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Rh examinations and rewards; and I hope to show, in conformity with the characteristics that have been sketched of a scheme likely to be attended with success, that, while the plan will present incitements to self-exertion for the purpose of self-improvement, it will be equally simple in its details and economical in expenditure, tending to draw forth the kindly affections of the people towards the Government, and to put into the hands of the Government large powers for the good of the people.

The first proposed application of the plan is to the improvement and extension of vernacular education; and to the importance of this branch of public instruction testimony has been at different times borne by the highest authorities in the State. Of these, I shall quote two only in this place. Lord Moira in his Minute on the Judicial Administration of the Presidency of Fort William, dated the 2nd October 1815, after mentioning certain evils in the administration of the Government and in the character of the people, goes on to say—“In looking for a remedy to these evils, the moral and intellectual improvement of the natives will necessarily form a prominent feature of any plan which may arise from the above suggestions, and I have, therefore, not failed to turn my most solicitous attention to the important object of public education. The humble but valuable class of village school-masters claims the first place in this discussion. These men teach the first rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic for a trifling stipend which is within reach of any man’s means, and the instruction which they are capable of imparting suffices for the village zemindar, the village accountant, and the village shop-keeper. As the public money would be ill-appropriated in merely providing gratuitous access to that quantum of education which is already attainable, ''any intervention of Government, either by superintendence or by contribution, should be directed to the improvement of existing tuition and to the diffusion of it to places and persons now out of its reach. Improvement and diffusion may go hand in hand; yet the latter is to be considered matter of calculation, while the former should be deemed positively incumbent.''” Twenty-two years have elapsed since these wise and benevolent views were expressed by one of the ablest and most distinguished rulers that British India has possessed, and no adequate means have yet been employed to discharge a duty declared to be positively incumbent by introducing improvement into the existing system of tuition practised by the humble but valuable class of village school-masters, and to extend the improved ininstructioninstruction [sic] to persons and places which the old system does not reach. We appear to have even retrograded, for not only has vernacular instruction been overshadowed and lost sight of by the almost exclusive patronage bestowed on a foreign medium of instruction, the English language, but even some of the principal efforts to improve the village schools and school-masters have, with


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262 or without reason, been abandoned. It was, I believe, under Lord Moira’s government that the Ajmere native schools were established and the Chinsurah native schools patronized by Government, but both have proved signal failures, and Government support has been withdrawn from them; the grand mistake being that new schools were formed subject to all the objections that have been described in another place, instead of the old schools and school-masters of the country that enjoyed, and still enjoy, the confidence of the people, being employed as the instruments of the desired improvements. The only other attempt known to me on this side of India to improve the system of vernacular instruction on a considerable scale unconnected with religion was that made by the Calcutta School Society, which received the special approbation of the Court of Directors. In 1825, in confirming the grant of 500 rupees per month which had been made to this Society by the Local Government, the Court made the following remarks:—“The Calcutta School Society appears to combine with its arrangements for giving elementary instruction, an arrangement of still greater importance for educating teachers for the indigenous schools. This last object we deem worthy of great encouragement, since it is upon the character of the indigenous schools that the education of the great mass of the population must ultimately depend. By training up, therefore, a class of teachers, you provide for the eventual extension of improved education to a portion of the natives of India far exceeding that which any elementary instruction that could be immediately bestowed would have any chance of reaching.” The plan of the Calcutta School Society so highly approved was that of stimulating teachers and scholars by public examinations and rewards, and although it was very limited in its application, and very imperfect in its details, the effects upon tha state of vernacular instruction in Calcutta were for a time highly beneficial. Yet the plan has been relinquished, the Society has ceased to exist, and the donation of Government, confirmed by the Court of Directors on the grounds above stated continues to be drawn by the nominal secretary and is now applied to the support of an English school and to the gratuitous education of thirty students of the Hindu College. It is evident, therefore, that in proposing to lay the foundations of national education by improving and extending the system of vernacular instruction, and to improve and extend that system, not by forming new and independent schools, but by employing the agency of the long-established institutions of the country, I am proposing nothing new. It is necessary only that we should retrace our steps, and, taught by past experience, start again from the position we occupied twenty years ago. In 1815 Lord Moira saw the necessity, either by superintendence or by contribution, of improving and diffusing the existing tuition afforded by village school-masters; and in 1825 the Court of Directors, by deeds as well as by words,

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The image of the page is partly covered with a hand. For the full image see also https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044083330522&seq=24. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:35, 13 October 2023 (UTC)


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Rh pronounced that upon the character of the indigenous schools the education of the great mass of the population must ultimately depend. These sentiments and opinions are worthy of the highest authorities in the government of a great empire, and they are confirmed by the whole history of civilization. It is deeply to be regretted that they have hitherto produced no fruit in this country; and it is earnestly to be hoped that the time has now arrived to give them a practical, a systematic, and a general application.

Assuming the importance of vernacular instruction as the very foundation-stone of a sound and salutary system of national education, and assuming also that the old and established village schools and school-masters, if they can be rendered available and qualified, present the most appropriate instruments for gaining a ready access to the people and a trustful acceptance of the improvements which we are desirous of introducing and diffusing, it remains for me to show with what preliminary arrangements, in what manner, and to what extent, I would propose to employ their agency.

The first step to be taken is the selection of one or more districts in which Government shall authorize the plan to be tried. It is desirable that the experiment should be made simultaneously in several districts, for the purpose of comparing the results obtained under different circumstances. The attempt may succeed in one district and fail in another, the failure arising from local and temporary, and the success from permanent and general, causes; and if the experiment was made only in one district, it might be one in which local and temporary causes are in operation leading to failure, and thus undeserved discredit might be entailed upon the whole scheme. The number of districts usually included in a division subject to a Commissioner of Revenue and Circuit would probably afford a just criterion.

Having fixed upon the districts in which a trial is to be given to the plan, the next step will be to institute an educational survey of each district, or a survey of all the institutions of education actually found in it to determine the amount of juvenile instruction, and a census of the population of each district, to determine the amount of domestic and adult instruction. With a view to the completeness of the results, I would recommend that the census of the population should not be limited to one thana in each district, but should be co-extensive with the survey of the schools. This would undoubtedly entail much additional trouble and some additional expense, but it is by such means that the interests of humanity, the interests of a future as well as of the present age, are promoted. I have shown in the preceding chapter how such investigations have been, and may be, conducted economically, and, I hope and believe, efficiently and inoffensively; and


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 characters give us the impression that the author has told the whole truth about them, greater characters give the impression that the author has given of them, not the truth, but merely a few hints and samples. In some mysterious way we seem to feel that even if Shakespeare was wrong about Falstaff, Falstaff existed and was real; that even if Dickens was wrong about Micawber, Micawber existed and was real. So we feel that there is in the great salt-sea of Yuba Bill's humour as good fish as ever came out of it. The fleeting jests which Yuba Bin throws to the coach passengers only give us the opportunity of fancying and deducing the vast mass of jests which Yuba Bill shares with his creator.

Bret Harte had to deal with countries and communities of an almost unexampled laxity, a laxity passing the laxity of savages, the laxity of civilised men grown savage. He dealt with a life which we in a venerable and historic society may find it somewhat difficult to realise. It was the life of an entirely new people, a people who, having no certain past,

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Rh prise a mysterious and plaintive voice. Petrified with fear, she awoke her husband, and began to up-braid him with his folly for burning his god, who, she declared, was now come to be avenged of them. "Get up and pray!" she cried. The husband arose, and, on opening his eyes, beheld the same glaring lights, and heard the same ominous sound. He commenced with all possible vehemence to vociferate the alphabet, as a prayer to the powers above to deliver them from the vengeance of Satan. The Cat, on hearing the incantation, was as much alarmed as the priest and his wife; so he escaped once more into the wilderness, leaving the repentant priestly pair in ecstacies at the efficacy of their exorcism. The nocturnal apparition of a Cat in the flesh had nearly reinstated an overthrown idol. Subsequently, Puss, in his perambulations, perhaps in hopes of finding a native fur-clad helpmate, went to another distant district; and as a maral or temple stood in a retired spot, and was shaded by the rich foliage of ancient trees, Tommy, pleased with the situation, and wishing to frequent good society, took up his abode with the wooden gods. A few days after, the priest came, accompanied by a number of worshippers, to present some offering to the pretended deities; and, on opening the door,

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 vast hives, and were screened behind bristling palisades. The wilder slopes of the hills recalled to Kennedy's mind the glens of the Scottish Highlands, and he frequently made the remark.

Despite the doctor's efforts the balloon was drifted towards the northeast, in the direction of Mount Mendif, which was hidden in the clouds. The high summits of these mountains separate the basin of the Niger from that of Lake Tchad.

Bagalé, with its eighteen villages hung upon its flanks, soon appeared, like a group of children round their mother; a magnificent group for those who, being overhead, could take the whole in at once. At three o'clock the "Victoria" was opposite Mount Mendif. They could not avoid it, so were obliged to go over it. The doctor, by means of a temperature of 180°, gave to the balloon a new ascensional force of nearly 1,600 lbs. It rose more than 8,000 feet. This was the greatest elevation obtained during the journey, and the temperature was so low that the doctor and his companions were glad to make use of their rugs.

Ferguson hastened to descend, for the envelope of the balloon threatened disruption. He had time, however, to verify the volcanic origin of the mountain, whose extinct craters were only deep chasms. Great agglomerations of the dung of birds gave the sides of the Mendif the appearance of calcareous rocks, and there was sufficient there to manure the whole United Kingdom.

At five o'clock the "Victoria," impelled by the south wind, sailed slowly along the slopes of the mountain, and halted in a large open space at a distance from any habitation. So soon as they touched the ground, precautions were taken to secure the balloon firmly, and Kennedy, gun in hand, started in the plain. He was not long before he returned with half-a-dozen wild ducks and a sort of snipe, which Joe served up to the best of his ability. The meal was a pleasant one, and the night passed without any disturbance.


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day, the 11th of May, the "Victoria" resumed her adventurous course; the travelers had in her the same confidence as a sailor feels in his ship.

Fearful hurricanes, tropical heat, dangerous ascents, even more dangerous descents, were experienced by the "Victoria," and happily overcome always and through everything. One might say that Ferguson guided her by a gesture; and without knowing the point of arrival, the doctor had no fear respecting the issue of the journey. But in this land of barbarians and fanatics, prudence obliged him to take the greatest precautions, and he enjoined his companions to keep their eyes open ready for anything at any time.

The wind carried them a little more to the north, and towards nine o'clock they came in sight of the large town of Mosfeia, built upon an eminence shut in between two high mountains. It was situated in an impregnable position; a road between a marsh and a wood was the only approach to it.

At this moment a sheik, accompanied by a mounted escort, clad in bright-colored robes, preceded by trumpeters and runners who cut down the opposing branches, was about to make his entry into the city.

The doctor descended so as to see the natives a little nearer, but scarcely had the balloon come into their range of vision when signs of terror began to manifest themselves, and they scampered away as fast as their legs or their horses could carry them. The sheik alone did not move, he cocked his long musket and waited proudly.

The doctor approached within 150 paces, and, in his most pleasant tone, addressed to him the Arab welcome.

But at these words falling from the sky, the sheik dismounted, and prostrated himself in the dust of the road; and the doctor was not able to prevent this act of worship.

"It is impossible," said he, "but that these people should take us for supernatural beings, since, on the arrival of the first Europeans amongst them, they believed them to be a divine race. And when this sheik speaks of this encounter in future he will not fail to elaborate the details


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 with all the resources of an Arab's imagination. Judge then what their legends will be respecting us some of these days."

"That will be rather disappointing from the civilization point of view," replied Kennedy. "It would be better to pass for simple men, who would give these negroes an excellent idea of European power."

"Agreed, my dear Dick; but what could we do here? You might explain at length to the wise men the mechanism of the balloon, which they would not understand, and would always suppose it to be a supernatural appearance."

"Sir," said Joe, "you have spoken of the first Europeans who explored this country; who were they, if you please?"

"My dear boy, we are precisely on the track of Major Denham. It was at this very Mosfeia that he was received by the Sultan of Mandara; he had left the Bornou. He accompanied the sheik in an expedition against the Fellatabs; he assisted at the attack on the town, which resisted bravely with its arrows against the Arabs' bullets, and put the troops of the sheik to flight; all this was but a pretext for murder, pillage, and raids. The major was completely stripped, and had it not been for a horse, beneath whose belly he crept, and which enabled him to escape his conquerors by its headlong gallop, he would never have reentered Kouka, the capital of Bornou."

"But who was this Major Denham?"

"A brave Englishman, who from 1822 to 1824, commanded an expedition into the Bornou, in company with Captain Clapperton and Doctor Oudney. They left Tripoli in the month of March, arrived at Mourzouk, the capital of Fezzan; and, following the route which Doctor Barth traversed afterwards on his return to Europe, they arrived on the 16th of February, 1823, in Bornou, in the Mandara, and at the eastern side of the lake. During this time, on the 15th December, 1823, Captain Clapperton and Doctor Oudney penetrated into the Soudan as far as Sackatou, and Oudney died of fatigue and privation at Murmur."

"This part of Africa," said Kennedy, "has then paid a large tribute of victims to science."

"Yes! this region is indeed fatal. We are tending directly towards the kingdom of Barghimi, which Vogel


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 crossed in 1856 to pentrate into the Wadaï, where he disappeared. This young man of twenty-three was despatched to co-operate in the explorations of Doctor Barth; they met on the 1st December, 1854, then Vogel commenced to explore the country; about 1856 he announced in his last letters his intention to examine the kingdom of Wadaï, into which no European had ever previously penetrated. It seems he reached Wara, the capital, where, according to some accounts, he was made prisoner; according to others he was put to death, for having attempted to ascend a sacred mountain in the neighborhood. But we must not lightly accept the report of the death of travelers, for that would obviate any search for them; thus, how often was the death of Doctor Barth officially announced, a circumstance which naturally caused him great irritation. It was therefore very possible that Vogel had been kept a prisoner by the Sultan of Wadaï, in the hope to obtain ransom. Baron Neimaus set out for Wadaï, but he died at Cairo in 1855. We know now that M. Heuglin, with the expedition despatched from Leipsic, followed up the traces of Vogel. Thus we ought to be soon assured of the fate of this youthful and interesting traveler."

Mosfeia had long since disappeared on the horizon. Mandara betrayed its astonishing fertility to the eyes of the travelers, with its acacia forests, the red-flowering locust plant, and the herbaceous plants in the cotton and indigo fields. The Shari, which flows into Lake Tchad eighty miles farther on, here rolled its impetuous course along.

The doctor followed with his companions the maps of Barth. "You see," said he, "that the works of this savant are wonderfully precise. We are traveling right over the district of Loggoum, and perhaps even upon Kernak, its capital. There poor Toole died, when scarcely twenty-two. He was a young Englishman, an ensign in the 8oth foot, who had for some weeks been with Major Denham in Africa, and he there quickly found his death. Ah! they may well call this country the 'Cemetery of Europeans.'"

Some canoes about fifty feet long were descending the Shari. The "Victoria," 1,000 feet above them, attracted little attention from the natives, until the wind, which had hitherto been blowing strongly, showed signs of diminishing.


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 "Are we again going to be becalmed, I wonder?" said the doctor.

"Well, sir, we have neither the want of water nor the desert to fear now."

"No, but the population is still very formidable."

"There" said Joe, eagerly, "is something that resembles a town."

"It is Kernak. The last breath of wind will carry us thither, and if it suits us, we can take an exact plan of the place."

"Can we not go nearer to it?" asked Kennedy.

"Nothing is more easy, Dick," said the doctor. "We are exactly over the town. Allow me to turn the tap of the blow-pipe a little, and we shall soon descend."

In half an hour the "Victoria " was floating motionless, about 200 feet from the ground.

"We are here nearer to Kernak," said the doctor, "than a man would be to London, if he were perched on the dome of St. Paul's. So we can observe at our ease all that is going on."

"What is that sound of mallets that we hear on all sides?"

Joe watched attentively, and perceived that the noise was produced by the number of weavers, who were beating their cloths stretched upon the large trunks of trees.

The capital of Loggoum was viewed in its entirety, like a plan unrolled at their feet. It was a veritable town, with lines of houses and good-sized streets. In the center of a large square a slave-market was held, and there was a large concourse of purchasers; for the Mandara women, with their little hands and feet, are very much sought after, and are sold for high prices.

At sight of the "Victoria," the oft-produced effect was again repeated—first cries, then profound stupefaction; business was abandoned, work suspended, the noise was hushed. The travelers remained immovable, and did not lose a detail of this populous city; they even descended to a distance of sixty feet from the ground.

Then the governor of Loggoum came out of his house, displaying his green flag, and accompanied by his musicians, who blew enthusiastically with the full force of their lungs into their hoarse buffalo horns. The crowd assembled round


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 him. Doctor Ferguson wished to make himself heard, but he could not succeed.

The people, who had high foreheads, curly hair, and almost aquiline noses, appeared proud and intelligent, but the presence of the "Victoria" disturbed them mightily. The travelers perceived horsemen galloping in all directions; soon it became evident that the soldiers were being assembled to give battle to this extraordinary enemy. Joe had lavishly displayed handkerchiefs of various colors, but without any result.

However, the sheik, surrounded by his court, proclaimed silence, and made a speech in a mixed language of Arabic and Baghimi, of which the doctor did not understand a word. He comprehended, however, by the universal language of signs, that he was particularly requested to depart; he asked for nothing better, but in default of wind it had become impossible. His immobility angered the governor, and his courtiers begged him to give loud orders for the departure of the monster.

They were curious people, these courtiers, with their five or six motley shirts upon their bodies; they were enormously stout, and some appeared to wear artificial stomachs. The doctor astonished his companions by telling them that this was the mode of paying court to the Sultan. The rotundity of the abdomen indicated the ambition of the people. These fat men gesticulated and shouted, and one more than all the rest, who ought to have been prime minister if his size met with any favor. The crowd of negroes joined their shouting to that of the courtiers, repeating their gesticulations like so many monkeys, and which resulted in a curious and instantaneous effect in the simultaneous movement of 10,000 arms.

To these modes of intimidation, which appeared to be insufficient, they added others more formidable. Soldiers, armed with bows and arrows, were drawn up in order of battle; but the "Victoria" had already been inflated, and moved quietly out of range. The governor then seized a musket and leveled it at the balloon, but Kennedy was on the watch, and with a ball from his carbine, shattered the musket in the sheik's grasp.

At this unlooked-for blow there was a general retreat; each one took shelter in his house as quickly as possible,


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 and during the rest of the day the town remained absolutely deserted.

Night arrived; the wind had dropped. It was resolved to pass the night at 300 feet from the ground. Not a gleam shone through the darkness—a deathlike silence reigned around.

The doctor redoubled his watchfulness; this calm betokened some treachery.

And Ferguson was right to watch as he did. Towards midnight all the town appeared on fire; hundreds of fiery streaks crossed each other like rockets, forming a network of flame.

"That is very curious," said the doctor.

"But, God bless me!" cried Kennedy, "It appears that the fire is ascending and approaching us."

In fact, at the sound of frightful cries, and amid the discharges of muskets, this mass of fire rose up towards the "Victoria." Joe made ready to throw out the ballast. Ferguson did not stop to ascertain the cause of the phenomenon.

Thousands of pigeons, their tails furnished with squibs, had been let loose against the "Victoria." Terrified, they ascended, marking their flight with fiery zigzags. Kennedy was about to discharge all the firearms into the midst of the crowd of birds, but what could he accomplish against such an innumerable host? Already the pigeons had surrounded the car and the balloon, of which the sides, reflecting the light, appeared wrapped in flames.

The doctor did not hesitate, and throwing over a large lump of quartz, he rose above the reach of these dangerous birds. For two hours they could perceive them flying backwards and forwards in the darkness; by degrees their numbers diminished and finally they disappeared.

"Now we can sleep in peace," said the doctor.

"Rather a happy thought of the savages," said Joe.

"Yes; they very commonly employ pigeons to burn the thatches of houses in the villages, but this time the village flew up higher than their winged incendiaries."

"A balloon has decidedly no enemies to fear," said Kennedy.

"Yes, indeed it has," replied the doctor.

"Who, then?"


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 The imprudent people whom it carries in its car; so, my friends, vigilance above everything—vigilance always!"

three o'clock in the morning, during Joe's watch, the town appeared to move beneath them, and the "Victoria" sailed away. Kennedy and the doctor awoke.

The latter consulted the compass, and perceived with satisfaction that the wind was bearing them to the nor-nor-east.

"We are getting on capitally," said he. "All goes well, and we shall come in sight of Lake Tchad this very day."

"Is it a large expanse of water?" asked Kennedy.

"A very considerable size, my dear Dick; at its greatest length and breadth it measures 120 miles."

"It will be a little change for us to sail over such a sheet of water."

"Well, it seems to me that we have nothing to grumble at; the country is very varied, and we are enjoying it under the most pleasant conditions."

"No doubt, Samuel. Except the privations of the desert we have not encountered any serious danger."

"Certainly, our tight little 'Victoria' has behaved wonderfully. To-day is the 12th of May; we started on the 18th of April, so we have been traveling twenty-five days. Ten days more and we shall reach the end of our journey."

"Where?"

"I do not know; but what does that matter?"

"You are right, Samuel; let us trust in Providence to take care of us and keep us in good health, as we are. We do not look much like people who have been traversing the most pestilential country in the world."

"We have been able to keep up so high, that is the reason we have been so well."

"Hurrah for aërial traveling!" cried Joe. "Here we are after twenty-five days, in good health, well fed, well rested; indeed, rather too well rested, for my limbs are getting stiff, and I should not be sorry to take the stiffness off with a thirty mile walk."


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60 on the other, alleged that they had gained many souls to God in that country, without any one knowing aught of the matter. Never were seen such zealous converters. They alternately persecuted one another; they transmitted to Rome whole volumes of slander, and treated each other as infidels and prevaricators for the sake of one soul. But the most violent dispute between them was with regard to the manner of making a bow. The Jesuits would have the Chinese to salute their parents after the fashion of China, and the Dominicans would have them to do it after the fashion of Rome.

I happened unluckily to be taken by the Jesuits for a Dominican. They represented me to his Tartarian majesty as a spy of the pope. The supreme council charged a prime mandarin, who ordered a sergeant, who commanded four shires of the country, to seize me and bind me with great ceremony. In this manner I was conducted before his majesty, after having made about a hundred and forty genuflections. He asked me if I was a spy of the pope's, and if it was true that that prince was to come in person to dethrone him. I told him that the pope was a priest of seventy years of age; that he lived at the distance of four thousand leagues from his sacred Tartaro-Chinese majesty; that he had about two thousand soldiers, who mounted guard with umbrellas; that he never dethroned any-


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Rh body; and that his majesty might sleep in perfect security.

Of all the adventures of my life this was the least fatal. I was sent to Macao, and there I took shipping for Europe.

My ship required to be refitted on the coast of Golconda. I embraced this opportunity to visit the court of the great Aurung-Zeb, of whom such wonderful things have been told, and which was then in Delphi. I had the pleasure to see him on the day of that pompous ceremony in which he receives the celestial present sent him by the Sherif of Mecca. This was the besom with which they had swept the holy house, the Kaaba, and the Beth Alia. It is a symbol that sweeps away all the pollutions of the soul.

Aurung-Zeb seemed to have no need of it. He was the most pious man in all Indostan. It is true, he had cut the throat of one of his brothers, and poisoned his father. Twenty rayas, and as many omras, had been put to death; but that was a trifle. Nothing was talked of but his devotion. No king was thought comparable to him, except his sacred majesty, Muley Ismael, the most serene emperor of Morocco, who always cut off some heads every Friday after prayers.

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62 young Frenchman, a fellow lodger of mine, was, however, greatly wanting in respect to both the emperor of the Indies, and to that of Morocco. He happened to say, very imprudently, that there were sovereigns in Europe who governed their dominions with great equity, and even went to church without killing their fathers or brothers, or cutting off the heads of their subjects.

This indiscreet discourse of my young friend the interpreter at once translated. Instructed by former experience, I instantly caused my camels to be saddled, and set out with my Frenchman. I was afterwards informed that the officers of the great Aurung-Zeb came that very night to seize me, but finding only the interpreter, they publicly executed him, and the courtiers all claimed, very justly, that his punishment was well deserved.

I had now only Africa to visit in order to enjoy all the pleasures of our continent, and thither I went to complete my voyage. The ship in which I embarked was taken by the negro corsairs. The master of the vessel complained loudly, and asked why they thus violated the laws of nations. The captain of the negroes thus replied:

"You have a long nose, and we have a short one. Your hair is straight, and ours is curled; your skin is ash-colored, and ours is of the color of ebon; and therefore we ought, by the sacred laws of nature, to be always at enmity. You buy us in the public markets on the coast of Guinea like beasts of


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Rh burden, to make us labor in I don't know what kind of drudgery, equally hard and ridiculous. With the whip held over our heads, you make us dig in mines for a kind of yellow earth, which in itself is good for nothing, and is not so valuable as an Egyptian onion. In like manner, wherever we meet you, and are superior to you in strength, we make you slaves, and oblige you to cultivate our fields, or in case of refusal we cut off your nose and ears."

To such a learned discourse it was impossible to make any answer. I submitted to labor in the garden of an old negress, in order to save my nose and ears. After continuing in slavery for a whole year I was at length happily ransomed.

As I had now seen all that was rare, good, or beautiful on earth, I resolved for the future to see nothing but my own home. I took a wife, and soon suspected that she deceived me; but, notwithstanding this doubt, I still found that of all conditions of life this was much the happiest.


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 against men who are continually disappearing by the assistance of you know not whom, to crush you know not whom, this must be a demoralising life for any man; it must be beyond description demoralising for those who have been trained in no lofty or orderly scheme of right. Small blame to them indeed if they become callous and supercilious and cynical. And the great glory and achievement of Bret Harte consists in this, that he realised that they do not become callous, supercilious, and cynical, but that they do become sentimental and romantic, and profoundly affectionate. He discovered the intense sensibility of the primitive man. To him we owe the realisation of the fact that while modern barbarians of genius like Mr. Henley, and in his weaker moments Mr. Rudyard Kipling, delight in describing the coarseness and crude cynicism and fierce humour of the unlettered classes, the unlettered classes are in reality highly sentimental and religious, and not in the least like the creations of Mr. Henley and Mr. Kipling. Bret Harte tells the truth about the wildest, the grossest, the most

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The aged Belus, king of Babylon, thought himself the first man upon earth; for all his courtiers told him so, and his historians proved it. We know that his palace and his park, situated a few parasangs from Babylon, extended between the Euphrates and the Tigris, which washed those enchanted banks. His vast house, three thousand feet in front, almost reached the clouds. The platform was surrounded with a balustrade of white marble, fifty feet high, which supported colossal statues of all the kings and great men of the empire. This platform, composed of two rows of bricks, covered with a thick surface of lead from one extremity to the other, bore twelve feet of earth; and upon the earth were raised groves of olive, orange, citron, palm, cocoa, and cinnamon trees, and stock gillyflowers, which formed alleys that the rays of the sun could not penetrate.

The waters of the Euphrates running, by the assistance of pumps, in a hundred canals, formed cascades of six thousand feet in length in the park, and a hundred thousand, whose height was


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Rh found in the man [Christ]; and now twice was the devil conquered from Scripture, when he was detected as advising things contrary to God's commandment, and was shown to be the enemy of God by [the expression of] his thoughts. He then, having been thus signally defeated, and then, as it were, concentrating his forces, drawing up in order all his available power for falsehood, in the third place "showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them," saying, as Luke relates, "All these will I give thee,—for they are delivered to me; and to whom I will, I give them,—if thou wilt fall down and worship me." The Lord then, exposing him in his true character, says, "Depart, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." He both revealed him by this name, and showed [at the same time] who He Himself was. For the Hebrew word "Satan" signifies an apostate. And thus, vanquishing him for the third time, He spurned him from Him finally as being conquered out of the law; and there was done away with that infringement of God's commandment which had occurred in Adam, by means of the precept of the law, which the Son of man observed, who did not transgress the commandment of God.

3. Who, then, is this Lord God to whom Christ bears witness, whom no man shall tempt, whom all should worship, and serve Him alone? It is, beyond all manner of doubt, that God who also gave the law. For these things had been predicted in the law, and by the words (sententiam) of the law the Lord showed that the law does indeed declare the Word of God from the Father; and the apostate angel of God is destroyed by its voice, being exposed in his true colours, and vanquished by the Son of man keeping the commandment of God. For as in the beginning he enticed man to transgress his Maker's law, and thereby got him into his power; yet his power consists in transgression and apostasy, and with these he bound man [to himself]; so again, on the other hand, it was necessary that through man himself he should, when conquered, be bound with the same chains with which


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 could have no certain future. The strangest of all the sardonic jests that history has ever played may be found in this fact: that there is a city which is of all cities the most typical of innovation and dissipation, and a certain almost splendid vulgarity, and that this city bears the name in a quaint old European language of the most perfect exponent of the simplicity and holiness of the Christian tradition; the city is called San Francisco. San Francisco, the capital of the Bret Harte country, is a city typifying novelty in a manner in which it is typified by few modern localities. San Francisco has in all probability its cathedrals, but it may well be that its cathedrals are less old and less traditional than many of our hotels. If its inhabitants built a temple to the most primal and forgotten god of whose worship we can find a trace, that temple would still be a modern thing compared with many taverns in Suffolk round which there lingers a faint tradition of Mr. Pickwick. And everything in that new gold country was new, even to the individual inhabitants. Good, bad, and indifferent,

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 heroes and dastards, they were all men from nowhere.

Most of us have come across the practical problem of London landladies, the problem of the doubtful foreign gentleman in a street of respectable English people. Those who have done so can form some idea of what it would be to live in a street full of doubtful foreign gentlemen, in a parish, in a city, in a nation composed entirely of doubtful foreign gentlemen. Old California, at the time of the first rush after gold, was actually this paradox of the nation of foreigners. It was a republic of incognitos: no one knew who anyone else was, and only the more ill-mannered and uneasy even desired to know. In such a country as this, gentlemen took more trouble to conceal their gentility than thieves living in South Kensington would take to conceal their blackguardism. In such a country everyone is an equal, because everyone is a stranger. In such a country it is not strange if men in moral matters feel something of the irresponsibility of a dream. To plan plans which are continually

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text: Varied Types/Chapter 13

title: Varied Types/Chapter 13


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celebrations in connection with the millenary of King Alfred struck a note of sympathy in the midst of much that was unsympathetic, because, altogether apart from any peculiar historical opinions, all men feel the sanctifying character of that which is at once strong and remote; the ancient thing is always the most homely, and the distant thing the most near. The only possible peacemaker is a dead man, ever since by the sublime religious story a dead man only could reconcile heaven and earth. In a certain sense we always feel the past ages as human, and our own age as strangely and even weirdly dehumanised. In our own time the details overpower us; men's badges and buttons seem to grow larger and larger as in a horrible dream. To study humanity in the present is like

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text: The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/The Saviors of Russia


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The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 9

EN long days, including the quietest Christmas ever spent in Bonnie Doon, and then on the second day of the New Year—“A letter for you, Miss Jean, from the Thatched House.” Elsie's dour face softened as the girl eagerly tore open the envelope.

Jean remembered that a telegram had come for her uncle a few moments ago. Now telegrams were always being delivered at Bonnie Doon, but some secret instinct now seemed to tell her that this time the telegram had had some thing to do with her lover and his affairs.

She walked into the doctor's study, and when he saw who it was, he opened the top drawer of the writing table at which he was sitting, and slipped something into it.

“Well?” he said, looking up, “Well, my dear, what d'you want?”

She came close up to the table, and he was dismayed to see how sad and suffering was the expression on her young face.

“Uncle Jock,” she said in a low voice, “Harry has just sent me word that he can't come this evening. I suppose” and then she stopped short; somehow she could not bring herself to say the horrible words. But at last she whispered: “I suppose they are going to dig up poor Mrs. Garlett's coffin to-night?”

Dr. Maclean rose from his chair; he put his arm round the girl's shoulder. “Yes,” he said quietly, “you have guessed aright, Jean. The exhumation is to take place to-night, and Harry and I will both, of course, be present.”

He could feel her trembling, and he saw her right hand open and shut.

“You must remind yourself,” he went on, “that what is going to be done to-night marks the beginning of the end—as far as Harry's painful ordeal is concerned. You and I know—indeed I am convinced that even those who have ordered the exhumation feel as sure of it as we do—that the result will be nil; that is to say, from our point of view, absolutely satisfactory.”

“I know that,” she murmured in a strangled voice. “But I don't feel as if that knowledge made the shame of it any easier to bear—now.”

He felt startled. It was the first time that Jean had admitted that there was any shame to be faced.

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed vigorously. “Think what you would be feeling—what I should be feeling—if we had the slightest doubt about the matter?”

She had moved away, and was looking at him with wide-open eyes.

“I—I don't understand,” she stammered.

“Forget yourself and Harry for a moment.” He felt that a touch of sternness, even of roughness, would do the girl good just now. “Think of what the innocent friends, ay, and lovers, of a real murderer must feel when the net is slowly but inexorably closing round him. Supposing you half suspected, or a quarter suspected, or even a hundredth part suspected—the man you love?”

The girl smiled; but it was a wan, pitiful smile.

“I can't imagine such a thing. And you know I can't, Uncle Jock.”

“Are you going to answer Harry's note?” he asked abruptly.

“Do you think I ought?”

“I do! I think you ought to write him a cheerful brave letter, reminding him that this is the beginning of the end, and that within a very short time you and he will have come out from the darkness into the sunshine.”

She went straight round the writing table, and leaning down, drew a sheet of notepaper toward her. She wrote:

And then, after she had addressed the envelope, she put her hands over her face, and burst into a passion of anguished sobs.

Sheltered by the heavy pall of a dark winter night, Jean Bower, six hours later, crept out of the garden door of Bonnie Doon into the lonely country road which led to Terriford churchyard. It was a bitterly cold, as well as a dark, night, but it was not the cold and darkness which made her tremble so violently that she found it difficult to shut the front door behind her.

For almost the first time in her life she was doing a thing which she believed to be wrong. She knew that not only her uncle and aunt, but also her lover, would be profoundly distressed and shocked by what she had long ago secretly determined she would do—that is, share, in as far as was possible without his being aware of it, Harry Garlett's horrible ordeal.

After an evening during which none of the three had spoken of what was filling all their minds and hearts, she had waited in her bedroom, trying to read, until close to midnight. Then there had come the sound of the front door shutting softly behind Dr. Maclean, and, allowing him a good quarter of an hour's start, she had crept down the stairs, and followed him.

Jean's eyes soon became accustomed to the darkness, and when she knew herself to be close to the wrought-iron gate which led into the grounds of the Thatched House, she waited a moment, scarcely daring to breathe, for she felt that it would be terrible for her, and horribly painful to them both, were she to meet Harry Garlett on the way to his sinister tryst.

As she walked up the broad, now deserted, village street, at the top of which were the church and churchyard with only fields and country lanes beyond, there was a red glow over the sky, and she could see the roof and clock-tower of the church outlined against it. She told herself, vaguely, that a house must be on fire somewhere far away, but the thought scarcely stirred her, so intent was she on the dreadful thing that was about to be done.

When she came close up to the lych-gate she stayed her steps and listened intently. But there was neither stir nor sound, and she reminded herself that Mrs. Garlett's grave lay the other side of the church and so even in daylight was completely hidden from where she was now standing.

She had moved a step forward, her foot kicking aside a stone as she did so, when all at once a bull's-eye lantern was turned full on her. Giving a stifled cry of surprise and fear, she waited, shrinkingly, for a stern inquiry as to her name and business to follow. But to her mingled relief and amazement it was a kindly, if a gruff, voice which came out of the darkness.

“Well, missie? Come to see the fun, I suppose?”

“The fun?” Could the still invisible man have said “the fun”?

Then the lantern was lifted a little, and by its gleaming light she saw a burly figure dressed in a plain chauffeur's uniform. Slowly he turned his lantern round, and then she became aware that drawn up under an evergreen oak over hanging the banked-up churchyard wall was a huge police motor-car.

Again the man spoke, but this time it was in a whisper: “If ye'll promise not to cry out, or faint, or do summat silly o' that sort, I'll get you a good sight of it all”

“Thank you very much,” she faltered, feeling overwhelmed with shame and confusion.

He went on: “Though 'tis a gruesome sight, sure-lye, for a young gal to want to see? But there! I've been young myself, and I can mind when I wanted to see every earthly thing there was to see, 'owever fearsome”

“I should like to see it,” she whispered back in a trembling voice, “but only if I can do so without being seen by any one who's there.”

“Trust to me, missie! I'll make that all right,” he said reassuringly. “They'll be much too busy over their job to trouble about you or me. You come right through 'ere.”

He half pushed, half led her through the lych-gate, and turning his lantern toward the ground, slowly preceded her, as they threaded their way between the gray and white gravestones.

“I've brought a party of six,” he muttered huskily, “and apart from the grave-diggers, and the undertaker's little lot, there's the corpse's doctor, so I understand, as well as the fine gentleman who did 'is poor lady in.”

Jean Bower stayed her steps.

“You mustn't say that—for Mr. Garlett is innocent of having done any wrong.”

She felt convulsed with pain and anger, though her words were whispered quietly enough.

The man turned round. “Every man and every woman, too,” he muttered huskily, “is hinnocent, as we well knows, until found guilty. But it stands to reason, don't it, that this kind of thing ain't done for nothing? 'E 'as got a nerve to be 'ere to-night at all—'e needn't 'a been.”

A moment later, turning round again, he asked with sudden suspicion, “You've nothing to do with 'im—eh? You're not an interested party, eh?”

And then Jean Bower, who had never told a lie, lied. “No, I'm just a visitor to Terriford,” she murmured.

Reassured, he went on, keeping near the low wall, as far from the church as was possible.

Suddenly a turn in the narrow way between the graves left the church to their right, and Jean saw before her what she had come to see, and instinctively she clutched hold of her companion's strong arm and clung to it, feeling sick and faint.

Lighted by two big flares, whence had come the curious glow which Jean had thought caused by a distant fire, a group of men were moving about close to, and just below, the walls of the old stone church; and stretching in dancing, shadowy lines on the gravestones round, the men's shadows came and went in queer, grotesque shapes.

Moving very slowly, her companion advanced nearer and nearer to the strange, uncannily silent scene, at which Jean, gathering a desperate courage from within herself, stared with affrighted eyes. Then all at once she saw the man whose image filled her heart.

Harry Garlett was standing almost exactly facing her, at the head of Emily Garlett's open grave. He seemed quite incurious of what was being done, for he was staring straight before him, his bare head flung back.

“The Home Office gent 'as 'is back turned to us,” whispered Jean's companion. “'E's 'ere to see that there's no tampering with the poor lady's remains.”

The girl pressed forward, shrouded in a darkness which was made the more intense by the bright light shed by the flares beyond, and, gradually, she began to realize exactly what was taking place in the lighted-up space before her.

Four men, two on each side of what looked like a deep, narrow trench, were exerting all their strength to lift the coffin up out of what Jean knew to be the freshly opened grave of Harry Garlett's wife. And, after what seemed to the agonized watcher a long, long time, they succeeded in their task. Then there came the sound of heavy, muffled footsteps; out of the darkness stepped two other men, and the six together placed the coffin on to a hand bier which Jean had not noticed before.

“They'll take her to that cottage yonder: I helped to get it ready for 'em,” muttered her companion hoarsely.

“What cottage?” she asked, surprised.

“Not better than a dog kennel!—but good enough for the gentleman from London—him what they call a hanalist—'e who's the cause of many a 'anging,” whispered the man.

And then Jean remembered that on the other side of the churchyard wall, standing in a field, was a kind of shanty which she knew had been condemned, largely owing to her uncle's efforts, as unfit for human habitation some months ago.

She forced herself to ask what was to her an all-important question.

“Is it there that they'll find out what Mrs. Garlett died from?”

“Lord, no!” he exclaimed, astonished at such ignorance, “that's a long business—that's done in London.”

“Then what will they do there?” she asked, puzzled and disappointed, and with no prevision of his answer.

“Well, missie, what'll be done in that cottage over there won't be a pleasant job. I'm glad I'm not in it.”

“What are they going to do?” she breathed.

“They'll take parts of the lady's inside and put them into jars. Then the poor soul will rest once more in her coffin. Meanwhile, that which 'as been removed (if you take my meaning) will be taken away to London, and it's according to the report of the gentleman I pointed out to you just now whether the 'usband will get off scot-free or whether he'll swing.”

He uttered the dreadful words in a matter-of-fact tone, and Jean turned suddenly sick and faint.

“Will you help me back to the gate?” she muttered. “I don't want to stay here any longer.”

“Not just a few minutes more?” he asked, disappointed. “If you goes now, you'll miss the most hinteresting part of the whole affair. They're just going to unscrew the coffin, and take her out, and it isn't as if we was near enough to see anything that 'ud frighten you”

But, already, Jean had turned and was blindly making her way back, among the gravestones, toward the lych-gate.

She was bitterly, bitterly sorry now that she had come. She felt that as long as she lived the memory of to-night would remain most presently and horribly vivid to her, and she knew that it was a memory of shame and horror she must ever bear alone.

“Don't 'e look like a murderer?”

“Course he does—he is one!”

Harry Garlett turned sharply round. For a moment his weary face, his shrunken eyes, glanced quickly this way and that, seeking to find out who had uttered those cruel words.

It was the day following the night of the exhumation, and market day in Grendon. On the high paved sidewalk there paced up and down, jostling one another, a crowd of men, though here and there a woman, a farmer's wife or daughter, mingled in the throng.

And then all at once Garlett realized that as he stepped quickly along, people were pointing him out to one another, and that many of them were staring at him, some furtively, but the majority with an eager, pitiless stare of almost savage curiosity.

A boy selling the local daily, a small sheet called The Grendon News, came bounding along, and he could hardly hand the paper out quickly enough to those who had not already got it in their hand.

Harry Garlett called out: “Here, boy, I want that paper!” and at the sound of his harsh voice the men round him all fell silent, and stared at him with a more pitiless curiosity than before.

He took the paper, paid the boy, and held it out. Right across the little local sheet, in as big type as had been set out the declaration of war in August, 1914, ran the words “Exhumation of Mrs. Emily Garlett.”

He walked on, hardly knowing what he was doing, and yet horribly aware that his fellow townsmen and country neighbours were now forming a lane, leaving the way clear for him alone on the pavement.

Not a face smiled in greeting, not a hand was stretched out to him of the many hands there which had so often grasped his in kindly friendship, or in fervent admiration of his cricketing prowess.

At last he reached what he believed would be to him a place of refuge. But as he turned into the great square courtyard of the Etna China factory, he saw faces glued to every window-pane.

His coming had been heralded, and all these people with whom he had been on such happy, friendly terms till yesterday, were now staring at him as if he were some terrible wild beast.

But having gazed, as they hoped furtively, their fill, they melted quickly away from the windows. He was, after all, their employer, the master of their destinies, until?

He hurried into the hall, and turned into the clerks' room. “Any one called yet?”

“No, sir, no one.”

The man who spoke to him looked much as usual, the other clerk had a foolish, nervous grin on his face.

He walked on into his own room, took off his hat and coat, sat down, and forced himself to open the letters which lay as usual piled on his desk.

Then he telephoned through to the room where his young lady shorthand writer must be awaiting his summons. But there came no answer to his call.

He waited five minutes, then tried to get through to her again—without result. Then he got up and went to the clerks' room. “Where is Miss Faring?” he asked.

His head clerk hesitated a moment. “Miss Faring's mother brought a note about half an hour ago, sir. I'm sorry I forgot it.”

He handed his employer a black-bordered envelope, and Harry Garlett, walking out of the room, opened the note in the hall.

Terrible things said about Jean and himself? This was a far greater, a more agonizing, blow, than anything he had yet experienced.

He walked into his room and, careless of possible interruption, sat down and buried his head in his hands.

Jean—the subject of low, coarse gossip? Jean—the subject of odious innuendo?

He started up and began walking up and down the room. The fearful ordeal of last night, the horror attendant on his recent hideous progress through the High Street—everything was forgotten in the news conveyed in Mrs. Faring's letter.

Garlett was a proud and sensitive man. He had put aside, as he would have done a noxious sight or smell, those half questions put to him by James Kentworthy, the detective, concerning his relationship with Jean Bower. But now the memory of those questions, those veiled insinuations, came back, and with that memory the agonized realization that Jean Bower had been even then suspected as providing the motive for an otherwise motiveless crime.

But, fortunately for most of us at some time of our lives, work has to be done—whatever betide. So at last the unhappy man sat down and began the tedious task of answering with his own hand the letters which otherwise he would have dictated. As he did so, he found himself, for the first time in his life, struggling with two distinct currents of thought—the one superficial, concerning the letters he was writing; the other still passionately concerned with the news contained in Mrs. Faring's letter. In vain he now tried to assure himself that his and Jean's ordeal was bound to be a short one, and that once the Government analyst's report was published he would be able to take up life again exactly as it had been.

Well he knew, now, that life could never be the same again. If he remained at Terriford he realized that even if he lived to be a very old man, there would always be somebody ready to point him out as the man who had been suspected of having murdered his first wife for love of the woman who had become his second.

Though he had arrived very late at the factory, he had never spent a morning there which seemed so long and dreary. None of his usual business associates came in to see him, no one even rang him up on the telephone. It was as though a desert had been created round about him, and bitterly he felt the humiliation, the degradation, of it all.

At one o'clock he got up, and, putting on his hat and coat, went into the clerks' room: “I shall not be here this afternoon,” and then painfully he hesitated. Yesterday he would have added, “Should you want me—get through to Bonnie Doon,” but that stinging sentence in Mrs. Faring's letter stopped his saying that.

“Should you want me,” he said quietly, “I shall be at the Thatched House after three o'clock.”

He had tried to speak, to look, as usual, but he knew that he had failed.

In the hall he waited irresolutely. No, he would not go out, as usual, through the courtyard, as perhaps another kind of man would have done. Grimly he told himself that, in a sense, he accepted defeat. He felt he could not face again the stares of his workpeople and of his fellow townsmen.

Taking a rusty key off its hook, he walked through the now empty shuttered rooms which had once been the home of his wife's parents. He hurried through the silent, cobwebbed kitchen into the narrow, sunless garden. A door at the bottom of the garden led into an alley which was an unfrequented and generally more or less deserted way of getting out of the town.

He hurried through the door, and once out there he felt as if he breathed a lighter air. And yet, as he hastened along, it seemed to his excited fancy that he could hear the busy murmur of voices, cruel, spiteful, eager voices—all talking of him, of his poor dead wife, and, hideous thought, Jean.

At last, after passing through some mean and sordid streets, he reached the open country, and the clean, keen air worked something like a miracle in his tortured brain. By the time he opened the front door of Bonnie Doon he was almost himself again, filled with joy at the thought of seeing Jean, the only human being to whom he could pour out his heart, and who could bring him comfort.

Elsie, the cook, came quickly out of her kitchen.

“Eh, Mr. Garlett,” she exclaimed, “I've been watching for ye! D'you mind going into the doctor's study? Miss Jean's not down yet.”

“She's not ill?”

“No, no—only tired. Don't ye fash yourself,” said the good woman.

And then the door of the doctor's study opened.

“Come in here, Garlett, just for a minute, will you?”

Was it his fancy, or was Dr. Maclean's voice cold—cold to sternness?

“Jean was in the churchyard last night,” began the doctor without any preamble. “She didn't mean us to know—but my wife got it out of her—and it's smashed her up. I've given her a soothing draught, and I want her to stay in bed quietly all to-day. I meant to ring you up, but we didn't expect you till this afternoon.”

He spoke in a low, preoccupied tone. “I'm sure you'll understand, my dear fellow,” his voice softened as he used the affectionate appellation, “that I think it's best you shouldn't see her to-day. You'll see her to-morrow, no doubt.”

Harry Garlett remained silent. He was sick with horror at the thought that Jean had been in the churchyard.

“Why did you let her come last night?” he asked roughly.

“I let her come?” repeated Dr. Maclean sharply. “It's the last thing I should have thought her capable of doing. It's the first time her aunt and I have found her out in doing anything deceitful or—well, I can only call it indelicate! But there, she felt half distraught. It's fortunate that it's only a fortnight now—it may be three weeks at the longest—before everything will be cleared up.”

“And how are we to get through the fortnight or three weeks?” asked Garlett hoarsely.

His mind was full of what had happened that morning, but he told himself with relief that of what was apparently being said in Grendon Dr. Maclean knew nothing.

“Come, come, man—show a little courage! You've a long life of happiness and prosperity before you. How few can say that!”

“I know that I'm not reasonable,” muttered Garlett.

“But there's one thing, Harry”—the older man bent forward and laid his hand on the younger man's shoulder. “There's one thing, my boy, I'm minded to say to you, and I expect you to take it in a sensible, upright way.”

“I'll try to, sir.”

“Both Mrs. Maclean and myself feel very strongly that during this time of waiting you should see very little of Jean. We haven't the heart to say you're not to meet at all, though we think that would be the best plan. But we do think you should do nothing to give cause for any talk or gossip—even in the village.”

As Garlett made no answer, the doctor went on reluctantly, “I can hardly bear to bring myself to soil my lips with what, however, I feel must be said. You are probably not aware that there has been talk about you and Jean?”

“I was not aware of it till this morning,” said Garlett in a low, shaky voice, “though of course Kentworthy asked me some strange questions.”

“Ay, so he did me! Even here there's been, it seems, a lot of poisonous gossip. I've traced one story direct to Miss Prince—a story of how you and that poor girl upstairs walked home on the day before your wife died.”

“Did we?” said Harry Garlett in a dull voice. “I'd forgotten that. I daresay we did. For the matter of that I've walked home from Grendon to Terriford with most of our neighbours in the last thirteen years, including Miss Prince herself.”

“I know that,” said the doctor quickly. “But to come back to the matter in hand. I don't want to be unreasonable, but I do hope that you will both behave—well, how can I put it?—with sense and discretion. After all, it isn't very long to wait; you'll be married within less than a month from now, and then you'll be together for always. Till you're married, I'm quite sure you'd best see as little as possible of one another.”

“I quite see what you mean, and I daresay you're right.” He was beginning to feel himself a pariah.

“I'll be going back to the Thatched House for lunch,” he went on forlornly, remembering vividly how only yesterday he had been pressed to come to-day to this house from which he now felt he was being expelled.

“I think that will be best,” said Dr. Maclean uncomfortably. “I'll telephone through and say you're coming along.”

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 9


text:
The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 10

FORTNIGHT to the day after the exhumation of Mrs. Garlett, Dr. Maclean, after reading his necessary letters, walked through the hall into the kitchen.

“Elsie,” he said abruptly, “I want your good help. First, go and tell your mistress that I require to see her about something urgent and private. Then get hold of Miss Jean and make her stay with you in here till I have done with your mistress.”

The woman, an old and trusted friend by now, just nodded her head. “Ay,” she said, “I'll do all that.”

A few moments later Mrs. Maclean hurried into her husband's study. “What is it?” she asked breathlessly. “You shouldn't frighten me like that, Jock. 'Secret and urgent' indeed!”

“Lock the door,” he said briefly.

She turned the key in the lock, and came over close to where he was sitting. “What is it, Jock?”

He did not answer for a moment, and then he said very quietly: “Harry Garlett did poison his wife. He is to be arrested to-day, and we must manage to get Jean away, if it's in any way possible, before that happens.”

She stared across into her husband's set face, but, though utterly amazed and horror-struck, she uttered no exclamation of surprise. She simply waited to hear more.

“Well,” he said irritably, “well, Jenny, did you expect this?”

“I expect it?” she exclaimed. “I expected it as little as you did. But what makes you so certain, Jock? Is there no loophole of escape?”

And then she muttered as to herself, “It's the child I'm thinking of. What will happen to Jean—if this is true?”

“She'll have to go through with it,” he said grimly. And then he handed her a letter. It was marked “Private,” and ran as follows:

There was a postscript:

Mrs. Maclean read the letter twice through. Then she handed it back to her husband.

“You'll never get Jean to go away,” she said quietly. “She wouldn't believe Harry Garlett guilty if an angel from heaven came and told her he was.”

“But he is guilty!” exclaimed Dr. Maclean, striking the table with his hand.

“I don't think you have any call to say that yet,” observed his wife.

“I shan't say it out of this room till I have to get up and say it on oath in the witness-box,” he said sombrely.

“Oh, Jock! Will you have to do that?”

“Of course I shall,” he answered bitterly—“and be known for the rest of my life as the medical man who was bamboozled into giving a wrong death certificate.”

Dismay kept her silent. Till this moment she had only thought of Harry Garlett, and of how all this would affect Jean. She now realized what it would mean to her husband.

She suddenly went very pale, and Dr. Maclean felt queerly touched. He got up and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.

“Come, come, woman,” he said a little huskily. “Things are never as bad as they look! Many a better man than I has made that kind of mistake. As for Jean, she's young yet. She'll get over it, never fear.” As his wife remained silent, he added: “It isn't as if we'd been improvident—if need be we can leave Terriford.”

“No,” said Mrs. Maclean in a low tone, “we must stay and face it out. But as for Jean, we'll have to make some plan. She won't go away now—not a hope of it. But if yon man's hanged we'll get her right away; I mean to some place where no one will have heard about this awful thing—to my sister in New Zealand, or to the MacPhersons in San Francisco.”

He looked at her, amazed. This was foresight with a vengeance. Why, she had already tried, judged, condemned, and, yes, hanged, Harry Garlett!

“Till this morning,” he said with a groan, “I would have staked my life on yon man's innocence.”

And then Mrs. Maclean said something which startled her husband.

“It's all so strange,” she said musingly, “because, as you well know, Jock, he hardly knew our Jean then.”

“It had nothing to do with Jean!” he said violently. “For God's sake, Jenny, put that horrible idea out of your mind. The truth is—I can say so to you—Emily Garlett had become impossible, intolerable”

“If the man's a murderer, you're just trying to find excuses for him,” she said dryly.

“Not excuses,” said Dr. Maclean sharply, “but a reason for his mad and wicked act—yes.”

“And now,” said his wife slowly, “which of us is to tell the child, and what will be the best way to break it to her?”

“I think,” said the doctor hesitatingly, “that you had better tell her, my dear.”

“Perhaps I had, for she's a bit afraid of me, and she hasn't a shadow of fear of you!”

But they might have saved themselves the trouble of their painful little discussion, for, when they went into the kitchen, they found that Jean had left the house without saying where she was going.

“I think she saw by my face that there was trouble afoot,” admitted Elsie regretfully, “for she just looked at me and said, 'You can tell them I've gone up to the village.'”

“I hope she hasn't gone to the Thatched House,” said Mrs. Maclean in a dismayed tone.

“That is just where I feel certain she has gone,” said the cook positively. “It's all over the village, Mrs. Maclean, that they will be arresting Mr. Garlett this morning. But the poor wean don't know that.”

Driven by some instinct which she would have shrunk from analysing, Jean Bower was hurrying toward the Thatched House.

It was the first time she was going there alone; but she had been through what had seemed to her a time of measureless suffering this last fortnight, and now had come the breaking point. She felt she must see Harry Garlett—and alone.

“Jean! Jean! Stop!”

It was Miss Prince's familiar voice, and unwillingly the girl turned and stood at bay.

“You mustn't go to the Thatched House this morning, my dear.”

A feeling of exasperated anger filled Jean's already overburdened heart.

“I have something very important to tell Harry before he starts for the factory,” she said quickly.

“I doubt if you'll find him at home. He probably slept at the factory”

The older woman looked into the girl's flushed, rebellious face, with genuine pity and concern.

“I think you ought to know, my dear, that the police came out to the Thatched House while Harry was out last evening. They ransacked everything, and turned out every drawer in the place.”

“Why—why did they do that?” asked Jean falteringly.

Probably for the first time in her life Miss Prince remained silent in answer to a question. She had already heard the rumour that Harry Garlett was to be arrested this morning.

“Let me go to the Thatched House,” she exclaimed, “and if Harry is there I'll ask him to come out here and speak to you. I don't think you ought to go there alone, in any case. Think what people would say?”

“I am going there,” said Jean firmly, “and I hope you won't think me rude, Miss Prince, if I say that I don't care at all what people say.”

Without waiting for the other's answer, she began to run, leaving Miss Prince staring after her.

But after she had gone through the wrought-iron gate, she saw that a little way up the broad path leading to the house the Terriford village policeman was standing, as if barring the way.

Now Jean knew the young man well, for he had an invalid mother whom she sometimes visited.

“Have you business up at the house, miss?” he asked hesitatingly.

She answered, “Of course I have, Jackson, or I shouldn't be going there,” and walked firmly on.

And then, all at once, with a leap of sudden joy she saw Harry Garlett standing by the open front door of his house. The sight of him brought a feeling of comfort, of reassurance, to her burdened heart. But as he came forward to meet her, she realized that he was in a state of painful excitement and anger.

“I tried to get through to your uncle about half an hour ago,” he exclaimed, “but Elsie said he was out. I wanted to tell him myself of the dastardly outrage committed here last evening! It scared away the cook and her daughter, so I'm alone here.”

He hurried her into the hall, and then throwing his arms round her, he strained her to him.

“It makes all the difference having you with me”

Poor Jean! Since this great trouble had come upon them all, Mrs. Maclean had seemed to think it almost unseemly for the lovers to be alone together. Even the yew edge walk had become, by her plainly expressed wish, forbidden ground.

It was wonderful to be alone with him like this, heart to heart, and lips to lips; almost too wonderful to be true.

But at last the girl gently withdrew herself from Garlett's enfolding arms.

“What happened last night?” she asked.

“I suppose I'm a fool to mind,” he answered. “You are the only thing that matters to me now, Jean. But I'd better tell you about it, for you will have to know some time.”

“Yes?” she said, and taking up his hand she laid it against her cheek. Though the mere fact that they were alone together brought with it deep comfort as well as a hidden ecstatic bliss of which she was half ashamed, she yet felt not only frightened, but terribly perplexed. What did this that had happened last evening portend?

“The moment I'd turned the corner on my way to Bonnie Doon the police came and ransacked everything here. I'll show you the state in which those brutes left my study!”

“Who did all this?” she asked.

“I met the Grendon inspector of police and his two underlings at the gate, as I was coming home last night, and he said that they had acted on instructions from London. D'you mind seeing my study, Jean? Everything is exactly as they left it. I want Dr. Maclean to see it—the rector, too! Of course I shall send in a claim for compensation.”

She followed him through the empty house, and then, at the door of what had been an orderly, even a luxurious, room, she stopped, amazed at the sight before her.

The cupboard doors of a large Chippendale bookcase were wide open, and the books had been roughly turned out of the shelves and lay all over the floor. The drawers of the writing table were drawn out as far as they would go, and the top drawer, which had been locked, had been wrenched open with some rough instrument.

As a girl Emily Garlett had collected shells, and her small shell cabinet had been kept in this, her husband's study. Even that had not been spared rough desecration. The cotton wool on which the shells had rested had been thrown out, and lay in wads on the carpet.

“This is the worst room,” said Harry Garlett quietly. “But my bedroom's in a pretty queer state, too, and as for the dining room, you'd think burglars had been in it!”

“Did they say what they wanted to find?” asked Jean wonderingly.

“They made a regular mystery of it, and yet they were fools enough to ask that poor old cook and her daughter if they had found any packets of gray or white powder about!”

“Gray or white powder?” she said uncertainly.

“Not salt or pepper—arsenic!” he said bitterly.

Then he again took her in his arms, and kissed her with a passion that half frightened her.

“God! What should I do if I hadn't you?” he muttered.

She clung to him, and for a moment they forgot their great trouble.

“Oh, Jean, my darling, darling love—it's been hell this last fortnight!” he whispered. “D'you know that we've never been alone since we came back from London?”

“They've been very cruel—though they meant to be kind,” she said in a choking voice.

“Did you feel them cruel?” he whispered.

As only answer she pressed more closely to him, and again in that disordered, desecrated room, it was as if Heaven wrapped them round.

It was Jean who heard the sound of footsteps echoing across the hall; and they had only just time to start apart when a loud voice called out: “Is any one in this house? We are looking for Mr. Henry Garlett” And two men in uniform burst through the half-open door.

They looked taken aback when they saw that the man they sought was not alone, and the elder of the two came up close to where Harry Garlett was standing by Jean Bower's side.

He asked civilly, “Can I speak to you in private?” he hesitated, and then added the word, “sir.”

Harry Garlett exchanged a quick look with the man, and then he turned to Jean. “Will you go outside, into the garden? I'll join you in a few minutes.”

“Yes, miss, that's what I advise you to do. You go out into the garden,” the police inspector spoke in a very kindly, respectful, pitying tone.

But Jean had moved closer to her lover's side. She took his arm, and held it firmly.

“Say what you want to say to Mr. Garlett here,” she said. “I'm not going to leave him.”

“I'm sure the gentleman would rather we had our talk by ourselves, miss.”

Garlett said in a low voice, “He's right, my dear. I do beg you to leave me.”

She shook her head. “I can't,” she said piteously. “Don't be angry with me, Harry.”

He tried to smile. “Nothing could make me angry with you, my darling.”

“Now, miss, can't I persuade you to go out into the garden?”

“No,” said Jean. “I'm very sorry, but you can't.”

“I'm sorry, too,” said the man. “But duty is duty.”

He put his hand lightly on Harry Garlett's free arm.

“I now arrest you,” he said solemnly, “on a serious charge—that of having murdered your wife, Mrs. Emily Garlett, on the twenty-seventh of last May.”

It was the first time that such a duty had fallen to Inspector Johnson, and he looked far more moved than did the man he had just put under arrest.

“I must warn you,” he went on, “that anything you say henceforth may be used in evidence against you.” And then inconsequently, he added: “Have you nothing to say, Mr. Garlett?”

“The only thing I have to say,” said Harry Garlett, “is that I am innocent.”

He gently freed his arm from Jean Bower's detaining hand. “You must go home now,” he said quietly, “and tell your uncle and aunt what has happened.”

He turned to the inspector. “I take it, Mr. Johnson, that I shall be allowed all reasonable opportunities of seeing my friends?”

“That is so,” said the man.

Then he made a sign to his subordinate, and they both turned their backs while their prisoner and the girl who loved him bade each other a silent, apparently an unemotional farewell.

But when she got out of doors, in front of the house, Jean suddenly turned faint and giddy; it was as if her mind became a blank. She covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God,” she prayed, “make me keep my reason—and help me to help Harry.”

Then, with steady steps, she walked on, past the pitying young policeman, and past the closed car in which she vaguely realized her lover was about to be taken to Grendon prison.

title: The Terriford Mystery/Chapter 10