WHAT THE BOOKSHELVES HID.

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 9

WHAT THE BOOKSHELVES HID.

BY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE. Archibald Cawlett, Dean of an ancient and reputable college, sat in his library this morning, his face all. hut buried in a treatise on Etruscan Vases. He was spare and long, the dean, and his clothes were snuffy and old, *and his shaven chin was never without a few interlacing cuts and gashes, the fruits of an absentminded application of the razor. Deport had it in Cambridge that Archibald Cawlett had once been young, but there were few who would defend the theory openly. A bachelor, if ever there . was one, ho knew nothing of women, because he had invariably fled from them at sight. . He had read in Homer of the loyes of men and women, and had glowed; but it was only the language and the quantities that had stirred his pulse, and so he

/3 was here, 011 this moriM-g- of May*Week, .much as you would have .found him on any other morning of the ' term, deep in his musty books, and as remote from the world outside as if he, too ~ were no more than a book upon one of life’s neglected shelves. “Dear me!” lie cried on a sudden, _ as the gateway clock chimed one. “1 —X believe X had an appointment* for one o’clock—yes, yes, Smit-helis was to come to see me.” He got* up from his cliaiv and! dusted his clothes a little, in the.vague fashion that was peculiar to him; and he would in all likelihood 1 have gone back to his vases again from sheer. forgetfulness, had not a spirited knock sounded on the door of his outer room. “Come in. come in!”»cried the Dean nervously, as he opened the inner door. He was always nervous when a man had to be “hauled” for not keeping chapels, and his visitor, he felt sure, was Smithells. o

But ms vistor was not 'Smithells, and the Dean, rubbed his eyes and murmured “Dear me” a score of tunes, and looked behind him as if to make sure of his retreat. Eor half-way between the doer and the table, with its littAr ox papers, books, and wliat not, stocid a girl, in' a muslin gown—a dainty, ffeshrlcoking' girl, with heightened colour and eyes that seemed to have a ’world of laughter in them. The lilies-of-thdf-va-lley she was carrying., brought a breath ir summer with them. ; - " V

“Oh —er —I—l thought you were Smitixells,” said the Dean.

. .“No.- Fm not iSmithells,;” said the other with an embarrassed; smile. “I’m Violet. Grey, you ;know.” ; ' .. ' . ; -The Dean went on rubbing his hands. He had noticed that Miss .'Grey, whatever her 'business might .be, had closed the door behind her,, and.his. terror was so acute at to render, him powerless either to advance or to.retreat, “You must think it rather odd of me to run into your room in this way,” said Miss Grey, after a. disquieting silence. “Oh, no—not at ail. odd, not at all odd. I—ah—er—l ' am extremely-—ex-tremely pleased to - see you.’’ . ' “I couldn’t help it, yoti seb,’--she-went-on, half laughing.“l.think I ought to make s6irie explanation'though /. - don’t you ?” d' She was SO outspoken, so like a kitten or any rather irresponsible- bit- of inno-~ cence, that the Dean forgot a little of his shyness. He felt almost -fatherly in a. far-away fashion. True, it was rather perplexing to find a lady, whom he had never seen before,- come directly into his room . in this light and airy way; but then he thought all . women incomprehensible, and perhaps there was nothing out of the common in this. “Perhaps—perhaps you will take- a chaii’P” he ventured, moving a step or two forward with a courage that did him credit. - - ~ “Oh, no, thank you"! I can’t stay. T only ran in to escape ” she began and stopped as a sound of feet came up the stair, and then a rattle of plates and dishes sounded at the outer door. Miss Grey, it seemed, was almost as nervous as the Dean in her own way. “Dear me, dear me!" murmured the Dean, opening the door a little way and peering out. “They have brought lunch up from the college kitchens; dear me,

there are a great many dishes. It would seem, that I had asked someone in to lunch.” - k ‘ He closed the door softly, and stood with his hand across his eyes as if in great perplexity. Not lightly had the dean earned his reputation for absentmindedness, and; it took him an appreciable time to recall that he had invited friends to lunch that day. “Ah, I remember, I remember!’ 7 he .said, smiling nervously. “I asked the Master and .the Professor of Fine Arks to lunch with me at a quarter past one.” Miss Grey’s anxiety increased. “Did —did you. say the Master was coming here to lunch ?" she stammered. “Yes, I believe so,” said the Dean, doubtfully. “I think I asked him—it is clear I. asked someone,, or the dishes would not be lying outside the door there.” ' “Then I'must- indeed, be going,” said the little lady, with decision. Let ms explain why I came in here. I—l am

engaged to- —to Percy, yorx know ;,'he—he has rooms on the stair above.” “Percy? Percy? I think, that must he Smitliells/’, said the ;3>eaitj looking at her with growing interest: ' bxnifclxehs has tne rooms above mine—ah, that is he, I-think!” he broke, off, as a burst of laughter sounded’ Just above their heads. " , . J “'Yes, that is Percy. He /hats - some men in to lunch. That is why I am here,” said Miss Grey, a little incoherently. - ' J

■ “Smithells is a...ver j pleasant man—a very pleasant man/’ said the Dean, ,in

a. kindly tone. “He does not keep chapels as he should 1 , and he lias forgotten that I asked him to call on, .me at one o’clock to-day—but, dear me! young men will be forgetful. So you are engaged-, to Smithells, my : —my clear?” /■ ' J , Miss Grey could not resist his kindli-u ness; besides, she must explain herpresence here. “It is this way, you see,” she went on. “I am staying with the Mas-—with my uncle for May: Week, and he has found 1 out that Percy and I;v are engagedand this morning he told-' me that it was/monstrous, and that I must give him up, ah,d that if I did: not; he would send me back to my people. ; And T iyas so , bothered thatr/it:: ram rape to Percy's roomsrto tell him- all.about it-—' > -you don’t think it very naughty of me ?” ■“Not at all, nqt at all./. ; Most natural, I ram sure,” murmured the Dean, and thought how pretty the .little lady was. “Percy was out, and I waited for him, thinking he would soon be in to lunch; And he was soon into lunch,” she added tragically; “but lie brought five other, men with him! ; I saw them through the- window as; they crossed the quad, and ran down as fast- as. I could to escape them.” It was quite an adventure, this, bo the Dean. “And did you escape?” he asked, almost breathlessly. “No, I was -too. late to get down the stair; and just as I passed your door I heard them coming up the flight below. What was I to do? They were laughing and' talking, and I daren’t meet them; they would have been sure to guess that I had come-to see Percy. The stairs are narrow,' too,-and your room was the only, hiding-place I could see. The door stood open, you know, and I was sure there was no one here,' and I thought I would just rim in until they had gone

up to Percy’s room; And now —I’m' very sorry I disturbed you; will you forgive me?” she finished. “My dear, there is .nothing to forgive. Smithells —Percy, shall I call •him ?—-would not have liked his friends to guess that you had been to see him. You did quite right to come in here. I —I wish you, all good fortune, I am sure.”

He blundered, ana stammered, and worked his wrinkled face into the oddest grimaces. But Miss Grey did not notice these' things, she even forgot that the Master was coming to lunch, for there was something pathetic in this old man’s kindly interest.

“Youj see,” went on the Dean, “he sometimes comes.and smokes a pipe with me —Percy, I mean—and helps to pass an evening very pleasantly for me. It is not all undergraduates who care to do as much. But he is very irregular with chapels,” he added, letting his don’s conscientiousness peep out. “I wish my uncle thought as well of him,“ she sighed. Then “Good-bye, I am so grateful to you,”- she added, and held her hand out frankly to him. Andi then, as an afterthought, she laid her hunch of lilies on the table. “Will you take these in token of my thanks?” she said prettily. “They were for Percy, you know; 'but in my hurry I left my parasol up there instead of the flowers.”

It was at this moment that a loud — almost blatant—voice sounded from the stairs without. Miss Grey let her hand fall to her side and looked blankly at the Dean.

“That is the Master,” he said, his old! nervousness returning; “dear me, and my gyp has forgotten to lay the luncheon table.”

“Are you a friend?” said Miss Grey, with startling suddenness. “A—a friend? Yes, lam a friend, I hope.” ... The blantant voice was drawing nearer, and Miss Grey was in an agony of trepidation. “Then show me a place to hide in,” she cried. “To hide in, do you understand? Oh, why did I ever stay here? He. will guess that I have been to Percy’s rooms' —he will ”

“My dear, what is the matter ? I—l do hot understand,” stammered the Dean.

Miss Grey laid a hand on (his rusty sleeve. “They—they are coming nearer,” she whispered, with a tragic glance towards the door. “I must hide, I must!”

“Hide", my dear ?” protested the other. “I really do not see why.”

“Oh, but I could tell you why—could give you a hundred 1 reasons, indeed I could. But there is no time to do anything. The Dean was carried beyond himself. The situation, wa,s unprecedented in his experience; he had ~no weapon with which to meet it. The girl’s eyes, moreover, were looking so trustfully into his, and she was in such evident-trepidation, that he scarcely thought of what he was doing; the one thing clear to him was, that this visitor of his sought his protection, and that he must shelter her from the mysterious danger that was hanging over her pretty head. With the air of a conspirator, and a boldness which was-due entirely to the excitement of the moment, he motioned her to the door which led to his inner library—a cunningly concealed door, with dummy shelves and' rows of dummy books painted on its front. “Your secret is quite safe with me—quite safe,” he murmured 1 . There was a loud knock, and the Dean had only time to push the door to, without latching it, before he had to turn to meet his guests. “Dear me, dear me,” he murmured; “a most extraordinary situation to be in. Dear me, if they should Ah, good morning, good-morning. I am glad to see vou.’.

The Master, big, florid, and nosy, had entered with the Professor of Fine Arts; the Dean’s nervousness, however, was scarcely more noticeable than usual, though his eye kept wandering in the direction of those four-and-twenty volumes of “Myths,” whose titles were painted on the dummy bookshelves. “Good morning, Cawlett! Are we before our time, eh?” cried the Master, glancing at the table. The Dean shuffled the books and papers about, under the impression that he was clearing them away. “No, no—that is—the lunch has come tip, hut my gyp seems to be busy els£' where—seems to be buisy elsewhere,” he repeated, and glanced at the inner door, and laughed in an idiotic way. “Humph! The lunch has come up, for I nearly fell over it as I came in,” growled the Master, who always bullied weaker men that himself U

—I fancy the gyp will be here presently,” said the Dean, apologetically. “Smithells has some friends in, you see, an <f__ a nd! perhaps he needs the gyp.” The Master stood on the hearthrug and snorted. “Smithells?” he echoed. “He’s a disgrace to the college. Always lunching, or supping, or playing cricket —anything but work.” “Oh, how 1 can he say such things of Percy?” murmured Miss Grey, listening breathlessly from the far side of the dummy row of hooks. But the Dean was rubbing his hands together miserably, and thinking of what this loud-voiced master of his college # would say if 'he knew all; and he failed to grasp—what the girl had made plain enough—that the Master and Miss Grey’s uncle were one and the same, and that his severe handling of Smithell’s char-

acter had reference to the latter’s imprudent courtship. The Professor of Fine Arts took his cue from the Master always, and he, too, must have his little sarcasm at the Dean’s expense. “Ah, we don’t often see flowers on your table, Cawlett,” he put in, pointing to Miss Grey’s bouquet. “Have you followed the prevailing fashion in May week, and entertained some lady visitors ?” The Dean glanced at the row of dummy books which marked his inner door, and he blushed. So the Professor, seeing thafi his rallefy had hit the mark, went on with it. And the Dean grew redder and redder, and stammered more acutely every moment. “Come, come, we shall see you married yet,” cried the Master, with his ponderous laugh. “What about your fellowship, eh, Cawlett? Flowers are dangerous things when the college won’t allow you to marry. Remember that you come under the old regulations.” “I scarcely—scarcely think of marrying,” murmured the Dean. “The flowers were brought me —by—by my niece.” “What a dreadful lib!” said Miss Grey to herself. And she was sorry that so aid a ’man should be. driven to duplicity on her account.

“Ah, yes, we have all had nieces, sisters, cousins, in our time,” went on the Master, and was about to elaborate such elephantine pleasantries as had secured him a reputation for wit, when the entry of Gawlett’s belated gyp put an end to his raillery. It was as the Dean had thought; the needs of Smithells upstairs had been so pressing that the manservant had entirely forgotten his duties below. He soon had the cloth laid, however, and the lukewarm dishes set in order; and Miss Grey, as she listened to the chink of knives and forks, the bubble of wine into the glasses, began to feel a sympathetic hunger, and to ask herself how long she would be kept jrisoner. But she was unfeignedly thankful that she and the Master were on opposite sides of that row of dummy books. As for the Dean, he was lost. The experience was so unique that he could find no waytM meeting it; and not one of his treatises on Etruscan vases offered him any light upoigV.he situation. It had all passed so' quickly—the girl’s entry, her explanation, her sudden, inexplicable flight. And now he, of all men, was guilty of concealing a: lady in his inner room. He did not know much of these matters bub he seemed to have read that it was only very desperate villains who dicT such things. Certainly he could' remember no case where a Dean had been convicted of an offence so dir«.

“Come, Cawlett, we are moody today,” cried the Master cheerily, as he poured himself another glass of port. “I’ll be bound you are thinking of your pet Etruscan vases, or ” “No,” interrupted 1 the Dean plaintively. “I was not thinking of Etruscan vases.” “The Classics, then?” put in the Professor of Fine Arts. “Something of that sort, judging by the way your eyes keep roving to the bookshelves yonder. Do give hooks a rest, Oawlett. in May week—thing of the flowers you had brought you instead.” “Ah—ha, ha! Yes, I will think of the flowers,” said the viotim, with a dreary chuckle.

“But don’t forget that you hold a Senior Fellowship,’’ murmured the Master, as he passed His plate for the liverwing of a chicken. The Dean was literally trembling with excitement. These desperate villians of whom he had read l —were they not always discovered at the finish? What would they say at the high table if his visitor were discovered, and the report spread through the college ? Their talk was so pointed that it seemed they suspected him already. At all costs he must not look in the direction of his inner room —yet even a,s he gave himself this sage advice he fell into the same rapt contemplation of the dummy books. This much at least was plain—that, however guilty the Dean might be in this one case, the was not used to playing such gSmes of hunt-the-lady. He tried to talk of other things, but could not; he kept starting violently on his chair, until his guests glanced sideways at each other and nodded gently, as if to say they always knew how near the Dean’s eccentricity was to something worse.

“Will they never finish lunch?” murms£ed Miss Grey. “Oh, I’m so miserably hungry, and uncle is so prosy at meal-times always. If he once begins telling stories I may have to wait an hour —two hours—sail the afternoon.”

And then her heart sank, for through the door she heard the Master begin to laugh in the slow, assured, well-fed way that always preceded one of his “good stories.”

The Professor of Fine Arts prompted him gently, like the faithful satellite he was. “Won’t you share the jest with us?*’ he asked.

“Yes, do,” murmured the Dean, with another apprehensive glance towards his bookshelves. .

“I was thinging of what happened in little Han way’s rooms the other day. Of course it was not very proper, and I would not tell it anywhere but here,’ began the Master, settling himself into an easier position. There V.are few men so fond of gen;le scandal as your more worldly tpye cf don and) the Professor Fin Arts drew his chair nearer to the Master’s. “JEfan-

way, Hanway?” he ' said. “Oh, yes, I remember; second year mathematics. He seems a very quiet little chap, I always thought.” “He’s deep, '.chuckled the Master. “He s a kind of connection cf mine, ’oa know, and I found myself in his rooms the other afternoon. Hanway, young rascal, thad not expected me, and I thought he appeared ill at ease from the first. I always like to see the other side of a wall, as you know—it is a useful habit—and so I got up by-and-by and wandered about the room. There was a screen near the window ; I peeped! behind, and what do you think I found ?” The Dean was growing visibly paler. There was-a look of'Kismet on his face. He gripped the edge of the table with his hands, and he looked at the Master appealingly, and, “What did you find?” he said tremulously. “Only the prettiest little girl l—ahem!—have even seen in Cambridge. It was droll, I assure you, though a trifling embarrassing both for Hanway and myself. Why, Cawlett, what is the matter with you? You’re not at all yourself to-day.” “I—l am only a little faint. It will pass off. Your stories are so amusing— amusing—and laughter always turns me faint,” stammered the other. “Yes, it must have been embarrassing,” put in the Professor. “I don't know what one would do under the circumstances.”

' “What 1 did, very likely,” laughed the Master, pourring himself yet another glass of port. “The girl came forward very prettily, and looked very helpless, and said it was dreadfully wrong, but that she and little Hanway lover each other dearly. And so, as she was so pretty, ana so evidently a lady, and there seemed no harm in it, I began with a caution, and ended by giving them my blessing.” “Oh, Uncle, I’ve found you out!” murmured Miss Violet Grey from her post behind the dummy books.

“It was funny, though, to see Hallway’s face,” went on the big, blatant voice. “He was just such another as you, Cawlett, to look at—gentle and far-away, with an other-worldly look disarmed suspicion. Upon my work, 1 would as soon have dreamed it of you as of Hanway!” The Dean rose hurriedly and began to pace the floor. His conscience was overactive, and.he read into this idle gossip a deeper meaning than its author ever thought of. In some way they had learned his secret, these two, and they were playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse. He was sure of it, and again pictures of that night’s dinner in Hall rose before him, and he saw himself walking up and up and up to the High Table, while dons and undergraduates alike whispered one to another the tale of his misdeeds. The -others scarcely noted his abstraction, after a mattered, “Cawlett grows more absent-minded every day”; and when ihe Dean came out of his feverish rverie he found that these two, whom he had thought his persecutors, were talking hard and fast of something equally remote from himself and from the subject of concealed ladies. The Professor, in fast, was airing some theory of his as to the folk-lore of the Persians, and the Master, following his invariable rule, was contradicting flatly, and with rudeness, every assertion that was made. The Dean breathed again, a<*-mendo •when one peril is passed and another has not yet cast its shadow on the mind. He listened 1 to the argument and heard both disputants grow loud and quarrelsome, and rubbed his hands togetner gleefully, thinking that after all they would never learn what was hidden in his library.

“I say, sir,, that you are wrong; your premisses are false, and your conclusions ridiculous,” thundered the Master. “And I say that, with all respect to you, your fallacies, will not bear a moment’s reasoning. The myth of the Ghostly Horseman in Persia is distinctly traceable to ■” “So you have said before,” interrupted the Master, with his professional rudeness. “Will yon accept the verdict of an acknowledged work on the subject? Cawlett here is sure to have plenty of literature dealing with it.” Still the Dean did not understand how near the gulf he stood. He watched with a placid eye while the Master rose and began to hunt through the bookshelves for a book on Eastern folldore; it was only when search on two sides of the room proved fruitless, and the big, burly figure went striding towards that) line of dummy books, that the Dean felt aU his old alarm return. '•’‘Stop, stop!” he cried. “There is no book on the subject there—no book at all •” But he was too late. The Master’s eye had caught a likely title, and he had moved forward eagerly. “Yes, this should give it. ‘Myths, by Professor Robinson.’ Reliable man in his subject,” he cried, putting his hand on the top of the row of dummies. He tried to pull the book out, and to his surprise he pulled open a door instead; andl behind the door, to his still greater surprise, stood a girl in a white muslin dress; and, as if the surprise needed italicising still further, the lady was well-known to him. The Master gasjed. A silence, deep and icy. fell on the whole company. The Dean fell into a chair, and shrivelled to a mere shapeless bundle of old and snuffy clothes. And then a blatant voice rang ont: “May I ask the meaning of this, Mr Oawlett

The Dean did his best to sit up like a man.

“I—er—that is my neice; she brought me the Sowers, you remember,” he said. “There are two points in your story that strike me as c-urious,” responded the Master, with chillj irony. “The first is, that uncles do hot usually secrete their neices in this way—it is scarcely necessary, indeed, if one comes to think of it. The second is, that I was not aware we were related, Mr Cawlett, you and I.”

“No,” said the Dean, forlornly. “And yet we must be, for this lady is nvv niece also.”

“On the mother’s side —strictly on the mother’s side,” murmured the Dean. No one had the faintest idea what he meant, but neither did anyone think it needful to inquire.

There was another silence, and then the Master, in awful tones, asked Mr Cawlett once more to explain the meaning of this conduct. It was Miss Violet Grey, however, who answered for her protector. “It was not Mr Cawlett’s fault, uncle,” she said, still in the arch of the doorway. T ‘lt was all my doing.” “Then I admire your modesty, Violet,” said the Master, and stood like a wellfed figure of justice, looking down upon the elderly culprit and on the youthful. Th© paus© was broken by a hurried step outside, and a hurried knock, and a hurried opening of the door. “Oh, I’m so sorry, but i clean forgot about ”

The boyish voice had preceded its owner, and both voice and owner stopped on seeing the strange tableau within.

“That is Smithells,” .said the Dean-, and he glanced at the new-comer as if in some obscure way he could help the situation through. But Smithells only made the situation worse. He glanced at Violet, standing on the threshold of the inner door; at the pompous and austere guardian of her welfare ; at the unhappy Dean; and in his surprise he blurted out the first thought that, was uppermost in his mind.

“Why, Vi, what on earth are you doing here?” he cried. “It was you, then, who left the parasolm my room—l—oh, what an ass I am!” he finished, as he realised the fatuousness of his admission.

“Really, this is most interesting,” said the Master, in his most cutting vein. “May I ask, Violet , if you have been’ hiding in all the rooms of this ancient and religious foundation? Was no one too old” —with a withering glance at the Dean —“or too young’’—with another at Smithells —“to give your talent for flir c. r.!; i oji s cop c~ ” Miss Grey came forward. She seemed not mind anything, now that “Percy” here. ‘Listen, uncle/’ she said quite c::-li."]y ; ‘ you told.me this morning ting I roast s:v .rood-bye to Percy, did y° o‘- ,r v * x tie maced. -Welh t came obediently to say it—car; lb Poicyh rooms, you know, the very fiinn chance ’ had. And while I wa waiting for hr a I heard him coming up the stairs with a heap of other men; and I could not get. down without being seen, and s o I ran in here until they- had passed. Then, while I was here* you came, and I was so afraid that you would gue&s Low —how obedient I had been in. coming to say good bye to Percy—that I slipped behind rho door here. Mr Cawlett had nothing at all to do with it, and ” “What has Mr Smithells done that he should not marry your niece ?” It was the Dean who spoke—the Dean, who had tapped an unsuspected vein of courage, and who, in his absent-mind-ed way, had hit very straight to the mark for once.

“Why, sir?” roared the Master, losing his dignity. “Because he is penniless, and as lazy as the Cam; because ” “I beg your pardon,” interrupted the Dean, still in the same gentle voice. “I know his people well, and they are far from penniless. He is their only son. As Dean, I am entitled to say that Mr Smithell’s conduct is exemplary —except, perhaps, in the matter of chapels.” “And then, you see, uncle,” put in Violet, “you forget that I overheard your description of the scene in little Hanway’s room. What did you/ do> uncle? As she was so pretty, and as she was so evidently a lady, and as there seemed no harm in it, you gave them your blessing. Well, dear, am not I a lady? and—and, well. Percy says that lam pretty. 1 think we’re waiting for you to . , _ ■ The Master changed colour. It was an unwelcome thrust, and Miss Grey followed it up with another : “Besides,” she said sweetly, “I left my parasol in Percy’s room and all the other men saw it—and recognised it, didn’t they, Percy ?” “Of course,” said Smithells, catching a meaning glance. “So I’m hopelessly compromised in any case —and don’t you see it would be ever so much simpler to give in and persuade mother to the l ma'cc^i?” The Master blustered awhile ; but he was assailed from too many quarters, and his silence, as he went cut with the Professor of Fine Arts, was in itself consent. The other two were following*, when the Dean’s conscience aim yet after all the turmoil of the morning, reasserted itself.

“Smithells!” he called, g door.

sr :o tho

“Yes, sir,” answered tk other, as l\e came back a step or two.

“There was a little matter of discipline I wished to discuss with you. I asked you to call at one o’clock, if you iemember.”

•*Yes. X came in just now to tell you how sorry I was, sir. I —well, the fact is. it clean slipped my mind.” “You have. been very irregular ?t chapel lately. I fear I must —I hope you won’t mind, Smithells —but- I fear I must gate you for the remainder of the week ”

Smithells smiled happily at the Dean. “I don’t mind, sir—now,” he said. “Won’t you gate. Violet, too?” —From the Christmas number of “Cassell’s Magazine.’ 5