A SHORT STORY.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16781, 26 April 1926, Page 4

A SHORT STORY.

■;1 A DEAL IN GHOSTS

STORY OF AN ENGLISHMAN'S EXILE

(By Henry S. Doig.) Harper Nimrod was an admirable type of Britisher, though he did not admit it. He obstinately _, preferred to describe himself as an Ulsterman. lie behaved well, lie worked bard, and allowed himself two hobbies—a Holiday on the Riviera in the early spring and the collection of Baxler prints all the year round. He believed that he had the best example of Jenny Lind, stamped in the corner and with the thin gold mount, that could be found in the world. It in no way diminished his delight to reflect that he got it in an old copy of Jullien's music, for a few shillings. He was thinking of that, as a matter of fact, as he sat on a seat on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, watching the va-et-vient of the fashionable and well-dressed throng, that kaleidoscope of colour and life which animates the world's most famous watering-place and basks in the glory of its beau soleil, the wonderful sunshine that makes Cambridge blue of the cloudless sky and Oxford blue of the unruffled sea. • * M *

As he gazed idly at the exquisite picture he became aware of a big liner, one of the lordly ocean yachts that are a feature of the Riviera season. It came into view beyond the Casino on the jetty and steamed eastwards towards Cannes.

Harper turned to the only other occupant of the bench, obviously an Englishman like himself.

"Pardon me, sir," he said. "Do you happen to be able to tcllme the name of that ship?" "I happen to be quite able to tell," was the somewhat strange reply; "but i have no desire to do so." "As you wish," Harper replied, a little surprised and nettled, and added acidly: "but I will ask you to consider my request for information withdrawn."

The stranger made no reply. He continued to gaze steadily at the sunlit Bais des Anges, the bay of the angels, with a gloomy moodiness that had in it nothing angelic. Harper thought him a churl and promptly forgot him, and watcticd the vessel with the idle curiosity that one observes the passing of a ship at sea. In his youth ho had himself been at sea, a real deep-sea sailor of the w-ind-jammer days, and—a mark of distinction —an aprentice on the Cutty Sark, that greyhound of the racing tea clippers which are now only a fading memory. * » » * A line of Kipling's "Bolivar" came into his mind, of the wearied men who saw: "some damned liner's lights go by, like a great hotel." And a recollection came to him of his first voyage in the Cutty Sark, of a weary forlnight when she was running down her Easling, all the time on the same t'ack, with every inch of canvas spread, and her lee gunwale always awash. He remembered how he had not a dry stitch of clothing for that whole fortnight of glorious and irretrievably uncomfortable existence. How different life was for these fortunate sojourners on the Cote d'Azur, with everywhere its note of warmth, wealth and enjoyment. It was the hour of the aperitif. The workmen putting up the decorations for "The Battle of Flowers" stopped in their task to drink a draught of wine—vin du pays—from their flasks. The promenade was crowded with a fashionable and polygot population—-over-clrcssed South Americans, solidlooking Englishmen in plus-fours, Ught-waisted Parisians, and dark-fea-tured Provencales, talking with their hands as much as their tongues, and women of all nationalities, dressed like mannequins, some painted like the lily, and most of them ablaze witli costly gems.

Harper thought how good it was for him to be there, and that nothing could improve his enjoyment—except a doubonnet sec or a grenadine au kirsch at the bar of the Ncgrcsco Hotel. * * * *

He was about lo rise "when the stranger beside him, whose existence Harper had forgotten, addressed him:

"1 am afraid you .think me discourteous," he said; "but 1 think it a pity that two Englishmen should meet and bicker before all these" —and he waved his hand contemptuously—"gadabout, gold-plated Dagoes." "Any bickering," said Harper coldly, "was not of my doing." "To know all is lo forgive all," replied the stranger. "I am a man in a quandary." He paused to reject the overtures of a promenade photographer, offering to snap-shot him, and of a swarthy Algerian trying to sell him one of the many-coloured shawls he carried over his arm, and looking slrangely reminiscent of the picture in the Royal Exchange at Phoenicians bartering with early Britons.

"A year ago," he said, as though talking 16 himself quite as much as to Harper, "I lived in England. I was depressed by its climate, tortured by its taxes, irritated by its restrictions. You know the kind of thing I mean. No drinks it you were late for lunch, no cigarettes after curfew, all the little pinpricks of an over-regulated realm."

"I am not amused," Harper interrupted. "Your autobiography lcaves me cold." "Sir," said the stranger impcrturably, "I can understand your point of view. Pray consider mo as merely talking to myself. I like lo do this tor two reasons: I like to talk to_a man of sense, and 1 like Lo hear a man of sense talking. "I had a very nice house at Taplow, in the Thames Valley. A place, the Thames Valley , in summer. Boulter's Lock, Cookham Dene, Marlow and Henley. . . •" he murmured the like a litany.

"Charming'. But I wanted this," an'd he waved a hand towards the palms id' the Jardins du Roi and the sunlit waters of the blue Mediterranean, flanked by the green glory of .Mont Boron. "-My wife would not budge. She had ting herself in at Taplow, fighting a losing battle with profiteering tradespeople and recalcitrant servants —in short enjoying all the rigours of-peaceful English country life. She clung lo her home, as the snail clings lo its shell.

"Sir, I am ashamed lo confess it. I I resorted Lo duplicity. I started a i theory that the liou.se was haunted. "I will not weary you with the tale of my artilloes, of the mysterious tappings arranged to be heard at night, ! of ercakings doors and muffled groans. I "These things can easily be ar- ! ranged by a > nan ot resource. After my own first cilorts t hired an exinspcelor of police, ostensibly |,o elucidate the mystery, but really—and nrivaloly—lo seo that the unearthly

manifestations continued. He did his job well. "Finally my wife yielded, and agreed that I should sell the house and that we should come out here to iive, amongst 'the palms and temples of the South.' "I sold the house for half what it cost me, dropping a. cool thousand pounds, for the story that it was haunted had leaked out. I admire the astuteness of the ex-inspector of police. It was only after the sale that I learned that he was the purchaser. "Sir, I want to go bade to England. 'East, West, home's best.' "I cannot eat bouillabaisse. I cannot bear the vin du pays. I cannot tolerate the cookery of the French, and I am sick of the beau solcil. "I long for foggy England—for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and good, honest British beer. . "Without telling my wife I bought a house at Bray—you know, where the famous Vicar came from, or, rather, refused •to come from. He ■was, as the Americans say, a sureenough wise guy. lie had the sense to stay where he was well off. "My wife, alas! will, not return. She says that England is full of gliosis and bogies.

" I told her of the new- house. She insisted that I should sell it. She got her way. You know the story of the husband who wanted the drawingroom red and the wife who wanted it green. They compromised—on greets an epitome of married life. "I had to sell the damned house. Nemesis, sir, Nemesis. I got just half what I paid for it, dropping another cool thousand. Luck, sir, luck. J'ai de la chance, moi. "I have been punished for my duplicity. But I have not solved my problem. I have only impailed myself farther on the horns of my dilemma. "That was what I was thinking when you interrupted the gloomy currents of my thoughts and asked me the name of tiiat ship"—pointing to the liner now disappearing beyond Cap d'Anlibes.

Harper got up to resume his constitutional, with its preprandial glass if Vichy from the kiosk opposite, the Hotel d'Angleterre. "I still can't understand," he said, "why a simple, inoffensive question about the name of ship should so upset you." "Perhaps not," replied the stranger moodily. "The name of that ship is the Escargot, and escargot, as you know, is the French for a snail, the fortunate animal that never can be homeless as long as it lives. "Sir, there is a proverb that you should never talk of hemp in the house of a man that was hanged. "Is it a joyous ond stimulating thing to refer to a snail in the prcsensc of a man, situated as I am, helpless and homeless?'' lie arose and strode off slowly, wearily, gloomily, mournfully,• as it were, at a snail's pace.