Kitabı oku: «The Golden Butterfly», sayfa 2
"Tommy," said the younger, "we will have a game to-night."
The largest building in the place had been an hotel. It had two stories, and was, like the rest of the houses, built of wood, with a verandah along the front. The upper story looked as if it had been recently inhabited; that is, the shutters were not dropping off the hinges, nor were they flapping to and fro in the breeze.
But the town was deserted; the evening breeze blew chilly up its vacant streets; life and sound had gone out of the place.
"I feel cold," said Jack, looking about him.
They went round to the back of the hotel. Old iron cog-wheels lay rusting on the ground with remains of pumps. In the heart of the town behind the hotel stretched an open space of ground covered with piles of shingle and intersected with ditches.
Mr. Beck sat down and adjusted one of the thorns which served as a temporary shirt-stud.
"Two years ago," he said, "there were ten thousand miners here; now there isn't one. I thought we should find a choice hotel, with a little monty or poker afterwards. Now no one left; nothing but a Chinaman or two."
"How do you know there are Chinamen?"
"See those stones?"
He pointed to some great boulders, from three to six feet in diameter. Some operation of a mystical kind had been performed upon them, for they were jagged and chipped as if they had been filed and cut into shape by a sculptor who had been once a dentist and still loved the profession.
"The miners picked the bones of those rocks, but they never pick quite clean. Then the Chinamen come and finish off. Gentlemen, it's a special Providence that you picked me up. I don't altogether admire the way in which that special Providence was played up to in the matter of the bar; but a Christian without a revolver alone among twenty Chinamen – "
He stopped and shrugged his shoulders.
"They'd have got my Luck," he concluded.
"Chief, I don't like it;" said the younger man. "It's ghostly. It's a town of dead men. As soon as it is dark the ghosts will rise and walk about – play billiards, I expect. What shall we do?"
"Hotel," growled the chief. "Sleep on floor – sit on chairs – eat off a table."
They entered the hotel.
A most orderly bar: the glasses there; the bright-coloured bottles: two or three casks of Bourbon whisky; the counter; the very dice on the counter with which the bar-keeper used to "go" the miners for drinks. How things at once so necessary to civilised life and so portable as dice were left behind, it is impossible to explain.
Everything was there except the drink. The greasers tried the casks and examined the bottles. Emptiness. A miner may leave behind him the impedimenta, but the real necessaries of life – rifle, revolver, bowie, and cards – he takes with him. And as for the drink, he carries that away too for greater safety, inside himself.
The English servant looked round him and smiled superior.
"No tap for beer, as usual, sir," he said. "These poor Californians has much to learn."
Mr. Gilead P. Beck looked round mournfully.
"Everything gone but the fixin's," he sighed. "There used to be good beds, where there wasn't more'n two at once in them; and there used to be such a crowd around this bar as you would not find nearer'n St. Louis City."
"Hush!" said Jack, holding up his hand. There were steps.
Mr. Beck pricked up his ears.
"Chinamen, likely. If there's a row, gentlemen, give me something, if it's only a toothpick, to chime in with. But that's not a Chinese step; that's an Englishman's. He wears boots, but they are not miner's boots; he walks firm and slow, like all Englishmen; he is not in a hurry, like our folk. And who but an Englishman would be found staying behind in the Empire City when it's gone to pot?"
The footsteps came down the stairs.
"Most unhandsome of a ghost," said the younger man, "to walk before midnight."
The producer of the footsteps appeared.
"Told you he was an Englishman!" cried Mr. Beck.
Indeed, there was no mistaking the nationality of the man, in spite of his dress, which was cosmopolitan. He wore boots, but not, as the quick ear of the American told him, the great boots of the miner; he had on a flannel shirt with a red silk belt; he wore a sort of blanket thrown back from his shoulders; and he had a broad felt hat. Of course he carried arms, but they were not visible.
He was a man of middle height, with clear blue eyes; the perfect complexion of an Englishman of good stock and in complete health; a brown beard, long and rather curly, streaked with here and there a grey hair; square and clear-cut nostrils; and a mouth which, though not much of it was visible, looked as if it would easily smile, might readily become tender, and would certainly find it difficult to be stern. He might be any age, from five and thirty to five and forty.
The greasers fell back and grouped about the door. The questions which might be raised had no interest for them. The two leaders stood together; and Mr. Gilead P. Beck, rolling an empty keg to their side, turned it up and sat down with the air of a judge, looking from one party to the other.
"Englishmen, I see," said the stranger.
"Ye-yes," said Ladds, not, as Mr. Beck expected, immediately holding out his hand for the stranger to grasp.
"You have probably lost your way?"
"Been hunting. Working round – San Francisco. Followed track; accident; got here. Your hotel, perhaps? Fine situation, but lonely."
"Not a ghost, then," murmured the other, with a look of temporary disappointment.
"If you will come upstairs to my quarters, I may be able to make you comfortable for the night. Your party will accommodate themselves without our help."
He referred to the greasers, who had already begun their preparations for spending a happy night. When he led the way up the stairs, he was followed, not only by the two gentlemen he had invited, but also by the ragamuffin hunter, miner, or adventurer, and by the valet, who conceived it his duty to follow his master.
He lived, this hermit, in one of the small bed-rooms of the hotel, which he had converted into a sitting-room. It contained a single rocking-chair and a table. There was also a shelf, which served for a sideboard, and a curtain under the shelf, which acted as a cupboard.
"You see my den," he said. "I came here a year or so ago by accident, like yourselves. I found the place deserted. I liked the solitude, the scenery, whatever you like, and I stayed here. You are the only visitors I have had in a year."
"Chinamen?" said Mr. Gilead P. Beck.
"Well, Chinamen, of course. But only two of them. They take turns, at forty dollars a month, to cook my dinners. And there is a half-caste, who does not mind running down to Sacramento when I want anything. And so, you see, I make out pretty well."
He opened the window, and blew a whistle.
In two minutes a Chinaman came tumbling up the stairs. His inscrutable face expressed all the conflicting passions of humanity at once – ambition, vanity, self respect, humour, satire, avarice, resignation, patience, revenge, meekness, long-suffering, remembrance, and a thousand others. No Aryan comes within a hundred miles of it.
"Dinner as soon as you can," said his master.
"Ayah! can do," replied the Celestial. "What time you wantchee?
"As soon as you can. Half an hour."
"Can do. My no have got cully-powder. Have makee finish. Have got?"
"Look for some; make Achow help."
"How can? No, b'long his pidgin. He no helpee. B'long my pidgin makee cook chow-chow. Ayah! Achow have go makee cheat over Mexican man. Makee play cards all same euchre."
In fact, on looking out of the window, the other Celestial was clearly visible, manipulating a pack of cards and apparently inviting the Mexicans to a friendly game, in which there could be no deception.
Then Ladds' conscience smote him.
"Beg pardon. Should have seen. Make remark about hotel. Apologise."
"He means," said the other, "that he was a terrible great fool not to see that you are a gentleman."
Ladds nodded.
"Let me introduce our party," the speaker went on. "This is our esteemed friend Mr. Gilead P. Beck, whom we caught in a bear-hunt – "
"Bar behind," said Mr. Beck.
"This is Captain Ladds, of the 35th Dragoons."
"Ladds," said Ladds. "Nibs, cocoa-nibs – pure aroma – best breakfast-digester – blessing to mothers – perfect fragrance."
"His name is Ladds; and he wishes to communicate to you the fact that he is the son of the man who made an immense fortune – immense, Tommy?"
Ladds nodded.
"By a crafty compound known as 'Ladds' Patent Anti-Dyspeptic Cocoa.' This is Ladd's servant, John Boimer, the best servant who ever put his leg across pig-skin; and my name is Roland Dunquerque. People generally call me Jack; I don't know why, but they do."
Their host bowed to each, including the servant, who coloured with pleasure at Jack's description of him; but he shook hands with Ladds.
"One of ours," he said. "My name is Lawrence Colquhoun. I sold out before you joined. I came here as you see. And – now, gentlemen, I think I hear the first sounds of dinner. Boimer – you will allow me, Ladds? – you will find claret and champagne behind that curtain. Pardon a hermit's fare. I think they have laid out such a table as the wilderness can boast in the next room."
The dinner was not altogether what a man might order at the Junior United, but it was good. There was venison, there was a curry, there was some mountain quail, there was claret, and there was champagne – both good, especially the claret. Then there was coffee.
The Honourable Roland Dunquerque, whom we will call in future, what everybody always called him, Jack, ate and drank like Friar John. The keen mountain air multiplied his normal twist by ten. Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who sat down to dinner perfectly unabashed by his rags, was good as a trencherman, but many plates behind the young Englishman. Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun, their host, went on talking almost as if they were in London, only now and then he found himself behind the world. It was his ignorance of the last Derby, the allusion to an old and half-forgotten story, perhaps his use of little phrases – not slang phrases, but those delicately-shaded terms which imply knowledge of current things – which showed him to have been out of London and Paris for more than one season.
"Four years," he said, "since I left England."
"But you will come back to it again?"
"I think not."
"Better," said Jack, whose face was a little flushed with the wine. "Much better. Robinson Crusoe always wanted to get home again. So did Selkirk. So did Philip Quarles."
Then the host produced cigars. Later on, brandy-and-water.
The brandy and water made Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who found himself a good deal crowded out of the conversation, insist on having his share. He placed his square box on the table, and loosed the straps.
"Let me tell you," he said, "the story of my Luck. I was in Sonora City," he began, patting his box affectionately, "after the worst three months I ever had; and I went around trying to borrow a few dollars. I got no dollars, but I got free drinks – so many free drinks, that at last I lay down in the street and went to sleep. Wal, gentlemen, I suppose I walked in that slumber of mine, for when I woke up I was lying a mile outside the town.
"I also entertained angels unawares, for at my head there sat an Indian woman. She was as wrinkled an old squaw as ever shrieked at a buryin'. But she took an interest in me. She took that amount of interest in me that she told me she knew of gold. And then she led me by the hand, gentlemen, that aged and affectionate old squaw, to a place not far from the roadside; and there, lying between two rocks, and hidden in the chaparelle, glittering in the light, was this bauble." He tapped his box. "I did not want to be told to take it. I wrapped it in my handkerchief and carried it in my hand. Then she led me back to the road again. 'Bad luck you will have,' she said; 'but it will lead to good luck so long as that is not broken, sold, given away, or lost.' Then she left me, and here it is."
He opened the little box. There was nothing to be seen but a mass of white wool.
"Bad luck I have had. Look at me, gentlemen. Adam was not more destitute when the garden-gates were shut on him. But the good will come, somehow."
He removed the wool, and, behold, a miracle of nature! Two thin plates of gold delicately wrought in lines and curious chasing, like the pattern of a butterfly's wing, and of the exact shape, but twice as large. They were poised at the angle, always the same, at which the insect balances itself about a flower. They were set in a small piece of quaintly marked quartz, which represented the body.
"A golden butterfly!"
"A golden butterfly," said Mr. Beck. "No goldsmith made this butterfly. It came from Nature's workshop. It is my Luck."
"And If the butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead Beck,"
said Jack.
"Thank you, sir. That's very neat. I'll take that, sir, if you will allow me, for my motto, unless you want it for yourself."
"No," said Jack; "I have one already."
"If this golden butterfly fall and break,
Farewell the Luck of Gilead P. Beck,"
repeated the owner of the insect. "If you are going on, gentlemen, to San Francisco, I hope you will take me with you."
"Colquhoun," said Ladds, "you do not mean to stay by yourself? Much better come with us, unless, of course – "
Lying on the table was a piece of an old newspaper in which Jack had wrapped something. Ladds saw Colquhoun mechanically take up the paper, read it, and change color. Then he looked straight before him, seeing nothing, and Ladds stopped speaking. Then he smiled in a strange far-off way.
"I think I will go with you," he said.
"Hear, hear!" cried Jack. "Selkirk returns to the sound of the church-going bell."
Ladds refrained from looking at the paper in search of things which did not concern himself, but he perceived that Colquhoun had, like Hamlet, seen something. There was, in fact, an announcement in the fragment which greatly interested Lawrence Colquhoun:
"On April 3, by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Turk's Island, at St. George's Hanover Square, Gabriel Cassilis, of etc., to Victoria, daughter of the Late Admiral Sir Benbow Pengelley, K.C.B."
In the morning they started, Mr. Beck being provided with a new rig-out of a rough and useful kind.
At the last moment one of the Chinamen, Leeching, the cook, besought from his late master, as a parting favour and for the purpose of self-protection, the gift of a pistol, powder, and ball.
Mr. Colquhoun gave them to him, thinking it a small thing after two years of faithful service. Then Leeching, after loading his pistol, went to work with his comrade for an hour or so.
Presently, Achow being on his knees in the shingle, the perfidious Leeching suddenly cocked his pistol, and fired it into Achow's right ear, so that he fell dead.
By this lucky accident Leeching became sole possessor of the little pile of gold which he and the defunct Achow had scraped together and placed in a cache.
He proceeded to unearth this treasure, put together his little belongings, and started on the road to San Francisco with a smile of satisfaction.
There was a place in the windings of the road where there was a steep bank. By the worst luck in the world a stone slipped and fell as Leeching passed by. The stone by itself, would not have mattered much, as it did not fall on Leeching's head; but with it fell a rattlesnake, who was sleeping in the warmth of the sun.
Nothing annoys a rattlesnake more than to be disturbed in his sleep. With angry mind he awoke, looked around, and saw the Chinaman. Illogically connecting him with the fall of the stone, he made for him, and, before Leeching knew there was a rattlesnake anywhere near him, bit him in the calf.
Leeching sat down on the bank and realized the position. Being a fatalist, he did not murmur; having no conscience, he did not fear; having no faith, he did not hope; having very little time, he made no testamentary dispositions. In point of fact, he speedily curled up his legs and died.
Then the deserted Empire City was deserted indeed, for there was not even a Chinaman left in it.
CHAPTER I
Joseph and His Brethren
The largest and most solid of all the substantial houses in Carnarvon Square, Bloomsbury, is Number Fifteen, which, by reason of its corner position (Mulgrave Street intersecting it at right angles at this point), has been enabled to stretch itself out at the back. It is a house which a man who wanted to convey the idea of a solid income without ostentation or attempt at fashion would find the very thing to assist his purpose. The ladies of such a house would not desire to belong to the world farther west; they would respect the Church, law, and medicine; they would look on the City with favourable eyes when it was represented by a partner in an old firm; they would have sound notions of material comfort; they would read solid books, and would take their pleasure calmly. One always, somehow, in looking at a house wonders first of what sort its women are. There were, however, no women at Number Fifteen at all, except the maids. Its occupants consisted of three brothers, all unmarried. They were named respectively Cornelius, Humphrey, and Joseph Jagenal. Cornelius and Humphrey were twins. Joseph was their junior by ten years. Cornelius and Humphrey were fifty – Joseph was forty. People who did not know this thought that Joseph was fifty and his brethren forty.
When the Venerable the Archdeacon of Market Basing, the well-known author of Sermons on the Duty of Tithe-Offerings, the Lesbia of Catullus, and a Treatise on the Right Use of the Anapæst in Greek Iambic Verse, died, it was found that he had bequeathed his little savings, worth altogether about £500 a year, to his three sons in the following proportions: the twins, he said, possessed genius; they would make their mark in the world, but they must be protected. They received the yearly sum of £200 apiece, and it was placed in the hands of trustees to prevent their losing it; the younger was to have the rest, without trustees, because, his father said, "Joseph is a dull boy and will keep it." It was a wise distribution of the money. Cornelius, then nineteen, left Oxford immediately, and went to Heidelberg, where he called himself a poet, studied metaphysics, drank beer, and learned to fence. Humphrey, for his part, deserted Cambridge – their father having chosen that they should not be rivals – and announced his intention of devoting his life to Art. He took up his residence in Rome. Joseph stayed at school, having no other choice. When the boy was sixteen, his guardians articled him to a solicitor. Joseph was dull, but he was methodical, exact, and endowed with a retentive memory. He had also an excellent manner, and the "appearance of age," as port wine advertisers say, before he was out of his articles. At twenty-five, Joseph Jagenal was a partner; at thirty-five, he was the working partner; at forty, he was the senior partner in the great Lincoln's-Inn firm of Shaw, Fairlight, and Jagenal, the confidential advisers of as many respectable county people as any firm in London.
When he was twenty-five, and became a partner, the brethren returned to England simultaneously, and were good enough to live with him and upon him. They had their £200 a year each, and expensive tastes. Joseph, who had made a thousand for his share the first year of his admission to the firm, had no expensive tastes, and a profound respect for genius. He took in the twins joyfully, and they stayed with him. When his senior partner died, and Mr. Fairlight retired, so that Joseph's income was largely increased, they made him move from Torrington Square, where the houses are small, to Carnarvon Square, and regulated his household for him on the broadest and most liberal scale. Needless to say, no part of the little income, which barely served the twins with pocket-money and their menus plaisirs, went towards the housekeeping. Cornelius, poet and philosopher, superintended the dinner and daily interviewed the cook. Humphrey, the devotee of art, who furnished the rooms according to the latest designs of the most correct taste, was in command of the cellar. Cornelius took the best sitting-room for himself, provided it with books, easy-chairs, and an immense study-table with countless drawers. He called it carelessly his Workshop. The room on the first floor overlooking Mulgrave Street, and consequently with a north aspect, was appropriated by Humphrey. He called it his Studio, and furnished it in character, not forgetting the easy-chairs. Joseph had the back room behind the dining-room for himself; it was not called a study or a library, but Mr. Joseph's room. He sat in it alone every evening, at work. There was also a drawing-room, but it was never used. They dined together at half-past six: Cornelius sat at the head, and Humphrey at the foot, Joseph at one side. Art and Intellect, thus happily met together and housed under one roof, talked to each other. Joseph ate his dinner in silence. Art held his glass to the light, and flashed into enthusiasm over the matchless sparkle, the divine hues, the incomparable radiance, of the wine. Intellect, with a sigh, as one who regrets the loss of a sense, congratulated his brother on his vivid passion for colour, and, taking another glass, discoursed on the æsthetic aspects of a vintage wine. Joseph drank one glass of claret, after which he retired to his den, and left the brethren to finish the bottle. After dinner the twins sometimes went to the theatre, or they repaired arm-in-arm to their club – the Renaissance, now past its prime and a little fogyish; mostly they sat in the Studio or in the Workshop, in two arm-chairs, with a table between them, smoked pipes, and drank brandy and potash-water. They went to bed at any time they felt sleepy – perhaps at twelve, and perhaps at three. Joseph went to bed at half-past ten. The brethren generally breakfasted at eleven, Joseph at eight. After breakfast, unless on rainy days, a uniform custom was observed. Cornelius, poet and philosopher, went to the window and looked out.
Humphrey, artist, and therefore a man of intuitive sympathies, followed him. Then he patted Cornelius on the shoulder, and shook his head.
"Brother, I know your thought. You want to drag me from my work; you think it has been too much for me lately. You are too anxious about me."
Cornelius smiled.
"Not on my own account too, Humphrey?"
"True – on your account. Let us go out at once, brother. Ah, why did you choose so vast a subject?"
Cornelius was engaged – had been engaged for twenty years – upon an epic poem, entitled the Upheaving of Ælfred. The school he belonged to would not, of course, demean themselves by speaking of Alfred. To them Edward was Eadward, Edgar was Eadgar, and old Canute was Knut. In the same way Cicero became Kikero, Virgil was Vergil, and Socrates was spelt, as by the illiterate bargee, with a k. So the French prigs of the ante-Boileau period sought to make their trumpery pedantries pass for current coin. So, too, Chapelain was in labour with the Pucelle for thirty years; and when it came – But Cornelius Jagenal could not be compared with Chapelain, because he had as yet brought forth nothing. He sat with what he and his called "English" books all round him; in other words, he had all the Anglo-Saxon literature on his shelves, and was amassing, as he said, material.
Humphrey, on the other hand, was engaged on a painting, the composition of which offered difficulties which, for nearly twenty years, had proved insuperable. He was painting, he said, the "Birth of the Renaissance." It was a subject which required a great outlay in properties, Venetian glass, Italian jewelry, mediæval furniture, copies of paintings – everything necessary to make this work a masterpiece – he bought at Joseph's expense. Up to the present no one had been allowed to see the first rough drawings.
"Where's Cæsar?" Humphrey would say, leading the way to the hall. "Cæsar! Why, here he is. Cæsar must actually have heard us proposing to go out."
Cornelius called the dog Kaysar, and he refused to answer to it; so that conversation between him and Cornelius was impossible.
There never was a pair more attached to each other than these twin brethren. They sallied forth each morning at twelve, arm-in-arm, with an open and undisguised admiration for each other which was touching. Before them marched Cæsar, who was of mastiff breed, leading the way. Cornelius, the poet, was dressed with as much care as if he were still a young man of five-and-twenty, in a semi-youthful and wholly-æsthetic costume, in which only the general air, and not the colour, revealed the man of delicate perceptions. Humphrey, the artist, greatly daring, affected a warm brown velvet with a crimson-purple ribbon. Both carried flowers. Cornelius had gloves; Humphrey a cigar. Cornelius was smooth-faced, save for a light fringe on the upper lip. Humphrey wore a heavy moustache and a full long silky beard of a delicately-shaded brown, inclining when the sun shone upon it to a suspicion of auburn. Both were of the same height, rather below the middle; they had features so much alike that, but for the hair on the face of one, it would have been difficult to distinguish between them. Both were thin, pale of face, and both had, by some fatality, the end of their delicately-carved noses slightly tipped with red. Perhaps this was due to the daily and nightly brandy-and-water. And in the airy careless carriage of the two men, their sunny faces and elastic tread, it was impossible to suppose that they were fifty and Joseph only forty.
To be sure, Joseph was a heavy man, stout of build, broad in frame, sturdy in the under-jaw; while his brothers were slight shadowy men. And, to be sure, Joseph had worked all his life, while his brothers never did a stroke. They were born to consume the fruits which Joseph was born to cultivate.
Outside the house the poet heaved a heavy sigh, as if the weight of the epic was for the moment off his mind. The artist looked round with a critical eye on the lights and shadows of the great commonplace square.
"Even in London," he murmured, "Nature is too strong for man. Did you ever, my dear Cornelius, catch a more brilliant effect of sunshine than that upon the lilac yonder?"
Time, end of April; season forward, lilacs on the point of bursting into flower; sky dotted with swift-flying clouds, alternate withdrawals and bursts of sunshine.
"I really must," said Humphrey, "try to fix that effect."
His brother took the arm of the artist and drew him gently away.
In front marched Cæsar.
Presently the poet looked round. They were out of the square by this time.
"Where is Kaysar?" he said, with an air of surprise. "Surely, brother Humphrey, the dog can't be in the Carnarvon Arms?"
"I'll go and see," said Humphrey, with alacrity.
He entered the bar of the tavern, and his brother waited outside. After two or three minutes, the poet, as if tired of waiting, followed the artist into the bar. He found him with a glass of brandy-and-water cold.
"I had," he explained, "a feeling of faintness. Perhaps this spring air is chilly. One cannot be too careful."
"Quite right," said the poet. "I almost think – yes, I really do feel – ah! Thank you, my dear."
The girl, as if anticipating his wants, set before him a "four" of brandy and the cold water. Perhaps she had seen the face before. As for the dog, he was lying down with his head on his paws. Perhaps he knew there would be no immediate necessity for moving.
They walked in the direction of the Park, arm-in-arm, affectionately.
It might have been a quarter of an hour after leaving the Carnarvon Arms when the poet stopped and gasped —
"Humphrey, my dear brother, advise me. What would you do if you had a sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside you?"
Humphrey replied promptly:
"If I had a sharp and sudden pain like a knife inside me, I should take a small glass of brandy neat. Mind, no spoiling the effect with water."
Cornelius looked at his brother with admiration.
"Such readiness of resource!" he murmured, pressing his arm.
"I think I see – ah, yes – Kaysar – he's gone in before us. The sagacity of that dog is more remarkable than anything I ever read." He took his small glass of brandy neat.
The artist, looking on, said he might as well have one at the same time. Not, he added, that he felt any immediate want of the stimulant, but he might; and at all times prevention is better than cure.
It was two o'clock when they returned to Carnarvon Square. They walked arm-in-arm, with perhaps even a greater show of confiding affection than had appeared at starting. There was the slightest possible lurch in their walk, and both looked solemn and heavy with thought.
In the hall the artist looked at his watch.
"Pa – pasht two. Corneliush, Work – "
He marched to the Studio with a resolute air, and, arrived there, drew an easy-chair before the fire, sat himself in it, and went fast asleep.
The poet sought the workshop. On the table lay the portfolio of papers, outside which was emblazoned on parchment, with dainty scroll-work by the hands of his brother the artist, the title of his poem:
AN EPIC IN TWENTY-FOUR CANTOS
By Cornelius Jagenal
He gazed at it fondly for a few minutes; vaguely took up a pen, as if he intended to finish the work on the spot; and then with a sigh, thought being to much for brain, he slipped into his arm-chair, put up his feet, and was asleep in two minutes. At half-past five, one of the maids – they kept no footman in Carnarvon Square – brought him tea.
"I have been dozing, have I, Jane?" he asked. "Very singular thing for me to do."
We are but the creatures of habit. The brethren took the same walk every day, made the same remarks, with an occasional variation, and took the same morning drams; they spent the middle of the day in sleep, they woke up for the afternoon tea, and they never failed to call Jane's attention to the singularity of the fact that they had been asleep. This day Jane lingered instead of going away when the tea was finished.
