The Novelist.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 237, 25 March 1876, Page 3

The Novelist.

UNCLE JOHN. Me foretliinketh, said King Pcllinore, this shall betide, but God may well foredoe destiny.— Morte d' Arthur. Chapter Vl. —Man-eaters. After a storm comes a calm. It is a fort« night since the good run from Plumpton Osiers, and in less than an hour the gong will sound for luncheon at the Priors. Meantime peace and quiet pervade the blue drawing-room in which Percy Mortimer and his broken leg are established. The Middleton doctor has “ reduced th 6 fracture,” as he calls it ; a process the sufferer renders by the expression “spliced it where it was sprung the bone is knitting, and the patient going on favorably. Indeed, Percy, as he often boasts, is an excellent subject for surgical operations. His constitution is healthy, his temperament easy and somewhat lethargic. He possesses plenty of courage, and derives a certain amusement from such experiments as those to which he is now subjected, even when made on his own person. He yps lived in so many strange scenes and places, ha so often been prostrated by accident or illness, with a screen of branches for a roof, a tattered blanket and weather-worn saddle for bedding, and an Indian squaw or a swarthy Affghan for nurse—that to be laid up in this luxurious drawing-room, with books and newspapers at hand, hot-house flowers on the table, and every female creature in the house his devoted slave”, seems a positive luxury and delight. His eye travels lazily round till it rests on the figure of Annie Dennison, drawing at the window, but looking up every now and then with a dreamy, abstracted air, suggestive of her occupation, and by no means unbecoming to a pretty woman.

It has just struck him that to have such a companion about one every day, even when no longer held by the leg on a drawing-room sofa, might be worth the sacrifice of many bachelor comforts and pleasures, which no man is better able to appreciate, and of which no man in his time has made better use.

Physical pain, especially when borne without complaint, seldom fails to win a woman's sympathies and excite her interest. Annie established herself from the first as head nurse to Mr. Mortimer, and m a very few days it seems the most natural thing in the world that his sofa should be wheeled into the blue draw-ing-room, and that he should spend the morning Ute-a-tUe with Mrs. Dennison.

Par be it from me to profess dissent from any article of faith cherished by that order of fire-worshippers who scorch, if they do not entirely consume, their own hearts on an altar of self-immolation. No doubt the true believer “ drags at each remove a lengthening chain.” No doubt “ absence ” (if not too prolonged) “makes the heart grow fonder,” and the ideal reigns perhaps most triumphantly when there is nothing present to destroy his or her ideality. But Outta cavat lapidem : constant dropping wears away a stone ; constant flirtation saps the character while it deteriorates the brain. Repeated confidences kindle into sympathy—the tow and timber of which men and women are proverbially composed, only wait a chance spark, a rising breeze, to become a bonfire, and propinquity is perhaps the most combustible ingredient of all. Then, even if the heart remain steady, the fancy is sadly apt to stray, and one step at least is taken on tb e downward path which runs in a steeper incline at every inoh, and hurries us, before we know where we are, to the very bottom of the hill. Percy Mortimer always boasted that he could stop and put on the drag-chain whenever he choose. He had often been in love, but never, as yet, with only one woman at a time ; and believed himsel, as he was believed by his friends, to be incapable of commiting what he and they considered the crowning imprudence of matrimony. His mother, his aunts, all his female relations, persistently recommended the institution, even while they were prepared to revile and vituperate any lady who should propose herself as a candidate for its advantages, and professed themselves, as no doubt they felt, eager to receive “dear Percy's ” wife with open arms—an expression best understood by those who have had most experience of the cordiality that exists between relations by marriage. But “dear Percy” did not see it. He got on very v/ell as he was—could tolerate his own society better than that of people who bored him, liked his own way, his own pursuits and amusements, his own friends, married and single, his horses, hi 3 cigar—above all, his liberty. To-day, for the first time, he began to think there might be something in life better than all these.

“ Turn your head a little towards the fireplace, Mr. Mortimer,” said Annie, from the window. “ I’ve rubbed your nose out three times, and a very provoking nose it is. Never mind ! don’t move, if it hurts you, please.” “ Most certainly not !” answered Percy, laughing. “ But turning one’s head does not necessarily give one a pain in the leg. Will that do ? Make a good nose of it, Miss Dennison—art should be nature idealized, not copied. On the aquiline, if you please, as much as possible, and off the snub. Have you done the tiger ?” “ I’m coming to him directly I’ve straightened your nose,” said the artist, whose talent lay chiefly in caricature. “ But was it a true story, Mr. Mortimer ?” Uncle John made my blood run cold when he described how the creature stood over you waving its cruel tail like a cat with a mouse. Poor mouse ! What a moment it must have been ! Tell me all about it from beginning to end. I shall draw it aB well again if you do.” “ There’s not much to tell, only the mouse had a squeak for it. Do you know what a shekar'ry is?” “Not the least. The only Indian word I know is bungalow, and I haven’t an idea what it means. Now I’ve began the tiger’s back. How do their stripes go ? The long way of the

skirt, or across it? Don’t move your head. Tell me exactly how it happened, without any Indian words, whilst I finibh his tail. > “ Well I was at a station—never mind w here —what we call up country, staying with a very good fellow, an indigo-planter ? No ? Well, you’ve seen a fellow with one eye, and that’s near enough. One day after tiffiin —” “Stop. What’s tiffin ? Don’t say that again.” , ~ “After lucheon, then, a native made, his appearance in a state of dismay and trepidation, to tell as that his relatives, his belongings, his entire village, were in terror of their lives from the depredations of a man-eater. “ That’s an Indian word, I’m sure. Don’t take your eyes off the chimney-piece, and confine your narrative to plain English. “Man-eater is plain English ; I’ve seen lots of them in London, and elsewhere, with striped dresses, and other tiger-like qualifications. Eor fifteen miles round, it seemed the beast kept everybody in alarm, and, according to the native’s account, had eaten within the month seven children, a water-carrier, and a tough old Hindoo woman, the speaker’s grandmother. My friend who was drinking brandy paw —brandy-and-water, I mean—thought the story probable enough, and in short, being a resolute fellow, determined to lie in wait at a certain spot the beast frequented, next morning at daybreak, and keep his eyes open.” “ His one eye open, if you please, interposed the young lady. “ I’m sketching him doing it. If thi3 improbable story really be true, let us have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Mr. Mortimer.” ** You draw him with a good deal of stomach then, and very thin legs,” continued Percy ; “ and the eye that is open ought to be as sharp as a needle. He made all his arrangements overnight, ordered everything to be ready—guns, fellows to carry them, an elephant to take us to the ground, &c., and at four in the morning we settled comfortably to our coffee, for of course I said I’d go with him.” “ Of course you did, and I think it was very foolish—no, I don’t ! I think you were quite right.” “ £ Can you draw a bead ?’ said my friend as soon as we got fairly under weigh. ‘You must shoot to an inch, when you go out to kill a tiger on foot. He’s not like a pheasant in Norfolk, you know. If you’re at all uncertain, you had better remain with the elephant. I should be sorry for you to risk your life in the kind of sport we are likely to have to-day.’ “Of course I swore I could shoot like Colonel Ross, and so, though I was in a blue funk, I resolved to do my best, and put a bold face on it, while the elephant tramped steadily on.”

“ Had the elephant tusks ?” interrupted Miss Annie. “ I’m putting it in the background.” “Tusks ! Of course it had, and horns too,” answered Percy laughing. “ Well, Miss Dennison, you’ll hardly believe it, but no sooner were we in sight of the tope—the clump of trees that was to guide us—than we came upon the beast’s track, printed off quite fresh in the clay, by a water spring. We had no doubt then of his size, or the shape of his claws. My friend’s one eye blazed like a lamp. “ ‘We’ll get down here,’ said he, * and leave the elephant to take us back again.’ I only hoped the elephant’s load might not be lightened for its homeward journey. “ We placed ourselves in a narrow pass, such as you would almost call a * ride ’ in a woodland here, waiting till the beaters should have driven up to us. Notwithstanding the diabolical row they made, I swear I could hear my heart beat. The indigo-planter, however, seemed as cool as was compatible with a temperature of 90° Fahrenheit in the shade.” Miss Dennison had laid her pencils down and was looking at him, as Desdemona (before marriage) looked at Othello. “ Presently I felt his hand on my shoulder. ‘ Right in front of you,’ he whispered, ‘Twenty yards, not an inch farther. You’ll see his head when he moves'

“ But when you come to paint that masterly sketch, Miss Dennison, please don’t forget that a tiger’s dress, as you call it, matches in color the jungle he frequents. In the gawdy tawny and orange hues that surrounded me I could make out nothing, positively nothing, till I fancied the reeds began to shake. “ ‘ Steady,' whispered one-eye, who was born a Scotchman, and under strong excitement spoke the language still. ‘ Tak’ time man ! Now ! give it him.’ “ Whether it was the noise the beaters made, or the roar of the animal, or both combined, I cannot say, but such a fearful row I never heard in my life as at that moment. The reeds seemed to divide of themselves, and out rushed a beast as big as a donkey, making straight towards me, with a sleek round head as broad as a bull’s.

“ I took the best aim I could at his mouth, and let him have an eleven-bore ball crash into the very middle of it.” “ Oh, Mr. Mortimer ! How could you ?” “ How couldn’t I, you mean. Instead of his tumbling headlong at my feet, as I fully expected, I heard a rush and singing in my ears, a long dark body seemed to shoot-between me and the sun. I felt something like an electric shock, only stronger, and I found myself half stunned, half paralysed, but not so frightened as I should have thought, lying on my back, with a wide hairy chest astride over mine, and a ton of weight driving spikes through my left arm as it pinned me to the ground. “ He said I didn’t faint ; but the next thing I remember was my friend giving me brandy, and the tiger stretched out stone dead, three or four yards off. What really happened was this. When the beast came at me out of the jungle I shot him, as I meant to do, in a vital place ; but I fancy I must have aimed an inch too low, for I only broke his jaw. In two bounds he was on me, and if I had been alone, why, I should never have inflicted on you so long a story in this pretty drawing-room. But the indigo-planter was as cool a hand and as good a sportsman as ever sat in a howdah. He knew the nature of the beast was so far catlike that it would gloat for anjinstant over its victim before dealing the fatal buffet, and of

that instant he took advantage. With a deliberate and deadly aim he finished it up by a double shot through the spine. There was not a moment to spare, and, as I said before, I think you must allow the mouse had a squeak for it.” Annie felt more interested than she cared to own, so applied herself sedulously to her di awing, while she asked “And what became of the Hindoo —the person whose grandmother was eaten by the tiger ?” “The Hindoo was like other Hindoos, very grateful and demonstrative, with a shade of polite insincerity. His ideas on the subject of tigers, as I gathered from my friend, were most remarkable. Had the last shot not killed the tiger, in which case the tiger must assuredly have killed me, nothing would have persuaded this intelligent native but that my spirit was destined to accompany the animal in its excursions, and assist it to obtain its prey. Fancy me, disembodied, if you can, leading a tiger about in a leash, like Una with the lion ! That would be a subject for a sketch—Miss Dennison, won’t you try it ?” . Annie shook her head, “ I don t like joking about these horrors,” she said; “but you can t mean that the natives seriously believe such absurdities ?” ~ “ I will only tell you what the old gentleman positively assured us happened in his own case, some years before. His eldest son had been killed by a tiger, and partly eaten, when the brute was disturbed, and driven away from its meal. The father, armed with a.rusty matchlock, as long as himself, climbed into a tree at nio-ht, resolved to watch the body, and have a shot at the beast, when it returned, as it certainly would, for another supper off his boy. He had not long to wait. The tiger stole out of the jungle, and came gliding into the moonlight, when, just as the weapon covered a vital spot, he whisked round, and slipped into the covert again. The corpse, sitting upright, was nodding at the tree on which the avenger had perched himself, and its friendly warning had not been in vain. The Hindoo then came down and fastened the boy’s body to the ground. Again he watched, and again the tio-er made his appearance, but one of the corpse’s hands was free, and that hand pointed faithfully towards the post of danger, with the same result as before. The undefeated old gentleman, came down, nevertheless, once more, and pinned his boy’s body secure to. the earth, so that it could not move a limb. His patience and perseverence were rewarded. The tiger emerged a third time, and finished a hasty morsel with an ounce of lead in his brain. The man stuck to the truth of his story with the utmost confidonce. A great English sahib had bought the tiger’s skin, and it was well known in Mysore and the adjacent districts that such was the nature of the man-eater and the destiny of his victim. Miss Dennison, have you finished your sketch ? “ I should like to have seen all you have, Mr. Mortimer,” said the young lady, coloring her tiger with some sepia and the feather-end of a pen. “ Gentlemen have a great advantage over ladies. They go about the world seeing and doing things, while we can only sit at home and—draw.” He looked up. The last word was not quite what he expected. Her head was bent over her color-box, and he could not help thinking what a beautiful sketch she herself would make in that attitude, if only she could be transferred to cardboard or canvas. Something whispered, “ Why not become possessor of the original ? You have money ; you are neither old nor ugly ; your manners are pleasant ; your position undeniable. Surely you have only got to ask and have.” But perhaps the assumed facility of the transaction lessened its charm, and Percy felt he was not yet so far gone but that he could balance calmly the pros and cons of that irrevocable plunge, which for the first time in his life he contemplated the possibility of making. She little thought what a push she gave him towards the brink by her innocent question, asked, nevertheless, with a faint increase of color in her cheek : “ Do you know if Mr. Maxwell is expected to-day ? He said he should come down again to see how you were getting on.” Now Horace Maxwell, who remained at the Priors to watch his friend’s recovery for nearly a week after the accident of which he was the innocent cause, had carried with him to London the good wishes of everybody in the house. Even Aunt Emily declared that he showed more feeling than she could have expected from any young man of the present day, while the skill with which he rode Barmecide up to their joint catastrophe, constituted him a prime favorite with Uncle John. Miss Blair had been prepared to like him from the first, and her conviction that her influence over him was less than she expected, in no way decreased her partiality. She had never before any difficulty in such matters, but here was one with whom she began swimmingly, and never advanced a step. She reflected, she wondered, she watched. She could not make out whether he was taken by Miss Dennison or not. And Annie, who asked herself the very same question, had decided, with more prudence than young ladies generally possess, that it must never be answered, one way or the other. Mr. Maxwell was nice, no doubt. None of her partners or male friends had ever been so nice. More of a man of the world than Lexley, who besides had become very odd and altered of late. Better looking than Mortimer, and altogether, as it seemed to her, belonging to a different class of beings from honest Nokes and Stokes, gone back to duty in their barracks. But he was not a marrying man. Some instinct, usually dormant in the breast of woman till she becomes a chaperon, had warned Annie that his pleasant glances, his bright smiles, were simply the frank tribute of one who had nothing else to offer. She did not forget an occasion when she found him in the billiard-room, holding a confidential conversation with Miss Blair. They changed color, she was sure, when she opened the door. Miss Dennison was not much given to analysing her feelings, or she might have felt alarmed at

certain pangs of jealousy occasioned by the" confusion of the gentleman, and the disinclination she felt afterwards for the society of the Still, though one never means, and don’t even want, to marry a man, one can appreciate his good qualities, be glad that he should visit one, and ask his friend, not without a blush, when one is likely to see him again. “He talked of to-day,” answered Percy, moving his sound leg uneasily on the sofa ; “ but that’s no reason he should come. People cannot tear themselves away from the delights of London. Look at the Pikes—promised faithfully, threw everybody over, and never appeared at all.” “You say that on purpose to make me angry,” exclaimed Annie. “ You know that she is my dearest friend, and the General is simply my idol. But how could they come when baby was ill ? It is brutal to think of it.” “ Babies never ought to be ill,” was his answer. “They never are, when properly brought up. Look at savages : I lived with a tribe once who turned their children out of their lodges directly they were weaned. The weakly died off, the strong grew up, and everybody was satisfied. Don’t go, Miss Dennison, I’m not such an ogre as you think.” “I must go,” replied Annie ; “but I’ll tidy you up first. Luncheon will be ready in five minutes, and most of the sepia for your tiger’s stripes has come off on my hands. Yes, I don’t mind showing you the sketch, but you must promise not to bounce about and fidget with the sofa-cushions. You’re not nearly so good a patient as you were, Mr. Mortimer. I suppose that means you are getting better.” “It means I have too kind a nurse,” replied Percy, looking gratefully in the girl’s face, while she put her half-finished sketch into his hand.

“ I’ll do it,” he thought, “ hang me if I won’t !” Then he reflected on the great disadvantage at which a suiter is placed when fastened down to a sofa by a broken leg. Had the lady been a person of experience—a widow, for instance, or a London girl of many seasons’ practice, or even Miss Blair, as he had lately learned to call her—the helplessness of his attitude would have been rather in his favor. Through all natures seems to prevail the law of mechanics, that “action and reaction are equal and contrary.” In love and business alike, each seems prepared to advance in proportion as the other recedes, until some imaginary line is reached at which people come to an understanding and conclude the transaction. But such mutual accommodation can only be calculated with certainty when both are experienced dealers, well acquainted with the value of their wares. In the present instance Percy thought it more than probable that anything like a premature declaration would put Miss Dennison to a flight he would be powerless to check by the exercise of certain gentle yet resolute measures that his experience taught him produced very soothing results. To be left on a sofa, with a half-finished offer on his lips, that could only be completed at a young lady’s pleasure, when, where, and how she would ! Not if he knew it! Into so thoroughly false a position Mortimer would be the last man on earth to blunder ; and so, instead of seizing the pretty hand that held the sketch and pressing it to his lips, he contented himself with a kindly glance into the pretty face, and a request that he might become the proud possessor of the picture when complete. “ I don’t know,” said Annie. “.You’ll hang it up somewhere, and laugh at it with your bachelor friends.” “ On the contrary, I shall keep it under lock and key, in a portfolio, and only look at it when I feel I want taking down a peg. You are strong in caricature, Miss Dennison, but you are not merciful. Am I really so ugly as that.” “ India is very unbecoming, I have been told,” answered Annie demurely. “I never saw you there, you know, so I have drawn on my imagination.” “And drawn from it to some purpose, it seems. Well, it’s lucky we cannot see ourselves as others see us. The tiger is capital. Is he drawn from the imagination too ?” “Oh ! no. I’ve seen him at the Zoological.” “ Why don’t you see me at the Zoological ? I know all the keepers, and a good many of the beasts. Won’t you come to the Zoo with me some day, when we get back to London ?” “ I don’t know,” said Annie, again. “ I must really go and wash my hands now. The gong will sound in five minutes. “ First tell me who that is coming up the avenue. I can just see a hat between the cedars.” “It’s Mr. Lexley,” answered Annie. “He often comes to luncheon now, and walks the whole way —eleven miles ! Mr. Mortimer, do you know —” “ Do I know what ?” “ It’s very ridiculous, of course, but I can’t help thinking that Mr. Lexley is rather inclined to—to like somebody here.” “ Meaning Miss Dennison ?” She flushed up. “ Not meaning Miss Dennison the least. Somebody very different from Miss Dennison.” “ You can’t mean Mrs. Dennison ! he exclaimed, raising his eyebrows in affected horror. “ And a clergyman, too ! How shocking !” “ I am serious,” she answered, though she could not help laughing “ which you never arefor five minutes, even with a broken leg. Of course he likes Aunt Emily and all of us very much, but I don’t fancy he would walk two-and-twenty miles, between breakfast and dinner, to see anybody on earth but Miss Blair. Mr. Mortimer, I am convinced you can tell me—who is Miss Blair ? “A friend of your aunt’s, I fancy. A very old friend of Mrs. Dennison ; that is why she is here so much.” “ But you have known her a long time ? She said so herself, the night before last.” “ I have met her abroad.” “Where?” He escaped into generalities. “Oh ! everywhere abroad. She’s been knocking about over the whole of abroad, and so have I.”

“Was she in society ! I don’t mean in China or the Sandwich Islands, or any of those out-of-the-way places, but in Paris and Yienna and Cannes ?” “Oh ! yes ; I belive so. But lam not a very good judge ; I have never thought much about her. I dare say you have formed your own opinion, and it’s far more likely to be right than mine.” . “ I dare say I have,” replied Annie, looking thoughtfully at her Bketch. “My opinion is that she’s a man-eater ! There ! What shall I send you in for luncheon?”