CHAPTER VI.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 14, 22 January 1892, Page 23

CHAPTER VI.

There were a score of narrow streets, intercepted by little byepaths, which led away to the water-meadows, and beyond that to the free expanse of downs, in the respectable town of St Swithun's. In one of the narrowest of these crooked, deformed, yet quaintly suggestive streets was an old curiosity Bhop, kept by an old art-collector and his supposed daughter Angela. That Angela was beautiful was a fact nobody in St Swithun's, from the bishop with his mitre to the crossing-sweeper with his broom, would for one second have disputed. Angela possessed beauty as incontrovertibly at Helen of Argos. She was also surrounded with mystery, and it was this mystery — which was felt, but scarcely ever mentioned — that possessed the key to the curiosity with which folks of high and low degree approached the shop of old Bartimeus Megiddo. The shop (if shop it could be called) waa dingy and dirty enough to be suggestive of many a buried treasure. It was like a city of the dead. Everything bore the appearance of a chrysalis. Only the lovers of art knew that many a wioged übjet il'art would emerge under the tender touch of the initiated crllector. Dirt is the coil in which art is nutured. A dust-pan, a broom, and a pail, would have been elements as destructive in the domestic economy of Bartimeus Megiddo as an army of locusts on the summer fields. Bartimeua was no exception to the rule of dirt in which he elected to set his gems. He was hideously dirty and uncompromisingly ugly, after the Jewish style. Hh locg, hooked nose caught his upper lip, and seemed to hold it, ss if in disdain of its mean, strike-a-bargain outline. His eyes, with their bilious Betting for the small keen pupils, were full of the fvrtive Bhifts which are the outcome of thoughts born of cupidity, for gain was the ooly Boil known to tbe 6oul of Bartimeus — gam, the chLd of per cent. It was Saturday, and it was Bunset. The great deep-toned Abbey bells had just chimed thei three-quarters of another hour. Bartimeus was standing in the doorway, and one of the shutters which barricaded his windows was in his hand. Conway Hope was passing down the narrow street. As he crossed the road his eyes fell on the figure of Bartimeus, and for several seconds seemed to grow into every detail of the shuffling form and Jewish contour of the Megiddo profile. Bartimeus bowed. This was the new Canon — the Abbey set patronised him (Bartimeus) largely ; and the clerical mind was, when Catholic, mediaeval — this man, too, looked mediseval. Bartimeus bowed again. He thought he recognised a customer. 11 1 have eheveral rare old bitp, Canon, ' said Bartimeus, " but Bhundown me^na Shabbath, and Shabbath means light the oil of other lamps. lam the ' sheeing Bartimeus, 1 Dot blind to the law of | reßt." 44 I ought to know your face," said Conway Hope ; " are you a new-comer 1 " " Ten years makes an old reshident. Bartimeus Meggido is as well-known in St Swithuu's as the vergi r in the Abbey." 41 Well, I have seen you somewhere." 41 We have ull met before, perhaps in Adam," said Bartimeus, and he grinned. O that grin 1 He displayed just the ruins of those ivory temples which bountiful nature gives but to despoil. It seems hard that the grin should survive its constituent teeth. " I will come in one day soon and have a talk," said Conway Hope, and then be passed on. 41 Acceshible," said Bartimeus to himself. " Dignity without a pound of cake and an orange all round. Meet a man as a man.

Angela said be was more able to carry bis starch than is nivaL Angela ia as 'cute as 'cute.) (Clever enough to ait on top of my old bits and cheap-Jack 'em round the country, and cunning enough to buy a pound of butter with a smile instead of a coin." Again Bartimaus grinned. After bis best-loved child, " gain," came Angela with her many-rivered soul, big enough to aspire to the minarets, and small enough to satisfy and manage Bartimeus Meggido. The shutters were closed, and Bartimeus had withdrawn into the porch, when the dark shadow of a man was thrown forward at his feet, The shadow remained stationary ; Bartimeus thrust his head oat and looked round the corner. As he looked he paled, and on his wrinkled mouth grew an expression of misery, fright, and rage, which seemed to add a score of years to his appearance. The shadow moved, and the tall, gaunt figure of a man darted forward, and, before Megiddo could expostulate, a hand with a clanking chain on the wrist had banged the duor, and the man confronted him. " Just in time to share your Sabbath 1 Come, ain't you glad to see me, escaped again to your city of refuge ? You will shelter me for to-night, and by to-morrow I'll be off to Manitoba. That hole, Dartmoor ! Here, get this chain off, and show me less of your gums and more of your hospitality. Food— l'm hungry I Best bed -—I'm dog-tired ! Loose my chain ! Play the father to the prodigal." " Let the day be cursed I begot you ! " Bfcid Megiddo slowly ; he was breathing hard, as those whose rage is pain. " Well, must I go to the larder ? " The man was busy with hit chain all the time he was speaking, and had at last, by tome inexplicable process, divested himself of it and flnng it from him with a chuckle . Then he said, " Keep it and sell it. There are worse chains even than that worn by many who come in here. I've learnt that bit of philosophy. Where's Angela? My — my— well, never mind who she is, or what she is, or where she came from ; Angela will do , It bothers the old 'un, I know, when I mention Angela. Well, come old man — as you won't own up to fatherhood- -I brought you a dainty bit of goods when I lauded her ou your greedy hands. For greedj they ever were. Bat come, no recrimination. Food, food ; sleep ; and then Manitoba." The maD was laughing. He blew a kiss at his chain as it lay in a heap not far from his dusty, patched boots with their untied strings. " Prison is respectable enough now,'" he said. " Why, things have come to a merry pass in the house where the makers and the breakers of law meet Look up, old man." '• Cursed be the day I begot you I " said Megiddo again ; and then be moved away, holding by th 6 wall to support himself. " How long will you stay ? " be said, turning at the door. " Ob, till the larder's empty and the moon round I That means to-night, for your larder was ever fit food for a mouse only. Well, the body revenges itself on the mean fare afforded it. Why, P^re Meggido, a mouse would turn up his noße at your larder — sing ' La-de-da * at it I I know it of old," and the man laughed. " Cursed be the day I begot you 1 " said Megiddo for the third time, as if in the trinity of curses he found a valve for his hatred, whether natural or unnatural. With stumbling steps, as if stricken with a sudden blindness, Megiddo got to the passage. But wbat was this rushing, surging, ringing noise, this rising of the tides which hold the ebb and flow of life at his vitala? With a crash Megiddo fell in the narrow doorway, and lay insensible acioss it, while over his prostrate form towered the figure of the man with a villainous face and a scar across his features from forehead to chin in one deep vertical line — the man who called Bartimem Megiddo father 1 To he continued.')