The Burglar, the Twins, and Ernestine

by Edgar Jepson

THE BURGLAR, THE TWINS,
AND ERNESTINE.

JACK FEATHERLEIGH was a scamp of the kind called engaging. He had all the faults which spring from an iron resolve to do no work, and from a private morality founded on a mental twist which made him conceive society as his inveterate enemy, on whom he was bound to avenge himself for fancied, untold wrongs. His career at a public school and his career at Oxford had been equally discreditable; and he had quarrelled coldly and firmly with his father, when that father made the continuance of his allowance dependent on his entering and working at a profession. He had admirable virtues—a cool, resourceful courage, kindliness, generosity, and a tried loyalty to his friends: he kept even an account of the moneys he had borrowed from them. He was adored by children, to amuse whom he would readily make himself ridiculous; a three-legged dog in a house in a London slum looked for his return in a restless, whining impatience; and when he put himself about, a woman would with an amazing, careless cheerfulness, surrender to him the peace of her heart. It is possible that if any one of them had ever touched anything but his fancy, she might have changed him—might even have broken his resolve to do no work. At the beginning of each month he wrote a charming letter to his mother, on (no matter what his straits) the finest hand-made paper.

For three years he had lived in London, by many shifts; and by a good fortune, which he was the last to admit, had never been in prison. It is the barest justice to declare that this was due to no lack of pains on the part of the police: without a hairbreadth of exaggeration it may be said that Scotland Yard craved for him. For he had a passion for aldermen, the aldermen of the City of London—a passion that had begun as a fancy and grown an obsession, until he had become the greatest living authority on the subject. He knew them so well by sight that he could recognise each of them by his back fifty yards away in the midday Cheapside crowd; he knew their ages, their fortunes, their weaknesses, their houses, and above all their coachmen, whom he treated often at bars. He kept new, perfectly cut, fine clothes, and a glossy silk hat to wear in the society of aldermen only. They were the source of his precarious income: he was that unknown man of whom the papers have told us so little at such length, who was sitting in Alderman Pudley’s brougham when that fuddled Atlas of the financial world stumbled into it after the Cutlers’ dinner; who helped him in with a firm grip on the windpipe; who left him bound, gagged and despoiled of his valuable, pretentious jewellery. He was the kindly young swell who met Alderman Gutterheim reeling along Holborn, shepherded him home, opened his door, and after drinking with him affably and fairly till he fell asleep in his armchair, left the house in that great banker’s fur-lined coat, its pockets, of a convenient amplitude, filled with invaluable portable property. He handled these, his supporters, with as much gentleness as might be; for he had all a nice fellow’s reverence for grey hairs.

But all good fortune comes to an end; and it was Lombard Street to a China orange that he would spend his vigorous prime and his green old age—he had the constitution of an ostrich—doing time; and not, when the burden of years waxed heavy on him, on his head.

Now, on this sunny June morning of his twenty-seventh birthday, he lay on the lane-side turf in the shade of a coppice surveying the world with thoughtful eyes. Owing to a matter of certain bottles of claret at fifteen shillings each, and a pretty chambermaid, his pocket held only sevenpence. For, on the tramp from London, he had chanced on an out-of-the-way inn, and talking to the landlady while he made a meal of bread and cheese and beer, had learned that there was a bin of fine old claret in the cellar. He had lost no time in convincing her that he was an eccentric gentleman who travelled in rags out of whim, had handed over to her six pounds, and stayed at her inn six days. He spent most of these days in a very easy chair, set in the shadow of the broad eaves, over against the window where the pretty chambermaid did her work; and at dinner each night had drunk one of the bottles of claret. On the morning of the seventh day the six pounds had been spent; he had given the pretty chambermaid, dissolved in tears at his going, his last sovereign; and had gone forth on the tramp once more—in his heart pleasant memories, in his pocket one half-crown. That was the morning of the day before: he had slept at the sign of the Beautiful Star; broken his fast on bread and milk; and was surveying the world in his low humour of hostility to his fellow-men, induced by the refusal of two brethren of the road, who had just passed him, to give him of their shag. He tugged gently at his beard, passed his hand through it in the fashion of a comb; but it did not soothe his indignation. Then a girl on a bicycle came slowly down the lane; and a glance from thought that she was a beautiful creature, and gazed after her till she passed round the corner.

Then he rose; picked up his heavy stick and the gay blanket, pierced with a hole for his head in the Mexican fashion, which served him for a cloak in the rain, a bed at the Beautiful Star; and went down the road with an easy swing which showed excellent muscle. He had not gone far when he heard a sharp scream ahead. In a breath he had broken into the long stride of the trained runner; and came over a rise in the road to see at its foot the pretty bicyclist struggling in the grip of his two churlish brethren of the road. He came flying down the hill, twisting his blanket round his left arm; the girl saw him, and cried, “Help me! oh, help me!”

At her cry the two busy tramps loosed her; snatched up their sticks, and faced him. He dashed at them, caught the blow from the left-hand man on his blanket, and gave the other the point neatly between the eyes. The man fell, scrambled to his feet, and ran howling down the road with a laceration that bared two square inches of the frontal bone. Jack got in a lucky blow on the other man’s wrist that knocked the stick out of his hand, and he ran after his comrade. Jack and the girl stood panting, and staring at one another with excited eyes. She set her hand on her heart as though to still its beating, and cried in a broken voice between her gasps, “Oh!—how can I—ever—thank you?”

“Sit down and get your breath,” said Jack kindly.

She sank down on the grass, covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears. He turned away, and busied himself picking up the unhurt bicycle; and she watched him through her fingers as she cried. She thought he looked like a lion.

Presently he saw that her tears flowed slower, and said, “Do you feel better?”

She gave herself a little shake, rose to her feet, and dried her eyes. She was trembling still. “How brave you are! And how strong!” she said; and her dimmed eyes shone suddenly bright.

“How fortunate, rather, to have been of use to you!” he said quietly, considering her carefully. She seemed to him about eighteen, and of an amazing prettiness.

“I was so frightened—oh, so frightened! I don’t know what I should have done if you hadn’t come. They were saying horrible things—horrible,” she said, and shivered.

“Forget them. They were only an ugly dream,” he said.

She looked at him, and her quick woman’s eye marked his difference from the real tramp: his sound, strong boots, the colours of his flannel shirt and blanket, his air of wholesome cleanliness, the whiteness of the skin through his rags.

“You must come with me—now, at once—to my father. He will try and repay you—though really it is beyond repayment—for saving me from those ruffians!” she said, making an eager movement to the bicycle.

He smiled, waved his hand, and said, “No; it is impossible. Consider, my dear young lady, how uncomfortable your father would be, and how uncomfortable I should be. Besides, why should I be robbed of the pleasure of having helped you?”

“Oh, but you must! Indeed you must!” she said.

He shook his head.

“But you are poor, surely: you are very poor,” she said, with a little blush.

“No, I am not. With good health, a clear conscience, and a light heart, one is never poor,” he said, with a fine air that she thought became him.

Her face fell; she knitted her brow; he watched the troubled working of her beautiful face, her troubled eyes, with a very keen sense of delight. At last she slipped her hand into her pocket, and saying, “At least take my purse: there is not much in it—only a few pounds,” held out to him a little silver chain purse, through whose rings the gold pieces were plain.

“No, indeed,” he said firmly.

A faint anger shone in her troubled eyes. “It isn’t fair!” she said; “it isn’t fair! And I have such lots of money, too!”

She seemed almost on the point of tears again, and, touched by her real distress, he said, “Well, I will take something if you will give it me,”—her face shone bright;—“give me the rose in your belt.” And he looked at her with all his masterful eyes.

The strong impression of being face to face with an extraordinary manliness went tingling down her nerves: her eyes fell; the red deepened in her cheek. She took the rose from her belt, and gave it him without looking up.

“Thank you; I am fully repaid,” he said, and fixed it in his ragged coat with great care. “And now I will bid you good-bye.” And he held the bicycle for her to mount.

His tone ended the interview. She took the handles submissively, then said, *What—what is your name?”

“Jack Featherleigh,” he said.

He did not ask her name, and his lack of interest hurt her. She mounted listlessly. He raised his cap, and said, “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she said; “and thank you—oh, so much!”

She rode slowly on, her head a little bowed, in a dream of romance, all a confusion of keen emotions.

He stood watching her till she passed out of sight; once she looked back.

“A beautiful creature! A beautiful creature!” he said, and sighed.

That afternoon he walked more at random than usual, taking cross-lane after cross-lane; he could not drive the plain image of the girl from his mind; his thought clung to her.

About five o’clock he came upon a little village of a model neatness, on the right of which, embowered in woods, stood a large red-brick house, all windows and gables.

He looked at it a while, and then said to himself, softly, “As I live, that is the house of an alderman; and there is money in it.”

He went into the village, found a little inn facing the green; spent his sevenpence on bread and cheese, beer and tobacco; and talking cheerfully with the landlord, learned that the big house belonged to the squire, Mr. Blyde, a gentleman of London, who plainly enjoyed the popularity which attends the lavish cultivation of model villages. Jack was grieved to hear that he was not an alderman; but consoled himself with the thought that he would surely become one in the fulness of time, and he must be content to take him in the green ear. At six he left the village at a brisk pace; and half an hour later was lying in the edge of the belt of woods which ran round the house, studying every step of the way he would take to it. Then, rolled in his blanket, he slept for four hours. At midnight he was climbing through a pantry window which he had opened with his big clasp knife.

The inside of the house was very dark, for the night was cloudy. His first act was to unlock and unbolt the outer door of the kitchen, which opened into a short passage, and the back door at the end of that passage. Then he went down the back hall to the main part of the house. Heavy curtains hung between the two halls; and parting them gently, he put his head through. He saw a blazing flash of a myriad stars; and knew no more.

When he began to come to himself, he hovered for a while in an aching unconsciousness, dimly aware of voices; then of a sudden he could hear, and see, and understand plainly. His head was very sore; he was gagged, and he could not move. He opened his eyes and found himself bound in a chair in the kitchen, which was brightly lighted by a score of candles. A little boy of about twelve, in a blue sleeping suit, sat at the table before him very busy. At the grate beyond stood a little girl in a blue dressing-gown, thrusting a poker into the hottest part of the fire, which was beginning to burn fiercely. There was a stench of paraffin on the air. His eyes wandered from one to the other; then he saw that the little boy was hard at work sharpening the ends of safety matches with a table-knife, and dropping them into a slop-basin. A dismantled lamp, standing beside it, suggested to him that it held the paraffin he smelt. On the other side of the table lay an eighteenpenny life-preserver.

“Are those matches finished yet? This poker is very slow,” said the little girl in a high, excited voice.

“They’re not matches! They’re splinters! Indians don’t have matches, stupid!” said the boy, in a voice uncertain with the same thrill of excitement.

“That’s three times you’ve called me stupid! If you call it me again I won't play! So there!” cried the little girl.

“Well, you shouldn’t make silly mistakes. If you’re a Red Indian, be a Red Indian,” said the little boy austerely. He dropped another sharpened match into the paraffin, looked up and caught Jack’s eye.

“He’s come to,” he said, rising; the little girl ran from the fire, and they stood before their prisoner in the full blaze of the candles.

They were pretty, clear-skinned, dark-haired children, with the parted lips and dreamy eyes of idealists, and their faces were shining in an intense, joyful excitement. The face of the little girl was like a face which Jack knew, but could not call to mind. They stared at him, and of a sudden the boy remembered his part. A portentous gloom spread over his face, and he said, “A fine, strong paleface, Black Bison. He will give us good sport.”

The little girl thought a moment, and then growled a little growl which Jack recognised, with a faint delight for all his aching head, as meant for that fine Fenimore-Cooperism, “Ugh!”

“He will give us good sport,” she said in a gruff voice.

“A fine, strong paleface; but I dropped him in his tracks,” said the boy.

“You dropped him in his tracks,” said the little girl.

Then they let fall the mask.

“I wish I could remember the proper order of the torture,” said the little boy, with an anxious frown.

“I tell you I’m positive we stick the matches—I mean splinters—in his cheeks first, and set light to them; then we burn the soles of his feet with the hot irons, and last we put live coals into his eye-sockets,” said the little girl, She paused, and added, “It seems a pity, though: he has very pretty eyes.”

Jack’s heart-beats quickened to her words.

“Now, there you go!—being a girl again!” said the boy angrily.

“I’m not! I’m not! I’m a Red Indian!” protested the little girl, indignant. “When I’m a girl, I’m afraid of blood! Now, look here!” And she put, very gingerly, a finger into the thin bloodstream still oozing from Jack’s broken head. “And mind, I’m going to have my fair share of torturing.”

“Well, I’m going to begin. He’s my prisoner. I dropped him in his tracks,” said the boy, taking a match from the basin.

“Ladies first,” said the little girl coldly.

“Not among Red Indians,” said the boy, drawing near to Jack.

“Isn’t it a pity we can’t take the gag out of his mouth just a little, and hear him scream?” said the little girl wistfully.

“It would never do,” said the boy quickly. “A burglar is quite ignorant, you know; he’d never understand that the prisoners of Indians make it a point of honour to be tortured without screaming; he’d wake the house.”

“I don’t know,” said the little girl “I should think he was quite a superior burglar. He’s wearing a rose. But are you going to begin, or aren’t you? We shall never get to the live coals.”

“All right,” said the little boy, and coming up to Jack, he tried to stick the pointed match into his cheek. It slipped on the skin; he took hold of his hair, and with the better purchase, thrust it slowly in. The match hurt little, indeed; but Jack’s blood ran cold. For the first time in his life probably—speechless and helpless in the hands of these little fiendish enthusiasts—fear gripped his heart. He bit on the linen in his mouth; he struggled against his bonds in vain.

“Mind! mind! You're hurting his poor head where you knocked that hole in it!” cried the little girl.

“Don’t make that row!” said the boy, drawing off, and surveying the projecting match with a loving eye. “His skin’s tougher than I thought.”

“It’s my turn now!” cried the little girl with joyous eagerness; and pressing her left hand against the back of Jack’s head, very careful not to hurt his wound, she thrust in her match with infinitely greater dexterity than the boy.

“I don’t find it tough. Boys’ fingers are all thumbs,” she said, faintly contemptuous.

Jack’s wild, suppliant eyes flew from one to the other. They did not see them; they were looking at the matches, panting, palpitating with the intense joy of realised ideals. The grip of fear tightened on his heart.

The little girl glanced at the fire, and cried, “Oh, the poker’s splendidly red hot.”

The handle of the door turned; the door opened; a charming voice, pleasantly expectant of amusement, said, “And what are you two little sinners doing now?” And a radiant vision dazzled Jack’s eyes: a beautiful face framed in a cloud of black hair that fell, waving, over the shoulders; a slender figure in a dressing gown unfastened at the top so that a white throat rose out of a nest of lace; wonderful, candid grey eyes. It was the girl he had rescued from the tramps; and his chilled heart burned with a shame as strange to it as the fear.

“Oh!” she gasped, at the sight of the bound figure, the white face, and bloody head.

“There!” said the boy in a tone of deep disgust. “It’s all up! Ernestine is always spoiling our fun!”

“She always does—always—the only prisoner we ever tortured!” said the little girl mournfully, almost in a whimper.

“Prisoner? Torture? Fred! Dulcie! what is it? What are you doing?” cried the girl, with a scared face.

She came a step nearer, and recognised him; a wave of colour flowed over her cheeks; she put her hands over her bare throat and cried, “Why! why! It’s Mr. Feather ...! it’s the man who saved me from the tramps!” She ran to him with a little sob of pity; saw the matches in his cheeks; turned on the children with flaming eyes.

“You cruel, heartless, abominable little wretches!” she cried in a terrible, low voice.

“I knew that’s how it would be,” said Fred, in a very despondent tone, looking at Dulcie.

“Unloose him at once!” said Ernestine.

Sulkily, grumbling that it would be her fault if all their throats were cut, Fred set about cutting the cords, while Ernestine drew the linen gag from his mouth. It unfolded into the sleeve of a little nightgown; and Dulcie stood with her left arm behind her back.

“Oh, you are a horrid little creature!” said Ernestine, and tossed it to her. The cords fell. Jack, in a revulsion from his fear, swayed limply forward, and fainted.

When he came to, brandy and food were on the table; and Ernestine gave him to eat and drink, her eyes filled with an ineffable pity. He could not meet them: they were touching strings in his heart that had never been touched before. The brandy set the blood flowing in his veins; and he said to the children, “You wicked little monsters! If you begin by torturing human beings, you'll come to torturing cats and dogs, or even helpless rabbits who can neither scratch nor bite.”

“But we were Red Indians; and Red Indians do. Besides, we didn’t know you were the man who beat the tramps,” said Fred.

“Well, I beg you won’t do it again. I’m not a Red Indian, though I fancy I must be rather red,” said Jack with poor gaiety.

“I must bind your head up at once! It must be terribly painful!” said Ernestine. And presently she was washing away the blood from his hair with very tender fingers. She rolled her handkerchief into a pad, dipped it in cold water, and pressed it to the wound; then she said to him, “Oh dear, I’ve no bandage! And I daren’t go through the house again. Oh—I know. Hold the handkerchief tight to your head, and don’t move.”

She took the knife; stooped down behind him; he heard a long, tearing rip; and she rose with a long strip of cambric in her hand, with a fine scarlet in her face—she had torn off the border of her nightgown. She bound the handkerchief firmly over the wound with very skilful fingers.

Her task was done: Jack’s head throbbed still; but his blood flowed no more. Then a change came upon her: she drew away from him with an unquiet movement, and walked round to the other side of the table. She looked at him with eyes filled with a divine pity and a very bitter reproach; and, as she looked, something broke in him. Unstrung, by loss of blood, to the acutest sensitiveness, he felt, in a horror, his eyes filling with tears, and cried, “Don’t! don’t look at me like that! What have I done to you?”

“How could you?” she said, with a sob: she had not heard him. “A thief prowling in the night.”

“Don’t!” he said, in a strange, strained voice. “Don’t shame me before these children!”

“Oh, it is a shameful thing!” she cried. “To-day you played the man; to-night you have done this.”

He rose to his feet unsteadily, and said hoarsely, “I won’t be talked to like this by a chit of a girl! I have played the man: I have gone my own way, on my lone, beholden to no one! What I have wanted, that I have taken; and no one has stayed me. I have fought a fight against all the forces of invincible society; and I have won. I have played the man!”

“I am a chit of a girl, I know,” she said, and her piercing eyes were flames searing his heart. “And—and—I can’t say what I feel. But your being a man—and brave—and strong—and able to do anything, makes it worse. It does! And you know it does!—A thief prowling in the night. Oh, how you have hurt me!” A dry sob shook her.

The two children gazed amazed at these inexplicable emotions of their elders.

Jack stared at her, raging, furious; but his eyes could not beat hers down. Slowly his look changed to a savage supplication; it forsook her, wandered round the room, and came back to her. Then he dropped heavily into his chair, and hid his face in his hands. A silence fell, broken presently by a single rasping, tearing sob from him.

At the sound of it Dulcie burst into a loud crying; ran to him, put a little arm round his neck, and sobbed, “Don’t cry, Mr. Burglar!—please don’t cry.” She glared at her sister and said, ‘Oh! what a beast you are, Ernestine! You called me cruel—and you’re worse: you’ve hurt him—m-m-m-more than hun-hun- hundreds of red-hot pokers!”

“I think burglars are fine!” said Fred, in a loud but thick voice. “They’re not thieves! And they don’t prowl in the night! And you're a liar, Ernestine! You know you are!”

Ernestine did not hear them; she stood in a torture, twisting her hands, her eyes glued to the bowed head. Dulcie stroked his hair, glowering at her sister. Fred feigned a sudden discovery of a black beetle in a corner: he seemed to be killing it loudly with sniffs.

Presently Jack got his control; put Dulcie very gently away from him; his contorted face twisted into a thin smile; and he said in jerks, “You’re a dear little girl—but your sister is—right. I haven’t played the man—I’ve been a damned, blind fool—a—a thief prowling in the night.” He rose, and bent on Ernestine unshrinking, honest eyes: “But by the grace of—by the grace of—Ernestine—I’ll play the man yet.”

He moved towards the door; and as Fred ran to open it, he turned with a sudden bright flame in his eyes that sent once more the impression of his extraordinary manliness tingling down her nerves, and said, “I shall come back in a year and a day—a man—to—to—apologise.”

At the opening of the door the heat of her indignation died out of Ernestine’s heart; she felt very cold and sick; and as he turned on the threshold to look his last look at her, by no will in the world of her own she made a step towards him. He took a longer step towards her; for a breath his lips were very close to hers; and she could not, for the life of her, have put up a hand to ward them off. But he jerked himself upright and away; moved backwards on dragging feet, his eyes set intense on her face, to the door, over the threshold; turned on his heel in the darkness of the passage; and was gone.