My Lady Nicotine Part 10

More than once, I know, I have wandered in my sleep, looking for it in all sorts of places, and after I went to bed I generally jumped out, just to make sure of it. My strong belief, then, is that I was the ghost seen by the writer of the paper. I fancy that I rose in my sleep, lighted a candle, and wandered down to the hall to feel if my pipe was safe in my coat, which was hanging there. The light had gone out when I was in the hall. Probably the body seen to fall on the hall floor was some other coat which I had flung there to get more easily at my own.

I cannot account for the bell; but perhaps the gentleman in the Haunted Chamber dreamed that part of the affair. I had put on the overcoat before reascending; indeed I may say that next morning I was surprised to find it on a chair in my bedroom, also to notice that there were several long streaks of candle-grease on my dressing-gown. I conclude that the pistol, which gave my face such a look of triumph, was my brier, which I found in the morning beneath my pillow. The strangest thing of all, perhaps, is that when I awoke there was a smell of tobacco-smoke in the bedroom.

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CHAPTER XXIV.

NOT THE ARCADIA.

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Those who do not know the Arcadia may have a mixture that their uneducated palate loves, but they are always ready to try other mixtures. The Arcadian, however, will never help himself from an outsider's pouch. Nevertheless, there was one black week when we all smoked the ordinary tobaccoes. Owing to a terrible oversight on the part of our purveyor, there was no Arcadia to smoke.

We ought to have put our pipes aside and existed on cigars; but the pipes were old friends, and desert them we could not. Each of us bought a different mixture, but they tasted alike and were equally abominable.

I fell ill. Doctor Southwick, knowing no better, called my malady by a learned name, but I knew to what I owed it. Never shall I forget my delight when Jimmy broke into my room one day with a pound-tin of the Arcadia. Weak though I was, I opened my window and, seizing the half-empty packet of tobacco that had made me ill, hurled it into the street. The tobacco scattered before it fell, but I sat at the window gloating over the packet, which lay a dirty sc.r.a.p of paper, where every cab might pa.s.s over it. What I call the street is more strictly a square, for my windows were at the back of the inn, and their view was somewhat plebeian. The square is the meeting-place of five streets, and at the corner of each the paper was caught up in a draught that bore it along to the next.

Here, it may be thought, I gladly forgot the cause of my troubles, but I really watched the paper for days. My doctor came in while I was still staring at it, and instead of prescribing more medicine, he made a bet with me. It was that the sc.r.a.p of paper would disappear before the dissolution of the government. I said it would be fluttering around after the government was dissolved, and if I lost, the doctor was to get a new stethoscope. If I won, my bill was to be accounted discharged.

Thus, strange as it seemed, I had now cause to take a friendly interest in paper that I had previously loathed. Formerly the sight of it made me miserable; now I dreaded losing it. But I looked for it when I rose in the morning, and I could tell at once by its appearance what kind of night it had pa.s.sed. Nay, more: I believed I was able to decide how the wind had been since sundown, whether there had been much traffic, and if the fire-engine had been out. There is a fire-station within view of the windows, and the paper had a specially crushed appearance, as if the heavy engine ran over it. However, though I felt certain that I could pick my sc.r.a.p of paper out of a thousand sc.r.a.ps, the doctor insisted on making sure. The bet was consigned to writing on the very piece of paper that suggested it. The doctor went out and captured it himself. On the back of it the conditions of the wager were formally drawn up and signed by both of us. Then we opened the window and the paper was cast forth again. The doctor solemnly promised not to interfere with it, and I gave him a convalescent's word of honor to report progress honestly.

Several days elapsed, and I no longer found time heavy on my hands. My attention was divided between two papers, the sc.r.a.p in the square and my daily copy of the _Times_. Any morning the one might tell me that I had lost my bet, or the other that I had won it; and I hurried to the window fearing that the paper had migrated to another square, and hoping my _Times_ might contain the information that the government was out.

I felt that neither could last very much longer. It was remarkable how much my interest in politics had increased since I made this wager.

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The doctor, I believe, relied chiefly on the scavengers. He thought they were sure to pounce upon the sc.r.a.p soon. I did not, however, see why I should fear them. They came into the square so seldom, and stayed so short a time when they did come, that I disregarded them. If the doctor knew how much they kept away he might say I bribed them. But perhaps he knew their ways. I got a fright one day from a dog. It was one of those low-looking animals that infest the square occasionally in half-dozens, but seldom alone. It ran up one of the side streets, and before I realized what had happened it had the paper in its mouth. Then it stood still and looked around. For me that was indeed a trying moment. I stood at the window.

The impulse seized me to fling open the sash and shake my fist at the brute; but luckily I remembered in time my promise to the doctor.

I question if man was ever so interested in mongrel before. At one of the street corners there was a house to let, being meantime, as I had reason to believe, in the care of the wife of a police constable. A cat was often to be seen coming up from the area to lounge in the doorway. To that cat I firmly believe I owe it that I did not then lose my wager.

Faithful animal! it came up to the door, it stretched itself; in the act of doing so it caught sight of the dog, and put up its back. The dog, resenting this demonstration of feeling, dropped the sc.r.a.p of paper and made for the cat. I sank back into my chair.

There was a greater disaster to be recorded next day. A workingman in the square, looking about him for a pipe-light, espied the paper frisking near the curb-stone. He picked it up with the obvious intention of lighting it at the stove of a wandering vender of hot chestnuts who had just crossed the square. The workingman followed, twisting the paper as he went, when--good luck again--a young butcher almost ran into him, and the loafer, with true presence of mind, at once asked him for a match. At any rate a match pa.s.sed between them; and, to my infinite relief, the paper was flung away.

I concealed the cause of my excitement from William John. He nevertheless wondered to see me run to the window every time the wind seemed to be rising, and getting anxious when it rained. Seeing that my health prevented my leaving the house, he could not make out why I should be so interested in the weather. Once I thought he was fairly on the scent. A sudden blast of wind had caught up the paper and whirled it high in the air. I may have uttered an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, for he came hurrying to the window. He found me pointing unwittingly to what was already a white speck sailing to the roof of the fire-station. "Is it a pigeon?"

he asked. I caught at the idea. "Yes, a carrier-pigeon," I murmured in reply; "they sometimes, I believe, send messages to the fire-stations in that way." Coolly as I said this, I was conscious of grasping the window-sill in pure nervousness till the sc.r.a.p began to flutter back into the square.

Next it was squeezed between two of the bars of a drain. That was the last I saw of it, and the following morning the doctor had won his stethoscope--only by a few hours, however, for the government's end was announced in the evening papers. My defeat discomfited me for a little, but soon I was pleased that I had lost. I would not care to win a bet over any mixture but the Arcadia.

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CHAPTER XXV.

A FACE THAT HAUNTED MARRIOT.

"This is not a love affair," Marriot shouted, apologetically.

He had sat the others out again, but when I saw his intention I escaped into my bedroom, and now refused to come out.

"Look here," he cried, changing his tone, "if you don't come out I'll tell you all about it through the keyhole. It is the most extraordinary story, and I can't keep it to myself. On my word of honor it isn't a love affair--at least not exactly."

I let him talk after I had gone to bed.

"You must know," he said, dropping cigarette ashes onto my pillow every minute, "that some time ago I fell in with Jack Goring's father, Colonel Goring. Jack and I had been David and Jonathan at Cambridge, and though we had not met for years, I looked forward with pleasure to meeting him again. He was a widower, and his father and he kept joint house. But the house was dreary now, for the colonel was alone in it. Jack was off on a scientific expedition to the Pacific; all the girls had been married for years. After dinner my host and I had rather a dull hour in the smoking-room. I could not believe that Jack had grown very stout. 'I'll show you his photograph,' said the colonel. An alb.u.m was brought down from a dusty shelf, and then I had to admit that my old friend had become positively corpulent. But it is not Jack I want to speak about.

I turned listlessly over the pages of the alb.u.m, stopping suddenly at the face of a beautiful girl. You are not asleep, are you?

"I am not naturally sentimental, as you know, and even now I am not prepared to admit that I fell in love with this face. It was not, I think, that kind of attraction. Possibly I should have pa.s.sed the photograph by had it not suggested old times to me--old times with a veil over them, for I could not identify the face. That I had at some period of my life known the original I felt certain, but I tapped my memory in vain. The lady was a lovely blonde, with a profusion of fair hair, and delicate features that were Roman when they were not Greek.

To describe a beautiful woman is altogether beyond me. No doubt this face had faults. I fancy, for instance, that there was little character in the chin, and that the eyes were 'melting' rather than expressive.

It was a vignette, the hands being clasped rather fancifully at the back of the head. My fingers drummed on the alb.u.m as I sat there pondering; but when or where I had met the original I could not decide. The colonel could give me no information. The alb.u.m was Jack's, he said, and probably had not been opened for years. The photograph, too, was an old one; he was sure it had been in the house long before his son's marriage, so that (and here the hard-hearted old gentleman chuckled) it could no longer be like the original. As he seemed inclined to become witty at my expense, I closed the alb.u.m, and soon afterward I went away.

I say, wake up!

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"From that evening the face haunted me. I do not mean that it possessed me to the exclusion of everything else, but at odd moments it would rise before me, and then I fell into a revery. You must have noticed my thoughtfulness of late. Often I have laid down my paper at the club and tried to think back to the original. She was probably better known to Jack Goring than to myself. All I was sure of was that she had been known to both of us. Jack and I had first met at Cambridge. I thought over the ladies I had known there, especially those who had been friends of Goring's. Jack had never been a 'lady's man' precisely; but, as he used to say, comparing himself with me, 'he had a heart.' The annals of our Cambridge days were searched in vain. I tried the country house in which he and I had spent a good many of our vacations. Suddenly I remembered the reading-party in Devons.h.i.+re--but no, she was dark. Once Jack and I had a romantic adventure in Glencoe in which a lady and her daughter were concerned. We tried to make the most of it; but in our hearts we knew, after we had seen her by the morning light, that the daughter was not beautiful. Then there was the French girl at Algiers.

Jack had kept me hanging on in Algiers a week longer than we meant to stay. The pose of the head, the hands clasped behind it, a trick so irritatingly familiar to me--was that the French girl? No, the lady I was struggling to identify was certainly English. I'm sure you're asleep.

"A month elapsed before I had an opportunity of seeing the photograph again. An idea had struck me which I meant to carry out. This was to trace the photograph by means of the photographer. I did not like, however, to mention the subject to Colonel Goring again, so I contrived to find the alb.u.m while he was out of the smoking-room. The number of the photograph and the address of the photographer were all I wanted; but just as I had got the photograph out of the alb.u.m my host returned.

I slipped the thing quickly into my pocket, and he gave me no chance of replacing it. Thus it was owing to an accident that I carried the photograph away. My theft rendered me no a.s.sistance. True, the photographer's name and address were there; but when I went to the place mentioned it had disappeared to make way for 'residential chambers.' I have a few other Cambridge friends here, and I showed some of these the photograph. One, I am now aware, is under the impression that I am to be married soon, but the others were rational. Grierson, of the War Office, recognized the portrait at once. 'She is playing small parts at the Criterion,' he said. Finchley, who is a promising man at the bar, also recognized her. 'Her portraits were in all the ill.u.s.trated papers five years ago,' he told me, 'at the time when she got twelve months.' They contradicted each other about her, however, and I satisfied myself that she was neither an actress at the Criterion nor the adventuress of 1883.

It was, of course, conceivable that she was an actress, but if so her face was not known in the fancy stationers' windows. Are you listening?

"I saw that the mystery would remain unsolved until Jack's return home; and when I had a letter from him a week ago, asking me to dine with him to-night, I accepted eagerly. He was just home, he said, and I would meet an old Cambridge man. We were to dine at Jack's club, and I took the photograph with me. I recognized Jack as soon as I entered the waiting-room of the club. A very short, very fat, smooth-faced man was sitting beside him, with his hands clasped behind his head. I believe I gasped. 'Don't you remember Tom Rufus,' Jack asked, 'who used to play the female part at the Cambridge A.D.C.? Why, you helped me to choose his wig at Fox's. I have a photograph of him in costume somewhere at home. You might recall him by his trick of sitting with his hands clasped behind his head.' I shook Rufus's hand. I went in to dinner, and probably behaved myself. Now that it is over I cannot help being thankful that I did not ask Jack for the name of the lady before I saw Rufus. Good-night. I think I've burned a hole in the pillow."

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CHAPTER XXVI.

ARCADIANS AT BAY.

I have said that Jimmy spent much of his time in contributing to various leading waste-paper baskets, and that of an evening he was usually to be found p.r.o.ne on my hearth-rug. When he entered my room he was ever willing to tell us what he thought of editors, but his meerschaum with the cherry-wood stem gradually drove all pa.s.sion from his breast, and instead of upbraiding more successful men than himself, he then lazily scribbled letters to them on my wall-paper. The wall to the right of the fireplace was thick with these epistles, which seemed to give Jimmy relief, though William John had to sc.r.a.pe and scrub at them next morning with india-rubber. Jimmy's sarcasm--to which that wall-paper can probably still speak--generally took this form:

_To G. Buckle, Esq., Columbia Road, Sh.o.r.editch_.

SIR:--I am requested by Mr. James Moggridge, editor of the _Times_, to return you the inclosed seven ma.n.u.scripts, and to express his regret that there is at present no vacancy in the sub-editorial department of the _Times_ such as Mr. Buckle kindly offers to fill.

Yours faithfully,