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 ,) but to show that the genius of our ecclesiastical system tends towards such an increase, and that it is but a question of time which has to be determined. These statements are also made with a view of keeping up in the minds of churchmen a recollection of the injury, which the Irish branch of our Church has lately sustained in the diminution of its sees.


text: Tracts for the Times/Tract 33

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Tracts for the Times/Tract 33


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, John de (1286-1322)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, John de (d.1361)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, John (1389-1432)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, John (1415-1461)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, Robert de


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CHAP. X universo libri XXII., two books more than those of Isidore's Etymologies, from which he chiefly drew; but he changed the arrangement, and devoted a larger part of his parchment to religious topics; and he added further matter gleaned from the Church Fathers, from whom he had drawn his Commentaries. This further matter consisted of the mystical interpretations of things, which he subjoined to their "natural" explanations. He says, in his Praefatio, addressed to King Louis:

"Much is set forth in this work concerning the natures of things and the meanings of words, and also as to the mystical signification of things. Accordingly I have arranged my matter so that the reader may find the historical and mystical explanations of each thing set together—continuatim positam; and may be able to satisfy his desire to know both significations."

These allegorical elaborations accorded with the habits of this compiler of allegorical comment upon Scripture.

Rabanus was a full Teutonic personality, a massive scholar for his time, untiring in labour and intrinsically honest. Except when involved in the foolishness of the mystic qualities of numbers, or following the will-o'-wisps of allegory, he evinces much sound wisdom. He abhors the pretence of teaching what one has not first diligently learned; and his good sense is shown in his admonition to teachers to use words which their pupils or audience will understand. His views upon profane knowledge were liberal: one should use the treasured experience and accumulated wisdom of the ancients, for that is still the mainstay of human society; but one should shun their vain as well as pernicious idolatries and superstitions. Let us by all means preserve their sound educational learning and the elements of their philosophy which accord with the verities of Christian doctrine. Raban also realized the sublimity of the study of Astronomy, which he deemed "a worthy argument for the religious and a torment for the curious. If pursued with chaste and sober mind, it floods

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iv ""

in 1864:


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, Roger de


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224 our thoughts with immense love. How admirable to mount the heavens in spirit, and with inquiring reason consider that whole celestial fabric, and from every side gather in the mind's reflective heights what those vast recesses veil." He then rebukes the folly of those who vainly would draw auguries from the stars.

Raban's mental activities were commonly constrained by the need felt by him and his pious contemporaries to master the works of the Latin Fathers. Perhaps more than any other one man (though here his pupil Walafrid Strabo made a skilful second) he contributed to what necessarily was the first stage in this mediaeval achievement of appropriating patristic Christianity, to wit, the preliminary task of rearranging the doctrinal expositions of the Fathers conveniently, and for the most part in Commentaries following verse and chapter of the canonical books of Scripture. But, like many of his contemporaries, Raban, when compelled by controversial exigencies, would think for himself if the situation could not be met with matter taken from a Father. Accordingly, individual and personal views are vigorously put in some of his writings, as in his Liber de oblatione puerorum, directed against the attempt of the interesting Saxon, Gottschalk, to free himself from the vows made by those who dedicated him in boyhood as an oblatus at the monastery of Fulda, of which Raban was abbot. Raban's tract maintained that the monastic vows made upon such dedication of children could not be broken by the latter on reaching years of discretion.

This same Gottschalk was the centre of the storm, which he indeed blew up, over Predestination; and again Raban was his fierce opponent. This controversy, with that relating to the Eucharist, will serve to illustrate the doctrinal interests of the time, and also to exemplify the quasi-originality of its controversial productions.

Of course Predestination and the Eucharist had been exhaustively discussed by the Latin Fathers. No man of the ninth century could really add anything to the arguments

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, Thomas (1366?-1399)


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CHAP. X touching the former set forth in the works of Augustine and his Pelagian adversaries. And the substance of the discussion as to the eucharistic Body and Blood of Christ had permeated countless tomes, both Greek and Latin, from the time of Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (d. 202); and yet neither as to the impossible topic of Predestination, nor as to the distinctly Christian mystery of the Eucharist, had the Latin Church authoritatively and finally fixed doctrine in dogma or put together the arguments. The ninth century with its lack of elastic thinking, and its greater need of tangible authority, was compelled by its mental limitations to attempt in each of these matters to drag a definite conclusion from out of its entourage of argument, and strip it of its decently veiling obscurities. Thereupon, and with its justifying and balanced foundation of reasons and considerations knocked from under, the conclusion had to sustain itself in mid air, just at the level of the common eye.

Such, obviously, was the result of the Eucharistic or Paschal controversy. The symbol, all indecision brushed away, hardened into the tangible miraculous reality. Radbertus, Abbot of Corbie, who was so rightly named Paschasius, was the chief agent in the process. His method of procedure, just as the result which he obtained, was what the time required. The method was almost a bit of creation in itself: he put the matter in a separate monograph, De corpore et sanguine Domini, the first work exclusively devoted to the subject. This was needed as a matter of arrangement and presentation. Men could not endure to look here and thither among many books on many subjects, for arguments one way and the other. That was too distraught. There was call for a compendium, a manual of the matter; and in providing it Paschasius was a master mechanic for his time. Inevitably the discussion and the conclusion took on a new definiteness. It is impossible to glean and gather arguments and matter from all sides, and bring them together into a single composition, without making the thesis more organic, tangible, definite. Thus Paschasius presented the scattered, wavering discussion—the victorious side of it—as a clear dogma reached at last.

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226 And whatever qualification of counter-doctrine there was in his grouped arguments, there was none in the conclusion; and the definite conclusion was what men wanted.

And practically for the whole western Church, clergy and laity, the conclusion was but one, and accorded with what was already the current acceptance of the matter. Radbert's arguments embraced the spiritual realism of Augustine, according to which the ultra reality of the eucharistic elements consisted in the virtus sacramenti, that is in their miraculous and real, but invisible, transformation into the veritable substance of Christ's veritable body. This took place through priestly consecration, and existed only for believers. For the brute to eat the elements was nothing more than to consume other similar natural substances. For the misbeliever it was not so simple. He indeed ate not Christ's body, but his own judicium, his own deeper damnation. Here lay the terror, which made more anxious, more poignant, the believer's hope, that he was faithful and humbled, and was eating the veritable Christ-body to his sure salvation. For the Eucharist could not fail, though the partaker might.

Out of all of this emerged the one clear thing, the point, the practical conclusion, which was transubstantiation, though the word was not yet made. Here it is in Paschasius; says he: "That body and blood veritably come into existence (fiat) by the consecration of the Mystery, no one doubts who believes the divine words; hence Truth says, 'For my flesh verily is food, and my blood verily is drink' (John vi. 55). And that it should be clearer to the disciples who did not rightly understand of what flesh He spoke, or of what blood, He added, to make this plain, 'Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me and I in him' (ibid. 56). Therefore, if it is veritably food, it is veritable flesh; and if it is veritably drink, it also is veritable blood. Otherwise how could He have said, 'The bread which I will give is my flesh for the life of the world' (ibid. 52)?"

Could anything be more positive and simplified? At first sight it is a marvel how Paschasius, even though treading in the steps of so many who had gone before,

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mowbray, Thomas (1386-1405)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moxon, Edward


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moxon, George


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moxon, Joseph


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CHAP. X could give a literal interpretation to words which Christ seems to have used as figuratively as when He said, "I am the vine, ye are the branches." A marvel indeed, when we think that Paschasius and all of his generation, as well as those who went before, had abandoned themselves to the most wonderful and far-fetched allegorical interpretations of every historical and literal statement in the Scriptures. And this same Paschasius, and all the rest too, do not hesitate to interpret and explain by allegory the significance of every accompanying act and circumstance of the mass. This might seem the climax of the marvel, but it is a step toward explaining it. For the literal interpretation of the phrases which Paschasius quotes was followed for the sake of the more absolute miracle, the deeper mystery, the fuller florescence of encompassing allegorical meaning. Only thus could be brought about the transformation of the palpable symbol into the miraculous reality; and only then could that bread and wine be what Cyril of Alexandria and others, five hundred years before Paschasius, had called it: "the drug of immortality." Only through the miraculous and real identity of the elements of the Eucharist with the body and blood of Christ could they save the souls of the partakers.

In partial disagreement with these hard and fast conclusions, Ratramnus, also of Corbie, and others might still try to veil the matter, with utterances capable of more equivocal meaning; might try to make it all more dim, and therefore more possibly reasonable. That was not what the Carolingian time, or the centuries to come, wanted; but rather the definite tangible statement, which they could grasp as readily as they could see and touch the elements before their eyes. In disenveloping the question and conclusion from every wavering consideration and veiling ambiguity, the Carolingian period was creative in this Paschal controversy. New propositions were not devised; but the old, such of them as fitted, were put together and given the unity and force of a projectile.

It was the same and yet different with the Predestination strife. Gottschalk, who raised the storm, stated doctrines of

title: Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/249


text:
Page:NARA Style Guide.pdf/11

 :1.3.3 Don't hide the verb.
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title: Page:NARA Style Guide.pdf/11


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moxon, Walter


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moylan, Francis


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moyle, John (1592?-1661)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moyle, John (d.1714)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moyle, Thomas


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Moyle, Walter (d.1470)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mozeen, Thomas


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mozley, Anne


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mozley, James Bowling


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mozley, Thomas


text:
Page:Dio's Roman History, tr. Cary - Volume 1.djvu/9

Rh


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506 Keys to voluntary mobility, 429 Keystone of the dream, 415 Kleinpaul, 246 Koenigstein, Dr., 264 Koerner, 85 Kontuszówka, 10 Krauss, A., 30, 77; quoted, 75

, 26, 27, 466 Language of dreams, 104 Lasalle, 280 Lasker, 280 Latent dream content, 114, 138, 157, 167, 171, 173, 206, 228, 240, 260, 352 Law of causality, 42 Laws of Association, 49 of the dream formation, 23 Legend of King Œdipus, 222–224 of Nausikaa, 208, 209 Le Lorrain, 21, 53, 397, 447 Lelut, 75 Lemoine, 46 Leuret, theory of, 419 Liébault, A., 450 Lipps, Th., 485, 486; quoted, 188 Literature on dreams, 1–97 Logical relations among the dream thoughts, 291 Lucretius quoted, 5 Lynkus, 79

quoted, 19 Maeder, A., 246 Manifestations of pain, 453 Manifest dream content, 114, 138, 159, 166, 173, 181, 240, 243 Manifold determination of the dream content, 285 Mantic power of dreams, 3 Masochistic wish-dreams, 135 Material of the dream, 7–16, 138–259 Maury, A., 19–21, 25, 28, 49, 53, 64, 74, 75, 158, 396, 397, 420, 454; quoted, 5, 9, 12, 46, 51, 60, 61 Means of representation in the dream, 288 Mechanism of dream formation, 297 of psychoneuroses, 172 Medical theory of dream life, 77 Meier, 18 Memory, fading, 457 in the dream, 7–16, 38, 48 traces, 426, 430, 446 Mental diseases, relations between dreams and, 73–79 Mental disturbance and dreams, 77 stimuli, 34 Method of dream interpretation, 80–102, 203 Meyer, C. F., 374 Meynert, 187, 212 Misunderstanding of the dream content, 205 Moral nature of man, 55 Moreau, J., 75 Motor impulses, 220 paralysis in sleep, 311, 312 stimuli, 189 Müller, J., 25 Muscular sensations, 30 Muthmann, 78 Myers, 9

, 240 Names and syllables, play on, 280, 281 Nelson, J., 13 Nerve-exciting dreams, 34 Nerve stimuli, 185, 186, 196 Nervous excitements, 306 Neuron excitement, 428 Neuropathology, 481 Neuropsychology, 489 Neuroses, 315 etiology of, 281 infantile etiology of the, 373 psychoanalysis of the, 438 psychological explanation of the, 385 investigation of the, 439 psychology of the, 443, 460 psychotherapy of the, 439 study of the, 456 Neuroses, theory of the, 374 Neurotic fear, 136 Neurotics, psychoanalysis of, 420 Nightmare, 2 Night terrors, 462, 463 Nocturnal excitations, 440 sensations, 155 Nordenskjold, O., 111 Novalis quoted, 69

external excitements, 197 Objective sensory stimuli, 17–24, 185, 186, 451, 465 Obscurity of the dream, 1 Obsessions, 315, 452 Obsessive impulses, 75 Oppenheim, Prof. E., 493 Organic sensory stimuli, 71 Origin of the dream, 407, 416


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Rh Origin of dreams, theory of the, 29 of hysterical symptoms, 449 of the psychoses, 29 Outer nerve stimuli, 180, 198 sensory stimuli, 66

stimuli, 189, 194, 453 Paramnesia in the dream, 352 Paranoia, 63, 206, 207, 418 hallucinatory, 77, 432, 433 Partition of dreams, 293 Parturition dreams, 243–245 Pathological cases of regression, 435 Pavor nocturnus, 462, 463 Peculiarities of the dream, 45 Penetration into consciousness, 484 Perception content, 453 identity, 477 stimuli, 426 Peripheral sensations, 30 Perennial dreams, 159 Perversion, 248 Peterson, F., 419 Pfaff, E. R., quoted, 55 Pfister, O., 245 Phantasies, infantile, 407 Phantastic ganglia cells, 73 illusions, 187 visual manifestations, 25 Phantasy combinations, 43 of being arrested, 395 of marriage, 395 Phenomena of the dream, 487 Phobias, 315 Physical sensations, 30 stimuli, 71, 77, 187 Pilcz, 15 Plasticity of the psychic material, 246 Plato, 493 Pleasure stimulus, 453 Pneumatic sensations, 30 Pollution dreams, 310 Pre–scientific conception of the dream, 2 Presentation content, 210, 365, 367, 389, 424 Present status of the dream problem, 1 Pressure stimulus, 188 Primary psychic process, 152 Prince, Morton, 12 Problems of consciousness, 490 of dream interpretation, 80 of repression, 479 of sleep, 4 Problems of the dream, 3, 260 Prophetic power of dreams, 3, 27 Psi–systems, 425, 428, 431, 453, 475 Psychic activity in the dream, 46, 62, 401 apparatus, 426–428, 430, 431, 437, 445, 482, 483; diagrams of, 426, 427, 429 capacity of the dream, 48, 52, 53 censor, 422 complexes, 365 condition of dream formation, 263 dream stimuli, 33 emotions, 445 exciting sources, 33–35 function in dream formation, 391 impulses, 221 infection, 126 intensity, 285 repression, 476 resources of the, 399 sensory organs, 490 source of dreams, 33 state of sleep, 468 stimuli, 34 symptomatology, 187 Psychoanalysis, 84, 209, 235, 236, 366, 469, 413 of adult neurotics, 219 of neurotics, 87, 154, 420 of the neuroses, 438 Psychoanalytic investigations, 9 method of treatment, 78, 491 Psychological character of the dream, 52, 423, 431 explanation of the neuroses, 385 formations, 471 analysis of, 487 investigation in dreams, 405, 422 of the neuroses, 439 peculiarity of dreams, 39, 40 Psychology of children, 107 of dream activities, 403–493 of dreaming, 154 of the dream, 416, 464 of the neuroses, 87, 433, 460 of the psychoneuroses, 433 of the sleeping state, 184 of the unconscious, 385 Psychoneuroses, 87, 127, 199, 283, 318, 365, 393, 480, 492 mechanism of the, 172 psychology of the, 433 sexual etiology for, 347 Psychoneurotic symptom formations, 481


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508 Psychoneurotic symptoms, 473 Psychoneurotics, 221, 223 Psychopathology, 4, 121 of the dream, 75 Psychoses, origin of the, 29 Psychosexual excitements, 200 Psychotherapy, 457 of the neuroses, 439 Punitive dreams, 378 Purkinje quoted, 69 Purpose served by condensation, 277 Purposeful nature of dream-forgetting, 410

, 20, 28, 37, 38, 48, 74, 113; quoted, 5, 46, 54, 59, 76, 77 Rank, O., 78, 85, 242, 379; quoted, 136 Regard for presentability, 313–322 Regression, 422–435 of the dream, 431 Relation between dream content and dream stimuli, 187 between dreams and mental diseases, 73–79 between dreams and the psychoses, 74 of sexuality to cruelty, 284 of the dream to the waking state, 4–7, 138 Repressed wishes, 199 Repression, 478, 479, 484 Requirements of dream formation, 322 Restraint of affects, 372 Riddles of the dream, 33, 34, 444 Riklin, 78 Robert, W., 13, 138, 139, 467; quoted, 65, 66 elimination theory of, 458 Robitsek, Dr. R., 81, 82 Rosegger quoted, 376, 377, 378

dream, 9 Schemer, R. A., 30, 31, 33, 69–71, 80, 189–191, 310, 434, 467, 486 Scherner's method of dream interpretation, 319 Schelling, school of, 3 Schiller, Fr., quoted, 85, 86, 361 Schleiermacher, Fr., 40, 59, 85 Scholz, Fr., 48, 112; quoted, 15, 55 Schopenhauer, 29, 54, 75 Scientific literature on dreams, 1–79 theories of the dream, 80 Secondary elaboration, 355, 389–402, 454, 461 Self-analyses, 87, 380 Self-correction in dreams, 411 Sensational intensity, 285 Sensations, gastric, 30 muscular, 30 nocturnal, 155 of falling, 466 of flying, 466 of impeded movement, 311 peripheral, 30 physical, 30 pneumatic, 30 sexual, 30 Senseful psychological structures, 1 Sensory images, 186 hypnogogic, 185 intensity, 306 organs, psychic, 491 stimuli, 17–27, 187, 189, 454 (objective), 185 (organic), 71 (outer and inner), 66 (subjective), 185 Sexual anamnesis, 281 dreams, 240 etiology, 281 for psychoneuroses, 347 organs and dreams, 185 sensations, 30 symbolism, 319 symbols, 246, 248 wish feelings, 480 Shakespeare quoted, 333 Siebeck, A., quoted, 48 Silberer, H., 41 Simon, B. M., 24, 27, 28, 31, 32, 112 Sleep, problems of, 4 psychic state of, 468 Sources of affects, 382 of dreams, 138–259 Somatic dream stimuli, 33 exciting sources, 53 origin of dreams, 64 sources of dreams, 184 theory of stimulation, 185 Spitta, W., 28, 41, 47, 50, 55, 75, 406; quoted, 39, 46, 48, 58 Stekel, W., 78, 232, 241, 248, 251, 298, 313 accidental stimuli, 185, 186 Stimuli of dreams, 16–35 of perception, 426 pain, 453 physical, 71, 77


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Rh Stimuli, pleasure, 453 psychic, 34 Strangeness of the dream, 1 Stricker, 364; quoted, 48, 61 Structure of dream thoughts, 431 Strumpell, L., 16, 31, 36, 42, 47, 138, 154, 186, 188, 191; quoted, 4, 5, 11, 14, 23, 27, 37, 45, 49 Study of the neuroses, 456 Stumpf, E. J. G., 81 Subjective sensory stimuli, 24–27, 185 Supernatural dream content, 466 origin of dreams, 3 Suppressed wishes, 199, 209 Suppression of the affects, 371, 372, 375 Sway of the dream, 11 Swimming in dreams, 239 Swoboda, H., 79, 140–142 Symbolic concealment, 310 dream formations, 310 interpretation, 81, 316 methods of interpreting dreams, 83 Symbolisation of bodily stimuli, 190 of the body, 319 Symbolism in dreams, application of, 249–259 sexual, 319 Symbols in the dream content, 246 sexual, 246, 248 Synthesis of syllables, 278

paralysis, 282 Tactile stimulus, 188 "Tannhauser," quotation from, 272 Taylor, B., 269 Temporal relations of life, 346 Theoretical value of the study of dreams, 492 Theories of the dream, 61–73 Theory of dream life, 46 of dreams, 127 of hysteria, 473 of hysterical paralysis, 444 of Leuret, 419 of organic stimulation, 310 of partial waking, 24 of psychoneurotic symptoms, 449 of somatic stimuli, 188 of the psychoneuroses, 480 of wish-fulfilment, 374, 376, 435, 458 of the emotions, 371 Theory of the neuroses, 374 Thirst dreams, 105 Thomayer, 74 Thought identity, 477 Tissié, Ph., 28, 29, 38, 74, 113; quoted, 27, 34 Toothache dreams, 189, 190 Tooth-exciting dreams, 72 Trains of thought revealed by analysis, 263 Transferred dream-wishes, 455 Transformation of affects, 479 of ideas, 424 Transforming activity of dreams, 327 ideas into plastic images, 435 Transvaluation of psychic values, 306, 402, 409 Trenck, Baron, 1, 3 Typical dreams, 31, 131, 203–259

properties of dreams, 66 Unconscious end-presentations, 418 excitations, 440, 448, 460 ideation, 459 phantasies, 486 psychic life, 220 process, 485 wishes, 438, 443, 457, 479–493 "Undesired" ideas, 85 Undesirable presentations, 59, 60, 414 Unmoral period of childhood, 212 Unwished-for presentations, 418 Urinary organs and dreams, 185

dream images, 189 Verbal compositions of the dream, 283 Visceral sensations, 191 Visions, 4, 424 Visual excitation, 434 pictures, 41 Vold, J. Mourly, 32 Volition, 312 Volkelt, J., 30, 71, 113, 189, 191, 319; quoted, 11, 20, 34, 49, 54, 59, 69, 70, 72, 190

caused by the dream, 452–458 "Weaver's Masterpiece," quotation from, 265 Weed, Sarah, 113 Weed-Hallam, 138


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510 Weygandt, W., 5, 20, 28, 34, 49; quoted, 105 Why dreams are forgotten, 35 Winckler, Hugo, 82 Wish-dreams, 113, 123, 128, 219 masochistic, 135 Wishes, forbidden, 209 foreconscious, 456 repressed, 199 suppressed, 199, 209 unconscious, 438, 443, 457, 479, 493 Wish-fulfilment of the dream, 76, 104, 205, 229, 233, 389, 423, 435–452 theory of, 374, 376, 458 Word-play and dream activity, 315 Work of displacement, 283–288 Wundt, 23, 34, 48, 49, 71, 187, 188; quoted, 75 theory of, 198

Zalzstangeln, 183 Zola, E., 182 Printed by Edinburgh & London.


text:
Forty Years On The Pacific/Oil and Fuel Used at Sea

SUBSTITUTION of oil for coal on ships is a matter of great importance. F. B. Dunn states that the use of oil as a fuel at sea was worked out over forty years ago by marine engineers in the Caspian Sea, who carefully guarded the secret. The American-Hawaiian Steamship Company was one of the first to investigate fuel oil for maritime use. The Mariposa was the first deep sea ship to use oil in the Pacific between San Francisco and Tahiti. About the same time the United States Naval Liquid Fuel Board made exhaustive tests, to ascertain the best method of using oil. As a result of these tests, under the direction of Rear Admiral George B. Melville, United States Navy, some battleships were equipped to use fuel oil exclusively. In 1903 the British cruisers Bedford and Arrogant were changed from coal into oil-burners at Davenport, England.

Passengers often wonder why ships travel a greater distance in one day than another. It is often a question of fuel consumption—economy. It is difficult to get the actual figures as to the amount of oil consumed, but it is about as follows: A ship of, say, eight or ten thousand tons, making fourteen knots an hour, could often in fair weather do fifteen knots, but that extra mile an hour would probably cost in coal or oil consumption, $150 or $200 more in the twenty-four hours. Oil makes very little smoke when intelligently "fired." If you want to make a chief-engineer of an oil-burner jump, point out the volume of black smoke coming out of the steamer's smokestacks. He will make for the fire-room and raise Cain. A big volume of smoke shows waste of oil and bad combustion.

In seeking information, I get various replies, all, however, claiming that much of the speed of the vessel depends upon currents, tides, weather, the state of the ship's bottom— whether covered with barnacles or clean out of dry dock. Again, bad time is often attributed to poor coal.

The human element is also to be reckoned with. Firemen get very thirsty and go ashore at way ports, where they may drink too much. This prevents a ship sailing at the advertised time, and so well is the Firemen's Union organized, that it will hold up a ship and not let her go until the last fireman is on board. There is nothing to do but grin and bear the loss.

I have known a ship of 13,000 tons gross making fifteen knots an hour on a consumption of six hundred barrels of oil, increase her speed to seventeen and one-half knots, by burning nine hundred and fifty barrels of oil. You might say, therefore, that to increase the speed of a 13,000-ton-oil-burning ship from fifteen to sixteen knots under ordinary conditions, thirty per cent. more oil would be required.

The question is often asked, how much is saved by burning oil instead of coal? This depends entirely on the relative cost of oil and coal. It varies greatly in different parts of the world; for example, coal may be $5.00 a ton in Australia at the same time that it is $40.00 a ton in Italy.

I give the following figures which appeared in the Vancouver Province, Feb. 19, 1913, referring to the steamer Princess Charlotte, 3,000 tons, of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The figures were authenticated by Mr. W. G. Dickie, and are from actual tests carried out:

When obtainable, crude petroleum is used as it comes from the well. On other occasions, it is not used until the benzine, gasoline or kerosene is distilled, the percentage of which in each case depends upon the character of the oil. It is often very thick and runs slowly through pipes, but is thinned down by steam coils in the tanks.

The petroleum of the Pacific and the Mexican coasts has as asphaltum base, while that obtained near the Atlantic has a paraffine base. When a ship is traveling in a cold latitude at a temperature of the water at 40 degrees above Fahrenheit, considerable difficulty is experienced in getting the oil through the pipes.


text:
Forty Years On The Pacific/Explanation of Difference of Time

THE sketch below represents the view of the earth that would be obtained by an observer stationed in a balloon above the North Pole. The circle would be the equator. The rotation of the earth and the apparent movement of the sun are shown.

Now, suppose the sun is as shown over the meridian passing through Greenwich, England (0° longitude): it will be noon at that place. At A, the sun is not yet overhead, so it will be some time before noon. At B, the sun has passed and is to the west; therefore, it is afternoon. So it will be seen that west of Greenwich (west longitude) as at A, the time in England is earlier than at 0°, and east of Greenwich, the time is later.

The earth revolves once in twenty-four hours, so at 180° longitude, the difference in time is twelve hours. Let us suppose two points—one 179° 5959" west longitude; the other, 179° 5959" east longitude. At the first point, it will be practically twelve hours earlier than at Greenwich, and at the second, twelve hours later, so the total difference is twenty-four hours. For this reason, when crossing the 180th meridian to the westward, we lose a day, and in the opposite direction, we gain a day.

Since the circumference of the earth may be reckoned as twenty-four hours and is 360°, time changes one hour; for every fifteen degrees of longitude, which is equal to nine hundred nautical miles on the equator.

Longitude west, Greenwich time best, Longitude east, Greenwich time least.

On one trip I made between New Zealand and Australia, in the year of the San Francisco fire (April, 1906), one of the passengers of the Moana was the noted American comedian, Willie Collier. We were traveling west, which means that we had to add about half an hour to every twenty-four hours' run. In other words, passengers traveling west on a fifteen knot an hour steamer, can lie abed half an hour later daily; while, if one is traveling east, he must rise half an hour earlier.

We made up daily a Calcutta sweepstake on the run, and one young actor—I think it was Jack Barrymore—bid in the number of the ticket that won. Collier protested, holding that Barrymore had an advantage, because he was aware of the difference in time, having allowed twenty-five minutes over the twenty-four hours in his calculation when bidding. In fact, Collier wanted the winner to divide the sweepstake. Freddie Shipman settled the dispute, and thus bloodshed was avoided.

During this trip we saw a waterspout, five miles on our starboard, near Lord Howe Island.


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The Man Upstairs and Other Stories/Something to Worry About

stood on the shingle that fringes Millbourne Bay, gazing at the red roofs of the little village across the water. She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Just now some secret sorrow seemed to be troubling her, for on her forehead were wrinkles and in her eyes a look of wistfulness. She had, in fact, all the distinguishing marks of one who is thinking of her sailor lover.

But she was not. She had no sailor lover. What she was thinking of was that at about this time they would be lighting up the shop-windows in London, and that of all the deadly, depressing spots she had ever visited this village of Millbourne was the deadliest.

The evening shadows deepened. The incoming tide glistened oilily as it rolled over the mud flats. She rose and shivered.

'Goo! What a hole!' she said, eyeing the unconscious village morosely. 'What a hole!'

was Sally Preston's first evening in Millbourne. She had arrived by the afternoon train from London—not of her own free will. Left to herself, she would not have come within sixty miles of the place. London supplied all that she demanded from life. She had been born in London; she had lived there ever since—she hoped to die there. She liked fogs, motor-buses, noise, policemen, paper-boys, shops, taxi-cabs, artificial light, stone pavements, houses in long, grey rows, mud, banana-skins, and moving-picture exhibitions. Especially moving-picture exhibitions. It was, indeed, her taste for these that had caused her banishment to Millbourne.

The great public is not yet unanimous on the subject of moving-picture exhibitions. Sally, as I have said, approved of them. Her father, on the other hand, did not. An austere ex-butler, who let lodgings in Ebury Street and preached on Sundays in Hyde Park, he looked askance at the 'movies'. It was his boast that he had never been inside a theatre in his life, and he classed cinema palaces with theatres as wiles of the devil. Sally, suddenly unmasked as an habitual frequenter of these abandoned places, sprang with one bound into prominence as the Bad Girl of the Family. Instant removal from the range of temptation being the only possible plan, it seemed to Mr Preston that a trip to the country was indicated.

He selected Millbourne because he had been butler at the Hall there, and because his sister Jane, who had been a parlour-maid at the Rectory, was now married and living in the village.

Certainly he could not have chosen a more promising reformatory for Sally. Here, if anywhere, might she forget the heady joys of the cinema. Tucked away in the corner of its little bay, which an accommodating island converts into a still lagoon, Millbourne lies dozing. In all sleepy Hampshire there is no sleepier spot. It is a place of calm-eyed men and drowsy dogs. Things crumble away and are not replaced. Tradesmen book orders, and then lose interest and forget to deliver the goods. Only centenarians die, and nobody worries about anything—or did not until Sally came and gave them something to worry about.

door to Sally's Aunt Jane, in a cosy little cottage with a wonderful little garden, lived Thomas Kitchener, a large, grave, self-sufficing young man, who, by sheer application to work, had become already, though only twenty-five, second gardener at the Hall. Gardening absorbed him. When he was not working at the Hall he was working at home. On the morning following Sally's arrival, it being a Thursday and his day off, he was crouching in a constrained attitude in his garden, every fibre of his being concentrated on the interment of a plump young bulb. Consequently, when a chunk of mud came sailing over the fence, he did not notice it.

A second, however, compelled attention by bursting like a shell on the back of his neck. He looked up, startled. Nobody was in sight. He was puzzled. It could hardly be raining mud. Yet the alternative theory, that someone in the next garden was throwing it, was hardly less bizarre. The nature of his friendship with Sally's Aunt Jane and old Mr Williams, her husband, was comfortable rather than rollicking. It was inconceivable that they should be flinging clods at him.

As he stood wondering whether he should go to the fence and look over, or simply accept the phenomenon as one of those things which no fellow can understand, there popped up before him the head and shoulders of a girl. Poised in her right hand was a third clod, which, seeing that there was now no need for its services, she allowed to fall to the ground.

'Halloa!' she said. 'Good morning.'

She was a pretty girl, small and trim. Tom was by way of being the strong, silent man with a career to think of and no time for bothering about girls, but he saw that. There was, moreover, a certain alertness in her expression rarely found in the feminine population of Millbourne, who were apt to be slightly bovine.

'What do you think you're messing about at?' she said, affably.

Tom was a slow-minded young man, who liked to have his thoughts well under control before he spoke. He was not one of your gay rattlers. Besides, there was something about this girl which confused him to an extraordinary extent. He was conscious of new and strange emotions. He stood staring silently.

'What's your name, anyway?'

He could answer that. He did so.

'Oh! Mine's Sally Preston. Mrs Williams is my aunt. I've come from London.'

Tom had no remarks to make about London.

'Have you lived here all your life?'

'Yes,' said Tom.

'My goodness! Don't you ever feel fed up? Don't you want a change?'

Tom considered the point.

'No,' he said.

'Well, I do. I want one now.'

'It's a nice place,' hazarded Tom.

'It's nothing of the sort. It's the beastliest hole in existence. It's absolutely chronic. Perhaps you wonder why I'm here. Don't think I wanted to come here. Not me! I was sent. It was like this.' She gave him a rapid summary of her troubles. 'There! Don't you call it a bit thick?' she concluded.

Tom considered this point, too.

'You must make the best of it,' he said, at length.

'I won't! I'll make father take me back.'

Tom considered this point also. Rarely, if ever, had he been given so many things to think about in one morning.

'How?' he inquired, at length.

'I don't know. I'll find some way. You see if I don't. I'll get away from here jolly quick, I give you my word.'

Tom bent low over a rose-bush. His face was hidden, but the brown of his neck seemed to take on a richer hue, and his ears were undeniably crimson. His feet moved restlessly, and from his unseen mouth there proceeded the first gallant speech his lips had ever framed. Merely considered as a speech, it was, perhaps, nothing wonderful; but from Tom it was a miracle of chivalry and polish.

What he said was: 'I hope not.'

And instinct telling him that he had made his supreme effort, and that anything further must be bathos, he turned abruptly and stalked into his cottage, where he drank tea and ate bacon and thought chaotic thoughts. And when his appetite declined to carry him more than half-way through the third rasher, he understood. He was in love.

These strong, silent men who mean to be head-gardeners before they are thirty, and eliminate woman from their lives as a dangerous obstacle to the successful career, pay a heavy penalty when they do fall in love. The average irresponsible young man who has hung about North Street on Saturday nights, walked through the meadows and round by the mill and back home past the creek on Sunday afternoons, taken his seat in the brake for the annual outing, shuffled his way through the polka at the tradesmen's ball, and generally seized all legitimate opportunities for sporting with Amaryllis in the shadehas a hundred advantages which your successful careerer lacks. There was hardly a moment during the days which followed when Tom did not regret his neglected education.

For he was not Sally's only victim in Millbourne. That was the trouble. Her beauty was not of that elusive type which steals imperceptibly into the vision of the rare connoisseur. It was sudden and compelling. It hit you. Bright brown eyes beneath a mass of fair hair, a determined little chin, a slim figure—these are disturbing things; and the youths of peaceful Millbourne sat up and took notice as one youth. Throw your mind back to the last musical comedy you saw. Recall the leading lady's song with chorus of young men, all proffering devotion simultaneously in a neat row. Well, that was how the lads of the village comported themselves towards Sally.

Mr and Mrs Williams, till then a highly-esteemed but little-frequented couple, were astonished at the sudden influx of visitors. The cottage became practically a salon. There was not an evening when the little sitting-room looking out on the garden was not packed. It is true that the conversation lacked some of the sparkle generally found in the better class of salon. To be absolutely accurate, there was hardly any conversation. The youths of Melbourne were sturdy and honest. They were the backbone of England. England, in her hour of need, could have called upon them with the comfortable certainty that, unless they happened to be otherwise engaged, they would leap to her aid.

But they did not shine at small-talk. Conversationally they were a spent force after they had asked Mr Williams how his rheumatism was. Thereafter they contented themselves with sitting massively about in corners, glowering at each other. Still, it was all very jolly and sociable, and helped to pass the long evenings. And, as Mrs Williams pointed out, in reply to some rather strong remarks from Mr Williams on the subject of packs of young fools who made it impossible for a man to get a quiet smoke in his own home, it kept them out of the public-houses.

Tom Kitchener, meanwhile, observed the invasion with growing dismay. Shyness barred him from the evening gatherings, and what was going on in that house, with young bloods like Ted Pringle, Albert Parsons, Arthur Brown, and Joe Blossom (to name four of the most assiduous) exercising their fascinations at close range, he did not like to think. Again and again he strove to brace himself up to join the feasts of reason and flows of soul which he knew were taking place nightly around the object of his devotions, but every time he failed. Habit is a terrible thing; it shackles the strongest, and Tom had fallen into the habit of inquiring after Mr Williams' rheumatism over the garden fence first thing in the morning.

It was a civil, neighbourly thing to do, but it annihilated the only excuse he could think of for looking in at night. He could not help himself. It was like some frightful scourge—the morphine habit, or something of that sort. Every morning he swore to himself that nothing would induce him to mention the subject of rheumatism, but no sooner had the stricken old gentleman's head appeared above the fence than out it came.

'Morning, Mr Williams.'

'Morning, Tom.'

Pause, indicative of a strong man struggling with himself; then:

'How's the rheumatism, Mr Williams?'

'Better, thank'ee, Tom.'

And there he was, with his guns spiked.

However, he did not give up. He brought to his wooing the same determination which had made him second gardener at the Hall at twenty-five. He was a novice at the game, but instinct told him that a good line of action was to shower gifts. He did so. All he had to shower was vegetables, and he showered them in a way that would have caused the goddess Ceres to be talked about. His garden became a perfect crater, erupting vegetables. Why vegetables? I think I hear some heckler cry. Why not flowers—fresh, fair, fragrant flowers? You can do a lot with flowers. Girls love them. There is poetry in them. And, what is more, there is a recognized language of flowers. Shoot in a rose, or a calceolaria, or an herbaceous border, or something, I gather, and you have made a formal proposal of marriage without any of the trouble of rehearsing a long speech and practising appropriate gestures in front of your bedroom looking-glass. Why, then, did not Thomas Kitchener give Sally Preston flowers? Well, you see, unfortunately, it was now late autumn, and there were no flowers. Nature had temporarily exhausted her floral blessings, and was jogging along with potatoes and artichokes and things. Love is like that. It invariably comes just at the wrong time. A few months before there had been enough roses in Tom Kitchener's garden to win the hearts of a dozen girls. Now there were only vegetables, 'Twas ever thus.

It was not to be expected that a devotion so practically displayed should escape comment. This was supplied by that shrewd observer, old Mr Williams. He spoke seriously to Tom across the fence on the subject of his passion.

'Young Tom,' he said, 'drop it.'

Tom muttered unintelligibly. Mr Williams adjusted the top-hat without which he never stirred abroad, even into his garden. He blinked benevolently at Tom.

'You're making up to that young gal of Jane's,' he proceeded. 'You can't deceive me. All these p'taties, and what not. I seen your game fast enough. Just you drop it, young Tom.'

'Why?' muttered Tom, rebelliously. A sudden distaste for old Mr Williams blazed within him.

'Why? 'Cos you'll only burn your fingers if you don't, that's why. I been watching this young gal of Jane's, and I seen what sort of a young gal she be. She's a flipperty piece, that's what she be. You marry that young gal, Tom, and you'll never have no more quiet and happiness. She'd just take and turn the place upsy-down on you. The man as marries that young gal has got to be master in his own home. He's got to show her what's what. Now, you ain't got the devil in you to do that, Tom. You're what I might call a sort of a sheep. I admires it in you, Tom. I like to see a young man steady and quiet, same as what you be. So that's how it is, you see. Just you drop this foolishness, young Tom, and leave that young gal be, else you'll burn your fingers, same as what I say.'

And, giving his top-hat a rakish tilt, the old gentleman ambled indoors, satisfied that he had dropped a guarded hint in a pleasant and tactful manner.

It is to be supposed that this interview stung Tom to swift action. Otherwise, one cannot explain why he should not have been just as reticent on the subject nearest his heart when bestowing on Sally the twenty-seventh cabbage as he had been when administering the hundred and sixtieth potato. At any rate, the fact remains that, as that fateful vegetable changed hands across the fence, something resembling a proposal of marriage did actually proceed from him. As a sustained piece of emotional prose it fell short of the highest standard. Most of it was lost at the back of his throat, and what did emerge was mainly inaudible. However, as she distinctly caught the word 'love' twice, and as Tom was shuffling his feet and streaming with perspiration, and looking everywhere at once except at her, Sally grasped the situation. Whereupon, without any visible emotion, she accepted him.

Tom had to ask her to repeat her remark. He could not believe his luck. It is singular how diffident a normally self-confident man can become, once he is in love. When Colonel Milvery, of the Hall, had informed him of his promotion to the post of second gardener, Tom had demanded no encore. He knew his worth. He was perfectly aware that he was a good gardener, and official recognition of the fact left him gratified, but unperturbed. But this affair of Sally was quite another matter. It had revolutionized his standards of value—forced him to consider himself as a man, entirely apart from his skill as a gardener. And until this moment he had had grave doubt as to whether, apart from his skill as a gardener, he amounted to much.

He was overwhelmed. He kissed Sally across the fence humbly. Sally, for her part, seemed very unconcerned about it all. A more critical man than Thomas Kitchener might have said that, to all appearances, the thing rather bored Sally.

'Don't tell anybody just yet,' she stipulated.

Tom would have given much to be allowed to announce his triumph defiantly to old Mr Williams, to say nothing of making a considerable noise about it in the village; but her wish was law, and he reluctantly agreed.

are moments in a man's life when, however enthusiastic a gardener he may be, his soul soars above vegetables. Tom's shot with a jerk into the animal kingdom. The first present he gave Sally in his capacity of fiance was a dog.

It was a half-grown puppy with long legs and a long tail, belonging to no one species, but generously distributing itself among about six. Sally loved it, and took it with her wherever she went. And on one of these rambles down swooped Constable Cobb, the village policeman, pointing out that, contrary to regulations, the puppy had no collar.

It is possible that a judicious meekness on Sally's part might have averted disaster. Mr Cobb was human, and Sally was looking particularly attractive that morning. Meekness, however, did not come easily to Sally. In a speech which began as argument and ended (Mr Cobb proving solid and unyielding) as pure cheek, she utterly routed the constable. But her victory was only a moral one, for as she turned to go Mr Cobb, dull red and puffing slightly, was already entering particulars of the affair in his note-book, and Sally knew that the last word was with him.

On her way back she met Tom Kitchener. He was looking very tough and strong, and at the sight of him a half-formed idea, which she had regretfully dismissed as impracticable, of assaulting Constable Cobb, returned to her in an amended form. Tom did not know it, but the reason why she smiled so radiantly upon him at that moment was that she had just elected him to the post of hired assassin. While she did not want Constable Cobb actually assassinated, she earnestly desired him to have his helmet smashed down over his eyes; and it seemed to her that Tom was the man to do it.

She poured out her grievance to him and suggested her scheme. She even elaborated it.

'Why shouldn't you wait for him one night and throw him into the creek? It isn't deep, and it's jolly muddy.'

'Um!' said Tom, doubtfully.

'It would just teach him,' she pointed out.

But the prospect of undertaking the higher education of the police did not seem to appeal to Tom. In his heart he rather sympathized with Constable Cobb. He saw the policeman's point of view. It is all very well to talk, but when you are stationed in a sleepy village where no one ever murders, or robs, or commits arson, or even gets drunk and disorderly in the street, a puppy without a collar is simply a godsend. A man must look out for himself.

He tried to make this side of the question clear to Sally, but failed signally. She took a deplorable view of his attitude.

'I might have known you'd have been afraid,' she said, with a contemptuous jerk of her chin. 'Good morning.'

Tom flushed. He knew he had never been afraid of anything in his life, except her; but nevertheless the accusation stung. And as he was still afraid of her he stammered as he began to deny the charge.

'Oh, leave off!' said Sally, irritably. 'Suck a lozenge.'

'I'm not afraid,' said Tom, condensing his remarks to their minimum as his only chance of being intelligible.

'You are.'

'I'm not. It's just that I—'

A nasty gleam came into Sally's eyes. Her manner was haughty.

'It doesn't matter.' She paused. 'I've no doubt Ted Pringle will do what I want.'

For all her contempt, she could not keep a touch of uneasiness from her eyes as she prepared to make her next remark. There was a look about Tom's set jaw which made her hesitate. But her temper had run away with her, and she went on.

'I am sure he will,' she said. 'When we became engaged he said that he would do anything for me.'

There are some speeches that are such conversational knockout blows that one can hardly believe that life will ever pick itself up and go on again after them. Yet it does. The dramatist brings down the curtain on such speeches. The novelist blocks his reader's path with a of stars. But in life there are no curtains, no stars, nothing final and definite—only ragged pauses and discomfort. There was such a pause now.

'What do you mean?' said Tom at last. 'You promised to marry me.'

'I know I did—and I promised to marry Ted Pringle!'

That touch of panic which she could not wholly repress, the panic that comes to everyone when a situation has run away with them like a strange, unmanageable machine, infused a shade too much of the defiant into Sally's manner. She had wished to be cool, even casual, but she was beginning to be afraid. Why, she could not have said. Certainly she did not anticipate violence on Tom's part. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was just because he was so quiet that she was afraid. She had always looked on him contemptuously as an amiable, transparent lout, and now he was puzzling her. She got an impression of something formidable behind his stolidity, something that made her feel mean and insignificant.

She fought against the feeling, but it gripped her; and, in spite of herself, she found her voice growing shrill and out of control.

'I promised to marry Ted Pringle, and I promised to marry Joe Blossom, and I promised to marry Albert Parsons. And I was going to promise to marry Arthur Brown and anybody else who asked me. So now you know! I told you I'd make father take me back to London. Well, when he hears that I've promised to marry four different men, I bet he'll have me home by the first train.'

She stopped. She had more to say, but she could not say it. She stood looking at him. And he looked at her. His face was grey and his mouth oddly twisted. Silence seemed to fall on the whole universe.

Sally was really afraid now, and she knew it. She was feeling very small and defenceless in an extremely alarming world. She could not have said what it was that had happened to her. She only knew that life had become of a sudden very vivid, and that her ideas as to what was amusing had undergone a striking change. A man's development is a slow and steady process of the years—a woman's a thing of an instant. In the silence which followed her words Sally had grown up.

Tom broke the silence.

'Is that true?' he said.

His voice made her start. He had spoken quietly, but there was a new note in it, strange to her. Just as she could not have said what it was that had happened to her, so now she could not have said what had happened to Tom. He, too, had changed, but how she did not know. Yet the explanation was simple. He also had, in a sense, grown up. He was no longer afraid of her.

He stood thinking. Hours seemed to pass.

'Come along!' he said, at last, and he began to move off down the road.

Sally followed. The possibility of refusing did not enter her mind.

'Where are you going?' she asked. It was unbearable, this silence.

He did not answer.

In this fashion, he leading, she following, they went down the road into a lane, and through a gate into a field. They passed into a second field, and as they did so Sally's heart gave a leap. Ted Pringle was there.

Ted Pringle was a big young man, bigger even than Tom Kitchener, and, like Tom, he was of silent habit. He eyed the little procession inquiringly, but spoke no word. There was a pause.

'Ted,' said Tom, 'there's been a mistake.'

He stepped quickly to Sally's side, and the next moment he had swung her off her feet and kissed her.

To the type of mind that Millbourne breeds, actions speak louder than words, and Ted Pringle, who had gaped, gaped no more. He sprang forward, and Tom, pushing Sally aside, turned to meet him.

I cannot help feeling a little sorry for Ted Pringle. In the light of what happened, I could wish that it were possible to portray him as a hulking brute of evil appearance and worse morals—the sort of person concerning whom one could reflect comfortably that he deserved all he got. I should like to make him an unsympathetic character, over whose downfall the reader would gloat. But honesty compels me to own that Ted was a thoroughly decent young man in every way. He was a good citizen, a dutiful son, and would certainly have made an excellent husband. Furthermore, in the dispute on hand he had right on his side fully as much as Tom. The whole affair was one of those elemental clashings of man and man where the historian cannot sympathize with either side at the expense of the other, but must confine himself to a mere statement of what occurred. And, briefly, what occurred was that Tom, bringing to the fray a pent-up fury which his adversary had had no time to generate, fought Ted to a complete standstill in the space of two minutes and a half.

Sally had watched the proceedings, sick and horrified. She had never seen men fight before, and the terror of it overwhelmed her. Her vanity received no pleasant stimulation from the thought that it was for her sake that this storm had been let loose. For the moment her vanity was dead, stunned by collision with the realities. She found herself watching in a dream. She saw Ted fall, rise, fall again, and lie where he had fallen; and then she was aware that Tom was speaking.

'Come along!'

She hung back. Ted was lying very still. Gruesome ideas presented themselves. She had just accepted them as truth when Ted wriggled. He wriggled again. Then he sat up suddenly, looked at her with unseeing eyes, and said something in a thick voice. She gave a little sob of relief. It was ghastly, but not so ghastly as what she had been imagining.

Somebody touched her arm. Tom was by her side, grim and formidable. He was wiping blood from his face.

'Come along!'

She followed him without a word. And presently, behold, in another field, whistling meditatively and regardless of impending ill, Albert Parsons.

In everything that he did Tom was a man of method. He did not depart from his chosen formula.

'Albert,' he said, 'there's been a mistake.'

And Albert gaped, as Ted had gaped.

Tom kissed Sally with the gravity of one performing a ritual.

The uglinesses of life, as we grow accustomed to them, lose their power to shock, and there is no doubt that Sally looked with a different eye upon this second struggle. She was conscious of a thrill of excitement, very different from the shrinking horror which had seized her before. Her stunned vanity began to tingle into life again. The fight was raging furiously over the trampled turf, and quite suddenly, as she watched, she was aware that her heart was with Tom.

It was no longer two strange brutes fighting in a field. It was her man battling for her sake.

She desired overwhelmingly that he should win, that he should not be hurt, that he should sweep triumphantly over Albert Parsons as he had swept over Ted Pringle.

Unfortunately, it was evident, even to her, that he was being hurt, and that he was very far from sweeping triumphantly over Albert Parsons. He had not allowed himself time to recover from his first battle, and his blows were slow and weary. Albert, moreover, was made of sterner stuff than Ted. Though now a peaceful tender of cows, there had been a time in his hot youth when, travelling with a circus, he had fought, week in, week out, relays of just such rustic warriors as Tom. He knew their methods—their headlong rushes, their swinging blows. They were the merest commonplaces of life to him. He slipped Tom, he side-stepped Tom, he jabbed Tom; he did everything to Tom that a trained boxer can do to a reckless novice, except knock the fight out of him, until presently, through the sheer labour of hitting, he, too, grew weary.

Now, in the days when Albert Parsons had fought whole families of Toms in an evening, he had fought in rounds, with the boss holding the watch, and half-minute rests, and water to refresh him, and all orderly and proper. Today there were no rounds, no rests, no water, and the peaceful tending of cows had caused flesh to grow where there had been only muscle. Tom's headlong rushes became less easy to side-step, his swinging blows more difficult than the scientific counter that shot out to check them. As he tired Tom seemed to regain strength. The tide of the battle began to ebb. He clinched, and Tom threw him off. He feinted, and while he was feinting Tom was on him. It was the climax of the battle—the last rally. Down went Albert, and stayed down. Physically, he was not finished; but in his mind a question had framed itself—the question. 'Was it worth it?'—and he was answering, 'No.' There were other girls in the world. No girl was worth all this trouble.

He did not rise.

'Come along!' said Tom.

He spoke thickly. His breath was coming in gasps. He was a terrible spectacle, but Sally was past the weaker emotions. She was back in the Stone Age, and her only feeling was one of passionate pride. She tried to speak. She struggled to put all she felt into words, but something kept her dumb, and she followed him in silence.

In the lane outside his cottage, down by the creek, Joe Blossom was clipping a hedge. The sound of footsteps made him turn.

He did not recognize Tom till he spoke.

'Joe, there's been a mistake,' said Tom.

'Been a gunpowder explosion, more like,' said Joe, a simple, practical man. 'What you been doin' to your face?'

'She's going to marry me, Joe.'

Joe eyed Sally inquiringly.

'Eh? You promised to marry me.'

'She promised to marry all of us. You, me, Ted Pringle, and Albert Parsons.'

'Promised—to—marry—all—of—us!'

'That's where the mistake was. She's only going to marry me. I—I've arranged it with Ted and Albert, and now I've come to explain to you, Joe.'

'You promised to marry—!'

The colossal nature of Sally's deceit was plainly troubling Joe Blossom. He expelled his breath in a long note of amazement. Then he summed up.

'Why you're nothing more nor less than a Joshua!'

The years that had passed since Joe had attended the village Sunday-school had weakened his once easy familiarity with the characters of the Old Testament. It is possible that he had somebody else in his mind.

Tom stuck doggedly to his point.

'You can't marry her, Joe.'

Joe Blossom raised his shears and clipped a protruding branch. The point under discussion seemed to have ceased to interest him.

'Who wants to?' he said. 'Good riddance!'

They went down the lane. Silence still brooded over them. The words she wanted continued to evade her.

They came to a grassy bank. Tom sat down. He was feeling unutterably tired.

'Tom!'

He looked up. His mind was working dizzily.

'You're going to marry me,' he muttered.

She sat down beside him.

'I know,' she said. 'Tom, dear, lay your head on my lap and go to sleep.'

If this story proves anything (beyond the advantage of being in good training when you fight), it proves that you cannot get away from the moving pictures even in a place like Millbourne; for as Sally sat there, nursing Tom, it suddenly struck her that this was the very situation with which that 'Romance of the Middle Ages' film ended. You know the one I mean. Sir Percival Ye Something (which has slipped my memory for the moment) goes out after the Holy Grail; meets damsel in distress; overcomes her persecutors; rescues her; gets wounded, and is nursed back to life in her arms. Sally had seen it a dozen times. And every time she had reflected that the days of romance are dead, and that that sort of thing can't happen nowadays.


text: Talk:The Man Upstairs and Other Stories/Something to Worry About


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The Man Upstairs and Other Stories/Deep Waters

of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a certain young man of Ariminum, who would jump into rivers and swim in 'em. When his friends said, 'You fish!' he would answer, 'Oh, pish! Fish can't swim like me, they've no vim in 'em.'

Just such another was George Barnert Callender.

On land, in his land clothes, George was a young man who excited little remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary amount of physical strength. Such was George—on shore. But remove his clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he 'suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.

George came to Marvis Bay at about five o'clock one evening in July. Marvis Bay has a well-established reputation as a summer resort, and, while not perhaps in every respect the paradise which the excitable writer of the local guide-book asserts it to be, on the whole it earns its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not confined to jumping up and down on a given jelly-fish. At the northern end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made his way on his arrival.

It was pleasant on the pier. Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture post-cards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature. At this hour of the day the place was deserted; George had it to himself. He strolled slowly along. The water glittered under the sun-rays, breaking into a flurry of white foam as it reached the beach. A cool breeze blew. The whole scenic arrangements were a great improvement on the stuffy city he had left. Not that George had come to Marvis Bay with the single aim of finding an antidote to metropolitan stuffiness. There was a more important reason. In three days Marvis Bay was to be the scene of the production of Fate's Footballs, a comedy in four acts by G. Barnert Callender. For George, though you would not have suspected it from his exterior, was one of those in whose cerebra the grey matter splashes restlessly about, producing strong curtains and crisp dialogue. The company was due at Marvis Bay on the following evening for the last spasm of rehearsals.

George's mind, as he paced the pier, was divided between the beauties of Nature and the forthcoming crisis in his affairs in the ratio of one-eighth to the former and seven-eighths to the latter. At the moment when he had left London, thoroughly disgusted with the entire theatrical world in general and the company which was rehearsing Fate's Footballs in particular, rehearsals had just reached that stage of brisk delirium when the author toys with his bottle of poison and the stage-manager becomes icily polite. The Footpills—as Arthur Mifflin, the leading juvenile in the great play, insisted upon calling it, much to George's disapproval—was his first piece. Never before had he been in one of those kitchens where many cooks prepare, and sometimes spoil, the theatrical broth. Consequently the chaos seemed to him unique. Had he been a more experienced dramatist, he would have said to himself, 'Twas ever thus.' As it was, what he said to himself—and others—was more forcible.

He was trying to dismiss the whole thing from his mind—a feat which had hitherto proved beyond his powers—when Fate, in an unusually kindly mood, enabled him to do so in a flash by presenting to his jaundiced gaze what, on consideration, he decided was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. 'When a man's afraid,' shrewdly sings the bard, 'a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see'. In the present instance the sight acted on George like a tonic. He forgot that the lady to whom an injudicious management had assigned the role of heroine in Fate's Footballs invariably—no doubt from the best motives—omitted to give the cynical  his cue for the big speech in Act III His mind no longer dwelt on the fact that Arthur Mifflin, an estimable person in private life, and one who had been a friend of his at Cambridge, preferred to deliver the impassioned lines of the great renunciation scene in a manner suggesting a small boy (and a sufferer from nasal catarrh at that) speaking a piece at a Sunday-school treat. The recollection of the hideous depression and gloom which the leading comedian had radiated in great clouds fled from him like some grisly nightmare before the goddess of day. Every cell in his brain was occupied, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by the girl swimming in the water below.

She swam well. His practised eye saw that. Her strong, easy strokes carried her swiftly over the swell of the waves. He stared, transfixed. He was a well-brought-up young man, and he knew how ill-bred it was to stare; but this was a special occasion. Ordinary rules of conventional etiquette could not apply to a case like this. He stared. More, he gaped. As the girl passed on into the shadow of the pier he leaned farther over the rail, and his neck extended in joints like a telescope.

At this point the girl turned to swim on her back. Her eyes met his. Hers were deep and clear; his, bulging. For what seemed an eternity to George, she continued to look at him. Then, turning over again, she shot past under the pier.

George's neck was now at its full stretch. No power of will or muscle could add another yard to it. Realizing this, he leaned farther over the rail, and farther still. His hat slid from his hand. He grabbed at it, and, overbalancing, fell with a splash into the water.

Now, in ordinary circumstances, to fall twelve feet into the ocean with all his clothes on would have incommoded George little. He would hardly have noticed it. He would have swum to shore with merely a feeling of amused self-reproach akin to that of the man who absent-mindedly walks into a lamp-post in the street. When, therefore, he came to the surface he prepared without agitation to strike out in his usual bold fashion. At this moment, however, two hands, grasping him beneath the arms, lifted his head still farther from the waves, and a voice in his ear said, 'Keep still; don't struggle. There's no danger.'

George did not struggle. His brain, working with the cool rapidity of a buzz-saw in an ice-box, had planned a line of action. Few things are more difficult in this world for a young man than the securing of an introduction to the right girl under just the right conditions. When he is looking his best he is presented to her in the midst of a crowd, and is swept away after a rapid hand-shake. When there is no crowd he has toothache, or the sun has just begun to make his nose peel. Thousands of young lives have been saddened in this manner.

How different was George's case! By this simple accident, he reflected, as, helping the good work along with an occasional surreptitious leg-stroke, he was towed shorewards, there had been formed an acquaintanceship, if nothing more, which could not lightly be broken. A girl who has saved a man from drowning cannot pass him by next day with a formal bow. And what a girl, too! There had been a time, in extreme youth, when his feminine ideal was the sort of girl who has fuzzy, golden hair, and drops things. Indeed in his first year at the University he had said—and written—as much to one of the type, the episode concluding with a strong little drama, in which a wrathful, cheque-signing father had starred, supported by a subdued, misogynistic son. Which things, aided by the march of time, had turned George's tastes towards the healthy, open-air girl, who did things instead of dropping them.

The pleasantest functions must come to an end sooner or later; and in due season George felt his heels grate on the sand. His preserver loosed her hold. They stood up and faced each other. George began to express his gratitude as best he could—it was not easy to find neat, convincing sentences on the spur of the moment—but she cut him short.

'Of course, it was nothing. Nothing at all,' she said, brushing the sea-water from her eyes. 'It was just lucky I happened to be there.'

'It was splendid,' said the infatuated dramatist. 'It was magnificent. It—'

He saw that she was smiling.

'You're very wet,' she said.

George glanced down at his soaked clothes. It had been a nice suit once.

'Hadn't you better hurry back and change into something dry?'

Looking round about him, George perceived that sundry of the inquisitive were swooping down, with speculation in their eyes. It was time to depart.

'Have you far to go?'

'Not far. I'm staying at the Beach View Hotel.'

'Why, so am I. I hope we shall meet again.'

'We shall,' said George confidently.

'How did you happen to fall in?'

'I was—er—I was looking at something in the water.'

'I thought you were,' said the girl, quietly.

George blushed.

'I know,' he said, 'it was abominably rude of me to stare like that; but—'

'You should learn to swim,' interrupted the girl. 'I can't understand why every boy in the country isn't made to learn to swim before he's ten years old. And it isn't a bit difficult, really. I could teach you in a week.'

The struggle between George and George's conscience was brief. The conscience, weak by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, had no sort of chance from the start.

'I wish you would,' said George. And with those words he realized that he had definitely committed himself to his hypocritical role. Till that moment explanation would have been difficult, but possible. Now it was impossible.

'I will,' said the girl. 'I'll start tomorrow if you like.' She waded into the water.

'We'll talk it over at the hotel,' she said, hastily. 'Here comes a crowd of horrid people. I'm going to swim out again.'

She hurried into deeper water, while George, turning, made his way through a growing throng of goggling spectators. Of the fifteen who got within speaking distance of him, six told him that he was wet. The other nine asked him if he had fallen.

name was Vaughan, and she was visiting Marvis Bay in company with an aunt. So much George ascertained from the management of the hotel. Later, after dinner, meeting both ladies on the esplanade, he gleaned further information—to wit, that her first name was Mary, that her aunt was glad to make his acquaintance, liked Marvis Bay but preferred Trouville, and thought it was getting a little chilly and would go indoors.

The elimination of the third factor had a restorative effect upon George's conversation, which had begun to languish. In feminine society as a rule he was apt to be constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles. The cue-withholding leading lady, the stick-like Mifflin, the funereal comedian—up they all came, and she, gently sympathetic, was endeavouring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not so bad as they seemed.

'It's sure to be all right on the night,' she said.

How rare is the combination of beauty and intelligence! George thought he had never heard such a clear-headed, well-expressed remark.

'I suppose it will,' he said, 'but they were very bad when I left. Mifflin, for instance. He seems to think Nature intended him for a Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I just came away and left them to fight it out among themselves.'

'I'm sure you have no need to worry. A play with such a good story is certain to succeed.'

George had previously obliged with a brief description of the plot of The Footpills.

'Did you like the story?' he said, tenderly.

'I thought it was fine.'

'How sympathetic you are!' cooed George, glutinously, edging a little closer. 'Do you know—'

'Shall we be going back to the hotel?' said the girl.

noisome creatures, the hired murderers of Fate's Footpills, descended upon Marvis Bay early next afternoon, and George, meeting them at the station, in reluctant pursuance of a promise given to Arthur Mifflin, felt moodily that, if only they could make their acting one-half as full of colour as their clothes, the play would be one of the most pronounced successes of modern times. In the forefront gleamed, like the white plumes of Navarre, the light flannel suit of Arthur Mifflin, the woodenest juvenile in captivity.

His woodenness was, however, confined to stage rehearsals. It may be mentioned that, once the run of a piece had begun, he was sufficiently volatile, and in private life he was almost excessively so—a fact which had been noted at an early date by the keen-eyed authorities of his University, the discovery leading to his tearing himself away from Alma Mater by request with some suddenness. He was a long, slender youth, with green eyes, jet-black hair, and a passionate fondness for the sound of his own voice.

'Well, here we are,' he said, kicking breezily at George's leg with his cane.

'I saw you,' said George, coldly, side-stepping.

'The whole team,' continued Mr Mifflin; 'all bright, bonny, and trained to the minute.'

'What happened after I left?' George asked. 'Has anybody begun to act yet? Or are they waiting till the dress-rehearsal?'

'The rehearsals,' admitted Mr Mifflin, handsomely, 'weren't perfect; but you wait. It'll be all right on the night.'

George thought he had never heard such a futile, vapid remark.

'Besides,' said Mr Mifflin, 'I have an idea which will make the show. Lend me your ear—both ears. You shall have them back. Tell me: what pulls people into a theatre? A good play? Sometimes. But failing that, as in the present case, what? Fine acting by the leading juvenile? We have that, but it is not enough. No, my boy; advertisement is the thing. Look at all these men on the beach. Are they going to roll in of their own free wills to see a play like The Footpills? Not on your life. About the time the curtain rises every man of them will be sitting in his own private corner of the beach—'

'How many corners do you think the beach has?'

'Gazing into a girl's eyes, singing, "Shine on, thou harvest moon", and telling her how his boss is practically dependent on his advice. You know.'

'I don't,' said George, coldly.

'Unless,' proceeded Mr Mifflin, 'we advertise. And by advertise, I mean advertise in the right way. We have a Press-agent, but for all the good he does he might be back on the old farm, gathering in the hay. Luckily for us, I am among those present. I have brains, I have resource. What's that?'

'I said nothing.'

'I thought you did. Well, I have an idea which will drag these people like a magnet. I thought it out coming down in the train.'

'What is it?'

'I'll tell you later. There are a few details to be worked upon first. Meanwhile, let us trickle to the sea-front and take a sail in one of those boats. I am at my best in a boat. I rather fancy Nature intended me for a Viking.'

Matters having been arranged with the financier to whom the boat belonged, they set forth. Mr Mifflin, having remarked, 'Yo-ho!' in a meditative voice, seated himself at the helm, somewhat saddened by his failure to borrow a quid of tobacco from the Ocean Beauty's proprietor. For, as he justly observed, without properties and make-up, where were you? George, being skilled in the ways of boats, was in charge of the sheet. The summer day had lost its oppressive heat. The sun no longer beat down on the face of the waters. A fresh breeze had sprung up. George, manipulating the sheet automatically, fell into a reverie. A moment comes in the life of every man when an inward voice whispers to him, 'This is The One!' In George's case the voice had not whispered; it had shouted. From now onward there could be but one woman in the world for him. From now onwards—The Ocean Beauty gave a sudden plunge. George woke up.

'What the deuce are you doing with that tiller?' he inquired.

'My gentle somnambulist,' said Mr Mifflin, aggrieved, 'I was doing nothing with this tiller. We will now form a commission to inquire into what you were doing with that sheet. Were you asleep?'

'My fault,' said George; 'I was thinking.'

'If you must break the habit of a lifetime,' said Mr Mifflin, complainingly, 'I wish you would wait till we get ashore. You nearly upset us.'

'It shan't happen again. They are tricky, these sailing boats—turn over in a second. Whatever you do, don't get her broadside on. There's more breeze out here than I thought there was.'

Mr Mifflin uttered a startled exclamation.

'What's the matter?' asked George.

'Just like a flash,' said Mr Mifflin, complacently. 'It's always the way with me. Give me time, and the artistic idea is bound to come. Just some little thought, some little, apparently obvious, idea which stamps the man of genius. It beats me why I didn't think of it before. Why, of course, a costume piece with a male star is a hundred times more effective.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I see now,' continued Mr Mifflin, 'that there was a flaw in my original plan. My idea was this. We were talking in the train about the bathing down here, and Jane happened to say she could swim some, and it suddenly came to me.'

Jane was the leading woman, she who omitted to give cues.

'I said to myself, "George is a sportsman. He will be delighted to do a little thing like that".'

'Like to do what?'

'Why, rescue Jane.'

'What!'

'She and you,' said Mr Mifflin, 'were to go in swimming together, while I waited on the sands, holding our bone-headed Press-agent on a leash. About a hundred yards from the shore up go her arms. Piercing scream. Agitated crowds on the beach. What is the matter? What has happened? A touch of cramp. Will she be drowned? No! G. Barnert Callender, author of Fate's Footballs, which opens at the Beach Theatre on Monday evening next, at eight-fifteen sharp, will save her. See! He has her. He is bringing her in. She is safe. How pleased her mother will be! And the public, what a bit of luck for them! They will be able to see her act at eight-fifteen sharp on Monday after all. Back you come to the shore. Cheering crowds. Weeping women. Strong situation. I unleash the Press-agent, and off he shoots, in time to get the story into the evening paper. It was a great idea, but I see now there were one or two flaws in it.'

'You do, do you?' said George.

'It occurs to me on reflection that after all you wouldn't have agreed to it. A something, I don't know what, which is lacking in your nature, would have made you reject the scheme.'

'I'm glad that occurred to you.'

'And a far greater flaw was that it was too altruistic. It boomed you and it boomed Jane, but I didn't get a thing out of it. My revised scheme is a thousand times better in every way.'

'Don't say you have another.'

'I have. And,' added Mr Mifflin, with modest pride, 'it is a winner. This time I unhesitatingly assert that I have the goods. In about one minute from now you will hear me exclaim, in a clear musical voice, the single word, "Jump!" That is your cue to leap over the side as quick as you can move, for at that precise moment this spanking craft is going to capsize.'

George spun round in his seat. Mr Mifflin's face was shining with kindly enthusiasm. The shore was at least two hundred yards away, and that morning he had had his first swimming-lesson.

'A movement of the tiller will do it. These accidents are common objects of the seashore. I may mention that I can swim just enough to keep myself afloat; so it's up to you. I wouldn't do this for everyone, but, seeing that we were boys together—Are you ready?'

'Stop!' cried George. 'Don't do it! Listen!'

'Are you ready?'

The Ocean Beauty gave a plunge.

'You lunatic! Listen to me. It—'

'Jump!' said Mr Mifflin.

George came to the surface some yards from the overturned boat, and, looking round for Mr Mifflin, discovered that great thinker treading water a few feet away.

'Get to work, George,' he remarked.

It is not easy to shake one's fist at a man when in deep water, but George managed it.

'For twopence,' he cried, 'I'd leave you to look after yourself.'

'You can do better than that,' said Mr Mifflin. 'I'll give you threepence to tow me in. Hurry up. It's cold.'

In gloomy silence George gripped him by the elbows. Mr Mifflin looked over his shoulder.

'We shall have a good house,' he said. 'The stalls are full already, and the dress-circle's filling. Work away, George, you're doing fine. This act is going to be a scream from start to finish.'

With pleasant conversation he endeavoured to while away the monotony of the journey; but George made no reply. He was doing some rapid thinking. With ordinary luck, he felt bitterly, all would have been well. He could have gone on splashing vigorously under his teacher's care for a week, gradually improving till he emerged into a reasonably proficient swimmer. But now! In an age of miracles he might have explained away his present performance; but how was he to—And then there came to him an idea—simple, as all great ideas are, but magnificent.

He stopped and trod water.

'Tired?' said Mr Mifflin. 'Well, take a rest,' he added, kindly, 'take a rest. No need to hurry.'

'Look here,' said George, 'this piece is going to be recast. We're going to exchange parts. You're rescuing me. See? Never mind why. I haven't time to explain it to you now. Do you understand?'

'No,' said Mr Mifflin.

'I'll get behind you and push you; but don't forget, when we get to the shore, that you've done the rescuing.'

Mr Mifflin pondered.

'Is this wise?' he said. 'It is a strong part, the rescuer, but I'm not sure the other wouldn't suit my style better. The silent hand-grip, the catch in the voice. You want a practised actor for that. I don't think you'd be up to it, George.'

'Never mind about me. That's how it's going to be.'

Mr Mifflin pondered once more.

'No,' he said at length, 'it wouldn't do. You mean well, George, but it would kill the show. We'll go on as before.'

'Will we?' said George, unpleasantly. 'Would you like to know what I'm going to do to you, then? I'm going to hit you very hard under the jaw, and I'm going to take hold of your neck and squeeze it till you lose consciousness, and then I'm going to drag you to the beach and tell people I had to hit you because you lost your head and struggled.'

Mr Mifflin pondered for the third time.

'You are?' he said.

'I am,' said George.

'Then,' said Mr Mifflin, cordially, 'say no more. I take your point. My objections are removed. But,' he concluded, 'this is the last time I come bathing with you, George.'

Mr Mifflin's artistic misgivings as to his colleague's ability to handle so subtle a part as that of rescuee were more than justified on their arrival. A large and interested audience had collected by the time they reached the shore, an audience to which any artist should have been glad to play; but George, forcing his way through, hurried to the hotel without attempting to satisfy them. Not a single silent hand-shake did he bestow on his rescuer. There was no catch in his voice as he made the one remark which he did make—to a man with whiskers who asked him if the boat had upset. As an exhibition of rapid footwork his performance was good. In other respects it was poor.

He had just changed his wet clothes—it seemed to him that he had been doing nothing but change his wet clothes since he had come to Marvis Bay—when Mr Mifflin entered in a bathrobe.

'They lent me this downstairs,' he explained, 'while they dried my clothes. They would do anything for me. I'm the popular hero. My boy, you made the mistake of your life when you threw up the rescuer part. It has all the fat. I see that now. The rescuer plays the other man off the stage every time. I've just been interviewed by the fellow on the local newspaper. He's correspondent to a couple of London papers. The country will ring with this thing. I've told them all the parts I've ever played and my favourite breakfast food. There's a man coming up to take my photograph tomorrow. Footpills stock has gone up with a run. Wait till Monday and see what sort of a house we shall draw. By the way, the reporter fellow said one funny thing. He asked if you weren't the same man who was rescued yesterday by a girl. I said of course not—that you had only come down yesterday. But he stuck to it that you were.'

'He was quite right.'

'What!'

'I was.'

Mr Mifflin sat down on the bed.

'This fellow fell off the pier, and a girl brought him in.'

George nodded.

'And that was you?'

George nodded.

Mr Mifflin's eyes opened wide.

'It's the heat,' he declared, finally. 'That and the worry of rehearsals. I expect a doctor could give the technical name for it. It's a what-do-you-call-it—an obsession. You often hear of cases. Fellows who are absolutely sane really, but cracked on one particular subject. Some of them think they're teapots and things. You've got a craving for being rescued from drowning. What happens, old man? Do you suddenly get the delusion that you can't swim? No, it can't be that, because you were doing all the swimming for the two of us just now. I don't know, though. Maybe you didn't realize that you were swimming?'

George finished lacing his shoe and looked up.

'Listen,' he said; 'I'll talk slow, so that you can understand. Suppose you fell off a pier, and a girl took a great deal of trouble to get you to the shore, would you say, "Much obliged, but you needn't have been so officious. I can swim perfectly well?"'

Mr Mifflin considered this point. Intelligence began to dawn in his face. 'There is more in this than meets the eye,' he said. 'Tell me all.'

'This morning'—George's voice grew dreamy—'she gave me a swimming-lesson. She thought it was my first. Don't cackle like that. There's nothing to laugh at.'

Mr Mifflin contradicted this assertion.

'There is you,' he said, simply. 'This should be a lesson to you, George. Avoid deceit. In future be simple and straightforward. Take me as your model. You have managed to scrape through this time. Don't risk it again. You are young. There is still time to make a fresh start. It only needs will-power. Meanwhile, lend me something to wear. They are going to take a week drying my clothes.'

was a rehearsal at the Beach Theatre that evening. George attended it in a spirit of resignation and left it in one of elation. Three days had passed since his last sight of the company at work, and in those three days, apparently, the impossible had been achieved. There was a snap and go about the piece now. The leading lady had at length mastered that cue, and gave it out with bell-like clearness. Arthur Mifflin, as if refreshed and braced by his salt-water bath, was infusing a welcome vigour into his part. And even the comedian, George could not help admitting, showed signs of being on the eve of becoming funny. It was with a light heart and a light step that he made his way back to the hotel.

In the veranda were a number of basket-chairs. Only one was occupied. He recognized the occupant.

'I've just come back from a rehearsal,' he said, seating himself beside her.

'Really?'

'The whole thing is different,' he went on, buoyantly. 'They know their lines. They act as if they meant it. Arthur Mifflin's fine. The comedian's improved till you wouldn't know him. I'm awfully pleased about it.'

'Really?'

George felt damped.

'I thought you might be pleased, too,' he said, lamely.

'Of course I am glad that things are going well. Your accident this afternoon was lucky, too, in a way, was it not? It will interest people in the play.'

'You heard about it?'

'I have been hearing about nothing else.'

'Curious it happening so soon after—'

'And so soon before the production of your play. Most curious.'

There was a silence. George began to feel uneasy. You could never tell with women, of course. It might be nothing; but it looked uncommonly as if—

He changed the subject.

'How is your aunt this evening, Miss Vaughan?'

'Quite well, thank you. She went in. She found it a little chilly.'

George heartily commended her good sense. A little chilly did not begin to express it. If the girl had been like this all the evening, he wondered her aunt had not caught pneumonia. He tried again.

'Will you have time to give me another lesson tomorrow?' he said.

She turned on him.

'Mr Callender, don't you think this farce has gone on long enough?'

Once, in the dear, dead days beyond recall, when but a happy child, George had been smitten unexpectedly by a sportive playmate a bare half-inch below his third waistcoat-button. The resulting emotions were still green in his memory. As he had felt then, so did he feel now.

'Miss Vaughan! I don't understand.'

'Really?'

'What have I done?'

'You have forgotten how to swim.'

A warm and prickly sensation began to manifest itself in the region of George's forehead.

'Forgotten!'

'Forgotten. And in a few months. I thought I had seen you before, and today I remembered. It was just about this time last year that I saw you at Hayling Island swimming perfectly wonderfully, and today you are taking lessons. Can you explain it?'

A frog-like croak was the best George could do in that line.

She went on.

'Business is business, I suppose, and a play has to be advertised somehow. But—'

'You don't think—' croaked George.

'I should have thought it rather beneath the dignity of an author; but, of course, you know your own business best. Only I object to being a conspirator. I am sorry for your sake that yesterday's episode attracted so little attention. Today it was much more satisfactory, wasn't it? I am so glad.'

There was a massive silence for about a hundred years.

'I think I'll go for a short stroll,' said George.

had he disappeared when the long form of Mr Mifflin emerged from the shadow beyond the veranda.

'Could you spare me a moment?'

The girl looked up. The man was a stranger. She inclined her head coldly.

'My name is Mifflin,' said the other, dropping comfortably into the chair which had held the remains of George.

The girl inclined her head again more coldly; but it took more than that to embarrass Mr Mifflin. Dynamite might have done it, but not coldness.

'The Mifflin,' he explained, crossing his legs. 'I overheard your conversation just now.'

'You were listening?' said the girl, scornfully.

'For all I was worth,' said Mr Mifflin. 'These things are very much a matter of habit. For years I have been playing in pieces where I have had to stand concealed up stage, drinking in the private conversation of other people, and the thing has become a second nature to me. However, leaving that point for a moment, what I wish to say is that I heard you—unknowingly, of course—doing a good man a grave injustice.'

'Mr Callender could have defended himself if he had wished.'

'I was not referring to George. The injustice was to myself.'

'To you?'

'I was the sole author of this afternoon's little drama. I like George, but I cannot permit him to pose in any way as my collaborator. George has old-fashioned ideas. He does not keep abreast of the times. He can write plays, but he needs a man with a big brain to boom them for him. So, far from being entitled to any credit for this afternoon's work, he was actually opposed to it.'

'Then why did he pretend you had saved him?' she demanded.

'George's,' said Mr Mifflin, 'is essentially a chivalrous nature. At any crisis demanding a display of the finer feelings he is there with the goods before you can turn round. His friends frequently wrangle warmly as to whether he is most like, Lancelot, or Happy Hooligan. Some say one, some the other. It seems that yesterday you saved him from a watery grave without giving him time to explain that he could save himself. What could he do? He said to himself, "She must never know!" and acted accordingly. But let us leave George, and return—'

'Thank you, Mr Mifflin.' There was a break in her laugh. 'I don't think there is any necessity. I think I understand now. It was very clever of you.'

'It was more than cleverness,' said Mr Mifflin, rising. 'It was genius.'

form came to meet George as he re-entered the veranda.

'Mr Callender!'

He stopped.

'I'm very sorry I said such horrid things to you just now. I have been talking to Mr Mifflin, and I want to say I think it was ever so nice and thoughtful of you. I understand everything.'

George did not, by a good deal; but he understood sufficient for his needs. He shot forward as if some strong hand were behind him with a needle.

'Miss Vaughan—Mary—I—'

'I think I hear aunt calling,' said she.

a benevolent Providence has ordained that aunts cannot call for ever; and it is on record that when George entered his box on the two hundredth night of that great London success, Fate's Footballs, he did not enter it alone.


text: Talk:The Man Upstairs and Other Stories/Deep Waters