by Grant Allen
“Yes, sir — r — r; at fifteen they took me to New York and got my eyes couched there. As soon as ever I could see, I began to learn more things still with the tips of my fingers; my eyes sort of helped me to interpret what I felt with them. Pretty soon I saw there was money in this thing. People in Colorado didn’t care to play poker with me; they found out I’d a wonderful notion what was printed on a card by just drawing my finger, like this, over the face of it. I see you’re a straight man, and haven’t got many prejudices; so I don’t mind telling you now my first idea was to go in for handling the cards as a profession. However, I soon caught on that that wasn’t a good game; people in our section observed how I worked it, and it was apt to lead in the end to bowies and other unpleasantness. Several unpleasantnesses occurred, in fact, in Denver City, before I retired from that branch of the business. So then I began to reflect this thought-reading trick would come in more handy; one might do a bit at the cards now and again for a change; but if one tried it too often, it might land one at last in free quarters at the public expense; and the thought-reading’s safer and more gentlemanly any way. So I worked at learning to read, as time afforded, till I could read a printed book as easy with my fingers as I could read it with my eyes. It took me ten years, I guess, to bring that trick to perfection.”
“You made us write with a pencil, I noticed,” Florian interposed, with a knowing smile. “That’s easier to read, of course, for a pencil digs in so.”
The Seer regarded him with no small admiration. “You’re a smart man, and no mistake, sir,” he answered, emphatically. “That’s just how I do it. I read it from the back, where it’s raised into furrows, in relief as it were, by the digging-in; I read it backwards. I gave ’em each a pad with the paper, you may have noticed. That pad supplies just the right amount of resistance. I had to stop once or twice to-night, where I couldn’t read a sentence, and fill in the space meanwhile with a little bit of patter about concentrating their thoughts upon it, and that sort of nonsense. Mrs Sartoris’s hand was precious hard to decipher, and there was one young lady who pressed so light, she almost licked me.”
“And the envelopes?” Florian asked once more.
The Seer smiled disdainfully. “Why, that’s nothing,” he answered, with a contemptuous curl of the lip. “Any fool could do that; it’s as easy as lying. The lower side-flap of the envelopes is hardly fastened at all, with just a pin’s head of gum,” — he drew one from his pocket — ”See here,” he said; “it’s got a bit left dry to wet and fasten afterwards. I draw out the paper, so, and read it with my finger; then I push it back, gum down again, and pull out the next one. It’s the rapidity that tells, and it’s that that takes so many years of practice.”
“But Browning’s Cleon?” Florian exclaimed. “And Sir Henry Martindale’s having learnt the Russian character in the Crimea? He told me it was there he picked it up himself. How on earth did you get at those, now?”
The Seer stretched out his legs with a self-satisfied smirk, and took a pull at his whiskey. “See here, my dear sir,” he said, stroking his smooth chin placidly; “a man don’t succeed in these walks of life unless he’s got some nous in him to start with. He’s bound to observe, and remember, and infer, a good deal; he’s bound to have an eye for character, and be a reader of faces. Now, it happens you wrote those self-same lines in Mrs Palmer’s album; and I chanced to read them there while I waited for her in the drawing-room this very morning. A man’s got to be smart, you bet, and look out for coincidences, if he’s going to do much in occult science to astonish the public. Well, I’ve noticed every one has certain pet quotations of his own, which he uses frequently; and you’d be surprised to find how often the same quotation turns up, time after time, in these psychical experiments. ‘The curfew tolls the knell,’ or, ‘Not a drum was heard,’ are pretty sure to be given six times out of seven that one holds a séance. But yours was a new one; so I learnt it by heart, and observed you set it down to Browning’s Cleon. As for the Russian character — well, where was an English officer likely to learn it except in the Crimea? That was risky, of course; I might have been mistaken; but one bad shot don’t count against you, while a good one carries conviction straight off to the mind of your subject.”
Florian paused, and considered. Before the end of the evening, indeed, he had learnt a good many things about the trade of prophet; and Mr Joaquin Holmes had taken, incidentally, every drop as much whiskey as was good for his constitution. When at last he rose to go, he clasped Florian’s delicate hand hard. “You’re a straight man, I believe, stranger,” he said, significantly, “and I’m sure you’re a smart one. But mind this from me, Mr Florian Wood, if ever you round on me, Colorado or London, the six-shooter’ll settle it.”
Florian smiled, and pressed his hand. “I don’t care that for your six-shooter,” he answered, calmly, with a resonant snap of his tiny left forefinger. “But I don’t want to spoil a man’s prospects in life, when he’s taken fifteen years to make a consummate rogue of himself. You’re perfect in your way, Mr Holmes, and I adore perfection. If ever I breathe a single word of this to my dearest friend — well, I give you free leave to whip out that six-shooter you’re so fond of bragging about.”
CHAPTER XXV
A DRAMATIC VENTURE
Among the minor successes of that London season, all the world reckoned the Colorado Seer’s Psycho-physical Entertainment at the Assyrian Hall in Bond Street, and Will Deverill’s dainty operetta, “Honeysuckle,” at the Duke of Edinburgh’s Theatre in Long Acre. The Seer, indeed, had been well advertised beforehand by the Morning Post and other London dailies, which gave puffs preliminary of his marvellous performance, “as privately exhibited to a select audience at Mrs Palmer’s charming and hospitable residence in Hans Place, Chelsea.” A well-known society writer, with a lingering love of the occult and the supernatural, saw in Mr Joaquin Holmes’s abstruse gifts “a genuine case of Second Sight, and a curious modern parallel to the most famous feats of the Delphic oracle and the Indian Yogis.” The Spectator suggested in a learned article that “Mahatmas were about”; the Daily News averred that “Nothing like Mr Holmes’s extraordinary powers had been seen on earth since the Egyptian magicians impiously counterfeited the miracles of Moses and Aaron before the throne of Pharaoh.” Every one of the accounts particularly insisted on the presence at the first trial of Mr Florian Wood, the distinguished musical and dramatic critic; whose inmost thoughts the Seer had read offhand like an open book, and whose quotations from little-known and unpopular sources he had instantly assigned to their proper origin. But when Florian himself was questioned on the subject, he shook his head with an air of esoteric knowledge, put two soft white fingers to his delicate lips, and smiled mysteriously. To say the truth, Florian loved a mystery. It flattered his sense of personal importance. Nay, he would almost have joined Mr Joaquin Holmes as a confederate in his little tricks for pure love of mystification, were it not for a wholesome and restraining dread that others might find them out as he himself had done. So the Seer, thus well and cheaply advertised by anticipation, made a hit for the moment, as dozens of such quacks have done before and since, from Home and Bishop to the Little Georgia Magnet.
As for Will Deverill’s play, the first night was crowded. All London was there, in the sense that the Savage, the Garrick, and the Savile give to all London. Rue had taken tickets for stalls with reckless extravagance, and bestowed them right and left, as if on the author’s behalf, to every influential soul among her fine acquaintance. Florian whipped up a fair number of first-nighters of the literary clique, and not a few great ladies from Belgravia drawing-rooms. The audience was distinctly and decidedly favourable. But not all the packed houses that ever were can save a bad play, if bad it is, from condign damnation. The incorruptible pit and the free and independent electors of the gallery are no respecters of persons, in their critical capacity. Fortunately, however, as it happened, Will’s play was a good one. It didn
’t take the audience by storm at the first hearing, but it pleased and satisfied them. One or two of the melodies had a catchy ring; one or two of the scenes were both brilliant and pathetic. The house encored all the principal tunes; and when the curtain fell on virtue triumphant, in the person of Honeysuckle, vociferous cries arose on every side for “Author! Author!”
Will sat in a stage box, throughout the whole performance, with Florian, Rue, his sister, Mrs Sartoris, and her husband, the amiable East End curate. It was a three-act piece. As far as the end of the second act, Maud Sartoris was delighted; it was a distinct success, and Rue was very well pleased. Maud thought that was good; after all, whether she “smelt of drapery” or not, it’s well for one’s brother to produce a favourable impression on a woman with a fortune of seven hundred thousand. But the third act, she felt sure, was distinctly inferior to the two that preceded it. She said as much to Rue, while Will, trembling with excitement from head to foot, slipped off to make his expected bow before the curtain.
At those words of hers, Rue turned pale. She had thought so all through, though she would hardly acknowledge it, even to herself, and she feared in her own heart she knew the reason. Could Will have written the first two acts during those happy days when his head was stuffed full of Linnet at Meran, and gone on with the third in a London lodging after he learned of her marriage to Andreas Hausberger? Rue more than half-suspected that obvious explanation — for Honeysuckle was Linnet — and the thought disquieted her.
“You’re quite right,” Florian interposed, with his airy eloquence. “The first two acts are good — distinctly good. Will wrote them in the Tyrol. The third’s a poor thing — mere fluff and feather: oh, what a falling off was there! It was written in London! But who can sing aright of Arcady in the mud of Mayfair? Who can sing of Zion by the willows of Babylon? Will drew his first inspiration from the sparkling air of Meran; it faded like a mist with the mists of the Channel.”
“The audience doesn’t seem to think so,” Rue put in, somewhat anxiously, as a hearty round of applause greeted Will by the footlights. “They feel it’s all right. They’re evidently satisfied, on the whole, with the nature of the dénoument.”
“If you look at the papers to-morrow morning,” Florian answered, carelessly, “you’ll find every candid critic disagrees with the audience and agrees with Mrs Sartoris. But what matter for that! It’s a very good play, with some very good tunes in it; and the actors have made it. I really didn’t think our dear friend Will could do anything so good — till I saw it interpreted. I call the reception, on the whole, most promising.”
Rue felt positively annoyed that Florian should speak so condescendingly of Will’s beautiful music. He damned it with faint praise, while Rue herself felt for it a genuine enthusiasm. For she knew it was good, — all except that third act, — and even there she saw touches of really fine composition.
In a minute or two more, Will came back to them, radiant. Florian boarded him at once. “Ten thousand congratulations, dear boy,” he cried, affectedly. “We’re all delighted. Laurel wreaths for the victor! Bays drape your lute. Everybody’s been saying the first two acts are a triumphal progress, though the third, we agree, fails to sustain the attention — flags in interest somewhat.”
Will coloured up to his eyes. Rue noted the blush; her heart sank at sight of it. “I knew it was weak myself,” he admitted, a little shamefacedly. “The inspiration died down. Perhaps it was natural. You see, Maud,” he went on, turning round to his sister as to a neutral person, and avoiding Rue’s eye, “I wrote and composed the first two acts at Innsbruck and Meran, under the immediate influence of the Tyrolese air and the Tyrolese music; they welled up in me in the midst of peasant songs and cow-bells. The third act, I had to manufacture at my rooms in Craven Street. Surroundings, of course, make a deal of difference to this sort of thing. I was in the key there, and out of it in London. Pumped-up poetry and pumped-up music are poor substitutes after all for the spontaneous article.”
He didn’t dare to look at Rue as he spoke those words. He was conscious all the while, let him boggle as he might, that she knew the real reason for the failure of the dénoument. And he was conscious, too, though he was a modest man, that Rue would feel hurt at the effect Linnet’s marriage had had upon his music. As for Rue herself, poor girl, her face was crimson. To think she should have done so much, and wronged her modesty so far with Mr Wildon Blades to get Will’s operetta put on the stage that evening; to think she should have risked her own money to ensure its success, and then to find it owed its inspiration wholly and solely to the charms of her peasant rival, Linnet! Rue was more than merely vexed; she was shamed and humiliated. Will’s triumph was turned for her into gall and bitterness. His heart, after all, was still fixed on his cow-girl!
They drove home together in Rue’s luxurious brougham to Hans Place, Chelsea — Mr Sartoris and Florian following close in a hansom. The party were engaged to sup at Rue’s. Florian had invited them, indeed, to a banquet at Romano’s, as more strictly in keeping with the evening’s entertainment; but Maud Sartoris had objected to such a plan as “improper,” and likely to damage dear Arthur’s prospects. So at Rue’s they supped. But, in spite of Will’s success, and his health which they drank in Rue’s finest champagne, with musical honours, the party somehow lacked go and spirit. Will was dimly conscious in his own soul of having unwittingly behaved rather ill to Rue; Rue was dimly conscious of harbouring some deep-seated but indefinite resentment towards Will and Linnet. It was some consolation, at least, to know that the girl was now decently married and done for; sooner or later, for certain, such a man as Will Deverill was sure to get over a mere passing fancy for a handsome up-standing Tyrolese peasant-girl.
After supper, Will Deverill and the Sartorises went home in a party. But Florian lingered late. This was an excellent opportunity. Rue was annoyed with Will, and therefore all the more likely to accept another suitor. He gazed around the room — that little palace of art he had decorated with such care for his soul to dwell in. “Upon my word, Rue,” he murmured at last, after some desultory talk, glancing around him complacently, “I’m proud of this place; I never knew before what a decorator I was. It’s simply charming.” He gazed at her fixedly. “It’s the sweetest home in all London,” he went on in a rapt voice, “and it’s inhabited by the sweetest and brightest creature in the whole of Christendom. I sometimes think, Rue, as I gaze round this house, how happy I should be — if I too lived in it.”
For a moment, Rue stared at him without quite understanding what he meant to convey by this singular intimation. Then all at once it flashed across her. In spite of her distress, a smile stole over her face. She held out her hand frankly. “Good night, Florian,” she said, in a very decided tone. “Let me urge upon you to be content with your chambers in Pimlico. You’re a delightful and always most amusing friend; I hope you’re not going to make your friendship impossible for me. I like you very much, in your own sort of way; but if ever you re-open that subject again, . . . I’m afraid I could give you no further opportunity of admiring your own handicraft in this pretty little house of mine. That’s why I say good-night to you now so plainly. It’s best to be plain — best to understand one another, once for all, and for ever.”
Two minutes later, a dejected creature named Florian Wood found himself walking disconsolate, with his umbrella up, on the sloppy wet flags of ill-lighted Sloane Street. He had sustained a loss of seven hundred thousand pounds on a turn of fortune’s wheel, at an inauspicious moment. And Rue, with her face in her hands by the fire, was saying to herself with many tears and sighs that, Linnet or no Linnet, she never would and never could love anyone in the world except that dear Will Deverill.
CHAPTER XXVI
A WOMAN’S HEART
The papers next morning, with one accord, were almost unanimous in their praise of Honeysuckle. Will’s operetta didn’t set the Thames on fire, to
be sure — a first work seldom does — but it secured such an amount of modest success as decided him to change his plans largely for the future. It was certain, now, that he might take himself seriously as a musical purveyor. So he began to drop off to some extent from the hack work of journalism, and devote his energies in earnest to his new task in life as a playwright and composer. Rue had nothing to pay for her guarantee of Honeysuckle; on the contrary, Will received a very solid sum for his royalties on the run through the remainder of that season. He never knew, indeed, how much he had been indebted to the pretty American’s not wholly disinterested act of kindness; for Mr Blades kept his word; and, in spite of what he said, Rue’s timely intervention had decided him not a little in accepting that first piece by an unknown author.
Thus, during the next few years, as things turned out, Will’s position and prospects improved very rapidly. He was regarded as one of our most rising composers; critics spoke of him as the sole representative and restorer of the serious English poetical opera. Monetary troubles no longer oppressed his soul; he had leisure to write — and to write, if he would, the thing that pleased him. His position was secured — so much so, indeed, that judicious mammas gave him frequent invitations to their gayest At Homes and garden parties. But he successfully avoided all snares so set for him. Many people expressed no little surprise that so nice a young man — and a poet to boot — with a position like his, and such excellent Principles, should refrain from marriage. Society expects that every man will do his duty; it intends him to marry as soon as he has means to relieve it becomingly of one among its many superfluous daughters. But, in spite of Society, Will still remained single, and met all the casual feelers of interested acquaintances as to the reasons which induced him so to shirk his duty as a British citizen with a quiet smile of self-contained resolution.