Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson

by Robert Louis Stevenson

  ‘If you are not mad, it was no conduct at all,’ cried the girl, with a flash of colour, ‘and showed you did not care one penny for my feelings!’

  ‘This is the very devil and all. I know — I admit that,’ cried Gideon, with a great effort of manly candour.

  ‘It was abominable conduct!’ said Julia, with energy.

  ‘I know it must have shaken your esteem,’ said the barrister. ‘But, dearest Miss Hazeltine, I beg of you to hear me out; my behaviour, strange as it may seem, is not unsusceptible of explanation; and I positively cannot and will not consent to continue to try to exist without — without the esteem of one whom I admire — the moment is ill chosen, I am well aware of that; but I repeat the expression — one whom I admire.’

  A touch of amusement appeared on Miss Hazeltine’s face. ‘Very well,’ said she, ‘come out of this dreadfully cold place, and let us sit down on deck.’ The barrister dolefully followed her. ‘Now,’ said she, making herself comfortable against the end of the house, ‘go on. I will hear you out.’ And then, seeing him stand before her with so much obvious disrelish to the task, she was suddenly overcome with laughter. Julia’s laugh was a thing to ravish lovers; she rolled her mirthful descant with the freedom and the melody of a blackbird’s song upon the river, and repeated by the echoes of the farther bank. It seemed a thing in its own place and a sound native to the open air. There was only one creature who heard it without joy, and that was her unfortunate admirer.

  ‘Miss Hazeltine,’ he said, in a voice that tottered with annoyance, ‘I speak as your sincere well-wisher, but this can only be called levity.’

  Julia made great eyes at him.

  ‘I can’t withdraw the word,’ he said: ‘already the freedom with which I heard you hobnobbing with a boatman gave me exquisite pain. Then there was a want of reserve about Jimson—’

  ‘But Jimson appears to be yourself,’ objected Julia.

  ‘I am far from denying that,’ cried the barrister, ‘but you did not know it at the time. What could Jimson be to you? Who was Jimson? Miss Hazeltine, it cut me to the heart.’

  ‘Really this seems to me to be very silly,’ returned Julia, with severe decision. ‘You have behaved in the most extraordinary manner; you pretend you are able to explain your conduct, and instead of doing so you begin to attack me.’

  ‘I am well aware of that,’ replied Gideon. ‘I — I will make a clean breast of it. When you know all the circumstances you will be able to excuse me.

  And sitting down beside her on the deck, he poured forth his miserable history.

  ‘O, Mr Forsyth,’ she cried, when he had done, ‘I am — so — sorry! wish I hadn’t laughed at you — only you know you really were so exceedingly funny. But I wish I hadn’t, and I wouldn’t either if I had only known.’ And she gave him her hand.

  Gideon kept it in his own. ‘You do not think the worse of me for this?’ he asked tenderly.

  ‘Because you have been so silly and got into such dreadful trouble? you poor boy, no!’ cried Julia; and, in the warmth of the moment, reached him her other hand; ‘you may count on me,’ she added.

  ‘Really?’ said Gideon.

  ‘Really and really!’ replied the girl.

  ‘I do then, and I will,’ cried the young man. ‘I admit the moment is not well chosen; but I have no friends — to speak of.’

  ‘No more have I,’ said Julia. ‘But don’t you think it’s perhaps time you gave me back my hands?’

  ‘La ci darem la mano,’ said the barrister, ‘the merest moment more! I have so few friends,’ he added.

  ‘I thought it was considered such a bad account of a young man to have no friends,’ observed Julia.

  ‘O, but I have crowds of FRIENDS!’ cried Gideon. ‘That’s not what I mean. I feel the moment is ill chosen; but O, Julia, if you could only see yourself!’

  ‘Mr Forsyth—’

  ‘Don’t call me by that beastly name!’ cried the youth. ‘Call me Gideon!’

  ‘O, never that,’ from Julia. ‘Besides, we have known each other such a short time.’

  ‘Not at all!’ protested Gideon. ‘We met at Bournemouth ever so long ago. I never forgot you since. Say you never forgot me. Say you never forgot me, and call me Gideon!’

  ‘Isn’t this rather — a want of reserve about Jimson?’ enquired the girl.

  ‘O, I know I am an ass,’ cried the barrister, ‘and I don’t care a halfpenny! I know I’m an ass, and you may laugh at me to your heart’s delight.’ And as Julia’s lips opened with a smile, he once more dropped into music. ‘There’s the Land of Cherry Isle!’ he sang, courting her with his eyes.

  ‘It’s like an opera,’ said Julia, rather faintly.

  ‘What should it be?’ said Gideon. ‘Am I not Jimson? It would be strange if I did not serenade my love. O yes, I mean the word, my Julia; and I mean to win you. I am in dreadful trouble, and I have not a penny of my own, and I have cut the silliest figure; and yet I mean to win you, Julia. Look at me, if you can, and tell me no!’

  She looked at him; and whatever her eyes may have told him, it is to be supposed he took a pleasure in the message, for he read it a long while.

  ‘And Uncle Ned will give us some money to go on upon in the meanwhile,’ he said at last.

  ‘Well, I call that cool!’ said a cheerful voice at his elbow.

  Gideon and Julia sprang apart with wonderful alacrity; the latter annoyed to observe that although they had never moved since they sat down, they were now quite close together; both presenting faces of a very heightened colour to the eyes of Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield. That gentleman, coming up the river in his boat, had captured the truant canoe, and divining what had happened, had thought to steal a march upon Miss Hazeltine at her sketch. He had unexpectedly brought down two birds with one stone; and as he looked upon the pair of flushed and breathless culprits, the pleasant human instinct of the matchmaker softened his heart.

  ‘Well, I call that cool,’ he repeated; ‘you seem to count very securely upon Uncle Ned. But look here, Gid, I thought I had told you to keep away?’

  ‘To keep away from Maidenhead,’ replied Gid. ‘But how should I expect to find you here?’

  ‘There is something in that,’ Mr Bloomfield admitted. ‘You see I thought it better that even you should be ignorant of my address; those rascals, the Finsburys, would have wormed it out of you. And just to put them off the scent I hoisted these abominable colours. But that is not all, Gid; you promised me to work, and here I find you playing the fool at Padwick.’

  ‘Please, Mr Bloomfield, you must not be hard on Mr Forsyth,’ said Julia. ‘Poor boy, he is in dreadful straits.’

  ‘What’s this, Gid?’ enquired the uncle. ‘Have you been fighting? or is it a bill?’

  These, in the opinion of the Squirradical, were the two misfortunes incident to gentlemen; and indeed both were culled from his own career. He had once put his name (as a matter of form) on a friend’s paper; it had cost him a cool thousand; and the friend had gone about with the fear of death upon him ever since, and never turned a corner without scouting in front of him for Mr Bloomfield and the oaken staff. As for fighting, the Squirradical was always on the brink of it; and once, when (in the character of president of a Radical club) he had cleared out the hall of his opponents, things had gone even further. Mr Holtum, the Conservative candidate, who lay so long on the bed of sickness, was prepared to swear to Mr Bloomfield. ‘I will swear to it in any court — it was the hand of that brute that struck me down,’ he was reported to have said; and when he was thought to be sinking, it was known that he had made an ante-mortem statement in that sense. It was a cheerful day for the Squirradical when Holtum was restored to his brewery.

  ‘It’s much worse than that,’ said Gideon; ‘a combination of circumstances really providentially unjust — a — in fact, a syndicate of murderers seem to have perceived my latent ability to rid them of the traces of their crime. It’s a legal study after all, you see!’ And with these words,
Gideon, for the second time that day, began to describe the adventures of the Broadwood Grand.

  ‘I must write to The Times,’ cried Mr Bloomfield.

  ‘Do you want to get me disbarred?’ asked Gideon.

  ‘Disbarred! Come, it can’t be as bad as that,’ said his uncle. ‘It’s a good, honest, Liberal Government that’s in, and they would certainly move at my request. Thank God, the days of Tory jobbery are at an end.’

  ‘It wouldn’t do, Uncle Ned,’ said Gideon.

  ‘But you’re not mad enough,’ cried Mr Bloomfield, ‘to persist in trying to dispose of it yourself?’

  ‘There is no other path open to me,’ said Gideon.

  ‘It’s not common sense, and I will not hear of it,’ cried Mr Bloomfield. ‘I command you, positively, Gid, to desist from this criminal interference.’

  ‘Very well, then, I hand it over to you,’ said Gideon, ‘and you can do what you like with the dead body.’

  ‘God forbid!’ ejaculated the president of the Radical Club, ‘I’ll have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Then you must allow me to do the best I can,’ returned his nephew. ‘Believe me, I have a distinct talent for this sort of difficulty.’

  ‘We might forward it to that pest-house, the Conservative Club,’ observed Mr Bloomfield. ‘It might damage them in the eyes of their constituents; and it could be profitably worked up in the local journal.’

  ‘If you see any political capital in the thing,’ said Gideon, ‘you may have it for me.’

  ‘No, no, Gid — no, no, I thought you might. I will have no hand in the thing. On reflection, it’s highly undesirable that either I or Miss Hazeltine should linger here. We might be observed,’ said the president, looking up and down the river; ‘and in my public position the consequences would be painful for the party. And, at any rate, it’s dinner-time.’

  ‘What?’ cried Gideon, plunging for his watch. ‘And so it is! Great heaven, the piano should have been here hours ago!’

  Mr Bloomfield was clambering back into his boat; but at these words he paused.

  ‘I saw it arrive myself at the station; I hired a carrier man; he had a round to make, but he was to be here by four at the latest,’ cried the barrister. ‘No doubt the piano is open, and the body found.’

  ‘You must fly at once,’ cried Mr Bloomfield, ‘it’s the only manly step.’

  ‘But suppose it’s all right?’ wailed Gideon. ‘Suppose the piano comes, and I am not here to receive it? I shall have hanged myself by my cowardice. No, Uncle Ned, enquiries must be made in Padwick; I dare not go, of course; but you may — you could hang about the police office, don’t you see?’

  ‘No, Gid — no, my dear nephew,’ said Mr Bloomfield, with the voice of one on the rack. ‘I regard you with the most sacred affection; and I thank God I am an Englishman — and all that. But not — not the police, Gid.’

  ‘Then you desert me?’ said Gideon. ‘Say it plainly.’

  ‘Far from it! far from it!’ protested Mr Bloomfield. ‘I only propose caution. Common sense, Gid, should always be an Englishman’s guide.’

  ‘Will you let me speak?’ said Julia. ‘I think Gideon had better leave this dreadful houseboat, and wait among the willows over there. If the piano comes, then he could step out and take it in; and if the police come, he could slip into our houseboat, and there needn’t be any more Jimson at all. He could go to bed, and we could burn his clothes (couldn’t we?) in the steam-launch; and then really it seems as if it would be all right. Mr Bloomfield is so respectable, you know, and such a leading character, it would be quite impossible even to fancy that he could be mixed up with it.’

  ‘This young lady has strong common sense,’ said the Squirradical.

  ‘O, I don’t think I’m at all a fool,’ said Julia, with conviction.

  ‘But what if neither of them come?’ asked Gideon; ‘what shall I do then?’

  ‘Why then,’ said she, ‘you had better go down to the village after dark; and I can go with you, and then I am sure you could never be suspected; and even if you were, I could tell them it was altogether a mistake.’

  ‘I will not permit that — I will not suffer Miss Hazeltine to go,’ cried Mr Bloomfield.

  ‘Why?’ asked Julia.

  Mr Bloomfield had not the least desire to tell her why, for it was simply a craven fear of being drawn himself into the imbroglio; but with the usual tactics of a man who is ashamed of himself, he took the high hand. ‘God forbid, my dear Miss Hazeltine, that I should dictate to a lady on the question of propriety—’ he began.

  ‘O, is that all?’ interrupted Julia. ‘Then we must go all three.’

  ‘Caught!’ thought the Squirradical.

  CHAPTER XII. Positively the Last Appearance of the Broadwood Grand

  England is supposed to be unmusical; but without dwelling on the patronage extended to the organ-grinder, without seeking to found any argument on the prevalence of the jew’s trump, there is surely one instrument that may be said to be national in the fullest acceptance of the word. The herdboy in the broom, already musical in the days of Father Chaucer, startles (and perhaps pains) the lark with this exiguous pipe; and in the hands of the skilled bricklayer,

  ‘The thing becomes a trumpet, whence he blows’

  (as a general rule) either ‘The British Grenadiers’ or ‘Cherry Ripe’. The latter air is indeed the shibboleth and diploma piece of the penny whistler; I hazard a guess it was originally composed for this instrument. It is singular enough that a man should be able to gain a livelihood, or even to tide over a period of unemployment, by the display of his proficiency upon the penny whistle; still more so, that the professional should almost invariably confine himself to ‘Cherry Ripe’. But indeed, singularities surround the subject, thick like blackberries. Why, for instance, should the pipe be called a penny whistle? I think no one ever bought it for a penny. Why should the alternative name be tin whistle? I am grossly deceived if it be made of tin. Lastly, in what deaf catacomb, in what earless desert, does the beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship? We have all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps alarmed by the works of Mr Mallock) defends human hearing from his first attempts upon the upper octave.

  A really noteworthy thing was taking place in a green lane, not far from Padwick. On the bench of a carrier’s cart there sat a tow-headed, lanky, modest-looking youth; the reins were on his lap; the whip lay behind him in the interior of the cart; the horse proceeded without guidance or encouragement; the carrier (or the carrier’s man), rapt into a higher sphere than that of his daily occupations, his looks dwelling on the skies, devoted himself wholly to a brand-new D penny whistle, whence he diffidently endeavoured to elicit that pleasing melody ‘The Ploughboy’. To any observant person who should have chanced to saunter in that lane, the hour would have been thrilling. ‘Here at last,’ he would have said, ‘is the beginner.’

  The tow-headed youth (whose name was Harker) had just encored himself for the nineteenth time, when he was struck into the extreme of confusion by the discovery that he was not alone.

  ‘There you have it!’ cried a manly voice from the side of the road.

  ‘That’s as good as I want to hear. Perhaps a leetle oilier in the run,’ the voice suggested, with meditative gusto. ‘Give it us again.’

  Harker glanced, from the depths of his humiliation, at the speaker. He beheld a powerful, sun-brown, clean-shaven fellow, about forty years of age, striding beside the cart with a non-commissioned military bearing, and (as he strode) spinning in the air a cane. The fellow’s clothes were very bad, but he looked clean and self-reliant.

  ‘I’m only a beginner,’ gasped the blushing Harker, ‘I didn’t think anybody could hear me.’

  ‘Well, I like that!’ returned the other. ‘You’re a pretty old beginner. Come, I’ll
give you a lead myself. Give us a seat here beside you.’

  The next moment the military gentleman was perched on the cart, pipe in hand. He gave the instrument a knowing rattle on the shaft, mouthed it, appeared to commune for a moment with the muse, and dashed into ‘The girl I left behind me’. He was a great, rather than a fine, performer; he lacked the bird-like richness; he could scarce have extracted all the honey out of ‘Cherry Ripe’; he did not fear — he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy — a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow stood without a rival. Harker listened: ‘The girl I left behind me’ filled him with despair; ‘The Soldier’s Joy’ carried him beyond jealousy into generous enthusiasm.

  ‘Turn about,’ said the military gentleman, offering the pipe.

  ‘O, not after you!’ cried Harker; ‘you’re a professional.’

  ‘No,’ said his companion; ‘an amatyure like yourself. That’s one style of play, yours is the other, and I like it best. But I began when I was a boy, you see, before my taste was formed. When you’re my age you’ll play that thing like a cornet-a-piston. Give us that air again; how does it go?’ and he affected to endeavour to recall ‘The Ploughboy’.

  A timid, insane hope sprang in the breast of Harker. Was it possible? Was there something in his playing? It had, indeed, seemed to him at times as if he got a kind of a richness out of it. Was he a genius? Meantime the military gentleman stumbled over the air.

  ‘No,’ said the unhappy Harker, ‘that’s not quite it. It goes this way — just to show you.’

  And, taking the pipe between his lips, he sealed his doom. When he had played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when the military gentleman had tried it once more, and once more failed; when it became clear to Harker that he, the blushing debutant, was actually giving a lesson to this full-grown flutist — and the flutist under his care was not very brilliantly progressing — how am I to tell what floods of glory brightened the autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an amateur himself, describe the heights of idiotic vanity to which the carrier climbed? One significant fact shall paint the situation: thenceforth it was Harker who played, and the military gentleman listened and approved.