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I had never need to keep any record either of the date or place. It was the fifteenth
night of July, in the year 1758, and the place was Lieutenant Clutterbuck's lodging at the
south corner of Burleigh Street, Strand. The night was tropical in its heat, and though
every window stood open to the Thames, there was not a man, I think, who did not long for
the cool relief of morning, or step out from time to time on to the balcony and search
the dark profundity of sky for the first flecks of grey. I cannot be positive about the entire
disposition of the room: but certainly Lieutenant Clutterbuck was playing at ninepins down the
middle with half a dozen decanters and a couple of silver salvers; and Mr. Macfarlane, a young
gentleman of a Scottish regiment, was practising a game of his own.
He carried the fire-irons and Lieutenant Clutterbuck's sword under his arm, and walked solidly about
the floor after a little paper ball rolled up out of a news sheet, which he hit with
one of these instruments, selecting now the poker, now the tongs or the sword with great
deliberation, and explaining his selection with even greater earnestness; there was besides
a great deal of noise, which seemed to be a quality of the room rather than the utterance
of any particular person; and I have a clear recollection that everything, from the candles
to the glasses on the tables and the broken tobacco pipes on the floor, was of a dazzling
and intolerable brightness. This brightness distressed me particularly, because just opposite
to where I sat a large mirror hung upon the wall between two windows. On each side was
a velvet hollow of gloom, in the middle this glittering oval. Every ray of light within
the room seemed to converge upon its surface. I could not but look at it--for it did not
occur to me to move away to another chair--and it annoyed me exceedingly. Besides, the mirror
was inclined forward from the wall, and so threw straight down at me a reflection of
Lieutenant Clutterbuck's guests, as they flung about the room beneath it.
Thus I saw a throng of flushed young exuberant faces, and in the background, continually
peeping between them, my own, very white and drawn and thin and a million years old. That,
too, annoyed me very much, and then by a sheer miracle, as it seemed to me, the mirror splintered
and cracked and dropped in fragments on to the floor, until there was only hanging on
the wall the upper rim, a thin curve of glass like a bright sickle. I remember that the
noise and hurley-burley suddenly ceased, as though morning had come unawares upon a witches'
carnival and that all the men present stood like statues and appeared to stare at me.
Lieutenant Clutterbuck broke the silence, or rather tore it, with a great loud laugh
which crumpled up his face. He said something about "Old Steve Berkeley," and smacked his
hand upon my shoulder, and shouted for another glass, which he filled and placed at my elbow,
for my own had disappeared.
I had no time to drink from it, however, for just as I was raising it to my lips Mr. Macfarlane's
paper ball dropped from the ceiling into the liquor.
"Bunkered, by God!" cried Mr. Macfarlane, amidst a shout of laughter.
I looked at Macfarlane with some reserve.
"I don't understand," I began.
"Don't move, man!" cried he, as he forced me back into my chair, and dropping the fire-irons
with a clatter on to the floor, he tried to scoop the ball out of the glass with the point
of Clutterbuck's sword-sheath. He missed the glass; the sheath caught me full on the knuckles;
I opened my hand and----
"Sir, you have ruined my game," said Mr. Macfarlane, with considerable heat.
"And a good thing too," said I, "for a sillier game I never saw in all my life."
"Gentlemen," cried Lieutenant Clutterbuck, though he did not articulate the word with
his customary precision; but his intentions were undoubtedly pacific. He happened to be
holding the last of his decanters in his hand, and he swung it to and fro. "Gentlemen," he
repeated, and as if to keep me company, he let the decanter slip out of his hand. It
fell on the floor and split with a loud noise. "Well," said he, solemnly, "I have dropped
a brooch," and he fumbled at his cravat.
Another peal of laughter went up; and while it was still ringing, a man--what his name
was I cannot remember, even if I ever knew it; I saw him for the first time that evening,
and I have only once seen him since, but he was certainly--more sober than the rest--stooped
over my chair and caught me by the arm.
"Steve," said he, with a chuckle,--and from this familiarity to a new acquaintance I judge
he was not so sober after all,--"do you notice the door?"
The door was in the corner of the room to my right. I looked towards it: the brass handle
shone like a gold ball in the sun. I looked back at my companion, and, shaking my arm
free, I replied coldly:
"I see it. It is a door, a mere door. But I do not notice it. It is not indeed noteworthy."
"It is unlatched," said my acquaintance, with another chuckle.
"I suppose it is not the only door in the world in that predicament."
"But it was latched a moment ago," and with his forefinger he gently poked me in the ribs.
"Then someone has turned the handle," said I, drawing myself away.
"A most ingenious theory," said he, quite unabashed by my reserve, "and the truth. Someone
has turned the handle. Now who?" He winked with an extreme significance. "My dear sir,
who?"
I looked round the room. Mr. Macfarlane had resumed his game. Two gentlemen in a corner
through all the din were earnestly playing putt with the cards. They had, however, removed
their wigs, and their shaven heads gleamed unpleasantly. Others by the window were vociferating
the chorus of a drinking song. Lieutenant Clutterbuck alone was near to the door. I
was on the point of pronouncing his name when he lurched towards it, and instantly the door
was closed.
"It was someone outside," said I.
"Precisely. Steve, you are not so devoid of sense as your friends would have me believe,"
continued my companion. "Now, who will be Lieutenant Clutterbuck's timorous visitor?"
He drew his watch from his fob: "We may hazard a guess at the sex, I think, but for the rest----
Is it some fine lady from St. James's who has come in her chair at half-past one of
the morning to keep an appointment which her careless courtier has forgotten?"
"Hardly," I returned. "For your fine lady would hurry back to her chair with all the
speed her petticoats allowed. She would not stay behind the door, which, I see, has again
been opened."
The familiar stranger laid his hand upon my shoulder and held me back in my chair at arm's
length from him.
"They do you wrong, my dear Steve," said he, gravely, "who say your brains are addled with
drink. Your"--his tongue stumbled over a long word which I judged to be "ratiocination"--"is
admirable. Never was logician more precise. It is not a fine lady from St. James's. It
will be a flower-girl from Drury Lane, and may I be eternally as drunk as I am to-night,
if we do not have her into the room."
With that he crossed the room, and seizing the handle suddenly swung the door open. The
next instant he stepped back. The door was in a line with the wall against which my chair
was placed, and besides it opened towards me so that I could not see what it was that
so amazed him.
"Here's the strangest flower-girl from Drury Lane that ever I saw," said he, and Lieutenant
Clutterbuck turning about cried:
"By all that's wonderful, it's *** Parmiter," and a lad of fifteen years, with a red fisherman's
bonnet upon his head and a blue jersey on his back, stepped hesitatingly into the room.
"Well, ***, what's the news from Scilly?" continued Clutterbuck. "And what's brought
you to London? Have you come to see the king in his golden crown? Has Captain Hathaway
lost his Diodorus Siculus and sent you to town to buy him another? Come, out with it!"
*** shifted from one foot to another; he took his cap from his head and twisted it
in his hands; and he looked from one to another of Lieutenant Clutterbuck's guests who had
now crowded about the lad and were plying him with questions. But he did not answer
the questions. No doubt the noise and the lights, and the presence of these glittering
gentlemen confused the lad, who was more used to the lonely beaches of the islands and the
companionable murmurs of the sea. At last he plucked up the courage to say, with a glance
of appeal to Lieutenant Clutterbuck:
"I have news to tell, but I would sooner tell it to you alone."
His appeal was received with a chorus of protestations, and "Where are your manners, ***," cried
Clutterbuck, "that you tell my friends flat to their faces they cannot keep a secret?"
"Are we women?" asked Mr. Macfarlane.
"Out with your story," cried another.
*** Parmiter shrank back and turned his eyes towards the door, but one man shut it to and
leaned his shoulders against the panels, while the others caught at the lad's hesitation
as at a new game, and crowded about him as though he was some rare curiosity brought
by a traveller from outlandish parts.
"He shall tell his story," cried Clutterbuck. "It is two years since I was stationed at
the Scilly Islands, two years since I dined in the mess-room of Star Castle with Captain
Hathaway of his Majesty's Invalids, and was bored to death with his dissertations on Diodorus
Siculus. Two years! The boy must have news of consequence. There is no doubt trouble
with the cray fish, or Adam Mayle has broken the head of the collector of the Customs House----"
"Adam Mayle is dead. He was struck down by paralysis and never moved till he died," interrupted
*** Parmiter.
The news sobered Clutterbuck for an instant. "Dead!" said he, gaping at the boy. "Dead!"
he repeated, and so flung back to his noise and laughter, though there was a ring of savagery
in it very strange to his friends. "Well, more brandy will pay revenue, and fewer ships
will come ashore, and very like there'll be quiet upon Tresco----"
"No," interrupted Parmiter again, and Clutterbuck turned upon him with a flush of rage.
"Well, tell your story and have done with it!"
"To you," said the boy, looking from one to other of the faces about him.
"No, to all," cried Clutterbuck. The drink, and a certain anger of which we did not know
the source, made him obstinate. "You shall tell it to us all, or not at all. Bring that
table, forward, Macfarlane! You shall stand on the table ***, like a preacher in his
pulpit," he sneered, "and put all the fine gentlemen to shame, with a story of the rustic
virtues."
The table was dragged from the corner into the middle of the room. The boy protested,
and made for the door. But he was thrust back, seized and lifted struggling on to the table,
where he was set upon his feet.
"Harmony, gentlemen, harmony!" cried Clutterbuck, flapping his hand upon the mantelshelf. "Take
your seats, and no whispering in the side boxes, if you please. For I can promise you
a play which needs no prologue to excuse it."
It was a company in which a small jest passed easily for a high stroke of wit. They applauded
Lieutenant Clutterbuck's sally, and drew up their chairs round the table and sat looking
upwards towards the boy, with a great expectation of amusement, just as people watch a bear-baiting
at a fair. For my part I had not moved, and it was no doubt for that reason that Parmiter
looked for help towards me.
"When all's said, Clutterbuck," I began, "you and your friends are a pack of bullies. The
boy's a good boy, devil take me if he isn't."
The boy upon the table looked his gratitude for the small mercy of my ineffectual plea,
and I should have proceeded to enlarge upon it had I not noticed a very astonishing thing.
For Parmiter lifted his arm high up above his head as though to impress upon me his
gratitude, and his arm lengthened out and grew until it touched the ceiling. Then it
dwindled and shrank until again it was no more than a boy's arm on a boy's shoulder.
I was so struck with this curious phenomenon that I broke off my protest on his behalf,
and mentioned to those about me what I had seen, asking whether they had remarked it
too, and inquiring to what cause, whither of health or malady, they were disposed to
attribute so sudden a growth and contraction.
However, Lieutenant Clutterbuck's guests were only disposed that night to make light of
any subject however important or scientific. For some laughed in my face, others more polite,
shrugged their shoulders with a smile, and the stranger who had spoken to me before clapped
his hand in the small of my back as I leaned forward, and shouted some ill-bred word that,
though might he die of small-pox if he had ever met me before, he would have known me
from a thousand by the tales he had heard. However, before I could answer him fitly,
and indeed, while I was still pondering the meaning of his words. Lieutenant Clutterbuck
clapped his hands for silence, and *** Parmiter, seeing no longer any hope of succour, perforce
began to tell his story.
It was a story of a youth that sat in the stocks of a Sunday morning and disappeared
thereafter from the islands; of a girl named Helen; of a *** who slept and slept, and
of men watching a house with a great tangled garden that stood at the edge of the sea.
Cullen Mayle, Parmiter called the youth who had sat in the stocks, son to that Adam whose
death had so taken Lieutenant Clutterbuck with surprise. But I could not make head or
tail of the business. For one thing I have always been very fond of flowers, and quite
unaccountably the polished floor of the room blossomed into a parterre of roses, so that
my attention was distracted by this curious and pleasing event.
For another, Parmiter's story was continually interrupted by intricate questions intended
to confuse him, his evident anxiety was made the occasion of much amusement by those seated
about the table, and he was induced on one excuse and another to go back to the beginning
again and again and relate once more what he had already told. But I remember that he
spoke with a high intonation, and rather quickly and with a broad accent, and that even then
I was extremely sensible of the unfamiliar parts from which he came. His words seemed
to have preserved a smell of the sea, and through them I seemed to hear very clearly
the sound of waves breaking upon a remote beach--near in a word to that granite house
with the tangled garden where the men watched and watched.
Then the boy's story ceased, and the next thing I heard was a sound of sobbing. I looked
up, and there was *** Parmiter upon the table, crying like a child. Over against him sat
Lieutenant Clutterbuck, with a face sour and dark.
"I'll not stir a foot or lift a finger," said he, swearing an oath, "no, not if God comes
down and bids me."
And upon that the boy weakened of a sudden, swayed for an instant upon his feet, and dropped
in a huddle upon the table. His swoon put every one to shame except Clutterbuck; everyone
busied himself about the boy, dabbing his forehead with wet handkerchiefs, and spilling
brandy over his face in attempts to pour it into his mouth--every one except Clutterbuck,
who never moved nor changed in a single line of his face, from his fixed expression of
anger. *** Parmiter recovered from his swoon and sat up: and his first look was towards
the lieutenant, whose face softened for an instant with I know not what memories of days
under the sun in a fishing boat amongst the islands.
"***, you are over-tired. It's a long road from the Scillies to London. Very like, too,
you are hungry," and *** nodded "yes" to each sentence. "Well, ***, you shall eat
here, if there's any food in my larder, and you shall sleep here when you have eaten."
"Is that all?" asked Parmiter, simply, and Clutterbuck's face turned hard again as a
stone.
"Every word," said he.
The boy slipped off the table and began to search on the ground. His cap had fallen from
his hand when he fell down in his swoon. He picked it up from beneath a chair. He did
not look any more at Clutterbuck; he made no appeal to anyone in the room; but though
his legs still faltered from weakness, he walked silently out of the door, and in a
little we heard his footsteps upon the stone stairs and the banisters creaking, as though
he clung to them, while he descended, for support.
"Good God, Clutterbuck!" cried Macfarlane "he's but a boy."
"With no roof to his head," said another.
"And fainting for lack of a meal," said a third.
"He shall have both," I cried, "if he will take them from me," and I ran out of the door.
"***," I cried down the hollow of the staircase, "*** Parmiter," but no answer was returned,
save my own cry coming back to me up the well of the stairs. Clutterbuck's rooms were on
the highest floor of the house; the stone stairs stretched downwards flight after flight
beneath me. There was no sound anywhere upon them; the boy had gone. I came back to the
room. Lieutenant Clutterbuck sat quite still in his chair. The morning was breaking; a
cold livid light crept through the open windows, touched his hands, reached his face and turned
it white.
"Good-night," he said, without so much as a look.
His eyes were bent upon memories to which we had no clue. We left him sitting thus and
went down into the street, when we parted. I saw no roses blossoming in the streets as
I walked home, but as I looked in my mirror at my lodging I noticed again that my face
was drawn and haggard and a million years old.