilled chop, marmalade, and so forth. He watched Prosper deftly preparing it with a sort of admiration.
"You are a capable man—an extraordinary man," he said, and tried to help, botched up everything he touched and resigned. "I am not accustomed to preparing luxuries," he said apologetically, "it makes me nervous."
They had no more than finished an after-breakfast cigarette when a huge motor-car slid almost soundlessly off the main road through the cutting into the chalk-pit and sighed itself to a standstill near the caravan.
At sight of the wrinkled old man sitting next to the driver, Stolid Joe gurgled delightedly, lurching across to him. It was Mr. Mullet. The car was Prosper's car and the driver thereof was Barker. Prosper's head chauffeur.
"Ah, there, you durned old bull! You durned old kinky-tailed old bull! Ain't forgot old Harry Mullet then—eh? How are ye, Joe—a picter o' health—never saw ye look better, you durned old bull!" babbled Mr. Mullet, fondling the elephant, who was cuddling the old man with his trunk. "Have ye took care o' the Jook? I see ye have. Durn your old hide, old Harry Mullet's glad to see ye again, Joe...!"
They had come from Derehurst Castle in response to Prosper's telegram of the previous night. Mr. Mullet was to care for the elephant and the others while Prosper went to town. He had prevailed upon the ex-miser to accompany him—after all, the windmill was not a very attractive place to which to bring one's wife. A good hotel would be better until they decided upon their home....
Prosper urged Stolid Joe to take care of Mr. Mullet and see that he behaved—much to the elephant's and Mr. Mullet's amusement; he patted Patience and whispered to her that Mr. Mullet would be preparing something rather recherché for her lunch, and that he would return that night, and he gave Plutus the day "off"—because, as he remarked, he knew that the semi-terrier would take it, in any case.
Then he took his seat at the wheel o[ the big car, saw that Mr. Turnable was comfortably settled by his side, gave the leathery-looking Barker a second or so to nip into the back, and then slid away on his hundred-mile run to London.
SOME hours later Mr. Fair deftly ran the car to a stop outside the gates of a fair-sized building near Croydon—the Blind Home of which Turnable had spoken.
"And here we are," he said, gaily, to the man who had been a miser. But Mr. Turnable's nerve was gone. He was white and he trembled a little. His years of toil and privation had told upon him.
His eyes were fixed upon a smaller building adjoining the house, and they were full of terror. For the smaller building was a charred ruin—evidently it had been burnt not long before. Men were working there, clearing away the wreckage.
Turnable's hand closed tight upon Prosper's arm.
"I am too late!" he quavered.
Prosper felt an odd chill run through his veins. If that were so—and sometimes things happened that way—
He brought himself up sharply.
"Nonsense, my dear man," he said, confidently. "Things don't happen like that. And even if they did I have an instinct that they haven't happened like that here! Come along."
But Mr. Turnable's nerves were not equal to that. He cowered in his seat.
"I—have not the courage. I—couldn't do it. If I tried to walk in there and ask for my wife—with that burnt house before me—I should fall down," he said in a whimper. "I am not the man I was!"
He covered his face with his hands.
Prosper did not attempt to persuade him. He glanced meaningly at Barker, the chauffeur—an old boxer, utterly reliable—and Barker touched his cap. Barker would take care of the shaken man until Prosper came back.
He passed through the gates, up the path—and his feet felt leaden, for he was afraid for the sake of Turnable—and so to a big doorway. He rang the bell.
The door was opened silently, by a young girl, exquisitely neat, who looked inquiringly at Prosper with a pair of the most beautiful and bluest eyes he had ever seen.
"I wish to see the matron," he said quietly, "if that is possible without an appointment." He offered his card.
The girl took it.
Not until he saw the deft, quick, feathery sweep of her fingertips over the pasteboard did he realize that she was blind.
Sightless! Something caught at his throat for an instant. Those wide blue eyes gazing eternally into blackness.
"Will you please come in?" said the girl, tranquilly, moving a little aside. "I will tell the matron that you are here."
Prosper entered the hall.
The girl closed the door softly, and went from the hall, moving with perfect confidence.
It was very quiet in that house of the blind, very peaceful. Whether there was or was not any revolt at their doom of everlasting darkness in the souls of the people there, Prosper did not know—though he could feel that the atmosphere of that house was not an atmosphere of revolt but of resignation so complete as to be almost content.
The matron came to him—a kind-faced, low-voiced woman of middle age, with patient eyes, and he explained why he had called.
"Perhaps Miss Ross has told you her story?" he said, using the name Turnable had given him, "if she has—" the matron nodded "—you will understand everything when I say that her husband wants her... that he is outside. He would have come himself but, as he said, 'he is not the man he was,' and the sight of the burnt house unnerved him."
The matron understood and she smiled. "He need not have feared," she said gently, seeing the anxiety on Prosper's face also, "his wife is well. But his instinct was not far wrong. Nurse Ross was burnt while getting some of the children out of the annex on the night of the fire. She risked her life to do what she did—but she is well again now. The last of the bandages were removed for good to-day."
Prosper read something in the matron's eyes. "Is she disfigured?" he asked quietly. "A little—not badly. She does not seem so to us—she would not seem so to any man who loved her. Her hair caught fire, and an ear was injured. Oh, not too badly! She is—quite presentable—" the matron smiled a little, and Prosper knew that all was well.
"May I bring her husband?" he asked rather humbly. There was that about this house and the people of this house which humbled one. The matron looked steadily into his eyes. "If he is a good man!" she said, quietly. "If not—if he is not the kind of man who will treat her well—then I beg you to take him away, and she need never know he came. For she is happy here and we love her. Don't let all that be spoiled for her, don't let her lose everything she has worked for, and her hope too, just for a whim. It would be cruel. She has told me her story. She says that it was all her fault—but I don't believe that—and I know, in her heart, she hopes her husband will come for her one day. I am glad if he is worthy of her. But if he is not it would be kinder—far kinder—to keep away. Don't misunderstand me, please—she would go to him whatever he is. It is I, who love her, who want to save her from herself if he is not worthy of her. What she was seven years ago, I do not know nor care—but I know now that she is a brave, and patient and sweet—a good woman, a noble woman, too good to be thrown away."
She paused a moment, studying Prosper's face. Then she continued:
"I have spoken frankly," she said. "And now I must trust to you. If you decide to bring her husband, I will welcome him for her sake, and she shall be told—and she will come to him."
Prosper nodded thoughtfully. All the responsibility for the future happiness of the couple, it appeared was to be his. Was that quite fair? He smiled within himself, as he reflected whimsically that if not quite fair, it was very womanly. After all, why should not the matron make the best terms she could for the woman she loved. And he believed in Turnable, too. He had seen the man's soul on the previous night.... So he decided.
"There is nothing against Turnable," he said. "I believe in him, absolutely, and as far as is humanly possible I will guarantee his wife's happiness."
The matron smiled and her eyes suddenly shone.
"Then please fetch him," she said eagerly. "He will not be disappointed—for she is charming!" And turned quickly to leave the hall.
Prosper went back down the path, beckoning furiously to Turnable.
And Turnable's nerve returned with a rush. He came, half running.
"All's well," said Prosper, and pushed him into the hall of the house.
He was aware of a rustle at the end of the hall and a figure all white and gray in nurse's uniform, hurrying forward, with a little low, choking cry—
"Humphrey! Oh, I thought that you were never coming—never coming. All these years—that are gone—"
Prosper softly closed the door—with himself on the outside....
He looked round the garden, thoughtfully, his gaze finally resting upon a fat and robustious sparrow on the lawn.
"I THINK, bird, that there is no longer any frenzied demand
for the presence of Prosper Fair. The matter has now been brought
to a successful conclusion, and nothing remains but to receive
the inevitable thanks of Mr. and Mrs. Turnable. And as thanks
always makes me feel very embarrassed—" he continued with
the playful extravagance which was one of his engaging
peculiarities "—and as there is now nothing to be done for
this young couple which they can not do far better for
themselves, we shall be completely justified, I fancy, in making
an unostentatious exit. How say you, bird?"
At this moment the bird, evidently attracted by sounds of sparrow argument and debate on a roof opposite, made a hurried exit from the lawn.
"An excellent example," murmured Prosper, and lit a cigarette, "I will follow it."
He went out to the motor.
"You drive, Barker. Home, as quick as you can!" he said, lying back in the seat next lo the driver's.
"Very good, Y'r Grace? To Derehurst, Y'r Grace?"
"Nay, nay, my Barker—to the chalk-pit!"
The great car glided away on its "homeward" run.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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