Chambers’s Journal, September 11, 1886

Towards the middle of last July, the people of Liverpool were surprised by the advent of a large band of Greek gypsies, ninety-nine in number, whom the London train had left stranded on a vacant space of ground beside the railway station. Though spoken of as ‘Greek’ gypsies, they were really from all parts of the Græco-Turkish corner of Europe, and some even from Smyrna and its neighbourhood. But they preferred to be regarded as Greeks, and all of them spoke the modern Greek tongue. They had come to Liverpool, intending to take an early steamer to New York; but their progress was here suddenly arrested; and their stay in Liverpool proved to be of longer duration than had been anticipated by themselves or by others. From their first squatting-ground beside the station they had early been removed to a secluded corner at Walton, within the grounds of the Zoological Gardens. But how long they must yet remain there, and what was to be done with them, seemed difficult problems.

It was not the fault of these strange emigrants that they thus halted on the outward verge of Europe. They had honestly paid their way hither from their Mediterranean home, and they had enough money among them to pay for their passage across the Atlantic. But at this point America interfered. Ready as she once was to welcome all immigrants with open arms, America has become less hospitable of recent years. She has excluded the Chinaman, for racial reasons; and now she is drawing the line at the ‘pauper,’ of whatever race, because of his poverty. It is not many years since Longfellow apostrophised Driving Cloud, ‘chief of the mighty Omawhaws,’ telling him it was in vain that he and his meagre tribe ‘claimed the soil for their hunting-grounds,’

But times are changed. And the European ‘pauper’ finds no resting-place on North American soil, but is sent back to his old hopeless existence in the garrets and ‘caverns’ of Europe. It is only the self-supporting immigrant that receives a welcome. There is nothing unnatural in this attitude of the Americans. A young and ambitious country does not want its ranks to be recruited from the idle, unenergetic, and criminal classes of older states; indeed, half the troubles of America have come, not from the descendants of the men who founded the Republic, but from the heterogeneous invaders of the present century. Thus, the American attitude is intelligible enough. Nevertheless, the mere fact that the poor are not permitted to seek a home in that vast country, forms a grim commentary on the popular conception of America as the great haven of refuge for all the victims of Old-world tyrannies.

It must be confessed that the appearance of the gypsy camp at Walton was not at all suggestive of the ideal emigrant; so that it was perhaps as well that the present writer conceived the idea of visiting them without any intention of advocating their claim to such a title. The scene, truly, did not suggest any such qualities as cleanliness, industry, or wealth. Scattered along two sides of an open grassy triangle stood the gypsy tents, some fifteen or twenty—small-sized, mean, and dingy, loosely put together, constructed of old canvas or sacking, which fell on either side of a low ridge-pole, and was closed at one end. In the open space between the two rows of tents a group of gypsy men were amusing themselves—some wrestling and fighting playfully; while the others looked on, talking, laughing, and smoking. A few female figures were moving about among the tents; and a host of children, of all sizes, scampered, toddled, and tumbled over the grass, as happy as if they had never breathed a milder air than that of this chilly English summer day.

One glance at the swarthy faces of these people was enough to convince one that their claim to be called ‘gypsies’ did not rest upon the mere fact{578} that they were nomads by habit and tinkers by trade, but that they were the little-mixed representatives of a distinct racial type. A closer examination did reveal the presence of an infusion of white blood among a few of them; but nearly all were the darkest of all dark-skinned Europeans. In no degree whatever did their tawny complexion result from long exposure to wind and sun; for, when one glanced at the skin which their half-open shirts disclosed, or at the bodies of the ill-clad little creatures everywhere running about, one saw the same uniform dusky hue. The hair of all was jet black; but the colour of their eyes seemed to be invariably of a deep hazel shade, rather than the opaque black that may be seen in the eyes of many people of a fairer skin.

No sooner were their visitors descried, than several young children, and one girl of about seventeen, swooped down on them with pleading cries for money. Strongly resembling the children of our itinerant Italians in their dress and appearance, they were also like them in their appealing tones and in the very words they used. ‘Grazia, grazia, deh mi pena [penny], ma dona!’ were the words they reiterated in various combinations, as they held out their dirty little hands beseechingly for the expected ‘pena.’ Whether they had become familiar with this Italian patois during their temporary residence in Italy, or whether—as is likelier—they had been always accustomed to it in their homes among the Ionian Islands, it was clearly the favourite form of speech among the younger children. But that they also understood modern Greek became speedily clear, although they were far from appreciating the uses to which that language was put. For on this occasion the writer was accompanied by a Greek gentleman, representing an eminent merchant of Liverpool who had greatly exerted himself on behalf of his otherwise friendless countrymen; and by his instructions, all attempts at begging were sternly suppressed, not only because the thing itself was objectionable, but also because he foresaw that, if indulged in, it would further complicate the position of the gypsies, and counteract his efforts to arouse the sympathy of the American authorities. Accordingly, by a few rapid sentences in Greek, the suppliants were effectually repressed.

As soon as the leading men of the band who were then present—the chief himself had gone into town with two of his followers—understood that one of their visitors was a fellow-countryman, representing their patron, they thronged around him with a hundred questions, gesticulating violently the while; and the burden of their complaint was: ‘How long must we remain here?’ ‘Why should we be detained when our journey is half over?’ ‘Why will the Americans not let us come?’ Their case was really a hard one. Three hundred napoleons had they spent on their journey from Greece—on the clear understanding that they were to obtain a passage across the Atlantic from Liverpool, the money for which they had in their possession. Then came the word that they would not be allowed to land; when immediately the steamship companies unanimously refused to take them as passengers. Nor was Canada a bit more friendly than the States; so that only South America remained open to them. This, indeed, was where they specially wished to go—among the Southern Europeans and their fellow-gypsies. But a voyage to Brazil means a great deal more money than the short passage to New York. The other alternative held up to them—to return to their native country—they indignantly repelled. They had left it for want of employment, and in the hopes of making more money in the New World; for the reasons, in short, which induce other people to emigrate; and they had no wish to waste their substance on a fruitless journey to and from Liverpool.

Although nomadic gypsies, not very clean in their appearance and ways, it must be remembered that these people were, like many other gypsies, honest craftsmen. Some English gypsies who visited them came away with the impression that they were extremely well skilled in metal-working; and the account given by one of their ‘interviewers,’ a Roumanian gentleman, quite bears this out. ‘Mr —— asked the chief why the tribe thought of going to America, and was answered that they wished to make a living. In Roumania they could “use the lead” [solder], and they could make and clean pans [the pans being presumably of copper, since they were noted for their skill in copper-working]. They were also builders, and carried bricks and mortar. They also tilled the soil.... From his [Mr ——’s] knowledge of their habits in Roumania, he did not think the Americans need fear their advent, as they would strive to earn an honest living.’ To all this favourable testimony may be added the statement made by the proprietor of the Gardens, that, so far as he could judge, they were absolutely free from the vice of drunkenness, which was more than he could say of many of the ‘roughs’ who came to look at them.

The passports which they produced from their pocket-books were seen to be bi-lingual—French and Greek in several instances, French and Roumanian, apparently, in others. One ran in the name of King Milan I. of Servia. The French designation given to them was that of chaudronnier (tinker). Their Christian names, detailed in their respective passports, were various—such as Michael (the name of their chief), Constantin, Stefano, and Janka; among the female names were Maria and Ghuri (pron. Gew′ri). The passports, which had been duly visé’d by the various consuls, frequently included a considerable number of individuals in each, thus covering one or more families. As already stated, these people came from all parts of Greece and European Turkey—from Corfu on the west, and Smyrna on the east, and also from the principalities of Servia, Bulgaria, and Roumania. Many of them, no doubt, are among the people particularly treated of in Dr Paspati’s well-known work on the Turkish Gypsies.

After their first expressions of indignation and annoyance at their mysterious detention had passed off, these men fell into a pleasanter humour, and accepted with gratitude a few cigars which their visitors offered them. They seemed great smokers, both men and women, their favourite pipe being about a foot in length, with a pendulous, elastic tube. On learning that the present writer had come all the way from{579} ‘Scozia’ (Scotland) to see them, they showed much gratification, to which their chief spokesman at once gave expression in modern Greek through the medium of our interpreter; and, pointing to the freshly-lit cigar at which he was now puffing vigorously, he said with emphasis, ‘Bōn’, bōn’;’ in this case employing his Italian dialect as likely to be the most intelligible form of speech. This man was quite an accomplished linguist, and could speak Greek, Russian, Roumanian, and two or three other dialects of South-eastern Europe. The curious thing was, that while he seemed rather proud of his attainments, he never once included in his list his own mother-tongue, the speech of the gypsy race. Neither would he admit that he was a ‘ziganka,’ not for a long time, at anyrate; but subsequently, both he and his comrades answered to the name of Roum,[1] and the cigar was no longer bōn’, but lâsho.[2]

The Greek gentleman and the visitor from Scozia had by this time made a sufficient investigation of the camp. The general effect of the people and their surroundings was undoubtedly disappointing. There was an almost total absence of colour in their attire, which—among the men, at least—was very plain, and had little of a distinctive character about it. One, however, wore a broad leathern belt studded with brass-headed nails, which had something about it suggesting the picturesque; while the fingers of most of the men and women were adorned with many rings. The men wore their hair short, and some had moustaches and beards. There was more that was characteristic about the women. The general hue of their attire was ‘sad-coloured,’ like that of the men; but one had a red, white-spotted kerchief wound round her head, gypsy fashion; and most of them had necklaces of coral or beads, and large silver coins disposed in strings around their neck and shoulders. Their raven tresses were braided in long plaits, which hung down on either side. But none of these gypsy women could be called handsome, and, indeed, were much inferior to the men in this respect. Among the children, however, there were one or two really pretty faces; one, a little girl of five or six, had quite a refined and sweet expression, as well as regular delicate features. In her case, an exception was made to the stern decree against almsgiving; and it was amusing to see her shy hesitation as, with hanging head, and a side-glance at the gypsy man beside her—who, with many cuffs to right and left, had repressed all attempts at begging—she held out a tiny hand for the offered ‘pena,’ while her neat little mouth parted smilingly over a row of shining ‘ivories.’ The children, in fact, who numbered more than fifty, constituted the most attractive feature of the scene; and queer, impish little creatures they were. Even where they had no claims to beauty, they were still inexpressibly droll. Some possessed very little clothing wherewith to hide their small brown bodies. One marched gravely about with nothing on but a dilapidated shirt; while, in the distance, a nurse about eight years old was seen to pursue and capture a wholly naked little savage of half her age. Something in their serio-comic air and the tumbled-together look of their garments, frequently reminded one of the odd little Bohemians in Callot’s etchings.

In one tent lay an old and very dark-skinned, white-bearded man. Through some accident, he had lost the use of his legs; but he lay stolidly on the ground, smoking a cigar, indifferent, apparently, to the inquisitive looks of a dozen curious spectators. A baby was lying very still in a heap of swaddling-clothes beside him—‘dying,’ said some of the onlookers, though the mother herself pronounced the illness to be nothing serious.

On leaving the camp, another incident in the checkered life of the sojourners presented itself. Two of their young women—girls, rather—had gone into the streets to do a little ‘shopping,’ and had attempted to enter a butcher’s shop, with intent to purchase; but from the recesses of this booth, suddenly evoked by their appearance, there issued forth what Mr Skimpole would have described as ‘the absurd figure of an angry butcher,’ who, with furious mien and uplifted arm, drove the poor girls back into the street. Followed by a small crowd of street-children, the two young Romany maidens strode along, one with a splendid scowl on her face, as she flashed her angry glances on the jeering gaújoes.[3] But a friend and compatriot was at hand. The irate butcher, being questioned, explained that he did not drive them away for any attempted dishonesty, but because he knew, from the previous days’ experience, that they had only copper to offer him for meat that was fairly worth some silver. To do him justice, the good butcher began to abate his wrath as soon as he perceived that there was money to be made after all. The girls were recalled, and—a perfect mob of children looking in at door and windows—their aprons were filled with a goodly store of meat, with which they departed in happiness, blessing their kindly benefactor.

This mid-day visit had not been enough for the gentleman from Scozia, who returned the same evening to the camp with a small party, one of the number being a famous ‘word-master’ of Rómanes.[4] And now it became apparent that the correctly behaved people of the forenoon, freed from the check of their patron’s influence, had dropped the mask, and stood boldly forth in their true colours. Not that they were very bad, even then; their only vice was that of begging. But how to describe that! From entrance to exit it was incessant, clamorous, piteous, and beyond all satisfying. Men, women, children, even babies begged! From every side came the grazia formula; and the nearer petitioners would lift and kiss the hem of one’s garments. Coppers vanished like smoke. Cigars and cigarettes were eagerly accepted on all sides, even by mere children. Nay, so free from shame were the supplicants, that, perceiving whence one of the ladies drew her store of cigarettes—thoughtfully laid in for their benefit—one of the young gypsies quietly thrust his hand into the folds of the dress and drew out{580} the remaining two or three! There was not the slightest attempt at violence or furtive theft; only an incessant, plaintive begging by voice and manner—of the most artistic order, evolved out of the practice of many generations. Although our own gypsies had long ago the reputation of practising this art, it is now quite dissociated from them—in this direct form.

Those English gypsies who had visited them had a good deal to say of their begging propensities. From one they had demanded tobacco to an unlimited extent, from others they had asked for sugar and soap. And while it was amusing to hear our own gypsies express their righteous indignation at the ways of their ‘kin beyond sea,’ it was very interesting to listen to their remarks upon their common language; for, although very imperfectly indeed, and only in occasional-words and phrases, they could understand each other a little—only a little, however, so great are the differences of intonation, inflexion, and vocabulary. Nevertheless, now that those Greeks had revealed themselves in their true character as gypsies, it became clearly evident to their visitors that—unlike their brethren in Montenegro—they still retained the language of their race. In the midst of the tumult and crowd—not only of gypsies but of indiscriminate gaújoes—it was impossible even for a báro lávengro[5] to do more than exchange a few brief sentences with them. But, in that imperfect way, it became clear that this was a camp of true Romané. Roum, or rather Erroum is the form they give to the more common Rom, in which peculiarity they resemble the Erroumans of the Basque countries. Various words were thus obtained from them, corresponding generally with those which one finds in Dr Paspati’s collection.

But patience has its limits, and a steady and persistent demand for largesse cannot be as steadily complied with; so, with words of farewell to the older members of the tribe, who had throughout restrained themselves—and indeed some of the youthful mendicants, who were void of shame—the gypsy camp was left to become an interesting memory.

When these lines were written, the newspapers told of heavy rains and wet bedraggled tents; and further, of a proposal made by an inveterate showman to exhibit the gypsies through the music-halls, with their ancestral games, dances, and craftsmanship. Misguided wanderers from the blue Ægean, is there no better fate before you than this?

IN TWENTY CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.

The shades of evening had commenced to fall; already the slanting sun shining through the open window glittered on the array of crystal glasses, turning the wine within them to a blood-red hue. The remains of an ample dessert were scattered about the bare polished table, rich luscious-looking fruits and juicy pines filling the air with their fragrance. A pleasant room, with its panelled walls and quaint curiosities, with here and there a modern picture framed; and again other works standing upon easels or placed against the wainscot. From the Corso below came the sounds of laughter and gaiety; while within, the delicate scent of the pines was overpowered by the odour of tobacco which rose from the cigarettes of the three men sitting there. They were all young—artists evidently, and from the appearance of one of them, he was of a different nationality from the others. Frederick Maxwell was an Englishman, with a passion for art, and no doubt had he been forced to gain a living by his brush, would have made some stir in the world; but being born with the traditional silver spoon in his mouth, his flirtation with the arts never threatened to become serious. He was leaving Rome in a few days, and the dessert upon the table was the remains of a farewell dinner—that custom dear to every English heart. A handsome fair-haired man this Englishman, his clear bright cheek and blue eyes contrasting with the aquiline features and olive-hued complexions of his companions. The man with the black moustache and old velvet painting-jacket, a man with bohemian stamped on him indelibly, was Carlo Visci, also an artist, and a genius to boot, but cursed with that indomitable idleness which is the bane of so many men of talent. The other and slighter Italian, he with the melancholy face and earnest eyes, was Luigi Salvarini, independent as to means, and possessed, poor fool! with the idea that he was ordained by Providence for a second Garibaldi.

There is an infinite sense of rest and comfort, the desire to sit silent and dream of pleasant things, that comes with tobacco after dinner, when the eye can dwell upon the waxlights glittering on glass and china, and on the artistic confusion the conclusion of the repast produces. So the three men sat listlessly, idly there, each drowsily engaged, and none caring to break the delicious silence, rendered all the more pleasing from the gay girlish laughter and the trip of little feet coming up from the Corso below. But no true Briton can remain long silent; and Maxwell, throwing his cigarette out through the window, rose to his feet, yawning. ‘Heigh-ho! So this pleasant life is come to an end,’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, I suppose one cannot be expected to be always playing.’

Carlo Visci roused himself to laugh gently. ‘Did you ever do anything else, my friend?’ he asked. ‘You play here under sunny skies, in a velvet painting-jacket; then you leave us to pursue the same arduous toil in the tall hat of Albion’s respectability, in the land of fogs and snows. Ah! yes, it is only a change of venue, my philosopher.’

‘Not now,’ Salvarini corrected gravely. ‘Remember, he has vowed by all in his power to aid the welfare of the League. That vow conscientiously followed out is undertaking enough for one man’s lifetime.’

‘Luigi, you are the skeleton at the feast,’ Visci remonstrated. ‘Cannot you be happy here for one brief hour without reminding us that we are bound by chains we cannot sever?’

‘I do not like the mocking tone of your words,’ Salvarini replied. ‘The subject is too earnest for jesting upon.—Surely, Maxwell, you have not so{581} soon forgotten the solemnity of the oath you took last night?’

‘I do remember some gibberish I had to repeat, very much like the conspirators’ chorus at the Opera,’ Maxwell returned with a careless shrug. ‘It is not bad fun playing at sedition.—But for goodness’ sake, Luigi, do not keep harping on the same string, like another Paganini, but without that wizard’s versatility.’

‘You think it play, do you?’ Salvarini asked almost scornfully. ‘You will find it stern reality some day. Your hour may not come yet, it may not come for years; but if you are ordered to cut off your right hand, you will have to obey.’

‘Oh, indeed. Thanks, most earnest youth, for your estimation of my talent for obedience.—Come, Luigi! do not be so Cassandra-like. If the worst comes to the worst, I can pitch this thing into the Tiber.’ He took a gold coin from his pocket as he spoke, making a gesture as if to throw it through the open lattice.

Salvarini stood up, terror written in every line of his face, as he arrested the outstretched arm. ‘For heaven’s sake, Maxwell, what are you thinking of? Are you mad, or drunk, that you can dream of such a thing?’

Maxwell laughed as he restored the coin to his pocket. ‘All right, old fellow. I suppose I must honour your scruples; though, mind you, I do not consider myself bound to do anything foolish even for the League.’

Maxwell laughed again, and whistled carelessly, thinking no more of the little episode. The League, the coin, everything was forgotten; but the time did come when he in his hour of need remembered Luigi’s words, and vividly realised the meaning of the look on his stern earnest face.

Visci looked on at the incident, totally unmoved, save by a desire to lead the conversation into more pleasant channels. ‘When do you leave, Maxwell?’ he asked. ‘I suppose you are not going for a few days?’

‘In about a week probably, not sooner. I did not know I had so many friends in Rome, till I was going to leave them.’

‘You will not forget your visit to my little place? Genevieve will never forgive me if I let you go without saying good-bye.’

‘Forget little Genevieve!’ Maxwell cried. ‘No, indeed. Whatever my engagements may be, I shall find time to see her; though, I daresay, the day will come when she will forget me easily enough.’

‘I am not so sure of that; she is a warm-hearted child. I tell you what we will do; and perhaps Sir Geoffrey and his daughter will join us. We will go down the day after to-morrow, and make a day of it.—Of course you will be one, Luigi?’

It was growing dark now, too dark to see the rich flush that mounted to the young Italian’s cheek. He hesitated a moment before he spoke. ‘With pleasure, Carlo. A day at your little paradise is not to be lightly refused. I will come gladly.’

‘You make a slight mistake, Visci, when you speak of Genevieve as a child,’ Maxwell observed reflectively. ‘She is seventeen—a woman, according to your Italian reckoning. At anyrate, she is old enough to know the little blind god, or I am much mistaken.’

‘I hope not,’ Visci returned gravely. ‘She is quick and passionate, and somewhat old for her years, by reason of the seclusion she keeps. But let the man beware who lightly wins her heart; it would go hard with him if I crossed his path again!’

‘There are serpents in every paradise,’ Maxwell replied sententiously; ‘and let us hope little Gen. is free from the curiosity of her original ancestress. But child or not, she has a woman’s heart worth the winning, in which assertion our silent friend here will bear me out.’

Luigi Salvarini started from his reverie. ‘You are right, Maxwell,’ he said. ‘Many a man would be proud to wear her gage upon his arm. Even I—— But why ask me? If I was even so disposed to rest under my own fig-tree, there are ties which preclude such a blissful thought.’

Maxwell whistled softly, and muttered something about a man drawing a bow at a venture—the words audible to Salvarini alone.

‘I am tied, as I told you,’ he continued coldly. ‘I do not know why you have drawn me into the discussion at all. I have sterner work before me than dallying by a woman’s side looking into her eyes’——

‘And not anything like so pleasant, I dare swear,’ Maxwell interrupted cheerfully. ‘Come, Luigi; do not be so moody. If I have said anything in my foolish way to offend you, I am heartily sorry.’

‘I am to blame, Maxwell, not you. You wonder why I am so taken up with this League; if you will listen, I will tell you. The story is old now; but I will tell you as best I can remember.’

‘Then, perhaps you will wait till I have found a seat and lighted my cigarette,’ exclaimed a voice from the background at this moment. ‘If Salvarini is going to oblige, I cut in as a listener.’

At these words, uttered in a thin, slightly sneering voice, the trio turned round suddenly. Had it been lighter, they would have seen a trim, well-built figure, with head well set on square shoulders, and a perfectly cut, deadly pale face, lighted with piercing black eyes, and adorned by a well-waxed, pointed moustache. From his accents, there must have been something like a sneer upon his lips. But whatever he might have been, he seemed to be welcome enough now as he drew a chair to the open window.

‘Better late than never,’ Maxwell cried. ‘Help yourself to wine, Le Gautier; and make all due apologies for not turning up to dinner.’

‘I will do so,’ the new-comer said languidly. ‘I was detained out of town.—No; you need not ask if a pair of bright eyes were the lodestars to my ardent soul, for I shall not tell you; and in the second place, I have been obtaining your permit as a Brother of the League. I offered up myself on the shrine of friendship; I lost my dinner, voilà tout;’ and saying these words, he put a narrow slip of parchment in Maxwell’s hands.

‘I suppose I had better take care of this?’ the Englishman answered carelessly. ‘I got so exasperated with Salvarini, that I came near{582} pitching the sacred moidore out of the window. I presume, it would not be wise?’

‘Not if you have any respect for a sound body,’ Le Gautier returned dryly. ‘I gather that Luigi has been talking largely about the sacredness of the mission. Well, he is young yet, and the gilt of his enthusiasm does not yet show the nickel beneath, which reminds me. Did my ears deceive me, or were we going to hear a story?’

‘It is no story,’ the Italian replied, ‘merely a little family record, to show you how even patriots are not exempt from tyranny.—You remember my brother, Visci? and his wife. He settled down, after fighting years for his country, not many miles from here. Living with him was his wife’s father, an aged man, universally beloved—a being who had not a single enemy in the world. Well, time went on, till one day, without the slightest warning, the old fellow was arrested for compliance in some so-called plot. My brother’s wife clung round her father’s neck; and there, in my brother’s sight, he saw his wife stricken brutally down by the ruffianly soldiers—dead; dead, mind—her only crime that little act of affection—killed by order of the officer in charge. But revenge followed. Paulo shot three of the scoundrels dead, and left the officer, as he thought, dying. Since then, I have never heard of Paulo.—And now, do you wonder why I am a Socialist, with my hand against all authority and order, when it is backed up by such cowardly, unprovoked oppression as this?’

For a time the listeners remained silent, watching the twinkling stars as they peeped out one by one, nothing to be seen now of each but the glowing tip of his cigarette as the blue smoke drifted from the casement.

‘You do not think that your brother and Paulo Lucci, the celebrated brigand we hear so much of, are the same men?’ Visci asked at length. ‘People have said so, you understand.’

‘I have heard such a tale,’ Salvarini replied sardonically. ‘The affair created quite a stir in the province at the time; but the peasants do me too much homage in connecting my name with so famous a character. Our Italian imagination does not rest at trifles.’

‘Pleasant for the officer who ordered them to strike down your brother’s wife,’ Le Gautier drawled, as he emitted a delicate curl of smoke from his nostrils. ‘Did you ever hear the name of the fellow?’

‘Curiously enough, his name is the same as yours, though I cannot be sure, as it is five years ago now. He was a Frenchman, likewise.’

‘Moral—let all Le Gautiers keep out of Paulo Lucci’s way,’ Maxwell exclaimed, rising to his feet. ‘We do not pay you the compliment of believing you are the same man; but these brigands are apt to strike first and inquire after. Of course, this is always presuming Salvarini’s brother and Paulo Lucci are one.—I am going as far as the Villa Salvarino. Who says ay to that proposal?—The ayes have it.’

They rose to their feet with one accord, and after changing their coats for something more respectable, trooped down the stairs.

‘You will not forget about Friday?’ Visci reminded. ‘I shall ask Sir Geoffrey and his daughter to come. We are going down to my little place on that day.—Will you make one, Le Gautier?’

‘A thousand thanks, my dear Visci,’ the Frenchman exclaimed; ‘but much as I should like it, the thing is impossible. I am literally overwhelmed in the most important work.’

‘I am sorry,’ Visci returned politely. ‘You have never been there. I do not think you have ever seen my sister?’

‘Never,’ Le Gautier replied with an inexplicable smile. ‘It is a pleasure to come.’

When Samuel Johnson said, ‘A ship is a prison with a chance of being drowned,’ he in that aphorism gave expression to the opinion generally entertained by landsmen in his day. In fact, the discomforts, and even privations, which sea-travelling then involved were such that very few persons were willing to expose themselves to them, save when compelled by imperative circumstances to do so.

When I crossed the Atlantic in 1841, for the first time, the condition of things had, in the three-quarters of a century which had elapsed since Johnson’s time, measurably improved; but the désagrémens to which passengers were even then subjected were numerous. No regular steam communication between Great Britain and the United States was in existence. The Sirius and the Great Western had indeed crossed the ocean in 1838, and the latter vessel had continued her trips at irregular intervals. But for some little time subsequently, no other steamer attempted to follow her example, the Cunard line not having been established until 1842.

At the period of which I speak, the sailing packets which ran between London and New York, and between Liverpool and that port, were ships of five to six hundred tons burden. The staterooms—as the little cabins ranged on either side of the saloon were termed—were below the sea-level. They were incommodious, dark, and ill ventilated. In fact, the only light they enjoyed was that furnished by small pieces of ground glass inserted in the deck overhead, and from the fan-lights in the doors opening to the saloon, and this was so poor, that the occupants of the staterooms could not even dress themselves without making use of a lamp. The sole ventilation of them was that afforded by the removal of the saloon skylights, which, of course, could only be done in fine weather. The consequence was that the closeness of the atmosphere in the staterooms was at all times most unpleasant; whilst the smell of the bilge-water was so offensive as to create nausea, independent of that arising from the motion of the vessel. In winter, on the other hand, the cold was frequently severe. There was, it is true, a stove in the saloon, but the heat from it scarcely made itself appreciably felt in the side-cabins.

In other matters there was the same absence of provision for the comfort of the passengers. The{583} fresh water required for drinking and cooking purposes was carried in casks; and when the ship had a full cargo, many of these were placed on deck, with the result that their contents were sometimes impregnated with salt water from the waves shipped in heavy weather. At all times, the water was most unpalatable, it being muddy, and filled with various impurities from the old worm-eaten barrels in which it was kept. Not only was the water bad, but the supply occasionally proved inadequate; and when the voyage was an unusually long one, the necessity would arise of placing the passengers upon short allowance.

There was always a cow on board; but there was no other milk to be had than what she supplied, no way of preserving it having then been discovered. Canned fruit and vegetables were equally unknown. There was commonly a fair provision of mutton and pork, live sheep and pigs being carried; but of other fresh meat and of fish, the stock was generally exhausted by the time the vessel had been a few days at sea, refrigerators at that period not having been invented.

But the arrangements on board these ships were defective in much more important matters than in not providing a good table for the passengers. The boats—even when they were seaworthy, which frequently was not the case—were so few in number that, in the event of shipwreck, there was no possibility of their holding more than a third of the souls on board. The longboat, indeed, was practically useless in an emergency, as it was almost invariably filled up with sheds for the accommodation for the cow, sheep, and pigs; and it would have been several hours’ work to clear the boat and launch her.

The law did not then render it compulsory for every vessel crossing the Atlantic to carry a surgeon, and the owners of the various lines of American packets would not incur the expense of providing one. The consequence was that, if an accident occurred or there was serious illness on board, no medical assistance was available. When I was returning to Europe in the Mediator in 1842, a sailor fell from one of the yards, badly fracturing his right leg. The commander of the vessel was a Yankee—that is, a native of one of the New England States—and he had the ingenuity and readiness of resource which are characteristic of the people of that section of the Union. He so admirably set the injured limb with splints, that, when the ship arrived at London and the man was taken to Bartholomew Hospital, the officials of that institution highly complimented Captain Morgan upon the workmanlike manner in which he had performed the operation. The fact, however, remains, that but for the purely fortuitous circumstance of the commander of the vessel having been able to deal with the case, the result of there being no surgeon on board must have been that the injured man would either have died, or been a cripple for life.

If the cabin passengers had good cause to complain that neither their safety nor their comfort was sufficiently studied, the condition of the steerage passengers was infinitely worse. Men, women, and children were huddled like sheep in the quarters assigned them, no separation of the sexes being attempted. The berths, which ran on either side of the vessel, were not inclosed, and were without curtains. The women were compelled to dress and undress before the eyes of the male passengers, and exposed to their coarse remarks and scurrilous jests. Indeed, the moral downfall of many a poor girl was to be attributed to her feelings of decency and modesty having been blunted by her painful experiences during the voyage.

The steerage passengers were required to both supply and cook their own provisions. There was commonly a fierce struggle for a place at the galley fire, in which the sick and feeble necessarily went to the wall; and sometimes several days would pass without any warm food being obtained by those who were most in need of it. Again, when there was a storm, or even when the ship experienced heavy weather, the hatches were closed, rendering the atmosphere of the steerage almost stifling. In fact, the condition and treatment of this class of passengers were simply abominable, and such as to reflect deep discredit upon the government for allowing so many years to elapse ere any attempt was made to deal with the evil.

Now, all is changed. The steamers which at the present day cross the Atlantic are vessels ranging from four to seven thousand tons burden; and the arrangements on board of them are excellent in all respects. Besides the lifeboats—which are numerous, large, and built on the most approved models—there are rafts which, in case of necessity, can be got ready and launched in a few minutes. In the event, too, of a fire breaking out in any part of the ship, the appliances for extinguishing it are of the most thorough character. In fact, the provision made for the safety of the passengers would be all that could be desired if every ship carried a sufficient number of boats to accommodate, in case of disaster, every passenger, even when her complement was full. Note the late disaster to the Oregon.

The comfort of the travelling public is now carefully studied. The cabins for the first-class passengers are placed amidships, where the motion of the vessel is least felt, instead of, as formerly, at the stern. The staterooms are commodious, handsomely furnished, thoroughly ventilated, and heated by steam. The saloon, which is spacious and well lighted, contains a piano, a small library, bagatelle tables, chess, &c., for the use of the passengers. There are also smoking and reading rooms and bathrooms, supplied with hot as well as cold water. The table is so luxuriantly spread that there is scarcely a delicacy which can be obtained in the best hotels in London, found lacking on board these steamers. The supply of fresh water—furnished by condensers—is practically unlimited; whilst that which is required for drinking purposes is in summer cooled with ice, of which a large stock is provided. A surgeon is invariably carried, the law rendering it obligatory to do so; and his services are at the disposal of any of the passengers who needs them without the payment of any fee.

Nor have the steerage passengers failed to participate in the altered condition of things. Instead of their being crowded together in the badly ventilated and unhealthy quarters assigned to them, as was formerly the case, it is now{584} compulsory for a fixed cubic space to be allotted to each individual. Not only, too, are the berths inclosed—which is greatly conducive to the preservation of decency—but the single women occupy a separate compartment, in the charge of a matron. But one of the greatest improvements which has taken place in the condition of occupants of the steerage has been effected by the Act, passed a few years ago, requiring cooked provisions being found by the owners of the ship; and although the passage-money is necessarily higher than it was under the old system, this drawback is more than compensated by the comfort which results from the present arrangement.

In conclusion, I may say that, indulging in a retrospect upon my experiences for the last forty years—during which period I have crossed the Atlantic ten times—I have been forcibly struck by the contrast the peril, tedium, and inconveniences then attendant upon an Atlantic voyage afford to the safety, rapidity, and comfort with which it is now accomplished.

CHAPTER XLIV.

Next morning, Tom Dupuy, Esquire, of Pimento Valley, Westmoreland, Trinidad, mounted his celebrated chestnut pony Sambo Gal at his own door, unchained his famous Cuban bloodhound Slot from his big kennel, and rode up, with cousinly and lover-like anxiety, to Orange Grove, to inquire after Nora’s and her father’s safety. Nora was up by the time he reached the house, pale and tired, and with a frightful headache; but she went to meet him at the front door, and dropped him a very low old-fashioned obeisance.

‘Good-morning, Tom Dupuy!’ she said coldly. ‘So you’ve come at last to look us up, have you? It’s very good of you, I’m sure, very good of you. They tell me you didn’t come last night, when half the gentlemen from all the country round rode up in hot haste with guns and pistols to take care of papa and me. But it’s very good of you, to be sure, now the danger’s well over, to come round in such a friendly fashion and drop us a card of kind inquiries.’

Even Tom Dupuy, born boor and fool as he was, flushed up crimson at that galling taunt from a woman’s lips, ‘Now that the danger’s well over.’ To do him justice, Tom Dupuy was indeed no coward; that was the one solitary vice of which no fighting Dupuy that ever lived could with justice be suspected for a moment. He would have faced and fought a thousand black rioters single-handed, like a thousand fiends, himself, in defence of his beloved vacuum pans and dearly cherished saccharometers and boiling-houses. His devotion to molasses would no doubt have been proof against the very utmost terrors of death itself. But the truth is that exact devotion in question was the real cause of his apparent remissness on the previous evening. All night long, Tom Dupuy had been busy rousing and arming his immediate house-servants, despatching messengers to Port-of-Spain for the aid of the constabulary, and preparing to defend the cut canes with the very last drop of his blood and the very last breath in his stolid body. At the first sight of the conflagration at Orange Grove, he guessed at once that ‘the niggers had risen;’ and he proceeded without a moment’s delay to fortify roughly Pimento Valley against the chance of a similar attack. Now that he came to look back calmly upon his heroic exertions, however, it did begin to strike him somewhat forcibly that he had perhaps shown himself slightly wanting in the affection of a cousin and the ardour of a lover. He bit his lip awkwardly for a second, with a sheepish look; then he glanced up suddenly and said with clumsy self-vindication: ‘It isn’t always those that deserve the best of you that get the best praise or thanks, in this world of ours, I fancy, Nora!’

‘Why, just you look here, Nora: it’s somehow like this, I tell you plainly. Here was I last night down at Pimento. I saw by the blaze that these nigger fellows must have broken loose, and must be burning down the Orange Grove cane-houses; so there I stopped all night long, working away as hard as I could work—no nigger could have worked harder—trying to protect your father’s canes and the vacuum pans from these murdering, howling rebels. And now, when I come round here this morning to tell you, after having made sure the whole year’s crop at old Pimento, one of your fine English flouts is all the thanks I get from you, miss, for my night’s labour.’

Nora laughed—laughed in spite of herself—laughed aloud a simple, merry, girlish laugh of pure amusement—it was so comical. There they had all stood last night in imminent danger of their lives, and of what is dearer than life itself, surrounded by a frantic, yelling mob of half-demented, rum-maddened negroes—her father left for dead upon the piazza steps, Harry Noel hacked with cutlasses before her very eyes, herself trampled under foot in her swoon upon the drawing-room floor by the naked soles of those negro rioters—and now this morning, Cousin Tom comes up quietly when all was over to tell her at his ease how he had taken the most approved precautions for the protection of his beloved vacuum pans. Every time she thought of it, Nora laughed again, with a fresh little outburst of merry laughter, more and more vehemently, just as though her father were not at that very moment lying within between life and death, as still and motionless as a corpse, in his own bedroom.

There is nothing more fatal to the possible prospects of a suitor, however hopeless, than to be openly laughed at by the lady of his choice at a critical moment—nothing more galling to a man under any circumstances than patent ridicule from a beautiful woman. Tom Dupuy grew redder and redder every minute, and stammered and stuttered in helpless speechlessness; and still Nora looked at him and laughed, ‘for all the world,’ he thought to himself, ‘as if I were just nobody else but the clown at the theatre.’

But that was not indeed the stage on which Tom Dupuy really performed the part of clown{585} with such distinguished success in his unconscious personation.

‘How’s your father this morning?’ he asked at last gruffly, with an uneasy shuffle. ‘I hear the niggers cut him about awfully last night, and next door to killed him with their beastly cutlasses.’

Nora drew herself up and checked her untimely laughter with a sudden sense of the demands of the situation, as she answered once more in her coldest tone: ‘My father is getting on as well as we can expect, thank you, Mr Tom Dupuy. We are much obliged to you for your kind inquiries. He slept the night pretty well, all things considered, and is partially conscious again this morning. He was very nearly killed last night, as you say; and if it hadn’t been for Mr Noel and Mr Hawthorn, who kindly came up at once and tried to protect us, he would have been killed outright, and I with him. But Mr Noel and Mr Hawthorn had happily no vacuum pans and no trash-houses to engage their first and chief attention.’

Tom Dupuy sneered visibly. ‘Hm!’ he said. ‘Two coloured fellows! Upon my conscience! the Dupuys of Trinidad must be coming down in the world, it seems, when they have to rely for help in a nigger rising upon two coloured fellows.’

‘If they’d had to rely upon white men like you,’ Nora answered angrily, flushing crimson as she spoke, ‘they’d have been burnt last night upon the ashes of the cane-house, and not a soul would have stirred a hand or foot to save them or protect them.’

Tom laughed to himself a sharp, short, malicious laugh. ‘Ha, ha!’ he said, ‘my fine English-bred lady, so that’s the way the wind blows, is it? I may be a fool, and I know you think me one’—Nora bowed immediately a sarcastic acquiescence—‘but I’m not such a fool as not to see through a woman’s face into a woman’s mind like an open window. I heard that that woolly-headed Hawthorn man had been over here and made a most cowardly time-serving speech to the confounded niggers, giving way to all their preposterous demands in the most outrageous and ridiculous fashion; but I didn’t hear that the other coloured fellow—your fine-spoken English friend Noel’—he hissed the words out with all the concentrated strength of his impotent hatred—‘had been up here too, to put his own finger into the pie when the crust was burning. Just like his impudence! the conceited coxcomb!’

‘Mr Noel is lying inside, in our own house here, this very moment, dangerously wounded,’ Nora cried, her face now like a crimson peony; ‘and he was cut down by the negroes last night, standing up bravely, alone and single-handed, with no weapon but a little riding-whip, facing those mad rebels like an angry tiger, and trying to protect me from their insults and their cutlasses; while you, sir, were stopping snugly away down at Pimento Valley, looking carefully after your canes and your vacuum pans. Tom Dupuy, if you dare to say another word, now or ever, in my hearing against the man who tried to save my life from those wild wretches at the risk of his own, as sure as I’m standing here, sir, I give you fair notice I’ll chastise you myself, as soon as I’ll look at you, you cowardly backbiter!—And now, Mr Dupuy, good-morning.’

Tom saw the game was fairly up and his hand outwitted. It was no use arguing with her any longer. ‘When she’s in this humour,’ he said to himself philosophically, ‘you might as well try to reason with a wounded lioness.’ So he whistled carelessly for Slot to fellow, lifted his hat as politely as he was able—he didn’t pretend to all these fine new-fangled town-bred ways of Harry Noel’s—jumped with awkward agility upon his chestnut pony, turned its head in the direction of Pimento Valley, and delivered a parting Parthian shot from a safe distance, just as he got beyond the garden gateway. ‘Good-by, Miss Nora,’ he said then savagely, raising his hat a second time with sarcastic courtesy: ‘good-bye for ever. This is our last meeting. And remember that I always said you’d finish in the end, for all your fine English education, in marrying a confounded woolly-headed brown man!’

CHAPTER XLV.

All day long, Mr Dupuy lay speechless and almost motionless on his bed, faint with loss of blood, and hovering between life and death, but gradually mending by imperceptible degrees, as Marian fancied. The brain had been terribly shaken, and there were some symptoms of stunning and concussion; but the main trouble was merely the excessive drain on the vascular system from the long-continued and unchecked bleeding. About mid-day, he became hot and feverish, with a full pulse, beating unsteadily. Macfarlane, who had remained in the house all night, ordered him at once a rough mixture of sal-volatile, bismuth, and whisky. ‘And whatever ye do,’ he said emphatically, ‘don’t forget the whisky—a good wine-glassful in half a pint of cold water.’

Mr Dupuy was raised in the bed to drink the mixture, which he swallowed mechanically in a half-unconscious fashion; and then a bandage of pounded ice was applied to his forehead, and leeches were hastily sent for to Port-of-Spain to reduce the inflammation. Long before the leeches had time to arrive, however, Nora, who was watching by his bedside, observed that his eyes began to open more frequently than before, and that gleams of reason seemed to come over them every now and again for brief intervals. ‘Give him some more whisky,’ Macfarlane said in his decided tone; ‘there’s nothing like it, nothing like it—in these cases—especially for a man of Dupuy’s idiosyncrasy.’

At that moment Mr Dupuy’s lips moved feebly, and he tried to turn with an effort on the pillow.

‘Hush, hush!’ Nora cried; ‘he wants to speak. He has something to tell us. What is it he’s saying? Listen, listen!’

Mr Dupuy’s lips moved again, and a faint voice proceeded slowly from the depths of his bosom: ‘Not fit to hold a candle to old Trinidad rum, I tell you, doctor.’

Macfarlane rubbed his hand against his thigh with evident pleasure and satisfaction. ‘He’s wrong there,’ he murmured, ‘undoubtedly wrong, as every judicious person could easily tell him;{586} but no matter. He’ll do now, when once he’s got life enough left in him to contradict one. It always does a Dupuy good to contradict other people. Let it be rum, then—a wine-glassful of Mr Tom’s best stilling.’

Almost as soon as the rum was swallowed, Mr Dupuy seemed to mend rapidly for the passing moment. He looked up and saw Nora. ‘That’s well then,’ he said with a sigh, recollecting suddenly the last night’s adventures. ‘So they didn’t kill you after all, Nora?’

Nora stooped down with unwonted tenderness and kissed him fervently. ‘No, papa,’ she said; ‘they didn’t; nor you either.’

Mr Dupuy paused for a moment; then he looked up a second time, and asked, with extraordinary vehemence for an invalided man: ‘Is this riot put down? Have they driven off the niggers? Have they taken the ringleaders? Have they hanged Delgado?’

‘Hush, hush!’ Nora cried, a little appalled in her cooler mood, after all that had happened, at this first savage outcry for vengeance. ‘You mustn’t talk, papa; you mustn’t excite yourself. Yes, yes; the riot is put down, and Delgado—Delgado is dead. He has met with his due punishment.’

‘That’s well!’ Mr Dupuy exclaimed, with much gusto, in spite of his weakness, rubbing his hands feebly underneath the bedclothes. ‘Serves the villain right. I’m glad they’ve hanged him. Nothing on earth comes up to martial law in these emergencies; and hang ’em on the spot, say I, as fast as you catch ’em, red-handed! Flog ’em first, and hang ’em afterwards!’

Marian looked down at him speechless, with a shudder of horror; but Nora put her face between her hands, overwhelmed with awe, now her own passion had burst itself out, at that terrible outburst of the old bad barbaric spirit of retaliation. ‘Don’t let him talk so, dear,’ she cried to Marian. ‘O Marian, Marian, I’m so ashamed of myself! I’m so ashamed of us all—us Dupuys, I mean; I wish we were all more like you and Mr Hawthorn.’

‘You must not speak, Mr Dupuy,’ Macfarlane said, interposing gently, with his rough-and-ready Scotch tenderness. ‘Ye’re not strong enough for conversation yet, I’m thinking. Ye must just take a wee bit sleep till the fever’s reduced. Ye’ve had a narrow escape of your life, my dear sir; and ye must not excite yourself the minute ye’re getting a trifle better.’

The old man lay silent for a few minutes longer; then he turned again to Nora, and without noticing Marian’s presence, said more vehemently and more viciously than ever: ‘I know who set them on to this, Nora. It wasn’t their own doing; it was coloured instigation. They were put up to it—I know they were put up to it—by that scoundrel Hawthorn—a seditious, rascally, malevolent lawyer, if ever there was one. I hope they’ll hang him too—he deserves it soundly—flog him and hang him as soon as they catch him!’

‘O papa, papa!’ Nora cried, growing hotter and redder in the face than ever, and clutching Marian’s hand tightly in an agony of distress and shamefacedness, ‘you don’t know what you’re saying! You don’t know what you owe to him! It was Mr Hawthorn who finally pacified and dispersed the negroes; and if it hadn’t been for his coolness and his bravery, we wouldn’t one of us have been alive to say so this very minute!’

Mr Dupuy coughed uneasily, and muttered to himself once more in a vindictive undertone: ‘Hang him when they catch him!—hang him when they catch him! I’ll speak to the governor about it myself, and prove to him conclusively that if it hadn’t been for this fellow Hawthorn, the niggers’d never have dreamed of kicking up such a hullabaloo and bobbery!’

‘But, papa,’ Nora began again, her eyes full of tears, ‘you don’t understand. You’re all wrong about it. If it hadn’t been for that dear, good, brave Mr Hawthorn’——

Marian touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Never mind about it, Nora, darling,’ she whispered consolingly, with a womanly caress to the poor shrinking girl at her elbow; ‘don’t trouble him with the story now. By-and-by, when he’s better, he’ll come to hear the facts; and then he’ll know what Edward’s part was in the whole matter. Don’t distress yourself about it, darling, now, after all that has happened. I know your father’s feelings too well to take amiss anything he may happen to say in the heat of the moment.’

‘If you speak another word before six o’clock, to-night, Dupuy,’ Macfarlane put in with stern determination, ‘I’ll just clear every soul that knows ye out of the room at once, and leave you alone to the tender mercies of old Aunt Clemmy. Turn over on your side, man, when your doctor tells ye to, and try to get a little bit of refreshing sleep before the evening.’

Mr Dupuy obeyed in a feeble fashion; but he still muttered doggedly to himself as he turned over: ‘Catch him and hang him! Prove it to the governor!’

As he spoke, Edward beckoned Marian out into the drawing-room through the open door, to show her a note which had just been brought to him by a mounted orderly. It was a few hasty lines, written in pencil, that very morning by the governor himself, thanking Mr Hawthorn in his official capacity for his brave and conciliatory conduct on the preceding evening, whereby a formidable and organised insurrection had been nipped in the bud, and a door left open for future inquiry, and redress of any possible just grievances on the part of the rioters and discontented negroes. ‘It is to your firmness and address alone,’ the governor wrote, ‘that the white population of the island of Trinidad owes to-day its present security from fire and bloodshed.’

Meanwhile, preparations had been made for preventing any possible fresh outbreak of the riot that evening; and soldiers and policemen were arriving every moment at the smouldering site of the recent fire, and forming a regular plan of defence against the remote chance of a second rising. Not that any such precautions were really necessary; for the negroes, deprived of their head in Delgado, were left utterly without cohesion or organisation; and Edward’s promise to go to England and see that their grievances were properly ventilated had had far more effect upon their trustful and excitable natures{587} than the display of ten regiments of soldiers in marching order could possibly have produced. The natural laziness of the negro mind, combining with their confidence in the young judge, and their fervent faith in the justice of Providence under the most apparently incongruous circumstances, had made them all settle down at once into their usual listless laissez-faire condition, as soon as the spur of Delgado’s fiery energy and exhortation had ceased to stimulate them. ‘It all right,’ they chattered passively among themselves. ‘Mistah Hawtorn gwine to ’peak to Missis Queen fur de poor naygur; an’ de Lard in hebben gwine to watch ober him, an’ see him doan’t suffer no more wrong at de heavy hand ob de proud buckra.’

When the time arrived to make preparations for the night’s watching and nursing, Nora came to Marian once more with her spirit vexed by a sore trouble. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘this is a dreadful thing about poor Mr Noel having to go on stopping here. It’s very unfortunate he couldn’t have been nursed through his illness at your house or at Captain Castello’s. He’ll be down in bed for at least a week or two, in all probability; and it won’t be possible to move him out of this until he’s better.’

‘Well, you see, Marian, it wouldn’t be so awkward, of course, if poor papa wasn’t ill too, because then, if I liked, I could go over and stop with you at Mulberry until Mr Noel was quite recovered. But as I shall have to stay here, naturally, to nurse papa, why’——

Nora hesitated. ‘Why, you see, darling,’ she went on timidly at last, ‘people will say that as I’ve helped to nurse Mr Noel through a serious illness’——

‘O Marian, don’t be so stupid! Of course, in that case, everybody’ll expect me—to—to—accept him.’

Marian looked down deep into her simple, little, girlish eyes with a curious smile of arch womanliness. ‘And why not, Nora?’ she asked at last with perfect simplicity.

Nora blushed. ‘Marian—Marian—dear Marian,’ she said at length, after a long pause, ‘you are so good—you are so kind—you are so helpful to me. I wish I could say to you all I feel, but I can’t; and even if I did, you couldn’t understand it—you couldn’t fathom it. You don’t know what it is, Marian, to be born a West Indian with such a terrible load of surviving prejudices. O darling, darling, we are all so full of wicked, dreadful, unjust feelings! I wish I could be like you, dear, I wish indeed I could; but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, somehow!’

Marian stroked her white little hand with sisterly tenderness in perfect silence for a few minutes; then she said, rather reproachfully: ‘So you wish Mr Noel wasn’t going to be nursed under your father’s roof at all, Nora! That’s a very poor return, isn’t it, my darling, for all his bravery and heroism and devotion?’

Nora drew back like one bitten suddenly by a venomous creature, and putting her hand in haste on her breast, as if it pained her terribly, answered, with a little deep-drawn sigh: ‘It isn’t that, Marian—it isn’t that, darling. You know what it is, dear, as well as I do. Don’t say it’s that, my sweet; oh, don’t say it’s that, or you’ll kill me, you’ll kill me with remorse and anger! You’ll make me hate myself, if you say I’m ungrateful. But I’m not ungrateful, Marian—I’m not ungrateful. I admire, and—and love him; yes, I love him, for the way he acted here last evening.’ And as she spoke, she buried her head fervidly, with shame and fear, in Marian’s bosom.

Marian smoothed her hair tenderly for a few minutes longer, this time again in profound silence, and then she spoke once more very softly, almost at Nora’s ear, in a low whisper. ‘I went this morning into Mr Noel’s room,’ she said, ‘darling, just when he was first beginning to recover consciousness; and as he saw me, he turned his eyes up to me with a beseeching look, and his lips seemed to be moving, as if he wanted ever so much to say something. So I stooped down and listened to catch the words he was trying to frame in his feverish fashion. He said at first just two words—“Miss Dupuy;” and then he spoke again, and said one only—“Nora.” I smiled, and nodded at him to tell him it was all well; and he spoke again, quite audibly: “Have they hurt her? Have they hurt her?” I said: “No; she’s as well as I am!” and his eyes seemed to grow larger as I said it, and filled with tears; and I knew what he meant by them, Nora—I knew what he meant by them. A little later, he spoke to me again, and he said: “Mrs Hawthorn, I may be dying; and if I die, tell her—tell Nora—that last night, when she stood beside me there so bravely, I loved her, I loved her better even than I had ever loved her!” He won’t die, Nora; but still I’ll break his confidence, darling, and tell it you this evening.—O Nora, Nora! you say you wish to goodness you hadn’t got all these dreadful, wicked, West Indian feelings. You’re brave enough—I know that—no woman braver. Why don’t you have the courage to break through them, then, and come away with Edward and me to England, and accept poor Mr Noel, who would gladly give his very life a thousand times over for you, darling?’

Nora burst into tears once more, and nestled, sobbing, closer and closer upon Marian’s shoulder.

‘My darling,’ she cried, ‘I’m too wicked! I only wish I could feel as you do!’

The extent to which the power of swimming is cultivated amongst Englishmen is scarcely creditable to the citizens of a country which boasts both that it is the greatest naval power, and that it possesses infinitely the largest mercantile marine on the face of the earth. It is only within recent years that it has been anything but a rare exception for a sailor to be able to swim. Amongst old naval officers it is still remembered as a notable occurrence that some fifty years ago, Lord Ingestre, when in command of a ship on the Mediterranean station, refused to rate as an able seaman any man who could not swim, and that from time to time other captains followed his example. That this should be still recalled{588} to mind shows how rare an accomplishment swimming was amongst sailors in past times; and if this has now been remedied in the royal navy, where, at the present day, swimming is taught, a similar improvement has by no means taken place in the mercantile marine, in which a seaman who can swim is still a curiosity. Probably the same remark would apply to our ‘long-shore’ population, to our lightermen and professional watermen, and to the inhabitants of our numerous canal-boats. And yet English people of both sexes and of the average type seem to take to the water as naturally as a duck. The difference is that they delight to disport themselves on the waves instead of in them. Every seaport, every suitable stretch of river, every lake, has its Rowing Club; Cockneys, whose ideas of rowing are original if not elegant, and whose notions of boat-management constitute a minus quantity, make summer Sundays and the August Bank Holiday hideous on the Thames in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court; and if ’Arry takes his ’Arriet for a day’s excursion to some one of the seaside resorts which they patronise, the enjoyment of both is incomplete if they do not court the woes of sea-sickness by going for a sail.

In face of this national taste for aquatic pursuits, it is a painfully suggestive reflection that comparatively few Englishmen, and still fewer Englishwomen, possess sufficient knowledge of swimming to save their own lives if they were suddenly plunged into deep water, and were called upon to support themselves for, perhaps, five minutes by their own exertions. No doubt, the power of swimming is a far more common accomplishment amongst men than it was a quarter of a century ago. Swimming has shared in the athletic revival which has marked the period, and has found its devotees amongst the practical adherents of muscular Christianity; but if, as some seem to think, there are not wanting signs that the rage for athletic pursuits has passed its meridian, and has begun its decline, swimming will probably suffer, in common with other sports, from the reaction. No doubt, too, our changeful English climate, our cold waters, are against this particular form of exercise. In the tideless, sun-warmed Mediterranean, in the coral-bound lagoons of the Southern Ocean, or by the grove-clad banks of Burmese rivers, swimming becomes both a luxury and a second nature. Let those testify who remember the untrammelled urchins flinging themselves from the bows of boats in Malta harbour to dive for and secure the coins flung from the deck of some newly arrived vessel, or disporting themselves day after day in the fetid, drain-polluted waters of the Dockyard Creek. Let travellers bear witness who, with possibly some humorous exaggeration, have told us how, in Burmah, toddling infants can swim at least as soon as they can walk; and how a mother, too busy for the time to look after her youngest born, will cheerfully and confidently place it in the river, to amuse itself with its playmates; and then, when she has leisure, will swim about among the gamboling children until she has found her own and brought it to land. In such a case as this there can be but little teaching; swimming must come almost naturally—shall we say from hereditary instinct, developed by the constant calls made upon it, and transmitted from generation to generation?

The lower temperature of the sea, or of fresh water fully exposed to the air, in our latitudes will doubtless always prevent Englishmen, as a nation, from becoming expert swimmers; but the common-sense of a people which prides itself on its possession of the quality should suffice to evade or overcome this natural obstacle so far as to release us from at least a large proportion of the grim death-tribute which we pay every year to our national ignorance. To any one who has noted the characteristic recklessness with which people intrust themselves to frail craft with whose management they are ludicrously unacquainted, it may perhaps be a matter for surprise that this tribute is not more heavy than it is; but certainly not a few of the deaths by drowning that go to swell our annual calendar of disasters can only be properly called accidents if we extend the signification of the word so as to include those misfortunes which, though unforeseen, arise from perfectly preventable causes. The climate of Paris and the north of France is not warmer than that of England, but the proportion of Parisians—perhaps even of Frenchmen in general—who can swim is certainly greater than that of Englishmen. When it was pointed out to the librarian at Boulogne-sur-Mer that the library did not possess a single work on swimming, he replied good-humouredly: ‘Ah! c’est comme ça, Monsieur—on apprend naturellement ici;’ and in Thévenot’s Art de Nager, démontré par Figures, avec des Avis pour se baigner utilement, published in Paris in or about 1696, some of the plates represent ladies swimming, and would thus seem to show that with Frenchwomen it has been a custom for centuries. In the year 1859, Miss Powers, the secretary to the Ladies’ National Association for the diffusion of sanitary knowledge, published a twopenny pamphlet entitled, Why do not Women Swim?—a Voice from many Waters; but the question thus propounded was not satisfactorily answered, and an Englishwoman who can swim still remains a rarity—how great a one, any one may easily ascertain for himself by watching the small crowd that speedily assembles to watch a lady-swimmer at any seaside resort.

In extenuation of our national ignorance of swimming, we have not even the excuse that the acquisition of the art is difficult. On the contrary, it is one of the most easily acquired of accomplishments. The one secret of it is confidence, though, like most other things, it is best learned young. There is no reason why it should not—on the contrary, on the ground both of health and of saving of life, there is every reason why it should—be made a necessary part of the education of young people of both sexes and of all classes. At Eton and in some other schools, it is systematically taught; but it would be far cheaper and more useful than many of the things for which parents cheerfully pay as ‘extras’ in private establishments; whilst in these days, when we are concerning ourselves so greatly about the education of the masses, and paying such a price for the privilege, swimming would certainly be a far more useful subject to form one of the items of Board School education than many of{589} the things for which the long-suffering ratepayer is now compelled to put his hand in his pocket. As a certain William Woodbridge remarked in a manual published by him in 1864:

This is the merest doggerel. In fact, the recommendation of the book is not its literary merit, for it possesses none, but the fact that it is what it professes to be—in itself a matter of congratulation after the nonsense which, from time to time, it has been sought to palm off upon the public by utilising the names of various prominent swimmers who were far too ignorant to have written a line of the compilations with which their names have been associated—and that the instruction conveyed in it is thoroughly sound, practical, and to the point. Woodbridge died in 1868; and the little manual has, I believe, been long out of print, so that in saying this I may be acquitted of the desire to give any one a gratuitous advertisement. I come back, however, to my point: Why, provided there be water at hand, should not every one be taught to swim during the period of his or her school career; and how can parents reconcile it to their consciences to permit their children to run a perfectly needless risk, by failing to have them taught what they ought to learn as regularly and easily as they learn to walk?

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.

Tom and Lucy Wedlake were two young people who had loved one another well enough, and had had sufficient courage to marry on two hundred pounds a year in the teeth of their respective families, both of which were highly respectable, extremely proud, but very poor. Tom was a Civil Service clerk, aged twenty-eight, whose salary had reached the above annual sum; and it was insisted by all their relations that the young people ought to wait until he should get his first class—which he might hope to do about forty—and be in receipt of three hundred a year; that being the smallest income upon which any lady and gentleman could contrive to support existence together. The pair declined to accept this view; so they got married; and Tom took his pretty gentle wife to live in a little house on the north-east of the Regent’s Park, which he had furnished with money lent him, free of interest, by a well-to-do friend. For the rest, they were content to trust to youth, health, and determination to keep from absolute destitution themselves and any little folks who might hereafter come.

They did not, after all, find the struggle so terrible as it had been described to them. They were not blessed—or burdened—with children until they had been some time married, nor until circumstances had put it into their power to maintain and educate them without difficulty; and they had no expensive tastes. They were extremely fond of one another, and lived in great happiness for one year. Then Uncle Franklin took up his abode with them, and their happiness was for a time considerably clouded. Mr Franklin was Lucy’s maternal uncle. In his business—that of a wine-merchant—he had made money, which he had increased by successful speculation. But in proportion as his purse grew bulky, his manners deteriorated. The latter fact was forgiven in consideration of the former; and by the time he retired, the master of a moderate fortune, the family toleration of him had developed into positive affection. Yet he was as we have seen him—rough, harsh, coarse, selfish, and overbearing; faults which were easily overlooked by the half-dozen sets of brothers and sisters, plentifully garnished with nephews and nieces, who remembered only that Uncle Franklin was old, rich, and a bachelor, and forgot the wine-merchant’s business, and the continual snubs and insults which it had always been the old gentleman’s pleasure to inflict upon his affectionate relatives. So that, when he began to lament the loneliness of his age, and to hint at his longings for the comforts and pleasures of family life, quite a number of hospitable doors flew open to him on the instant. Uncle Franklin entered all those doors, and left each of them before many weeks were over, shaking the dust off his feet against the inhabitants. In every house which he honoured with a brief sojourn, he comported himself more like a fiend than a human being. His selfishness, his ill-temper, his insolence, his coarseness, his tyranny, his general powers of exasperation, would have been unendurable by any save possible legatees, whose meekness, however, instead of disarming the old savage, seemed to incite him to yet greater cruelties. The end was the same in every case. He would fasten some perfectly unreasonable quarrel upon his hosts, and fling out of the house in a furious passion; subsequently amusing himself by inditing from his next abode injurious replies to the petitions for pardon and reconciliation which pursued him.

One day a cab drove up to Tom Wedlake’s door, and Uncle Franklin, alighting therefrom, walked into the parlour, plumped himself into the most comfortable armchair, and announced his intention of remaining, adding that his luggage would arrive shortly. Lucy, in consternation, entertained him as well as she could, which did not appear to be very well, until her husband came home and they were able to take counsel together.

Tom was at first entirely opposed to the whole thing; and being himself of a somewhat fiery temper, hinted at forcible expulsion as a means of solving the difficulty. But Lucy begged him to do nothing hastily, and suggested that the self-invited guest might at all events remain for a few days, until they should be able to see for themselves whether he were in reality so black as he{590} had been painted. And whether it was the excellence of the little dinner which Lucy dished up, or the bright though homely comfort around him, or certain indications in Tom’s look and manner, the dreadful uncle, having come in like a lion, seemed disposed to remain in the character of a lamb. He actually tried, in the course of the evening, to pay Lucy a compliment on her good looks, which only missed fire because no one could possibly have understood it.

Before he went to bed, Uncle Franklin repeated his proposal, offering very liberal terms; and he lamented his lonely old age and the evident disposition of all his relatives to quarrel with him, in a way which went to Lucy’s soft heart. Even Tom, than whom there was no better fellow breathing, was taken in so far that he forgot much that he had heard of the woes attending Uncle Franklin’s irruption into any household. It so happened that he had never troubled Lucy’s own family circle, who alone of all his relatives lived at some distance from London. The young couple sat late that night, discussing the matter from all sides, and at last determined to make the trial. Lucy was influenced partly by pity, partly by the hope, which had in it little indeed of the mercenary element, that her uncle might leave her some small legacy, so that her darling husband might not, after all, have an altogether undowered bride. Tom, on his side, thought only of the wife he loved; the additional income would enable her to keep another servant, would relieve her from hard and menial labour, and would even afford her some few little feminine luxuries which had hitherto been beyond her reach. So each, for the other’s sake, was willing to bow the back for the burden.

For a time all went well. The old man seemed to have made a sudden and vast amendment. True, he was generally irritable, always selfish, and sometimes expressed himself in rather odd language. But these, after all, were mere eccentricities, failings of old age, results of a life apart from all refining influences. They were not insupportable by two people who had youth, health, and good spirits to their aid. And it was evident that Uncle Franklin had taken a fancy to his niece. He liked to have her sitting near him at work; and she made an exemplary listener while he fought over again the battles of business, or indulged in tirades against the baseness and ingratitude of mankind in general and his other relations in particular. To Tom he was civil, and even friendly after his fashion; altogether, he was an endurable inmate; and his entertainers began to believe that the tales which they had heard must at least have been highly coloured.

But after a month of this, Tom and Lucy began to discover that very little present advantage was likely to result to them from the arrangement, which was also irksome in many ways. Uncle Franklin paid well; but then his ideas on the subjects of eating and drinking and minor luxuries were on an even more liberal scale. In fact, after his requirements in this way were provided for, and the expense of the necessary additional servant met, there was little or no margin of profit remaining. And the demands upon Lucy’s time and energies were considerable. Uncle Franklin liked attention, and was unsparing in exacting it; he was, in truth, something of an invalid, which perhaps partly accounted for his temper and other peculiarities; so that Tom began to think seriously of hinting to his guest that it was hardly convenient to entertain him longer; when one evening the old man, being alone with his host and in an unusually equable frame of mind, made an explicit declaration of his intentions. Having first anathematised all his other relations in a general but very hearty manner, he vowed that his niece and her husband were so far the only people with whom he had been able to get on; that he found himself more comfortable with them than he had ever been in his life; and that, with their permission, he proposed to end his days in their company. Tom looked a little awkward; but Mr Franklin, as if guessing at what was in his mind, went on to say that on this condition he should make Lucy his sole legatee; there being, as he considered, no one who had a better claim upon him, or to whom he would willingly leave a fraction of his wealth. Of course Tom could only express his grateful acknowledgments. He was too poor, his prospects were too uncertain for him to be justified in standing in the light of his wife and possible children; so Uncle Franklin was given to understand that his proposal was accepted.

Lucy was full of delight when her husband told her what had passed; but Tom himself was by no means disposed to be sanguine.

‘It’s all very well, little woman,’ said he; ‘and so far he has behaved with tolerable decency. But I don’t think he’s exactly a person to be trusted. You see, he is very comfortable here, thanks to you, and he is undeniably selfish. Naturally, he would like to stay; and some men will say or promise anything to get what they want at the moment. Let him stay, by all means; we must not throw away such a chance. But don’t allow yourself to build too much on his promises, my dear. I, for my part, shall not be at all surprised if he gets tired of us, and quarrels with us, as he has with the rest; nor even if we find, after he has ended his days here and got all he can out of us, that his money is left elsewhere.’

Lucy said little, but she could not bring herself to believe in the existence of such duplicity, and in her heart she was convinced of her uncle’s bona fides. She even felt a little shocked that her husband, whom she so loved and admired, could entertain such narrow and unworthy suspicions; and she resolved that, so far as it depended on her, the old man should have no just cause to reconsider his testamentary intentions.

But it is to be feared that this attack of amiability, coupled with the repression of the past few weeks, had put a strain upon Uncle Franklin which he was unable to bear. Perhaps he thought that his munificent promise entitled him to relax a little; perhaps he considered that he had now made his footing in the house absolutely safe. However that may have been, within a very few days after this conversation, the old Adam began to appear in him once more. In Tom’s presence, he was still on his good behaviour, having an instinctive fear of him, as one not likely to submit tamely to oppression. But Tom was absent all day at his office; and{591} when Uncle Franklin had no one to withstand him but a woman, and a very timid and gentle one to boot, he began to ‘let himself out.’ His powers of fault-finding were perfectly microscopic; he passed his time in devising vexations and enjoying them with the keenest relish. As for his language, it daily increased in majesty and ornament. He spoke to the servants in such a manner that one of them—the new one—threatened to give warning, and was with difficulty persuaded to remain; and Lucy was obliged to keep them as much as possible from contact with her guest. He would begin with a grumble at some trifle, round which he would gradually crystallise his grievances, and work himself up by their contemplation into a condition of insane rage, in which he would amble about the room like an angry baboon, knocking down chairs and scattering verbal brimstone all around. On these occasions, his liking for Lucy seemed to disappear altogether, and he would indulge in the most unpleasant criticisms on her appearance, her intellect, and her housekeeping abilities. Neither would he spare her husband, whom he was accustomed to sum up with similarly uncomplimentary results, inviting Lucy to report his comments to their object—a course which, he understood very well, nothing would induce her to take.

She bore it all heroically. She knew what the consequence would be if the slightest hint of the treatment to which she was subjected should ever reach Tom’s ears; so she contented herself with uncomplaining good-temper so long as that was possible, and tears—which added fuel to her uncle’s wrath—when endurance was pushed beyond its limits. Of her own profit she thought little; or rather, the loss of her expectations would have seemed to her humble and contented nature but a small price to pay for release from her sufferings. But for Tom’s sake—in the hope of seeing him relieved of that anxiety for her future which she knew to be always present to his mind—for the sake of those who might hereafter cling around her knees—she was prepared to endure silently the worst that Uncle Franklin could do to her.

This state of things, however, came to a sudden end in a manner to her most unwelcome. Her husband came home one afternoon much earlier than usual. He had thought of late that his wife looked rather pale and worn, and had resolved to treat her to a little dinner at a restaurant, and to take her afterwards to the theatre, in the hope that the outing might give her a much-needed fillip. The consequence was that he met her unexpectedly, as she came out of the dining-room. Could she have had a few moments’ time, she would have utilised it in sponging her eyes and generally smoothing down her ruffled plumage, for this was one of the days on which she had given way under Uncle Franklin’s inflictions; her face was all blurred with tears, and she was sobbing so that she could not immediately stop. All that he had heard of the old man rushed into Tom’s mind, and he suspected at once the state of the case. He took her up-stairs, and then and there had it all out of her, with that gentle and perfectly unbending firmness which she could never resist. He said no more than to bid his little wife dry her eyes and be comforted, kissed her, and went down-stairs, quite deaf to her feeble efforts to excuse the offender. Uncle Franklin had a bad half-hour of it that afternoon; he probably heard more solid truth than he had been favoured with for many years. It was never exactly known what Tom said to him; but before bedtime that night, it was quite understood by all the household that their guest was under orders to quit within a week. Uncle Franklin did not utter a word all the evening, but sat in his armchair, blinking furtively at his host, feeling guilty and detected, but yet unrepentant. Before he went to bed, he announced his intention of keeping to his own room for the remainder of his stay, and requested that a fire might be lit there in the morning. Also, he wrote a letter, and sent a servant to post it. This letter it was which occasioned Mr Blackford’s visit.

That worthy solicitor prepared the will, which was very short and simple, with the care demanded by a document of such importance to his own interests. He even took the precaution to fair-copy it for signature himself, so as to pay strict regard to the desire of the testator that no inkling of its purport should leak out prematurely; and with it he next day repaired to Camden Town, taking with him, as requested, two witnesses—his own clerk, and a writer in the employ of his law-stationer.

Mr Franklin chuckled a great deal as he wrote his name. ‘You can take it away and keep it yourself, Blackford,’ said he, after the witnesses had done their part and retired; ‘I’ll warrant you to take good care of it.—By the way, I don’t think the date’s inserted.’

The solicitor began to unbutton the greatcoat, in an inner pocket of which he had buried the precious piece of paper.

‘Oh, bother that! Do it when you get back. It’s your concern—not mine. I’ve had enough of you for one while; and I feel confoundedly queer. I suppose this business has upset me, though I don’t know why it should. It wouldn’t have done so, once on a time.—Good-day.’ And, nothing loth, Mr Blackford took himself off with his treasure.

The prize was his; but only conditionally. This unreliable testator might alter his mind at any moment and undo his freak. Mr Blackford, with all his faults, was not murderously inclined; but it is to be feared that if some burglar in the pursuit of his calling had found it necessary to eliminate Mr Franklin that night, and had confided his intentions beforehand to the solicitor, something would have happened to prevent that gentleman from warning the police. He re-entered his office with a sigh. Never had it appeared to him so gloomy as at this moment, when, with the possibility of future wealth in his pocket, he found himself still confronted with the necessity of solving that difficult and importunate bread-and-cheese problem.

Uncle Franklin had rightly estimated his chances of remaining an inmate of the Wedlake nest. On the morning after the execution of his will, he came down to the dining-room at breakfast-time, and then and there ate humble-pie with the best grace he could assume. He{592} apologised formally to Lucy, and promised never to repeat his behaviour. He pleaded to Tom his failing health and increasing age, and drew a moving picture of himself as an outcast upon the world, at the mercy of landladies; and he did this with a certain rough pathos which produced its effect. Tom was very short and stern in his replies, and would commit himself to nothing definite, but promised to think the matter over during the day. And when he returned at night, Lucy the soft-hearted met him with an appeal, before which he gave way.

‘He has been very humble and quiet all day,’ said she. ‘I think, my boy—so savage about his little wife!—has quite broken the poor old man’s spirit. I don’t think we ought to send him away. Of course, there is the money; and it’s nonsense to pretend that we shouldn’t be glad if he were to leave us a little. We can’t afford to despise it, Tom. I am sure he likes me, though he is so cross; and I am not much afraid that this affair will make any difference in the end. But besides all that, he is so friendless and alone, rich as he is.—We will try to keep him, won’t we, Tom dear?’

‘He must be on his good behaviour, then,’ said Tom, only half mollified. ‘I’ll stand no more nonsense, let him be as rich as Crœsus.’

‘Leave him to me,’ said Lucy; ‘there will be no more trouble with him. It was my own fault for giving way so much. I shall be wiser now, and so will he.’

‘As you like, dear,’ said her husband. ‘I have no right to oppose you in this matter, if you are willing to sacrifice yourself. I am very much afraid you will be disappointed. Forgiveness of injuries is not in your dear uncle’s nature, or I am much mistaken. He hates me like poison now, of course; and he can’t benefit you without doing the same by me, to some extent.’

‘I don’t know,’ returned Lucy thoughtfully. ‘I think you will find him very different in future. He seems to me as if he had had a shock. No one has ever stood up to him before, you know; and the treatment may have a good effect.’

It did not occur to either of them to attach any importance to the visits of Mr Blackford, of whose profession they were ignorant. Uncle Franklin, though he had retired from trade, continued his speculative investments; and the calls of gentlemen of unmistakable ‘business’ appearance were of such common occurrence, that they had almost ceased to attract notice in the household, the master and mistress of which were two of the least curious people in the world.

The old man certainly was altered, suddenly and strangely. His ill-temper had disappeared; he even refrained from swearing when, on one occasion, a mishap in the kitchen ruined his lunch. He became remarkably silent; he gave up his morning walk, seldom read his paper, and moped all day in his armchair, following Lucy about the room with his eyes whenever she was present. She was rather anxious about him, and did her best, by redoubled kindness and attention, to soothe what she supposed to be his mortification under the sharp rebuke which he had received. For a long time he scarcely noticed her efforts, remaining sullen and unresponsive; but after a while she found that he still liked her to be near him, and got restless and uneasy if she were long absent. He seemed to have something on his mind, and would gaze into the fire and mutter anxiously to himself for hours together. For Tom he entertained a hearty and unconcealed aversion, never speaking to him unless obliged to do so, and glaring at him with no doubtful expression whenever his back was turned. Of this Tom was almost oblivious, and entirely careless; for no ‘expectations,’ however important to himself or to others, could have enabled him to dissemble his real feelings towards any one whom he either loved or disliked.

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Roum or Rom, the gypsies’ own name for a gypsy all the world over.

[2] Lásho, otherwise látcho, ‘good.’

[3] Gaújoes, Gentiles or non-gypsies.

[4] Rómanes, the gypsy language.

[5] Báro lávengro, ‘great word-maker,’ that is, fluent speaker of the gypsy language.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 141, VOL. III, SEPTEMBER 11, 1886 ***

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 141, vol. III, September 11, 1886

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

THE GREEK GYPSIES AT LIVERPOOL.

BY ORDER OF THE LEAGUE.

IN TWENTY CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.

AN ATLANTIC VOYAGE—AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER XLIV.

CHAPTER XLV.

SWIMMING.

A TALE OF TWO KNAVERIES.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.

DREAM-FANCIES.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 141, vol. III, September 11, 1886

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

THE GREEK GYPSIES AT LIVERPOOL.

BY ORDER OF THE LEAGUE.

IN TWENTY CHAPTERS.—CHAP. I.

AN ATLANTIC VOYAGE—AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER XLIV.

CHAPTER XLV.

SWIMMING.

A TALE OF TWO KNAVERIES.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAP. II.

DREAM-FANCIES.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.