# The Collaborators (Kinross)

Extracted from Century magazine, v91 1915-16, pp. 598–609. Accompanying illustrations by Dalton Stevens may be omitted.
Illustration: It must have been at some small hour in the morning that I was aroused and gagged and pinioned"
The Collaborators
By ALBERT KINROSS Author of "Joan of Garioch," etc
Illustrations by Dalton Stevens
I
IT was after the publication of my first book, a historical romance dealing with the life and times of Charles XII of Sweden, that I received a letter in a strange and none too legible hand, addressed to me in the care of Messrs. Nicoll & Prout, the firm whose imprint stood upon my title-page. Such letters, coming from grateful readers, were scarce in those days. I opened it. I flushed with pleasure as I deciphered my unknown friend's warm praises and flattering testimony to the success wherewith I had presented a difficult personality and a barbaric period. He was in a position to judge of both, he said, and his own studies and a recent spell of travel had led him across much of the ground so vividly depicted.
This letter was signed "S. Bellamy," and infolded with it was an ordinary card such as a caller might send in by a servant. "Monsignor Canon Bellamy," it read, "17 Fairview Crescent, Claverton." Claverton I knew by repute as a fashionable watering-place in the southwest of England.
To the letter was added a postscript:
       Call on me one afternoon. I am an old man, and you, I judge, are a young one. I am often in London, and you will find me at Wexford House in St. James's Place. I should be delighted to make the acquaintance of a writer who has given me so much pleasure, and hear something of his plans for the future; and, moreover, I have a proposal to make which I think will interest you. I shall be in town all next week. Perhaps you can let me know on what afternoon I may expect you.
He had touched my vanity, he had roused my sense of adventure. Picture me as I was, a poor young man of our sober middle class who had starved himself in order to write a book. It was, in its way, a successful book. A second impression had been called for, a pirate had seized upon it in America, and my net profit was close on sixty pounds. For a beginner I had not done so badly.
I wander from the point. Let us get back to it. Here was a high personage who desired my acquaintance, a notable of the Roman Catholic Church, with quarters in St. James's Place. I did not know Wexford House, but I knew St. James's Place. Prying round London, as was my constant habit in those days, I had acquired a familiarity with the exteriors of many famous houses, with the lay and atmosphere of most of the great squares and of all the royal palaces. I wondered over that hidden life, I speculated and wove romances; and when a gentlewoman issued from one of those noble mansions, affording me a glimpse of the hall and powdered servants, I experienced a thrill which she, stepping into her carriage or limousine, might have envied. I was a prowler and a nobody, with a high, romantic passion for the unknown, and, living in London as I did on the hazardous earnings of a bookish hack, was I not altogether surrounded by the mysterious and inaccessible? It is a city the wealth and power and splendor of which would leave such a one as I was then gasping and ever open-mouthed. Of its squalor, rascality, and evil I saw much and yet saw nothing. Youth has that knack, and middle age mourns the loss of it.
I return once more to Wexford House in St. James's Place. It must be, I fancied, one of the five large mansions which make an inclosure of the park end of that aristocratic back-water. In a public house I consulted the London Directory. Wexford House, I soon discovered, lay between the residences of the Duke of Mells and the Earl of Templehaven, the latter of which has no special name, but only a number. I found that number in St. James's Place, and so to Wexford House.
In the directory the present tenant was inscribed as plain Hugh Janvier. The name meant nothing to me then. He must be a rich man, and possibly the friend or patron of monsignor, if one so highly placed could suffer such protection. Hugh Janvier, I decided, was his friend. I had no means of ascertaining the actual facts, for I was too poor and too obscure to belong to clubs, and I had no acquaintance among the well informed who conduct our newspapers. I was a solitary student, with a turn for the historical romance, a precarious income, and an attic in the dingier part of Bloomsbury. My library was the one at the British Museum. There I browsed, there I raised my facts and fancies, there I wandered off into foreign lands, and made those visionary friendships with the illustrious dead to which, all said and done, I owe my present enviable position.
Before replying to my unknown correspondent I took the liberty of marking down Wexford House. So much has already been hinted. Like a pointer, or, better still, a detective, I gathered such information as its exterior could offer, and even looked in at the lower windows. These were separated by an iron railing from the street, and at that distance afforded no serious clue to the pomp and magnificence of Mr. Janvier. The house Itself was spacious and plain-fronted, designed, no doubt, by one of those Georgian architects who aped the classic and admired the smooth, mellifluous artifices of Mr. Pope. A neglected house, it seemed, without much life in it. None at all, if I except a tabby-cat that brooded on the door-step.
So much for the front of Wexford House. My next course was to take it in the rear. I found the narrow outlet which connects St. James's Place with St. James's Park, and discovered that the mansion possessed a garden of its own and rose to five sheer stories. A score of windows overlooked the park, and the little garden had its gate of entry. For London this was luxury indeed. I thought of my own penurious quarters and my hemmed-in view. Roofs and chimney-stacks were all I saw with the bodily eye, and at night I often rose to deal with cats. Here one could look out and observe the courtships of true lovers. A couple sat on a bench just now. He was earnest and silk-hatted; she was tender, and her gray shoes matched her stockings. Oh, heart, dear heart of me, how lonely and friendless and unloved I felt in this great city! I went away from there and mounted to my attic. I wrote in haste and agitation:
       Monsignor, I will come to you on Tuesday afternoon next at five o'clock. I am, as you supposed, a young man, a very young man. Pray do not expect too much of me. I am grateful for the praises you bestowed on my poor book, and my future plans depend on inspiration.
I inscribed myself his "obedient servant," and put my name in full, "John Stacey Cornwallis Loughborough." It is a grand name, and I was proud of it.
II
On the Tuesday I was punctual and more than punctual. It was an afternoon of mid-December, a black fog in the air, the streets doubly dark, and all the elements against me. I was not to be deterred, however. At a quarter to the hour I arrived in St. James's Place; and there, cooling my heels, inhaling the fog, and colliding with lamp-posts, I marked time and waited for the appointed moment. The hour struck, at last it struck, and I was free to ring the bell of Wexford House.
I stood in the porch of that great mansion, expecting a lobby full of footmen, a hall of dazzling splendor, and, beyond these, Monsignor Canon Bellamy, with cassock and skull-cap, seated in a deep chair before the blazing fire that cunning hands had laid in the big library. It was an interior by Fortuny. Actually, the face of Wexford House was dark and blind, with only a single muffled light burning below-stairs, and presenting that aspect of desertion which great houses show in the dead season.
The door swung back, and I discerned a hall and only a single man-servant. Both were dimmed by the intruding fog. Still, it was a fine hall, and more brilliantly occupied and illuminated—
"Mr. Loughborough?" The man-servant had recalled my wits from their wool-gathering; and without waiting for a reply, "This way," he added, examining me with all the odious insolence of his class. He felt and made me feel my shabbiness.
I followed him, and scorned him in return. He was a big fellow, and would have made two of me. He led me up a wide and enshrouded staircase,—that whole house seemed deathly and enshrouded,—we passed into a corridor, then up more stairs, and so to a small study. Within this cozy chamber sat monsignor.
I had expected a stout, benignant priest, shrewd, able, and pink-jowled with good living, or else a lean and ardent-eyed ascetic. Monsignor was neither. He possessed a watery quality which I have since learned to associate with the more scholarly among our aristocracy. A wisp of a man, thin, bald, ancient, with a lamentable nose and vague, blue eyes, he stood up to receive me. His courtesy contrasted well with that of the disdainful man-servant. He did his best to put me at my ease. Breeding is breeding, and no matter how lamentable the personage, it is the last thing to decay.
He offered me a chair, and a large cigar similar to the one he himself was smoking. The fire was a gas-stove; we sat together and looked at it. His costume was something like that of an ordinary parson, and included legs and trousers. His head, I have before remarked, was bare and bald.
"It was good of you to come," he began; "I feared you might not care to face this dreadful weather."
"Not at all, not at all," said I, puffing away at the large cigar.
"It occurred to me after I had sent my letter that possibly you did not live in London. A lucky chance," he added.
Naturally, I agreed with him.
"Mr. Janvier will be in presently," he pursued. "This is his house; but of course you know it."
Again I assented, omitting, however, to state the precise circumstances in which I had acquired my information.
"Do you know why I wrote to you?" he inquired, after these preliminaries.
"You liked my book," I began.
"Certainly, I liked your book; but I want you to write another one, I want you to collaborate."
"Collaborate?" It was the first I had heard of it.
"The last ten years," he pursued, "I have devoted myself to a task which the historian has neglected. There exists no life, there has been no memoir, of the greatest adventurer who ever lived."
I pricked up my ears at this.
"The greatest adventurer who ever lived," he repeated, and then added: "I am no hand at a novel, but with your magic pen—the pen of a wizard, if I may say so—we might do something considerable. I have all the materials; the research work is done; it only remains for you to write the story."
"What story?" I interrupted.
"We are coming to that," said he, rising from his chair and crossing over to a side-table.
He returned with a bulky pile of manuscript, typed and all ready for the publishers, which he dumped down before me. It looked as though it had traveled overmuch, and had been rudely treated in the process.
"This is my 'Life of Perkin Warbeck,'" he resumed. "The publishers to whom I have submitted it decline it. They have used it badly, have they not? One has even gone so far as to spill coffee upon chapter eleven. They say—their letters, at least, are very courteous—they say that as an historical work my book stands no chance of success; that, despite its unique interest, there exists no public demand for such a biography. Their letters are virtually of one mind, and maybe the public does adopt this attitude. I have, however, spent ten years of my life and as many hundred pounds on the bare collection of my materials. Is all this labor and expenditure to run to waste?"
He eyed me, and I quailed before the sudden ferocity wherewith he put the question. The matter of his frustrate toil had moved him, and he was now as nearly plebeian and human as myself. More so, perhaps; for when your true aristocrat once begins, he runs to an extremity.
"I read your novel," he continued, rising and striding to and fro before me. "'If this young man can do so much with Charles XII,' I said, 'what would he not make of Perkin Warbeck?' Reshaped into a historical romance,—for that is what the fickle public asks of us,—my book would make the lasting fame of any writer. There is a fortune in this scheme, and there is fame as well. As to the money, I ask no more than the bare return of what I have expended; the fame we will share alike.. Its glory must cover both our names and hand them down."
I was moved. Eloquence, sincerity, had then more weight with me; nor had I counted on anything so savage and determined from this watery old gentleman.
"I am afraid that I know next to nothing of Perkin Warbeck," I replied, as soon as ever he gave me an opportunity. "Apart from Dr. Gairdner and what we learned at school—"
"He was the greatest adventurer who ever lived," monsignor had interrupted me, and then and there, in so far as he had fathomed it, he told me the story of Perkin's life from beginning to end.
We started at Tournai, and finished on the scaffold, and this story, no less than the manner of its telling, wearied me as nothing has ever wearied me before or since. Though monsignor might have spent ten years and as many hundred pounds on research work and the collecting of materials, it seemed to me that there were no materials to collect. He had only a bare and unconvincing outline, plentifully provided with gaps, with guesswork. The motive force and the psychology alike were incomplete; he had no clear, inevitable picture of his hero, and no more have I. To this day I fail to see him, despite all that was to follow, and the ridiculous chain of accident which links my name and fame with this "feigned boy."
Monsignor had set himself down again and told this story. He told it as a succession of craven episodes, and it was never explained why one episode rose out of the other. So do schoolmasters inflict their lessons on the defenseless young. I had looked for more sense in a monsignor, a more genuine culture in Wexford House, St. James's Place. I was at that time young enough to be honest, so I told him exactly what I felt about it.
"This Perkin Warbeck," I said, "as you describe him, and as no doubt he is depicted by your leaky chroniclers, is nothing more than a driveling, base-born coward, as passive as a Hindu, yet without the Hindu's deep philosophy. His adventures seem to be forced on him; they arise from no inner need or impulse. When they become at all dangerous, he runs away, and leaves his followers in the lurch; when at last he is caught, he is as abject as a worm. He is supposed to be a pretender to the throne of England, and to win that throne he tries on five separate occasions, with more or less success, to raise the country against Henry VII. In reality, or, rather, as you have described him to me, he is ever the tool of greater men, the weakling, the cat's-paw, ready to their hand, the victim of their policy or their ambitions. He is entirely negative, and even his one romance was with a woman who took and buried four husbands! How can one make a hero of an adventurer who never struck or received a blow, a heroine of a lady so impartial? His adventures leave me cold. What could I do with him? He became an impostor because he was bullied into it, and finding here an easy means of escaping honest work, he stuck to the job, and courts and princes used him. He is ever a pawn, and you cannot build a historical romance about a pawn. Give me a king or queen, a knight or bishop! I want life, blood, the joy and fire of passion, the surge of great events; I want the clash of weapons, a dazzling, fated, or romantic figure—"
What else I might have said to that poor man I do not know, for at this particular juncture he leaped up from his seat.
"But I have spent ten years over it!" he cried in desperation. "And Perkin Warbeck was the greatest adventurer—ah, here is Mr. Janvier."
The reader will guess the cause of this diversion: we had been interrupted by no less a personage than the lord and master of Wexford House himself.
He had come in breezily, and was still wearing his hunting-dress—pink coat, white breeches, and topped boots. Yet it was his face which most impressed me at that moment. Swarthy and brigandlike, clean-shaved, and with a jaw of steel, he looked as though here, indeed, was the arch-adventurer so coveted by monsignor.
"This is the Mr. Loughborough of whom I told you," said that venerable biographer.
"Mr. Loughborough—pleased to meet you, sir," remarked the new-comer. I judged by his accent and this cordial turn that he was an American; and, as the event proved, I was right.
He was not at all concerned with Perkin Warbeck.
"There was no fog in the country," he announced. "Had a great run. Met at Detling Forstal, found two foxes and killed one; other one got away. All over by three. Motored back, and caught the fog outside Hayes Ever go fox-hunting, Mr. Loughborough?"
"I'm afraid not," was my reply.
His dark gaze rested for a moment on my face, then passed into a smile.
"Neither does our friend here," he said. Then, looking me over more intently still, he added: "You and monsignor are going to collaborate. It will be the opportunity of a lifetime."
"But there is nothing in the story that I could seize on," I began.
"If monsignor says there is, there is." He laughed.
Again I protested.
"Of course—of course you will. What are your terms? I see we must make terms."
I looked from one to the other.
"I have already spent a thousand pounds in travel and the collection of materials," chimed in monsignor.
"Leave Mr. Loughborough to me," interposed our host; and, taking me by the shoulder, added, "I am monsignor's man of business. Monsignor is a child when it comes to business. Rewritten as a historical novel, he feels that his 'Life of Perkin Warbeck' would be the novel of the year. He tells me that he is unable to write a novel, but that, helped by your brilliant pen—"
"Really," I interrupted, "I am afraid that monsignor is mistaken. Warbeck, as he has been explained to me, is one of those shadowy figures of whom one knows next to nothing, and apart from a few curious facts that have been rescued, I fear one cares very little about him."
"But we are not going to disappoint monsignor. Bettina and I are very fond of him."
"Well, why don't you collaborate? And there are other writers—"
"But he wants you—particularly you. Come, now, is it a question of money?"
I rose, and recovered my hat and overcoat.
"It is a question of conscience," I thundered, sick and tired of the pair of them. "It is a question of my artistic honesty, of everything that I hold sacred. I take no interest in Perkin Warbeck. He is a lay-figure and a poltroon. Give me one of the great figures of history—"
"You won't do it?" interposed Hugh Janvier.
"Certainly not," said I. "Neither for money nor any consideration whatsoever."
"I guess you will. If monsignor wants it done, it will be done."
"But, Hugh—" protested monsignor.
"You have set your heart on this, have n't you?" asked Janvier.
Monsignor admitted that such was the case.
"This young fool here is not going to break your heart."
"My heart will not be broken."
"I say it will." Hugh Janvier touched the bell.
The man-servant who had let me in returned.
"Put this gentleman into one of the top attics," said Hugh Janvier, "and lock him in and feed him."
"Yes, sir," said the domestic.
"He had better have this bundle to browse on," added Janvier, indicating the pile of manuscript.
"Yes, sir."
I was staring aghast at all three of them.
"By what right—" I began. But Hugh Janvier laughed at me.
"Off with him, George!" he cried, turning to the man-servant, and though I struggled prodigiously, that muscular fellow, using some cunning grip, hoisted me to his shoulders as if I were a child. He walked up-stairs with me, up flight after flight, and flung me at last into a little room on the top floor. There was electric light in it, a bed, and the usual furniture. He put a match to the fire, turned the key in the door, and went down-stairs again. A few minutes later he came back and thrust upon me the type-written copy of monsignor's "Life of Perkin Warbeck," which the publishers had refused with good reason. I was left alone with that ill-omened work.
I went to the window. The fog had cleared a little, and far below me I could see the lights of the green park, and, beyond these, like mystic flowers, the golden globes that burn in clusters outside Buckingham Palace. Thus, from my prison, I could see the stronghold of my king without being able to call on him for aid or succor.
III
It must have been at some small hour in the morning that I was aroused and gagged and pinioned. The sturdy man-servant saw to this, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy it. Hugh Janvier, in evening dress and a fur coat, stood over us and issued his directions.
"We are motoring into the country," said he. "London in the winter months is more than I can stand." And into the country we went.
I was carried down-stairs, bundled into the waiting car, and oft we started. The man-servant sat on the box beside the driver; within the limousine were Janvier and I. St. James's Place was fast asleep and took no notice.
Once outside London—and it was swift and easy going at this hour—my companion untied me, and I was free to speak and move.
"I have a particular affection for monsignor," he said, offering me one of his large cigars, "and there are so few things he will accept from me. Now, you be a sensible young fellow and get busy. You can go back to where you came from as soon as monsignor gives the word. I often wonder what the dear old boy can see in me. I don't know why he should like me, but he does." These concluding sentences were spoken more to himself than to a listener.
"Extremes meet," I ventured, "and you two are so utterly different."
"That's it, I reckon," he answered pensively. "Say, you 're no fool, though you behave like one."
"Your own behavior, judged by ordinary civilized standards—" I began; but he had interrupted me, and I was unable to finish.
"By the way," he had said, "I 've got your box and paid the woman at your lodgings; you 'll be our guest for several months."
For a reply I snorted, and that wretched car rushed forward in the dark.
He dried up after this, and gave no heed to my indignant questions. "You keep still," was all he said; and soon I lay back in a doze from which I woke every now and then to look out of the window. The fog had disappeared; it was a fine, clear winter's night, with a moon and drifting clouds. A wind had sprung up, and the air was fresh and good to breathe.
Our true direction I could not say, for I had lost all count of the four quarters and even of time. A recent crisis had dispossessed me of my watch, and I only knew that twice we had crossed the Thames, and might be going south or west.
At length—and the dawn had not yet broken—we entered the gates of a private park, ran down a dim avenue of naked trees, and then kept to a winding road that went through woodland and came out on a stretch which took us to the front of a great house.
"Here we are!" cried Janvier, springing to his feet.
"Where are we?" I answered, very limp and drowsy.
"That's none of your business. You 've got to set about that book. George will look after you till the morning. I may see you at lunch or I may not."
He left me, and somehow I found myself within that darkened mansion, following on the heels of George, who led me to my room. It was no use quarreling with my manifest destiny, I thought. I would stay here till the morning, and then I would take stock of the situation and see what could be done.
Through that sleeping palace we went, George in front and I a little way behind, until we reached a large and spacious bedroom looking out upon the park. It was all ready for me, with a fire still burning, fresh pajamas invitingly displayed, and enough electric light to satisfy a lady at her mirror.
George stood in the doorway, and his lips curved cynically as he surveyed me.
"I lay you are n't used to this," was what that look implied, though, as ever, he said nothing in so many words; yet the fellow's face was an open book, and I could read.
There was no key to my bedroom door, nor any bolt. I was too tired to care now, too tired to think of anything but sleep. When I had undressed and was all ready for bed, George paid me a good-night visit. Calmly, deliberately, he went through my clothes, and took away the eighteenpence that I had thrown upon the dressing-table.
"Mr. Janvier's orders," he said laconically.
"Damn Mr. Janvier!" said I, and jumped into bed.
He went out silently, first putting a key into the keyhole, and extinguishing all the lights save one, which I could reach from where I lay.
IV
I slept, and slept till noon. Then I awoke and was very happy. I looked out of the window and loved the landscape; I flung the casement wide and breathed the fresh, clean air. I was young and hearty despite my predicament. A worse, fate might befall a man than to be an unconsulted guest in a great house away from town.
"Suppose I ring the bell," I thought; and the action went with the idea.
George found me singing.
"Good morning, George!" I cried as he came in.
"Tea or coffee, sir?" he answered, and I plumped for tea.
There was a bath-room adjoining, and he turned the taps and spread the towels.
"It is n't the first time I 've had a bath," I shouted, answering his ironic grin.
"Luncheon is at one-thirty, sir," was his reply. "Miss Bettina is expecting you."
I could get no more from him than that, if I except my old tin trunk, which miraculously had arrived from Bloomsbury. It was not a very heavy trunk, and, as I dressed, I began to wish it had been. Still, my razor was in it, with my brushes and a comb.
I was for putting on my blue serge, the suit I wore on state occasions. It had grown sleek and shiny, and of my three shirts the best was a much-frayed affair. But I had reckoned without George. He put his foot down heavily, or, rather, he carried off my things. "Mr. Janvier's orders," was all he said, and at once replaced what he had confiscated with something more suitable and quite as well-fitting.
"All right," said I—"all right." By now I had ceased to care or wonder. Below, where I next ventured, I found a hall, a library, a ball-room, and a winter-garden, and there was every conceivable kind of servant. They let me roam and gape at them until luncheon.
To-day I can hardly recover the full effect of that first impression. I refer, of course, to my initial meeting with Bettina Janvier. I had never spoken to a beautiful and high-born girl before, nor been in the same room with one, and as for sitting alone at the same table—I leave the situation to the imaginative reader. He or she may do it justice; I cannot.
She was awaiting me in a room on the ground floor; a table there was arranged for two, and I was to be the other.
"Mr. Loughborough?" she said, giving me her hand.
I stammered something, and I made her smile. Her smile was not at all like that of the disdainful man-servant. I felt no worse for it; the better, rather. That meal was one of my dreams come down to earth.
I do not know what she said, I do not know what I said. There was a something inside of me which purred; that is the sole word for it. Or, perhaps, I was like a kettle on the hob, making some blissful noise which could hardly be classed as conversation. And yet I know that every word I spoke came from the central heart of me, where all one's hot thoughts sleep and mutter until some such hour as this. I forgot my awkwardness, I forgot that strange environment. She drew me out, and I made music, and we two, like the morning stars, were singing together half-way through that meal.
I remember one passage only.
"You are going to write monsignor's book for him," she said. "It is so kind of you to do it for him. My brother has told me all about it."
"And me as well," said I; "but I did n't reckon on this." The last was a foolish remark, but probably the rest was just as bad.
I learned that Hugh Janvier was out shooting with some neighbors, and that he was an ardent sportsman. It was the reason why they lived so much in Eng- land. He hunted, he kept a racing-stable, he fished, he shot, he stalked in Scotland. But what did I care about Hugh! There was this wonderful creature sitting opposite me. I am sure I lunched off her more than off what I made pretense to eat that day.
"And, Mr. Loughborough," she ended, "Hugh says you are my prisoner. I seem to be in charge of you. He has an idea that you may not want to write monsignor's book, and that you may try to run away from us. I am responsible for you—at least, that's what Hugh says. Will you promise me one thing," she ran on: "you will tell me first before you try to escape? It 'll be easier for us that way, won't it? Give me your hand on it."
Hers was held out, and what could I answer?
"Escape!" I cried. "You will have to drive me away with guns and beaters."
"And what about monsignor's book?" she asked, clear-headed.
"Ah, monsignor—I owe him anything he demands."
"You 'll do your best for him?"
"I will do my best."
And then she was gone, and there was no one in the room with me but George. I would see her again, perhaps that very evening. I lighted one of the large cigars, and made my way into the park.
At the north lodge there was a gate, which opened on the outer world. Absently, I made for it. A man barred my progress.
"Mr. Loughborough?" he asked.
I nodded.
"I'm afraid you can't go on, sir," he said. "Mr. Janvier's orders."
He was civil, yet firmly and squarely he turned me back.
"I was n't going on," was my lame reply, and I wheeled, and continued my walk within the limits of the park.
V
During the next weeks I began to understand things. First of all there was Hugh Janvier. He was American and immensely wealthy, and he lived over here because he enjoyed the easy gentleman's life which England offered, and, more still, because America had of late years become too hot to hold him. He had done something in connection with a railroad, and something else in connection with a bank, and then there was a trust which he had controlled, and an insurance company into the pockets of which he had dipped, and come out smiling. But America was not smiling any longer; the days of such adventurers were past. They had developed a tenderer conscience over there, and this had made matters rather trying for the Hugh Janviers. And, further, I discovered that he was of an old Southern family, so poor, so proud, that, as a boy, he had determined to go a different way. Poverty disagreed with him, and as for pride—he had hastened to escape the pair of them.
I hardly know how I divined these matters. Possibly by intuition; yet Hugh Janvier was never reticent, and he called a spade a spade. There were, however, other and nobler sides to this outrageous brigand, this modern bucaneer; for such, indeed, he was, rather than a peaceful gentleman or man of business.
His attachment to so feeble a creature as monsignor was a leading instance, and I could multiply examples of this nature. Where Janvier liked, he liked whole-heartedly; and where he hated, he hated. A second and more natural affection was the man's devotion to his sister. A good many years lay between them, and Janvier's pride in her was almost fatherly. She had held on to her fine breeding, and viewed his haste and fierce impulsiveness with a whimsical humor which I soon learned to share. They were the most loyal of friends, however, and at Sanborne Park, where we were wintering, or at Wexford House in town, his will was law with her. She did not question it: it was just Hugh's way.
At first I had no over-great intercourse with either of them. I was there for a certain purpose; I must not disgrace the house. When I had done what Janvier required of me, I would be free to go, and, if I wished, claim any reasonable sum as a reward. They saw to it that I was suitably dressed, and I had no hesitation in accepting so much from them, especially as I was curious about the society they kept, and, without an evening suit, I do not suppose I would have ventured to their table.
It was my first experience of the life I had spied upon in treading the London streets. We were in a different theater, but the parts were filled by the same actors, and I at last was allowed to come inside. Hugh Janvier had them all at his command, these fine ladies who followed his hounds so bravely, who ate his dinners, and won his money at the card-table; these ruddy men who shot over his coverts, backed his steeple-chasers, and made light of ancient names and titles. I was permitted to mix with them all and listen.
I remember the day when Bettina Janvier told me that she had stayed up till a small hour over my book, and reveled in the camps and battle-fields of Charles XII of Sweden. She had not been able to put it down, she said, eying me with a new interest, as though she had suddenly realized that there was a something in me beyond the ordinary.
"Would you like to hear a little of the book I am writing now?" I answered her.
"So you have begun? Oh, won't monsignor be pleased!" was her reply.
Most certainly I had begun, and that very afternoon I read her my opening chapters. And every, day. after this there was an instalment waiting her pleasure if she would listen. She rarely failed me. Once free of the tea-table, she came down to the library, where I worked, and asked me to go on.
Hugh Janvier smiled broadly when he heard the news.
"I said he'd get busy. People always do what I tell them to do," he cried; and he telegraphed an exclamatory despatch to monsignor. That watery biographer had ceased to trouble me. He was now somewhere in Italy, making a long stay with his cousin, the Earl of Chart.
VI
The public is familiar with my story of Perkin Warbeck; the public welcomed it, raved about it, and one can hardly discuss it as a book, for during the best part of a year it was more an epidemic.
It is a dishonest book from beginning to end; yet viewed solely as romance, as what might have been, but never was, I take it to be the sincerest thing that I have done. It springs right out of the heart of youth. It is a bath of youth, if I may quote old fogies whose praises fell about me like a shower. How could it have been otherwise, given the conditions? Yet the story of its writing is a better story still, and certainly more honest.
During those winter mornings I had gone down-stairs to the library with monsignor's ill-fated manuscript, which I was learning to know by heart. It had pursued me here; I seemed never to be rid of it. And then on one morning I began to write something, and on the next morning to add to it, and the same the day after. There was little else to do. I had forgotten all about monsignor and most about Perkin Warbeck, for I was writing about myself rather than of that hero.
I was writing of myself, poor, lonely, and obscure, adventuring here among the powerful, much as he had adventured at the French, the Burgundian, and Scottish courts. There was a remote resemblance. It extended to Hugh Janvier, who became each king in turn; it embraced even George the man-servant. My Perkin became a hero. I let chance play with him at first, just as it had played with me; but once that mile-stone passed, he grew into a man. The adventure had produced the arch-adventurer. Henceforth he was to run his own race and win or lose as destiny decreed. I led his enterprises, his hazardous descents and landings on a foreign coast; I claimed the English crown for him with a brazen hardihood. I was the true, unmurdered prince who had escaped cold Crookback's treachery in the Tower, and at my word the crafty Henry trembled. There was fighting, combat on combat, I ever in the van and princely in swordsmanship. I was beaten, wounded, and cast down, never outgeneraled, always outnumbered. I fell to rise again. My hairbreadth 'scapes made Bettina Janvier's heart stand in her mouth. Can you not hear her exclaiming, her words of wonder and encouragement?
And about the house I had become heroic, too, all aware of my power; so that now I looked with a royal gaze upon beings as lowly as George, the trusted man-servant, nor did I quail before the dark and eagle glance of Hugh Janvier. True, I wore his clothes, slept in his bed, and ate his dinners. It was the man's privilege so to entertain me, I discovered, the one outstanding act of his life that would surely survive.
And Bettina Janvier, who was following where I led—what of Bettina Janvier? I wrote that book to her, and she had become its heroine. The Lady Katherine Gordon, Perkin's wife, instead of espousing four successive husbands, looked only to me; and, moreover, it was I who encouraged her cousin the King of Scotland, I who planned the invasion from the north, and, when he failed me,—of course, in reality, it was Perkin who failed him,—set out alone for Ireland, and thence for Cornwall, where I put all to the test. I say "alone," yet Bettina came with me. We called her Katherine in the book, but, inside of us, we knew better. She would not stay behind; my fortunes were her fortunes.
Illustration:"I see Bettina weeping as we reached the end"
I was taken. The crafty Henry, summoning all his might, the full resources of a kingdom, had cornered me at last. I was taken, red with battle, and yielding only when the rest had died or melted away in ignominious flight. I had never deserted my wretched followers; it was they who had forsaken me. Nor did I cry for mercy and make abject confession, as monsignor had stated, copying the passage verbatim from Hall's chronicle. A captive, I dared Henry to do his worst, and, when I mounted the scaffold, Bettina wept. She was not alone in this, apart from the weeping thousands in the book. Many people since have told me how they were shaken.
Yet Bettina vv-as the first to weep over that ending. I had been granted permission to say good-by to her before I left my dungeon. That, too, was another memorable scene. "The rest of my life will be devoted to your memory," cried sobbing Katherine, and instead of four husbands, she vowed herself to espouse religion until the hour when we, so faithful on earth, should find reunion. My humble birth,—for I was still the Flemish boatman's son,—my hazardous imposture, were all long since wiped out by a true grandeur. I may have sinned, but the great sins, once acknowledged, are counted for righteousness in such as L There had at least been no concealment from the woman I loved.
I see Bettina weeping as we reached the end. It was a day in spring; for once begun, I had worked passionately, and these few months were all we had required. It was a day of blossoming orchards and the promise of new life. A different landscape spread outside the window, a prospect soft with all the season's bloom. And Bettina was still weeping, and I, for sheer happiness, had tears to match.
We were alone in the great library, now lighted by the gold of westering suns. She sat there in such radiance—I close my eyes and see her in that light. I open them, and kiss her tears away. We seemed like two who had gone a long and splendid journey, and learned to love each other on the road. There was no need to speak of it; our youth did all that was required. Slim hands that lay in mine, white throat which held the flower that was her face, brown hair softening to gold—you are here with me as in that late afternoon.
The next day I was gone. It would have been cruel to linger. Janvier had the book he wanted of me, and it could not have been in better hands. In England and in America he worked for it as though it had been some pet scheme of his own. He was audacious, he was magnificent. Somehow I managed to live till it came out with monsignor's name added to mine upon the title-page. He did not quarrel with my history; I fancy he regards it as his own. He took his thousand pounds, however, and his share, and more than his share, of glory. Still, there were other thousands, and now I needed no Hugh Janvier to bolster me and fit me out.
My next meeting with Bettina was in the vast saloons of Wexford House. There had been nothing but letters in between—the stupidest, dearest letters! She was expecting me, and I felt pleased that in these crowded rooms I held my own. It was a vanity, a selfish thought; but "Love yourself because I love you," she had once written to me. I had obeyed her. Our secret swam in her dear eyes; she was proud of her tame lion. Monsignor himself conducted our marriage ceremony. He managed that better than he managed biography.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1929, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 94 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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