 Section 6 of here and hereafter. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Maria Fatima da Silva. Here and hereafter by Barry Payne. The Witherware. The decision of Edward Morris to marry again was one of the few practical things of his record. He had married first at the age of 18 without the knowledge of his parents. His wife died two years later. He had no children by her. At her death he was desolate. He was as desolate that is as one can be at 20. He was free from the annoying minor poet habit of advertising his afflictions. But it was quite clear to himself that there was nothing more left. Yet it is idle for a man to say he will stop when nature, his proprietor says that he will go on. There is no comedy at 90 and there is no tragedy at 20. After he had deposited the remains of his wife in Rompton Cemetery, she had a strong aversion to cremation and inwardly believed that it destroyed the immortal soul. He went off into the country selecting a village where he knew nobody. Here he learned by heart considerable portions of the poems of Heiner, neglected to return the call of the rector and bored himself profusely. It must not be understood that he resented the boredom. That was what life was to be in future, a continuous dreariness. After a brief stay in the village he went off to Paris to study art. At the time when he thought of giving himself to music, all noticed his ability in painting. When he took to art they remembered that he had musical talent. A year later, when he returned to England to live the life of a hermit, to teach in song what he had learned in sorrow, some said that he was a lost artist. And some that he was a lost musician. And others that he was a well-defined case of dilettantism. It is, however, difficult to be a hermit in London. London has many tentacles. It puts them out and draws you in the liveliest part of itself. A claim of relationship, an old friendship, a piece of medical advice, a chance meeting, anything may become a tentacle. Almost before he knows it, the misanthropical hermit is dragged from his shell and is writing that he has much pleasure in accepting her very kind invitation for the thirteenth. And wonders if that man in Sackville Street will be able to make him some evening clothes in time. His others being not so much clothes as a relic of those pre-hermit days when his wife, his only love, still lived and took him out to dinners and would have the glass down in the handsomes. The thought that he resented this last action at the time saddens him. But the acceptance is posted. He is drawn into the vortex. Once in Edward Morris had to explain to himself how he got there. Nobody else wanted any explanation. Nobody else knew that the first time he took his hostess in to dinner, he looked down the long table towards his host's right hand and remembered. His explanation to himself was that he did it to avoid comment. One could not wear one's heart on one's coat sleeve. One must go somewhere and must do something. One must unfortunately live even when the saver of life has gone. So he lived and in living the saver of life came back again. It was on the muggy December evening that he accompanied Lady March-C and her eminent husband to a first night performance. When the eminent man was grumbling at the draught, and Lady March-C was with justification admiring herself, her dress and everything that was hers, Edward Morris looked up. Out of the gloom of the box above him, a brown-faced girl with dark eyes, her chin leaning on her white gloves, bent forward and looked down. Yet it was not till the end of the first act that he asked who she was and was told that she was nobody, but was apparently with the Martins, who were very, very dear friends and would Mr Morris take her round. That was the beginning of it, and the end of it was his engagement to Adela Constantia Graham, who was nobody. Everybody who knew Adela Constantia knew that it was an excellent thing for her, a much wealthier man than she had any reason to expect. Everyone who knew Edward Morris knew that it was the best thing for him. Ballast, said Lady March-C emphatically, that is what marriage means to a man like Edward Morris. He needs Ballast, something to make him concentrate himself and trust himself, something to encourage him and urge him on. Her notions of the general uses of Ballast were vague, but her conviction was sincere that Edward Morris happily remarried would achieve something in one or possibly in all of the arts. Her eminent husband said, nice sort of man, but no good really. But still he paid for the dinner service with the sanctifying mark on the bottom of all the plates, which they forwarded to Edward Morris a short time before the wedding, the wedding which never took place. About a week before the date fixed for that wedding, it occurred to Edward Morris in a moment of leisure, he was naturally very busy at the time, that his first wife had been a jealous woman, and he wondered what she would have thought and said if she had been alive. He could laugh at the illogicality. If she had been alive there would have been nothing to think or to say. The haunting face with the chin pressed on the white gloves against the darkness at the back of the box would have been merely a face and nothing more and would not have haunted. He collected his old love letters and burned them. Other little relics of his first wife he gathered together, had them placed in a box and deposited at his bankers. The old life was done, the new life was beginning. Yet one night as he stood in a darkened room with a dull constancy in his arms, the door opened with a little quick click some few inches. She stepped back from him thinking it was a servant and he turned white thinking in a moment of madness that it was someone else. Then he went to the door and opened it, why there? No one was there. The position of the widower who marries again is irritating to him if he be as Edward Morris was a man of nice feeling. He has to say and to believe that he loves as he never loved in his life before. Scraps of youth romance must be whipped up out of his respectable past to set against the vaginal fervor of the young woman who has just begun to love him. Yet he feels that all this is an insult to the dead, to the woman who loved him before. A man of the world has a happy habit of forgetting and of ignoring. He may marry for the second or third time quite easily. He takes nothing too seriously. He may order a new overcoat, but he does not feel that the coat will be worthless unless he swears and tries to believe that he never wore a coat like that before. Morris however was a sentimentalist and so he became irritated with himself. The next step inevitably followed. He became irritated with his dead wife. She had got her cold arms round his neck and was dragging him down and holding him back from the joyful development of his life. When in London it was his custom to visit her grave in Brompton Cemetery at regular intervals once every month. During his engagement to Adela Constantia he made up his mind that this regular visit must be dropped. Some arrangement could be made to have the grave kept in decent order, but he could not go near it again. He remembered having been told a story of a widower who married again and went hand in hand with his second wife to stand by the grave of the first. It had been told him as something pathetic. He had never been able to see in it anything but a subject for a humorous paper. Guy de Mont-Passant would have done wonders with it. He settled the day when the last visit should be made. He selected an appropriate wreath in which everlasting and dead leaves were symbolically interwoven. But that afternoon, more than ever before, his hatred to his dead wife grew within him. He recollected her strange belief with regard to cremation. Fire destroyed everything, even the immortal soul, and it seemed as if fire destroyed love too. He remembered that he had burnt her letters. As he drove down Regent Street, an old friend, a man whom he had not seen for some time, recognized him. He stopped the cab and his friend came up. Why do I never see you now? said the friend. But of course I know. Very much engaged, don't you? That's not bad for an impromptu, by the way. I suppose you are going there now? No, said Morris. As a matter of fact, I am not. Well, you are evidently going somewhere, and you carry a big box with you with a florist's label on it. So all I can say is that if you are not going there, you ought to be. Edward Morris laughed, and to laugh was the last touch of horror. Well, the friend said, if you are really not going to see Miss Graham, I have no scruples in the necks in you. Come round to the club for a game of billiards. Thanks, said Morris. I am afraid I am very busy this afternoon. However, he let himself be persuaded. The box containing the wreath was left in the charge of the whole porter at the club. On the following day Morris dispatched the wreath to Brompton Cemetery by a messenger boy, where the symbolical offering was deposited on the grave of Charles Ernest Jessup, who died at the age of two and a half, and of whose death or previous existence Morris was unaware. Messenger boys are so careless. Morris never even attempted to visit the cemetery again. It was not only anger. It was not only hatred. It was also fear that kept him away. He was assured in his own mind that the dead woman was awake again and was watching him jealously. The moment when he had just awoken from sleep was always a horrible one for him. The fear of the dead woman was in his mind then, and nothing else was very clear. He left the electric light on all night and, as a rule, slept fairly well and without any haunting or painful dreams. But the moment of waking was always a trial. He kept on expecting to see something that he never did see. He would not have wondered if, as he awoke, someone had touched his hand or the electric light had been suddenly switched off. Of course, everybody noticed that he looked wretchedly ill. Adela Constantia was in despair about his health. There were things about him which were very queer, that he did not like dark rooms, that when he was talking to her, he would suddenly look over his shoulder at nothing. The comforting doctor told her that Morris has been very busy indeed with the preparation for his married life and, the doctor added, a lot of worry upsets the nerves. This is quite true. On his wedding morning, he certainly looked much fitter to be married than to be married. His best man gave him champagne and told him to hold his head up more. The bride made an adorable and pathetic figure. A beautiful young girl is always a pathetic figure on her wedding morning. Her sisters fluttered around her, ready to cry at the right moments. Her father looked a little nervous and elated. He had had quite a long talk with Lady Marci, whose husband was kept away by the toothache. The ceremony went with its customary brilliance, until that point when the bridegroom was required to say, I, Edward, take the Adela Constantia. He said this in a loud voice, but he did not say, Adela Constantia. He gave another name. There was a moment's pause, and while everybody was looking at everybody, he fainted and fell. At the inquest it was found that the blow on the head from the sharp edge of the stone step satisfactorily accounted for the death. All the evening papers had readable paragraphs headed, tragic end to a fashionable wedding ceremony. And Adela Constantia married somebody else. And the dead woman went to sleep again. End of section 6 For the last twenty, I had been both proprietor and manager and had worked uncommonly hard, for it is personal attention and plenty of it, which makes a hotel pay. I might have retired altogether, for I was a bachelor with no claims on me and had made more money than enough, but that was not what I wanted. I wanted a nice, old-fashioned house, not too big, in a nice place with a longish slack season. I cared very little whether I made it pay or not. The Regency Hotel at Tanslow was just the thing for me. It would give me a little to do and not too much. Tanslow was a village, and though there were two or three public houses, there was no other hotel in the place, nor was any competition likely to come along. I was particular about that, because my nature is such that competition always sets me fighting, and I cannot rest until the other shop goes down. I had reached a time of life when I did want to rest, and did not want any more fighting. It was a free house, and I have always had a partiality for being my own master. It had just the class of trade that I liked, principally gentle folk taking their pleasure in a holiday on the river. It was very cheap, and I like value for money. The house was comfortable, and had a beautiful garden sloping down to the river. I meant to put in some time in that garden, I have a taste that way. The place was so cheap that I had my doubts. I wondered if it was flooded when the river rose, or if it was dropping to pieces with dry rot, if the drainage had been condemned, if they were going to start a lunatic asylum next door, or what it was. I went into all these points and a hundred more. I found one or two trifling drawbacks, and one expects them in any house, however good, especially when it is an old place like the Regency. I found nothing whatever to stop me from taking the place. I bought the whole thing, furniture and all, lock, stock, and barrel, and moved in. I brought with me my own head-waiter and my man-cook, Englishmen both of them. I knew they would set the thing in the right key. The head-waiter, Silas Goodheart, was just over sixty, with grey hair and a wrinkled face. He was worth more to me than two younger men would have been. He was very precise and rather slow in his movements. He liked bright silver, clean table linen, and polished glass. Artificial flowers and the vases on his tables would have given him a fit. He handled a decanner of old port as if he loved it, which, as a matter of fact, he did. His manner to visitors was a perfect mixture of dignity, respect, and friendliness. If a man did not quite know what he wanted for dinner, Silas had sympathetic and very useful suggestions. He took, I am sure, a real pleasure in seeing people enjoy their luncheon or dinner. Americans loved him and tipped him out of all proportion. I let him have his own way, even when he gave the thing away. Is the coffee all right here? a customer asked after a good dinner. I cannot recommend it, said Silas. If I might suggest, sir, we have the chartreuse of the old French shipping. I overheard that, but I said nothing. The coffee was extract, for there was more work than profit in making it good. As it was, that customer went away pleased and came back again and again and brought his friends too. Silas was really the only permanent waiter. When we were busy, I got one or two foreigners from London temporarily. Silas soon educated them. My cook, Tims, was an honest chap and understood English fair. He seemed hardly ever to eat and never sat down to a meal. He lived principally on beer, drank enough of it to frighten you, and was apparently never the worst for it. And a butcher who tried to send him second quality meat was certain of finding out his mistake. The only other man I brought with me was young Harry Bryden. He always called me uncle, but as a matter of fact he was no relation of mine. He was the son of an old friend. His parents died when he was seven years old and left him to me. It was about all they had to leave. At this time he was twenty-two and was making himself useful. There was nothing which he was not willing to do, and he could do most things. He would mark at billiards and played a good game himself. He had run the kitchen when the cook was away on his holiday. He had driven the station omnibus when the driver was drunk one night. He understood bookkeeping, and when I got a clerk who was a wrongan he was on to him at once and saved me money. It was my intention to make him take his proper place more when I got to the Regency, for he was to succeed me when I died. He was clever and not bad-looking in a gypsy-faced kind of way. Nobody is perfect, and Harry was a cigarette maniac. He began when he was a boy, and I didn't spare the stick when I caught him at it. But nothing I could do or say made any difference. At twenty-two he was old enough and big enough to have his own way, and his way was to smoke cigarettes eternally. He was a bundle of nerves, and got so jumpy sometimes that some people thought he drank, though he had never in his life tasted liquor. He inherited his nerves from his mother, but I dare say the cigarettes made them worse. I took Harry down with me when I first thought of taking the place. He went over it with me, and made a lot of useful suggestions. The old proprietor had died eighteen months before, and the widow had tried to run it for herself and made a mess of it. She had just sense enough to clear out before things got any worse. She was very anxious to go, and I thought that might have been the reason why the price was so low. The billiard room was an annex to the house, with no rooms over it. We were told that it wasn't used once in a twelve-month, but we took a look at it. We took a look at everything. The room had got a very neglected look about it. I sat down on the platform, tired with so much walking and standing, and Harry whipped the cover off the table. This was the one they had in the arc, he said. There was not a straight cue in the rack. The balls were worn and untrue. The jigger was broken. Harry pointed to the board. Look at that, uncle, he said. Noah had made forty-eight, Ham was doing nicely at sixty-six, and then the flood came and they never finished. From neatness and force of habit he moved over and turned the score back. You'll have to spend some money here, my word, if they put the whole lot in and a floor in were swindled. As we came out Harry gave a shiver. I wouldn't spend a night in there, he said, not for a five-pound note. His nerves always made me angry. That's a very silly thing to say, I told him. Who's going to ask you to sleep in a billiard room? Then he got a bit more practical and began to calculate how much I should have to spend to make a bright, up-to-date billiard room of it. But I was still angry. You needn't waste your time on that, I said, because the place will stop as it is. You heard what Mrs. Parker said, that it wasn't used once in a twelve-month. I don't want to attract all the loafers and tans-lo into my house. They're customs worth nothing and I'd sooner be without it. Time enough to put that room right if I find my staying visitors want it and people who've been on the river all day are mostly too tired for a game after dinner. Harry pointed out that it sometimes rained and there was the winter to think about. He always had plenty to say and what he said now had sense in it. But I never go chopping and changing about and I had made my mind up. So I told him he had got to learn how to manage the house and not waste half his time over the billiard table. I had a good deal done to the rest of the house in the way of redecorating and improvements but I never touched the annex. The next time I saw the room was the day after we moved in. I was alone and I thought it certainly did look a dingy hole as compared with the rest of the house. Then my eye happened to fall on the board and it still showed 66-48 as it had done when I entered the room with Harry three months before. I altered the board myself this time. To me it was only a funny coincidence. Another game had been played there and it stopped at exactly the same point but I was glad Harry was not with me for it was the kind of thing that would have made him jumpier than ever. It was the summer time and we soon had something to do. I had been told that motorcars had cut into the river trade a good deal so I laid myself out for the motorist. Tanslow was just a nice distance for a run from town before lunch. It was all in the old-fashioned style but there was plenty of choice and the stuff was good and my wine list was worth consideration. Prices were high but people will pay when they are pleased with the way they are treated. Motorists who had been once came again and sent their friends. Saturday to Monday we had as much as ever we could do and more than I had ever meant to do but I'm built like that. Once I'm in a shop I've got to run it for all it's worth. I'd been there about a month and it was about the height of our season when one night for no reason that I could make out I couldn't get to sleep. I turned in tired enough at half past ten leaving Harry to shut up and see the lights out and at a quarter past twelve I was still awake. I thought to myself that a pint of stout and a biscuit might be the cure for that. So I lit my candle and went down to the bar. The gas was out on the staircase and in the passages and all was quiet. The door into the bar was locked but I thought to bring my pass key with me. I had just drawn my tankard of stout when I heard a sound that made me put the tankard down and listen again. The billiard room door was just outside in the passage and there could not be the least stout that a game was going on. I could hear the click click of the balls as plainly as possible. It surprised me a little but it did not startle me. We had several staying in the house and I suppose two of them had fancy to game. All the time that I was drinking the stout and munching my biscuit the game went on click, click, click. Everybody has heard the sound hundreds of times standing outside the glass panel door of a billiard room and waiting for the stroke before entering. No other sound is quite like it. Suddenly the sound ceased. The game was over. I had nothing on but my pajamas and a pair of slippers and I thought I would get upstairs again before the players came out. I did not want to stand there shivering and listening to complaints about the table. I locked to the bar and took a glance at the billiard room door as I was about to pass it. What I saw made me stop short. The glass panels of the door were as black as my Sunday hat except where they reflected the light of my candle. The room then was not lit up and people do not play billiards in the dark. After a second or two I tried the handle. The door was locked. It was the only door to the room. I said to myself, I'll go on back to bed. It must have been my fancy and there was nobody playing billiards at all. I moved a step away and then I said to myself again I know perfectly well that a game was being played. I'm only making excuses because I'm in a funk. That settled it. Having driven myself to it, I moved pretty quickly. I shoved in my pass key, opened the door and said, anybody there? In a moderately loud voice that sounded somehow like another man's. I am very much afraid that I should have jumped if there had come any answer to my challenge but all was silent. I took a look round. The cover was on the table and I sensed it, had been put there to be out of the way. As I moved my candle the shadows of things slithered across the floor and crept up the walls. I noticed that the windows were properly fastened and then as I held my candle high the marking board seemed to jump out of the darkness. The score recorded was 66-48. I shut the door, locked it again and went up to my room. I did these things slowly and deliberately but I was frightened and I was puzzled. One is not at one's best in the small hours. The next morning I tackled Silas. Silas, I said, what do you do when gentlemen ask for the billiard room? Well, sir, said Silas, I put them off it if I can. Mr. Harry directed me to, the place being so much out of order. Quite so, I said, and when you can't put them off? Then they just try it, sir, and the table puts them off. It's very bad. There's been no game played there since we came. I thought I heard a game going on last night. I've heard it myself, sir, several times. There being no light in the room, I've put it down to a loose ventilator. The wind moves it and it clicks. That'll be it, I said. Five minutes later I had made sure that there was no loose ventilator in the billiard room. Besides, the sound of one ball striking another is not quite like any other sound. I also went up to the board and turned the score back, which I had admitted to do the night before. Just then Harry passed the door on his way from the bar, with a cigarette in his mouth as usual. I called him in. Harry said, give me thirty and I'll play you a hundred up for a sovereign. You can tell one of the girls to fetch our cues from upstairs. Harry took a cigarette out of his mouth and whistled. What, uncle? He said, well, you're going in, I don't think. What would you have said to me if I'd asked you for a game at ten in the morning? I said, but this is all in the way of business. I can't see much wrong with the table, I can't play on it than other people may. There's a chance to make a sovereign for you anyhow. You've given me forty-five and a beating before now. No, uncle, he said, I wouldn't give you thirty. I wouldn't give you one. The table's not playable. Luck would win against Roberts on it. He showed me the faults of the thing and said he was busy, so I told him if he'd like to lose the chance of making a sovereign he could. I hate that room, he said, as we came out. It's not too clean and it smells like a vault. It smells a lot better than your cigarettes, I said. For the next six weeks we were all busy and I gave little thought to the billiard room. Once or twice I heard old Silas telling a customer that he could not recommend the table and that the whole room was to be redecorated and refitted as soon as we got the estimates. You see, sir, we've only been here a little while and there hasn't been time to get everything as we should like it quite yet. One day Mrs. Parker, the woman who had the Regency before me came down from town to see how we were getting on. I showed the old lady round, pointed out my improvements and gave her a bit of lunch in my office. Well now I said, as she sipped her glass of port afterwards, I'm not complaining of my bargain, but isn't the billiard room a bit queer? It surprises me, she said, that you've left it as it is, especially with everything else going ahead and the yard half full of motors. I should have taken it all down myself if I'd stopped. That iron roof's nothing but an eyesore and you might have a couple of beds of geraniums there and improve the look of your front. Let's see, I said. What was the story about that billiard room? What story do you mean, she said, looking at me suspiciously. The same one you're thinking of, I said. About that man, Josiah Hamm? That's it. Well, I shouldn't worry about that if I were you. That was all thirty years ago and I doubt if there's a soul in Tenslow knows it now. Best forgotten, I say. The talk of that kind doesn't do a hotel any good. Why, how did you come to hear of it? That's just it, I said. The man who told me was none too clear. He gave me a hint of it. He was an old commercial passing through and had known the place in the old days. Let's hear your story and see if it agrees with his. But I told my fibs to no purpose. The old lady seemed a bit flustered. If you don't mind, Mr. Sanderson, I'd rather not speak of it. I thought I knew what was troubling her. I filled her glass in my own. Here, I said. When you sold the place to me it was a fair deal. You weren't called upon to go thirty years back and no reasonable man would expect it. I'm satisfied. Here I am and here I mean to stop and twenty billiard rooms wouldn't drive me away. I'm not complaining, but just as a matter of curiosity I'd like to hear your story. What's your trouble with the room? Nothing to signify, but there's a game played there and marked there and I can't find the players and it's never finished. It always stops at sixty-six forty-eight. She gave a glance over her shoulder. Pull the place down, she said. You can afford to do it and I couldn't. She finished her port. I must be going, Mr. Sanderson. There's rain coming on and I don't want to sit in the train in my wet things. I thought I would just run down to see how you were getting on and I'm sure I'm glad to see the old place looking up again. I tried again to get the story out of her but she ran away from it. She had not got the time and it was better not to speak of such things. I did not worry her about it much but she seemed upset over it. I saw her across to the station and just got back in time. The rain came down in torrents. I stood there and watched it and thought it would do my garden a bit of good. I heard a step behind me and looked around. A fat chap with a surly face stood there as if he had just come out of the coffee-room. He was the sort that might be a gentleman and might not. Afternoon, sir, I said. Nasty weather for motoring. It is, he said. Not that I came in a motor. Mr. Sanderson? I am, I said, came here recently. I wonder if there's any chance of a game of billiards. I'm afraid not, I said. Table's shocking. I'm having it all done up afresh and then What's it matter? said he. I don't care. It's something to do and one can't go out. Well, I said, if that's the case I'll give you a game, sir. But I'm no flyer at it the best of times and I'm all out of practice now. I'm no good myself, no good at all and I'd be glad at the game. When I came back to the room door I told him I'd fetch a couple of decent cues. He nodded and went in. When I came back with my cue and Harry's I found the gas lit and the blinds drawn and he was already knocking the balls about. You've been quick, sir, I said and offered him Harry's cue. But he refused and said he would keep the one he had taken from the rack. Harry would have sworn if he had found that I had lent his cue to a stranger so I thought that was just as well. Still, it seemed to me that a man was not likely to be an expert. The table was bad, but not so bad as Harry had made out. The luck was all on my side. I was fairly ashamed of the flukes I made one after the other. He said nothing but gave a short, loud laugh once or twice. It was a nasty sounding laugh. I was at thirty-seven when he was nine and I put on eleven more at my next visit and thought I had left him nothing. Then the fat man woke up. He got out of his first difficulty and after that the balls ran right for him. He was a player too with plenty of variety and resource and I could see that I was going to take a licking. When he had reached fifty-one an unlucky kiss left him an impossible position. But I miscued and he got gelling again. He played very, very carefully now taking a lot more time for consideration than he had done in his previous break. He seemed to have got excited over it and breathed hard as fat men do when they are worked up. He had kept his coat on and his face shown with perspiration. At sixty-six he was in trouble again. He walked round to see the exact position and chalked his cue. I watched him rather eagerly for I did not like the score. I hoped he would go on. His cue slid back to strike and then dropped with a clatter from his hand. The fat man was gone, gone as I looked at him like a flame blown out, vanished into nothing. I staggered away from the table. I looked back slowly towards the door meaning to make a bolt for it. There was a click from the scoring board and I saw the thing marked up. And then I am thankful to say the billiard room door opened and I saw Harry standing there. He was very white and shaky. Somehow the fact that he was frightened helped to steady me. Good heavens, uncle, he gasped. I've been standing outside. What's the matter? What's happened? Nothing's the matter, I said sharply. I swished back the curtain and sent up the blind with a snap. The rain was over now and the sun shone in through the wet glass. I was glad of it. I thought I heard voices laughing, somebody called the score. I turned out the gas. Well, I said, this table's enough to make any man laugh when it doesn't make him swear. I've been trying your game with one hand against another and I daresay I called the score out loud. It's no catch, not even for a wet afternoon. I'm not both-handed at the apes and Harry Bryden. Harry's is good with the left hand as the right and a bit proud of it. I slid my own cue back into its case. Then whistling a bit of a tune I picked up the stranger's cue which I did not like to touch. I nearly dropped it again when I saw the initials J-H on the button. Been trying the cues, I said as I put it in the rack. He looked at me as if he were going to ask more questions. So I put him on to something else. We've not got enough cover for Harry's motor-cars, I said. Lucky we hadn't got many more here in this rain. There's plenty of room for another shed and it didn't cost much. Go and see what you can make of it. I'll come out directly, but I've got to talk to that girl on the bar first. He went off, looking rather ashamed of his tremors. I had not really very much to say to Miss Hesketh in the bar. I put three fingers of whiskey in a glass and told her to put a dash of soda on the top of it. That was all. It was a full-sized drink and it did me good. Then I found Harry in the yard. He was figuring with pencil on the back of an envelope. He was always pretty smart where there was anything practical to deal with. He had spotted where the shed was to go and was finding what it would cost at a rough estimate. Well, I said, if I went on with that idea of mine about the flower beds it didn't cost much beyond the labour. What idea? He's got a head like a sieve. While carrying on the flower beds around the front where the billiard room now stands. If we pulled that down, what materials we want for the new motor shed? The roofing sound enough for I was up there yesterday looking into it. Well, I don't think you mentioned it to me but it's a rare good idea. I'll think about it, I said. That evening my cook Tims told me he'd be sorry to leave me but he was afraid he'd find the place too slow for him. Not enough doing. Then old Silas informed me that he hadn't meant to retire so early but he wasn't sure. The place was livelier than he had expected I asked no questions. I knew the billiard room was somehow or other at the bottom of it and so it turned out. In three days time the workmen were in the house and breaking up the billiard room door and after that Tims and old Silas found the regions sea suited them very well after all. And it was not just to oblige Harry or Tims or Silas that I had the alteration made. That unfinished game was in my mind. I had played it and wanted never to play it again. It was of no use for me to tell myself that it had all been a delusion for I knew better. My health was good and I had no delusions. I had played with Josiah Ham with the lost soul of Josiah Ham and that thought filled me not with fear but with a feeling of sickness and disgust. It was two years later that I heard the story of Josiah Ham and it was not from old Mrs. Parker. An old tramp came into the saloon bar begging and Miss Hesketh was giving him the rough side of her tongue. Nice treatment said the old chap. Thirty years ago I worked here and made good money and was respected and now it's insults. And then I struck in. What did you do here? I asked. Waited at table and marked at billiards. Till you took to drink? I said. Till I resigned from a strange circumstance. I sent him out of the bar and took him down to the garden saying that I'd find him an hour or two's work. Now then I said as soon as I got him alone what made you leave? He looked at me curiously. I said, 66, unfinished. And then he told me of a game played in that old billiard room on a wet summer afternoon 30 years before. He, the marker, was one of the players. The other man was a commercial traveller who used the house pretty regularly. A fat man ugly looking with a nasty laugh. Josiah Ham his name was. He was at 66 when he got himself into a tight place. He moved his ball, did it when he thought I wasn't looking at the glass and I told him of it. He got very angry. He said he wished you might be struck dead if he ever touched the ball. The old tramp stopped. I see, I said. They said it was apoplexy. It's known to be dangerous for fat men to get very angry. But I'd had enough of it before long. I cleared out and so did the rest of the servants. Well, I said, we're not so superstitious nowadays. And what brought you down in the world? Well, it's there. If you can keep off it, I can give you a job waiting for three days. He did not want the work. He wanted a shilling and he got it. And I saw to it that he did not spend it in my house. We have got a very nice billiard room upstairs now. Two new tables and everything ship shape. You may find Harry there most evenings. It is all right, but I have never taken to billiards again myself. And where the old billiard room was there are flower beds. I've got funny markings, like figures. End of Section 7 Recording by Colleen McMahon and hereafter by Barry Payne Sparkling Burgundy In London a day in mid-August drew to its close. The air was motionless. The pavements were hot. Weary children came home with the perambulator from the sandpit of Regent's Park or the playground of Kensington Gardens. Young men from the city wore straw hats and thronged the outside of motor omnibuses. There was a small street on Oxford Street that singularly striving street was still striving still exhibiting some of its numerous activities. Starting from a humble and whole-born origin it lives to touch the lips of Park Lane but it goes to Bayswater when it dies. It was still protesting that it was not tired and still crowded with traffic. The road was covered out darkly against a sky of fainting lettuce color. Young Mrs. Bablove noticed them as she came out of the tube station drawing her cloak around her unwanted evening dress. Yes, said her husband as she called his attention to the effect striking. It was scarcely a minute's walk from the station to the restaurant Marlowe where they were to be the guests of Mr. Albert Carver. Marlowe does its best. It has an arc lamp and a medium-sized commissionaire. It bears its name proudly and guilt letters a foot and a half high. In the entrance are bay trees and green tubs and a framed bill of our celebrated the Nerd de Jure at half a crown. Within are little tables brightly appointed and many electric lamps. A mahogany screen is carved with challenging pine tables and grapes and against it is a table for six. Mr. Carver had reserved this table. Yet somehow one gets the correct impression that this is a small eating-house under Italian proprietorship. The occasion of the little dinner given by this bachelor in Viverre was the engagement of Ada Bunting to Harold Simcox. Albert Carver had received much hospitality from Miss Bunting's parents. He had, as nearly as possible, got engaged to Miss Bunting himself and now knew what the condemned man feels like who is unexpectedly reprieved. Miss Bunting and Mr. Simcox were the guests of importance. She was lymphatic and pale-haired. Her future husband was smaller and ashamed shorter than she. She was treated on politeness and made to anyone to whom he spoke feel like a possible customer. As for Mr. and Mrs. Babelove, Mr. Albert Carver had always intended to ask them if he ever asked anybody. He frankly admired young Mrs. Babelove and said so and was slightly pleased when this created surprise and it was suggested that she was hardly his type. Mr. Carver was a problem and this was subtly flattering to Mr. Carver, who, if a problem was singularly soluble, it is true nonetheless that the women whom Albert Carver admired were mostly fleshy and exuberant. Mrs. Babelove looked like an angel who had gone into domestic service, a soul in servitude. She had to make a just sufficient income suffice and, as she was devoted to her husband and her two little boys, she did a good deal of work herself. She had a sweet and rather childish nature, was not without some true aesthetic perception and under less stringent limitations might have developed further. Mr. Babelove, a very quiet and prosaic man who wore spectacles only when he was reading, was made about the same income as Mr. Carver. They both held responsible positions in the same firm. They both lived in the same street and Shepherd's Bush neighborhood. But Mr. Babelove's income had to provide for a household and Mr. Albert Carver's income was all earmarked for Mr. Albert Carver. There was less splendor in Mr. Babelove's home than in Mr. Carver's wicket flat with a hookah from the cut-priced debaconist standing on the low inlay table and the fringe of photo-glaveur of a bathing subject over the mantelpiece. The remaining guest was Miss Adela Holmes. She was beautiful and looked oriental. Her movements, after office hours, were slow and very graceful. Her voice was soft and graceful. Her eyes also spoke. During the day she was the third quickest typist in London and ran her own office strictly on business lines. Mr. Carver, in his light way, would sometimes call her Nirvana. He was convinced that this was an eastern term of endearment and, though an allusion to her appearance, for years. Mr. Carver surveyed his little party with pleasure. It was not the celebrated half-crowned dinner that was being served for this leuculus. It was the rich man's alternative, the deneur de luxe at four and six. Mr. Carver always said that if he did a thing at all he liked to do it well. He was a man of mild stature and middle age. His hair was very black and intensely smooth. His face suggested a commercial Napoleon. He was dressed with some elaboration. Pink coral buttons constrained his white waistcoat over a slight protuberance. Other diners at other tables were not so dressed, not dressed for the evening at all. One black guard had entered in a suit of flannels and a straw hat. But other tables had not the perfusions of smile acts and carnations which graced at the table reserved for Mr. Carver's party. A paper assimilation of chrysanthemums was good enough for the half-crowners. How could they expect the eager attendance given to Mr. Carver's party? The frock-coated proprietor hovered near the mahogany screen. The head waiter at a side table looked like of a bottle of sparkling burgundy between his dusky hands and caused it to rotate vigorously in the half-pale. This does not really make that curious wine any the worse. Another waiter handed up for Mr. Carver's approval the chef's attempt to make a lobster look like a sunset on the Matterhorn. Looks almost too good to eat, said Adela Holmes drowsily. Mr. Carver laughed joyously. Think so, Narana. Well, we'll try it. The wonder had not yet quite gone out of the soft-brown eyes of Dora Bablev. This was luxury indeed. It was a new way of living that she had never known. In the course of her married life she had dined out very rarely and never after this manner. Somehow she felt as if she was not Dora Bablev at all. The proprietor made a suggestion to Mr. Carver. Good idea, senor! said Mr. Carver. You'd like an electric fan, Mrs. Bablev? Wouldn't you? It was done in a moment. An electric lamp was taken out and something plugged in its place. A gentle whirer with a hint of an aeroplane in it. A cool breeze that fluttered the pendant's smile-axe. I think you're being very well looked after, said Mrs. Bablev timidly. You've got it, said Mr. Carver with conviction. That's just the advantage of a little place like this. I'm here pretty often and the senor knows me. And, oh well, I daresay he thinks well to keep my costume. I assure you, I get an amount of personal attention here that I never get out the rits. As Mr. Carver had never been to the rits, this is credible. I like being looked after, said Mrs. Bablev. I like to think that so many people are taking so much trouble to please me. I should think that that must always happen, said the polite Mr. Simcox on her side. Not a bit, laughed Dora. As a rule I take all the trouble. Ask Teddy if I don't. But nobody asked Teddy. Mr. Bablev was discussing palmistry with Miss Bunting, who thought there might be something in it and with Miss Holmes, who was quite expert and offered to read his hand. Mr. Carver said in his whimsical way that he thought Mrs. Bablev should drink and forget it. He watched her as she touched with her full lips the magenta foam in her glass. He had never seen Mrs. Bablev in a low dress before. Certainly she had a charm. The conversation grew animated. The question of London in August was settled. London empty? Not a bit of it. It was the old idea. Why, this year, with the house sitting, half the best people were still in London. You could walk through Mayfair and see for yourself. Mrs. Bablev was not deeply interested in the question. She knew that Teddy and Mr. Carver would take their holidays just when the firm decided. She was more interested in the people in the room. The black guard in the flannel suit had finished his lager and had attempted to light a pipe. It had been politely explained to him that pipes were not permissible. At a little table in the corner were a man with a subtle nine-face and a very young girl in red. They drank champagne, talked low and confidentially and paid no attention to anybody. Dora Bablev had strayed into a world previously unexplored by her. More and more the conviction came on her that the Dora who was unwrapping the vine leaf from the fat quail on her plate was not the Dora who had been married six years, who looked after her two little boys so well, who mended and cleaned and did rather clever things with the rest of the cold mutton. She was, for the moment, a woman untrammeled by circumstances. She delighted in it, enjoying it desperately and was half afraid of it. Had this Dora quite the same ideas about well, about what was right? The girl in red had lit a cigarette now and she was getting rather angry with a man who was with her. Dora thought that he was making her angry on purpose. She wondered why. She asked Mr. Carver. Mr. Carver shook his head. A mistake to make the ladies angry. That's what he always thought. But some of them had tempers. Now, well, he mustn't say that. Oh, come on. You must, said Dora. Well, I was only going to say that parents are deceptive. You look at first sight as if you had the most placid nature in the world. But I think you could get angry, Miss Bob Love. Very angry. Oh, no, quite wrong. Whatever makes you think that. There's a look in the eyes sometimes. Oh, I assure you it makes me very careful. Laughed Mr. Carver. Frightens me. Now really, Mrs. Bob Love, you must have a little peace with your coffee. But Mrs. Bob Love was resolute in her refusal. She did not care in the least about such things. She had drunk one glass of the sparkling burgundy, not to be out of the picture, and after that she had sipped iced water. At the other end of the table, Nirvana was saying that she didn't see why she shouldn't. Two other women in the room sat. She accepted a cigarette from Mr. Bob Love's silver case. The smoke wandered gently through the Smilax plantation and left hurriedly when it met the electric fan. And now Mr. Simcox had to take Miss Bunting home, for Miss Bunting lived in remote Wimbledon and in an early household and the privilege of the latchkey was not accorded to her. Mr. Simcox, who had not refused the yellow chartreuse or anything else, was slightly flushed and more polite than ever. He assured his host that it had been the pleasantest evening of his life and he should never forget it. Even the lymphatic Miss Bunting had become quite animated. At the beginning of the dinner they had maintained towards one another a preconcerted air of dignified reserve, but that was now quite broken down. Mr. Carver rose to see them to their cab. And if anybody else tries to go, he said to the rest of his guests, I shall lose my temper. Might have got a box at one of the halls if I had thought about it, said Mr. Carver on his return. He was a well meant effort of the imagination. He might, but it would have been unlike him. Much pleasant of where we are, said Miss Holmes, languorously. Performances always bore me. Well, Nirvana, said Mr. Carver, so long as you're pleased. Miss Holmes turned again to Mr. Bablov. His wife hoped that Teddy was not being too prosaic. From her word or to she called, she knew he was talking politics. But Miss Holmes did not look bored. But she was interested in politics, too. Why do you call her Nirvana? Mrs. Bablov asked, dropping her voice a little. But the couple at the further end of the table were absorbed in their talk now, and taking no notice of what the others were saying. Why do I call her Nirvana? Because she looks like a gypsy. She does, doesn't she? Mr. Carver's fruity voice has also become discreet. I don't know. I think she looks charming. Do you? said Mr. Carver. I'd like to talk to you about that. Not now, presently. He knew the value of a slight hint of mystery. Have a cigarette now, Mrs. Bablov. Thanks. I think I will. Why wouldn't you smoke before? Because he lit the cigarette for her. Too many people. The room's nearly empty now. I'm not so brave as Nirvana. I don't think you quite know what you are. You're full of possibilities. I like these cigarettes, said Dora. Teddy gives me one sometimes, though I don't often smoke. But his are not quite so nice as these. Mr. Carver became informative on the subject of Turkish tobacco, but with the information he wove much which was personal. It appeared that it was Mr. Carver's ambition to leave business at London and to spend the rest of his life in Japan. I thought you were devoted to London, said Mrs. Bablov. What you say rather surprises me. I surprise myself sometimes, said Mr. Carver darkly. A little later, all rose to go. A handsome was waiting just outside, and Mr. Carver began to organize briskly. Will you take Ms. Holmes in that cab, Teddy? It's scarcely two minutes out of your way. I'll bring Mrs. Bablov in the next cab. Mr. Carver took it all for granted and it was done as he suggested. The next cab was a taxi. We shall be home before them. laughed Dora as she got into the cab. By the way, Mr. Carver, what were you going to tell me about Nirvana? And presently Mr. Carver was saying that Ms. Holmes could not seem charming when Dora Bablov was present. He compared them in some detail. I don't think you know enough about yourself. That delicious mouth of yours. When they reached Mrs. Bablov's house, Dora did not ask Mr. Carver to come in. She thanked him and said good night, brother, briefly. She switched on the light in the hall, ran upstairs to see that our two little boys were safely asleep, and came down to the dining room to wait for her husband. She poured out a glass of water and drank it. Then she sat quite still in the easy chair with her head in her hands. What was she to do? What on earth was she to do? A man had kissed her on the lips. A man who was not her husband. She had let him do it. She thought, she hardly knew, that her lips had answered to his. Such a thing had never happened to her before. She was wide awake now. But surely in the cab she must have been half asleep. She had leaned back with her eyes half closed, suffused with a pleasant warmth and tiredness, and had heard his caressing voice praising her as she had never before been praised. She had not guessed that he thought so much of her, that he admired her so much. Then, as he spoke of the beauty of her hands, he took one of her hands in his. She knew what would come and was without any power to prevent it. She had seen his face come near to her own and no, she would tell the truth to herself. For a moment she had gone mad and let herself go completely. She had wanted to be kissed, and as she felt his lips upon her own her kiss had met his. True, the next moment she had recovered herself, she had it gaily, was merely amused when Mr. Carver would have been sentimental and would not let him get near her. Her one reference to what had happened was as the cab neared her own door. She said, you know, what you did when I had fallen asleep. Never tried to do it again and never speak of it to me. I couldn't forgive it twice, you know. Tonight I've met. Well, here we are. I must get out. She was not troubled about Mr. Carver. She had told him that she was asleep and it implied that he was under the influence of wine. She felt that she could always manage Mr. Carver. But what about Teddy? He must never, never know. It was one little slip, one moment of madness and it would never happen again. It would be wicked to let Teddy know and to make him wretched. On the other hand, if she did not tell him, how was she to quiet the voice of conscience? What became of their mutual confidence? She felt that she could never be happy again until she told all and been forgiven. She took the thing tragically. She saw the whole of her happiness and Teddy's happiness ruined by that one moment of madness and the future of little boys seriously imperiled. She was just wondering who in the event of a separation would have the custody of the children when she heard the sound of Teddy's handsome as it stopped at the door. What on earth was she to do? She could never face him. She would just burst into tears and tell him everything. But she found herself quite unable to carry out this decision. Teddy looked so cheerful. He talked more than usual. How had she liked it? A rare good dinner it seemed to him and she had been by far the prettiest woman there. He had felt proud of her. She smiled sadly and said that he was prejudiced and how did you get on with Miss Holmes? Oh, all right. The trouble with her is that she's rather affected and our factation is just one of those things that I can't stand. If only for one moment he would take his eyes off her she felt distraught. She hardly knew what she was saying. She observed that sparkling burgundy seemed rather a heady wine. He hastened to agree with her. To tell the truth is not a wine I ever met before and the taste seemed to me rather funny. I'd sooner have a whiskey and soda any day. Have one now, do. Why not? I'll run up to bed because I'm so tired. I dare say I shall be asleep by the time you come. Oh, I shan't be long, said Teddy. And Dora managed out the room without being kissed. The moment she had gone Teddy's cheerfulness vanished. He mixed himself a very stiff whiskey and soda and sipped gloomily, staring at the dead cigarette between his fingers. Dora panted as she undressed. Tragedy seemed to be choking her. She hurried into bed. When Teddy came up she pretended to be asleep but she got little sleep that night. Two days had passed and Dora had not spoken. There were dark lines under her eyes and she seldom smiled. Teddy, always kind, had been kinder to her than ever. He said complimentary things to her. Every evening he brought her fruit from the city because she liked fruit. It was expensive fruit, too. And every kind word or act seemed to cut her heart with a knife. She felt so unworthy of devotion. The position was unendurable and on the third morning as she rose from breakfast she suddenly determined to end it then and there to tell him everything and throw herself on his mercy. I want to speak to you for a minute before you go to the city. She said, Will you come into the living room? said Teddy In the drawing room she found that she was shaking all over and had to sit down. She was thinking how she would begin when she heard a hollow voice say Wait you need say nothing it was Teddy's voice What do you mean? She asked in a choked whisper Do you think I haven't seen? said Teddy almost fiercely You guessed it somehow when I came into the house that night I suppose a bad conscience gives itself away I thought you knew when you asked me how I got on with Miss Holmes These last two days you've been upset You've not been yourself and that, of course, made me certain you knew Only, let me tell you how I came to do it Yes, said Dora Tell me that Well she was talking about the loneliness of her life it was as much pity as anything and the cab was going down a dark street at the time Mind, I only kissed her once and the moment I did it I was ashamed of myself you don't know what I've been through Dora thought she did but she said nothing I swear that I have a no woman in the world but you Dora I'm awfully sorry I've hurt you like this Can you ever forgive me Dora rose and placed both hands on his shoulders Could you have forgiven me She said If I had let a man kiss me he paused a moment Yes, Dora He said I think so Her face was like the face of an angel Then Teddy dear I forgive you absolutely We shall never speak of this again and it will never happen again Will it Never Said the repentant sinner and kissed her Mrs. Bablove saying happily as she helped to make the beds that morning she never did speak of it again once two years later this was after poor Aunt Mary had been called to her rest and the Bablove had become prosperous and consequence Teddy gave it as his opinion that there was only one sparkling wine worth consideration and that wine was champagne Dora cordially agreed with him but changed the subject rapidly of section eight section nine of here and hereafter by Barry Payne this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org here and hereafter by Barry Payne the act of heroism part one do not go outside your part you may be cast if you are nature's low comedian do not usurp the business of the hero hear the plain story of Alfred Smithers who stood five foot eight had sandy hair and an apologetic eye earned four pounds a week by bookkeeping and was a good husband until, by the merest chance he was led into the paths of heroism chance plays the devil at times Emily Trimmins house made by profession a historical by nature found that the postman was walking out with another lady consulting her recollection of penny romances she saw that suicide was clearly indicated the relics of sense which distinguished hysteria from madness made her choose the manner of her suicide she went up onto the heath one afternoon and flung herself into a pond in the presence of several philosophical male loafers one emotional nurse made and two fat headed children her last thought as she entered the water was which of the male loafers would pull her out again the first loafer said that that was as silly an act as he ever saw her knees should be moving home the second loafer observed that something ought to be done at once the third called for help the fourth said the police were never there when they were wanted the emotional nurse made sat down at once on the grass removed her hat, unhooked her dress at the neck fanned herself with a handkerchief and said oh, that has give me a turn the two fat-headed children cried I ain't that funny nurse make her come out and do it again nurse ain't that funny nurse make her come out and do it again and at this moment chance playing the devil as the fourth said brought upon the scene Alfred Smithers who had fished the pond and believed the depth nowhere exceeded three feet who saw a policeman with a coil of rope under his arm rapidly approaching who observed that he had an audience and was accordingly inspirited go in from where you are shouted the second loafer don't waste time thinking about it Smithers removed his silk hat and frock coat courage that's a man screamed the emotional nurse made that settled it with a stentorian cry of stand back there to the two fat-headed children a cry which was not needed when they were coming Smithers jumped feet foremost there was a mighty splash when it subsided Smithers was observed standing in the pond the water reaching up to the terminals of his string-mended braces the two children rolled over and over on the grass in fits of inextinguishable laughter it was a good afternoon they had had nothing quite so good since the pantomime don't wait for her to come up or the second loafer I know what to do all right replied Smithers who, as a matter of fact didn't he took one step forward and incontinently vanished down a fifteen foot hole of the existence of which though he had fished that pond he had previously been unaware as he was going down the hole he met Emily Trimmins coming up she paused and sold it herself firmly onto as much of Smithers as she could reach he trod water very fast and very furiously like a child stamping its feet on the nursery floor because it meant begin tea-cake first he lashed out hard and indiscriminately with both hands and might have succeeded in scraping off most of the half-drowned lady but that he found in his struggles they had become entangled and tied together by a rope he could remember no prayer but the grace after meat which he repeated to himself fervently then he gave up his breath exploded into the green jelly he gave one more kick and lost his interest in things in the meantime the policeman assisted by the loafers was pulling hard at the other end of the rope and brought to bank a job lot of mixed scarecrows those being sorted out on the grass proved to be one moiety Smithers and one moiety Trimmins the treatment of the apparently drowned was then proceeded with energetically to the satisfaction of a considerable number of spectators they had gathered in a moment Smithers came to himself feeling ill but magnificent and assured the policeman that he was all right he was not much to look at at the moment yet everywhere he felt the admiring gaze upon him Bravo! exclaimed an old gentleman a very chorus of bravos followed in which the policeman and the doctor who was busy with Emily Trimmins joined enthusiastically oh it was good it was very joyous you done splendid sir said the policeman the way you just managed to grab the end of the rope as you went down the hole to fetch her up was very smart you must be pretty quick and neat with your hands and pretty cool and collected too for I dare say she gave a lot of trouble when you got her well you see said Smithers indulgently she'd quite lost her head and yet you managed to get the rope under her armpits tied a good knot and wound the slack twice round yourself and it couldn't have been done quicker if you'd been on dry land instead of underwater and ampered by the woman Emily Trimmins was by this time so far recovered as to be ripe for removal in a four-wheeler with a policeman on the box she did not look pretty her hair had come down and something had happened to her nose it was suggested that she had struck it entering the water Alfred Smithers remembered at an early stage of the struggle he had kicked something it was not worth mentioning he took under advice another drop of brandy and was driven home the crowd cheered Mrs Smithers was a woman of some energy Smithers was wrapped in hot blankets and tucked away in bed in no time he had a hot water bottle at his feet and steaming rum and water at his head Mrs Smithers sent a polite note to Mrs Garson and Begg to say why her husband would be unable to be at work as usual on the following day she threw the story over the right-hand wall of the backyard to Mrs Warboys and over the left-hand wall to the widow of the late Charles Push in twenty minutes the story was all over the terrace and had not shrunk there was great excitement and three separate houses hoped that Mrs Smithers would look in for a cup of tea and would be glad if they could do anything to help she accepted two of the invitations and would visit the third house on the morrow and would be obliged by the loan of a nutmeg it being necessary to keep up an internal glow after prolonged struggle in cold water the daredevil had dived six times before he found the woman and the patient otherwise being likely to take a chill in the vitals and die hurriedly then she decided to have the newspaper cuttings framed the medal would go on the mantelpiece under glass Smithers lay upstairs with the feeling that his head was a large lump of dough traversed by a steam-propelled roller but satisfied that heroism and hot rum were both excellent he was soon asleep Glory reached its flood on the following day an offering was bought from the mother of Emily Trimmins a box encrusted without with small shells and two pieces of looking-glass and lined with pink satin within the slip of paper which accompanied it was ascribed a mother's tribute to a daughter's preserver the newspapers on the whole did well though the Times was quite outclassed in the race for news having but two lines to the half column of the local organ the magistrate cautioned Miss Trimmins and handed her over to the care of her mother he said that the loafers were not men he referred to the intrepid courage cool head strength wedded with skill of Alfred Smithers one of the men of whom England had good cause to be proud in the course of a week the postman had explained away the other lady and was allmure with Emily Trimmings who, so far as this story is concerned may now take a seat at the back a considerable number of Smithers friends were waiting when the magistrate had finished to have the pleasure of shaking hands with Smithers and congratulating him and so on and that night one of the men of whom England had good cause to be proud went home most painfully and uncompromisingly drunk part two Alfred Smithers as he made his modest breakfast of a cup of tea and two liver pills next morning explained to his wife that he had not been the drinks for much as the reaction she said that he needn't have taken the reaction she should overlook it this time and say no more knowing what he was when not misled but no amount of ironig would make that hat look anything again he went to work feeling that the glory had been turned a little lower there were more newspaper cuttings and later there was something on vellum Smithers said rather bitterly that the society seemed to do things on the cheap a medal came at last presented by the vicar on behalf of a few friends and local inhabitants it was of silver and very large it was kept on the mantelpiece and shown to everyone who would look at it but the excitement was dying down glory was on the ebb Mrs Smithers would sometimes allow two days to pass without alluding to the act of heroism Smithers watched the ebbing tide with inward rage and with many vain efforts to stay it the neighbourhood sickened slowly with a lot of conversations on the different ways of rescuing the drowning conversations initiated by Smithers in order to lead to the case of the poor girl Emily Trimmins but he had eaten praise poison and no other diet was rich enough for him now the neighbourhood weering of him and hinting as much he would slip the medal into his pocket on saturday afternoons get on his bicycle and seek fresh fields a little group and a bar parlor sufficed when Smithers first leaned his bicycle against the horse trough outside five minutes later they were listening while Smithers got in with I remember once being on the heath when some fool of a girl jumped into 20 feet of water what did I do watch for the bubbles coming up and then dived the devil of it was that there was a strong cross current and etc later the medal would be produced poor Alfred Smithers nature's low comedian and yet smitten with a raging madness for the strut, the soliloquy the limelight, the sympathetic music the roar of applause in his new part of hero he invented business that was not good he began to be, as he phrased it master in his own house he interfered in matters which were the special province of Mrs Smithers he gave detailed instructions in domestic subjects of which he was completely ignorant and brought upon himself ridicule he was rude to Mrs Smithers and said that she needed to be driven with a firm hand he told the eight pound general that his word was law and she forthwith gave notice on the ground that she could put up with anything except haughtiness Mrs Smithers told him with some frankness that she was glad to see his back when he went to business of a morning for he was more nuisance in a house than a cartload of monkeys at business he had got, as a rule just enough sense not to try any heroism he was a good bookkeeper and he had got a good place and he knew it one day, however, as his mind strayed for a moment to high things he made a small blunder affecting a large sum and the sum got on to the wrong side of the book and caused trouble in due course Mr Peter Begg said send me Smithers the clerk who took the message said to Smithers you're going to get beans and at this all the heroism in Smithers arose and boiled over and he spluttered out that he thought it would be rather the other way look here, said Mr Begg how do you come to make such an infernal fool of yourself as this Smithers Smithers was now well alight kindly understand once for all that there are some expressions I don't permit to be used to me by any man Mr Begg gazed at Smithers pensively through his eyeglass and sighed get out, he said I'll finish with you tomorrow morning you may be sober by then get out, go on Smithers got out and a slight chill fell on him possibly he had gone too far he was unusually civil to his wife at supper that night and appeared somewhat preoccupied after supper he asked his wife what she thought of Klondike I wouldn't care to have much to do with it why? well, I had a few words with Begg today Peter Begg, the old one it happened but something I said seemed to sting him rather I can't say how well it will end I was good as promised to see him again tomorrow morning but he may not meet my views and you know it is when either the senior partners got to go or the bookkeeper you apologize and asked to be took on again said Mrs Smithers going right through the elegancies of her husband's version and getting straight down to the bedrock facts that's what you'll do if you're not silly, you don't want to lose a good place I don't know said Smithers with an air of melancholy same old drudgery day after day and what's it all come to nothing, I might strike it if we went to Klondike you aren't going to know Klondike said Mrs Smithers I'm not sure it wouldn't be the right life for me I'm a natural man of action I do the bookkeeping well enough but adventures and emergencies are more my line you remember what the magistrate said when? I remember how drunk you were that night little you know said Smithers though conscious that the retort was somewhat vague and after some meditation he managed to supplement it as follows and little you care either top button's been off my waistcoat for the last four days you've got a tongue in your head to ask with haven't you give it here and don't grumble and a little later Alfred Smithers with a distinct chill on the heroism went up to bed more distinct when in the small hours of the morning Mrs Smithers shook him by the shoulder awoke him, told him that there was a burger in the kitchen and asked him to go down in the small hours of the morning one's vitality is low part three they'd been unable to get any satisfactory sleep after the disturbance and they breakfasted early Mrs Smithers looked amused Alfred Smithers looked conciliatory I want you to understand how it was I understand it all right and how my poor size to hate with laughing lock our door as quietly as you can you says and don't make a sound you says for you says if he knows we've discovered him he'll have the lies of both of us sounds funnier still when it's said over again by daylight oh my poor size and even then Alfred Smithers did not become rebellious on the contrary in mirthless and subservient way he smiled I'm quite willing to own I blundered what seems now a rather funny way but it wasn't in the way you think my dear my dear Agnes it really wasn't tell your own story said Mrs Smithers with a victor's easiness I was awoke sudden said Smithers I don't suppose I was more than half awake which accounts for the error of judgement I'm a man and not a machine we all blunder at times I own I made a mistake and I can afford to laugh at it he managed to jerk up another semblance of a smile and I said that what you heard was a rat and what you'd seen was a shadow then when you made me look through the corner of the blind and I saw the end of the man's leg drawn inwardly through the downstairs window I, being half asleep suppose there is a regular professional burglar and if it had been that my advice would have been correct professional burglars carry revolvers in their it pockets and they'll shoot anybody police or any man to destroy evidence against them very well what good was I against an armed burglar full hardiness isn't courage if you knew life as I know it you'd realise that you didn't agree with my ideas and I was half asleep I own you were right you said Mrs Smithers took up the story triumphantly I said it was stuff and nonsense and so it was burglars don't come to a penny-farthing place like this and if they did they wouldn't wake up the house opening a window and a supper to deaden the sound of the spring when it comes back Smithers recovered himself sufficiently to ask how they put in the two drops of oil and the wad of paper how should I know, not being a burglar myself anyhow I was right I said it was just some tramp new to the business and hungry for a supper and that he'd bolt as soon as he heard anybody moving and didn't he yes, said Smithers, he did I was just thinking of getting out of bed and following you down the stairs the door opened and was out of the house before you were half way down that's my point, it was an error of judgment on my part, not a want of courage it's a mercy, he had no time to take much well he got the cold beef out and precious little he had left of that the bottle of beer he knocked over and broke in his hurry the only thing he actually got away with was that uh, that medal at this point Mrs Smithers' face became dark and inscrutable pity, she added we shall miss it too with that inscription for gallantry and courage presented by a few admirers of Alfred Smithers but you'll inquire of the police of course and as likely as not you'll get it back I believe I was right in saying you ought to have gone to the police there and then I believe you were said Alfred with alacrity it's no good going now for the medals certain to be in the melting pot besides, I've no fancy for having the police interfering with my private business and I think it would be just as well if we neither of us said a word about it oh, I must tell Mrs Warboys said Mrs Smithers I wouldn't miss seeing her laugh over that story were it ever so as for poor Mrs Push when I come to the part when I put your boots on my feet because you'll squeak louder and you'd got your head under the bed clothes and I said oh look here said Alfred desperately I do wish you wouldn't I'd really much rather not it isn't often I ask for anything particular but if that story's told it's almost certain to be taken up in the wrong way as far as it concerns me, I made a blunder and I've lost me medal, ain't that enough for you then you've given up on the Klondike idea, observed Mrs Smithers with more consecutiveness than was immediately apparent certainly, oh certainly, it was just a wandering notion that wouldn't stand thinking over and I shall smooth old Peter Begg down alright with a little give and take compromise on both sides it only wants tactful handling Garson and Begg have been very good friends to me and I'm not going to throw them over I couldn't do that even if you asked it I don't ask it, said Mrs Smithers dryly, get that fix right by tonight and I won't say nothing on his way to the city he reflected that it would indeed require tact however he entered Mr Begg's room and did his best I've come, he said very humbly for the way I spoke yesterday as you saw I wasn't myself sir then you were a drunk said Mr Begg with mild interest, oh no sir at least I was more drugged I'd suffered torments all day with toothache and took a little lordenum for it and that made me come over all anyhow if I'd been myself I'd sooner have cut off my right hand that'll do, said Mr Begg no more need be said about it in that case but when you are troubled with toothache again I should advise you either to take a little less lordenum or to take a good deal more now get on with your work thus tact triumphed Mrs Smithers kept a word and Mrs Warboys and the relict of the late Charles Push have missed the story which would undoubtedly have amused them Smithers has returned to his natural role the newspaper cuttings have been replaced by a chromo which happened to fit the frame exactly and the happiness is general End of Section 9 Section 10 of Here and Hereafter by Barry Payne this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Here and Hereafter by Barry Payne some notes on Cyrus Verde the name of Cyrus Verde once so frequently seen in the newspapers and heard in conversation has now for many years past been rarely mentioned the absolute retirement of the latter part of his life helped the public always ready to forget to forget him a few weeks ago at the club I happened to say something rather about him and a man who, as a rule, knows his world turned to me and asked who Cyrus Verde was the obituary notice of him in the Times the other day may possibly have revived interest in what was really rather an extraordinary personality but the notice was brief and beyond names and dates said little more than that he was an eccentric millionaire who, at the age of 45 chose to surrender almost the whole of his wealth and live a life of comparative poverty it is said that this step was the result of some curious religious convictions but Cyrus Verde himself never in his lifetime offered any explanation of it the few notes which I propose to add including as they do a personal reminiscence of the man may possibly be of interest a writer of fiction constantly arranges his problem to suit his solution of it it is perhaps beneficial, though somewhat humiliating that he should occasionally turn his attention to the problems that real life sets him and see how much more difficult it is to find the solution then Cyrus Verde came to England in his 34th year at an age at which many men are only at the commencement of their career he had already made his fortune I cannot say exactly how rich he was many newspaper paragraphs at the time gave estimates of his annual income all different I should say that the only man who really knew was Cyrus Verde himself he owned steamships railways, factories, mines and enough land for a small nation on his arrival in London many stories were told of his extravagance and eccentricity he was debating where he should reside and a friend suggested that he should take or build a house in Park Lane where is Park Lane? our Cyrus Verde he had been only two days in London runs along the east side of Hyde Park in the most fashionable quarter your coachman would know it Verde went to look at it and returned yes, he said it would be a fair sight for a house one house but there seems to be some brick tenements there of some sort or other already I suppose I could get those cleared away he made the attempt and was very angry at first when he found that he could not get those cleared away but he soon grew more philosophical your people he observed cling to their little homes I guess he was always much disappointed at first if he found there was anything which he could not buy he went over the National Gallery alone one morning he was a judge of pictures and occasionally put a pencil cross on his catalogue when he got downstairs again he said to the man who handed him his umbrella my name's Cyrus Verde I'm at the Metropole, write that down send me round the things I've marked to my list and my secretary will hand you the check this story was much exaggerated in the newspapers it was said that he had offered to buy the entire National Gallery building an all, as it stood whether or not there was any truth in the report which appeared about the same time to the effect that he had endeavored to buy the crown jewels but as far as I can judge his character it does not seem impossible at the same time it would be rash to attempt to judge his character only from such reports as these the secretary of a well known charitable institution made that mistake he wrote to us for a donation to the institution and guaranteed that it should be acknowledged by public advertisement in four of the leading dailies Cyrus Verde wrote back that he had much pleasure in accepting the offer and enclosed four pence in stamps the acknowledgement appeared as promised and once more made Cyrus Verde a common topic of conversation but one of the strangest things that he did never got into the newspapers at all he left, intentionally ten pounds in gold on the seat of a railway carriage on the following day he inquired at the lost property office if the money had been brought back he was told, with a smile that it had not been brought back and that there was no earthly probability that it ever would be he repeated the experiment and again failed to recover the money he repeated it twenty times on different lines and at last a carriage cleaner found the money and brought it back Cyrus Verde took the name and address of that carriage cleaner made inquiries about him and then sent for him I don't see why I should reward you at all it's the company's business you're their servant and such actions as yours increase the feelings of security and confidence in their passengers are you suited to a better position than you've got? yes I am, said the man I'm a steady man and I have a talent for figures I'm known for it among my mates call on the chairman of directors here's his private address give him my card, explain the circumstances and tell him from me that he's to put you in a position of trust with at least three times your present wages the man came back to say that the chairman had laughed at him had said that he was not the man to whom the application should have been made and that there was no chance of it being entertained in any case I must go and see him myself then said Cyrus Verde the chairman was not in a very good temper really Mr. Verde you'll be asking me to carry your luggage next it's no part of my duties as chairman of the directors to undertake business of this kind what that man ought to have done he did what I told him you can get this put through if you like will you frankly I won't it creates a precedent it one moment sir if you'll have a copy of Bradshaw brought in here I'll show you something now the chairman knew that Cyrus Verde was eccentric and so he was not surprised he did not respect eccentricity but he respected capital and he knew that Cyrus Verde had already thanks to his capital he had little games with railway companies so he rang the bell and a Bradshaw was brought when the servant had gone Verde drew a penny blue chalk pencil from his pocket he opened the Bradshaw unfolded the map and without saying a word made certain marks upon it the chairman watched him closely and his face changed who's going to do it he gasped then he repented as a man does repent when he has given himself away parliament he said that's all right remarked Cyrus Verde replacing his blue pencil I've asked they dare not block it it wouldn't pay the chairman said with an effort at the careless smile that matters only to the man who runs it either way it would wreck your line and you as my time here is short don't pretend that it wouldn't because of course I know that you know that it would am I to understand said the chairman angrily here to threaten me with this new line well I was talking about a carriage cleaner I want him rewarded I want it done right away when I want anything done I don't tell myself that I won't spend more than a couple of millions on getting it done men like you ought not to be allowed to live I tell you that plainly Mr. Verde there are no men like me good afternoon then oh wait wait there's to be rewarded only these things must be done in the regular way if he will write to I'm going to know underlings said Cyrus Verde and I'm in a hurry next time I mark that map those marks will stop there the chairman seems suddenly to recollect something what was this about a carriage cleaner oh yes it's irregular but naturally you wouldn't understand I'll see about it myself when days weeks then it shan't be days it shall be within six hours a position of trust and three times his present wages within six hours the way you talk makes me tired if you know enough to come in when it rains I guess you'll drop this argument the chairman did drop it and that same night the carriage cleaner received the official intimation of his promotion Cyrus Verde was young, fabulously wealthy married he was a tall, broad-shouldered man he was not exactly handsome but he had that look of power which, in the eyes of women, does just as well when he first came over he was the hope of many noble matrons with unmarried daughters he afterwards became their despair and this was in consequence of his marriage with Anna Folks a woman who had neither wealth nor high position she'd been a governess she was remarkably beautiful and somewhat discounted by the fact that she had or was said to have a trace of negro blood in her veins when this marriage was announced a certain noble matron said a cruel thing to Cyrus Verde she congratulated him sardonically on having no racial prejudices I shall remember your kind words, Countess he said pleasantly within a year the Countess was a ruined woman evidence came to her husband's knowledge which led him to divorce her this terrible fall was closely followed by the loss of a part of her private income she was left without a friend in the world and with much reduced means a disgraced woman there were some who said that Cyrus Verde had remembered those kind words but if he was responsible for her exposure and ruin he was careful not to let any evidence of his actions appear it was seven years after his marriage that as the times of bichery states he gave up almost the whole of his property he prepared a long list of relations and friends of himself and of his wife and of certain charitable and religious institutions in which they were interested he reserved for himself an annual income of five hundred pounds only which to a man who had lived as a millionaire for years would be abject poverty the remainder was divided among these relations, friends and institutions and made over to them by deed of gift of course many people said that he was mad if he was his wife was mad also for the step that he took was planned by him with her and she fully agreed to it personally I do not think he was mad I had expected him to take that step and I think I could produce evidence that in a private letter I actually foretold it for it happened by chance that I came upon him when he was in the enjoyment of what he called his annual holiday and it was significant it was in an out of the way Welsh village one year before his marriage I was stopping there because it was out of the way chiefly I had some work to do Cyrus Bird was there in a caravan and he was masquerading he was H. Jackson photographer a travelling photographer in a very small way of business with showcases of fly blown photographs of posed rustics affixed to the outside of his caravan he wore a shabby surge suit much stained with chemicals and a soft felt hat he had not attempted to disguise his face he had never allowed any portrait of himself to appear in any illustrated paper shop window or public gallery and probably considered himself safe from recognition but I had once been in the same drawing room with Cyrus Bird and he had been pointed out to me he was not a man who could easily be forgotten I never had the least doubt that the shabby man who stood touting for custom outside that caravan was Cyrus Bird I allowed him to photograph me I remembered that the price was seven shillings and six wints for a dozen and that he bothered me to take two dozen for fourteen shillings no thanks Mr. Bird, I said he seemed to reflect for a moment and then he asked me how I knew I told him where I had met him it's my only enjoyment, he said you won't spoil it everybody thinks I'm yachting I won't spoil it, I said always if you cared so much about it no, I couldn't thank you, I am obliged to you alright, I said, good morning and I moved off he called me back again you'll excuse me, he said but you've not paid for those photographs you haven't printed them yet my rule is that payment must be made at the time of sitting well, I won't pay for a thing until I get it we squabbled about it and finally came to a compromise after abruptly, he asked me to come to supper with him that night and I warned you, he said but I live solely on what I make by this photographic business of course, I went we had supper in the caravan it consisted of chops and potatoes which Cyrus Verde cooked he cooked better than he photographed we drank beer which Verde had fetched from the public house in a jug he had no servant with him and did everything for himself to supper it's very pretty, I said but it's play-acting, it's not genuine it's absolutely genuine I tell you that I love simplicity had I my choice I would always go on like this and like the work too in this little village I've already picked up enough orders to keep me busy for a week every year I have a month of this and I look forward to it as I look forward to nothing else do you think that this sort of thing proves that you love simplicity it proves the absolute contrary that you love variety no one is compelled to live the life of a rich man against his will if you live that life for 11 months in the year and the life of a poor man for one month you like to be rich 11 times as much as you like to be poor what you say, he said sounds plausible but you don't know the circumstances I am sorry I cannot offer you a cigar H, Jackson photographer cannot afford to smoke cigars I have my own case here I said I selected a cigar, lit it put the case back in my pocket and watched Cyrus Verde the fragrance reached him he grew uneasy he rose and began to put the supper things away in silence shall I help you, I asked no, he said snappishly he held out for about 5 minutes he said give me one of those cigars he opened the case with trembling hands and took no notice of my amusement at first when his cigar was lit and the first sigh of satisfaction was over he appeared aggrieved and asked me what I was laughing at go back and be a millionaire I said you dress this part well and glancing round the caravan it's very correctly staged but you make the feeblest H Jackson that's the British drama listen, he said eagerly H Jackson is a poor man as a rule he smokes cheap shag in a clay a gentleman comes along and offers him a cigar H Jackson jumps at the treat of course where is the inconsistency I didn't offer you a cigar you asked for it Cyrus Verde could do that but H Jackson could not I have half a mind to pitch your beastly cigar out of the window but he did not he smoked that and others and talked delightfully he had a fine sense of humour and was willing enough to laugh at himself as a millionaire but in the character of H Jackson he had an ardent belief in himself and a strong desire to be taken seriously after that, for a week we always spent the evenings together gradually I guessed at the circumstances to which he had alluded near to the village was the country seat of a baronet the folks was governess to his children and Cyrus Verde was in love with Anna folks he had met her in the same place a year before she and I knew who he really was but no one else in the village did her method of procedure was simple on the arrival of H Jackson she took the baronet's children to be photographed afterwards she called every day to see if the photographs were finished he was in fact engaged with her before the night on which I first had supper with him a week after my return to town I got a note from Cyrus Verde asking me to dine with him and assist at the funeral of H Jackson I accepted we were alone and the dinner was ridiculously magnificent I congratulated him on his engagement which that morning had been made public he seemed in the best of spirits after dinner he said I'm going to explain the death of H Jackson money has power and the novelty of possession is attractive but any other kind of power is better worthwhile and the novelty ceases also I observed time flies and one must not judge by appearances yes I quite understand what you would imply I'm talking platitudes I guess if the platitude happens to be the truth that doesn't matter the actual enjoyment to be obtained from money must soon go and can only be renewed in the enjoyment of another a marry a poor woman who has worked in a subservient position in her enjoyment I shall enjoy again wealth and the parrot gives will be so new and attractive to her that I may safely calculate on a fair period of very decent second hand enjoyment consequently H Jackson may die wait I said your wife's enjoyment will cease in the end and yours with it what then special gift for enjoying wealth forever he said meditatively but you're right miss folks has not that gift then then there will be a revival of H Jackson or something very like it perhaps in a less crude form this practically ended my acquaintance with Cyrus Verde at first I still saw him occasionally but I could not afford to know millionaires and told him so afterwards at the time when he renounced his wealth I was away from England I can see of course that a practiced author might make something of a character a consistent whole out of Cyrus Verde I only give notes of what came to my knowledge and confess that I have not the imagination requisite to connect them supplement them and give them that air of probability which is always found in the best fiction and so seldom in real life end of section 10