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ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

COMPTON MACKENZIE

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

By
COMPTON MACKENZIE

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
ON MURRAY HILL   :   :   NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1927,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS
— B —
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To A. H.

CONTENTS

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

CHAPTER I         NEPTUNE’S GROTTO

SUPERIOR
FIRE WORKS
at the
NEPTUNE’S GROTTO
Tavern and Tea Gardens
PIMLICO
on Thursday Evening, 20th, July, 1829.
By
MADAME ORIANO
The Celebrated Pyrotechnic to HIS MAJESTY
The Exhibition will include
A Grand Display of various kinds of
WATER FIRE WORKS
On the Grosvenor Basin.
ORDER OF FIRING

GRAND FINALE
MADEMOISELLE LETIZIA ORIANO

Will with a temerity hitherto unknown in the blazing annals of her profession slide down an inclined rope 350 feet high, erected on the firework platform, wreathed in Fizgigs and Fiery Serpents and accompanied by the awful thunder of a Battery of Maroons.

Admission 1s each
Gardens open at half-past seven, and commences at
Nine o’clock precisely.

“Neptune’s Grotto” was one of the many pleasure-gardens that in the days when the Londoner was comparatively a free man helped to amuse his leisure. Yet even by the ninth year of the reign of King George IV most of the famous resorts of the preceding century had already been built over, and now that Lord Grosvenor was developing the Manor of Ebury (Buckingham Palace appearing fixed as the metropolitan abode of the Sovereign) “Neptune’s Grotto” was likely to vanish soon and leave no more trace of its sparkling life than the smoke of a spent rocket. Indeed, change was already menacing. For two years Cubitt, the famous builder, had been filling up the swampy land between Vauxhall Bridge Road and Ranelagh with the soil he had excavated in the construction of St. Katharine’s Docks. His cadaverous grey plastered terraces were creeping nearer every week. Willow Walk, a low-lying footpath between the cuts of the Chelsea Water Works, in a cottage hard by which Jerry Abershaw and Gentleman James Maclaine the highwaymen once lodged, would soon be turned into the haggard Warwick Street we know to-day. The last osier bed would ultimately be replaced by the greasy aucubas of Eccleston Square, and Lupus Street would lie heavy on ancient gardens. The turnpike at Ebury Bridge had been gone these four years; the old country road to Chelsea would within a lustrum be lined by houses on either side and become Buckingham Palace Road. Even the great basin of the Grosvenor Canal would run dry at last and breed from its mud Victoria Station.

However, in 1829 “Neptune’s Grotto” still remained much as it had been for over a century. The house of mellow red brick was covered with lattice-work, which on this warm July evening was all fragrant and ablow with climbing roses. Only the box trees had changed the pattern of their topiary. In place of earlier warriors or statesmen you would have found Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington at this date, the general more freshly trimmed than the admiral, but likely to go unpruned in the years of his unpopularity that were coming. His sacred Majesty King George III had been allowed to sprout into the rounder bulk of his sacred Majesty King George IV, but the new portrait was hardly more attractive than the blowsy original. The garden paths were bordered with stocks and hollyhocks. There were bowling-greens and fishponds, and a dark alley in emulation of the notorious dark alley of Vauxhall. Most of these amenities, however, had been made familiar by a score of other pleasure-gardens all over London. What gave “Neptune’s Grotto” its peculiar charm was the wide green lawn running down to the edge of the great reservoir. In the middle of this was the grotto itself, under the ferny arches of which an orchestra of Tritons languorously invited the little world of pleasure to the waltz, or more energetically commanded it to the gallopade. The firework platform was built out over the water on piles; and the lawn was surrounded on three sides by small alcoves lined with oyster shells, in some of which the lightest footstep on a concealed mechanism would cause to spring up a dolphin, or a mermaid, a harlequin or a Mother Shipton, startling intruders for the maiden who first encountered them, so startling that she would usually fling herself into the arms of the beau in escort and require to be restored with various liquors much to the satisfaction of Mr. Seedwell, the owner of the gardens.

High tortoiseshell combs and full curled hair, wide skirts of Gros de Naples flounced and pinked and scalloped and fluted, white stockings and slippers of yellow prunella, Leghorn hats of transparent crape bound with lavender sarsenet or puffed with small bouquets of marabout, bonnets of jonquil-yellow with waving ostrich plumes, bonnets of marshmallow-rose with ribbons of lilac and hortensia floating loose, double Vandyke collars of Indian muslin, grass-green parasols and purple reticules, leg-of-mutton sleeves and satin roulades, pelisses and pèlerines most fashionably of camelopard-yellow, ivory shoulders, Canezon spencers and gauze capotes, fichus of ethereal-blue barège, laughter and whispers and murmurs and music (ah, yes, no doubt and plenty of simpers too), where now trains thunder past filled with jaded suburbans, whose faces peep from the windows as their owners wonder if the new film at the picture-theatre will be worth the trouble of visiting after tea in our modish contemporary shades of nude, French nude, sunburn, and flesh. Would that Stephenson had never cursed humanity with his steam-engine, and would that this tale might never creep nearer to the present than that July night of 1829! Alas, it has more to do with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who fluttered out like moths in that summer dusk to watch Madame Oriano’s fireworks; and these at whom you gaze for the moment are but creatures in a prologue who will all be ghosts long before the last page is written.

However, here come those ghosts, still very much alive and shilling in hand, some from Knightsbridge, some from Chelsea, some from Westminster. “Strombolo House,” which used to charge half-a-crown for its fireworks, so famous were they, is closed. To be sure the “Monster” is still open, but there are no fireworks in the entertainment there to-night; a performing bear is all that the “Monster” can offer to-night. The “Orange Tea Gardens” are gone for good: St. Barnabas’ Pimlico, will occupy their site, and on it cause as much religious rowdiness in another twenty years as ever there was of secular rowdiness in the past. “Jenny’s Whim” hard by the old turnpike has already been covered with builder Cubitt’s beastly foundations. There is no longer much competition with “Neptune’s Grotto” in the manor of Ebury. A few pause in Vauxhall Bridge Road when they see the hackney-coaches filled with merry parties bound for the most famous gardens of all; but they decide to visit them another evening, and they cross the road to Willow Walk, where one remembers seeing Jerry Abershaw’s body swinging from the gibbet on Putney Common and that scarcely thirty years ago, and another marvels at the way the new houses are springing up all round. Some shake their heads over Reform, but most of them whisper of pleasure and of love while ghostly moths spin beside the path, and the bats are seen hawking against the luminous west and the dog-star which was glimmering long before his fellows is already dancing like a diamond in the south.

While the public was strolling on its way to “Neptune’s Grotto,” within the gardens themselves Mr. Seedwell, the proprietor, and Madame Oriano made a final inspection of the firework platform.

“You think she can do it?” he was saying.

“Offa coursa she can do it,” Madame replied sharply.

Mr. Seedwell shook his head in grave doubt. Weighing eighteen stone and a bit over he found it hard to put himself in Mademoiselle Letizia’s place.

“I don’t want an accident,” he explained. “The magistrates are only too glad of an excuse to close us down these days.”

“Dere willa not be no accident,” Madame Oriano assured him.

And Mr. Seedwell, looking at the raven-haired and raven-beaked and raven-eyed woman beside him, took her word for it and went off to see that all was ready inside the house for the entertainment of his guests.

Madame Oriano squeezed a handful of her yellow satin gown.

“Bagnato!”[1] she murmured to herself. Then looking across to one of the alcoves she called out in a shrill harsh voice, “Caleb! Caleb Fuller!”

[1] Wet.

A beetle could not have left his carapace more unwillingly than Caleb Fuller that alcove. He was a young man—certainly not more than twenty-five, perhaps not as much—whose lumpish and pasty face suggested at first an extreme dulness of mind until one looked a little closer and perceived a pair of glittering granite-grey eyes that animated the whole countenance with an expression that passed beyond cunning and touched intelligence. Beside the dragon-fly vividness of his employer he appeared, as he shambled across the lawn to hear what she wanted of him, like an awkward underground insect, with his turgid rump and thin legs in tight pantaloons and his ill-fitting tail-coat of rusty black.

“Dissa English cleemat non è possibile,” Madame shrilled. “Everyting willa be wet before we beginna to fire.”

“It’s the heavy dew,” said Caleb.

“Oh, diavolo! What do it matter which it is, if de fireworks will alla be—how you say—spilt?”

“Spoilt,” he corrected gloomily.

“Che lingua di animali, questa English linguage! Where issa John Gumm?”

“In the tap-room,” Caleb informed her.

“Drinking! Drinking,” she shrilled. “Why you don’ta to keep him notta to drink before we are finished?”

John Gumm who was Madame’s chief firer had already imperilled by his habits several of her performances.

“Somebody musta go and putta clothes on de fireworks. Non voglio che abbiamo un fiasco,[2] I don’ta wish it. You hear me, Caleb?”

[2] “I do not want us to have a fiasco.”

Caleb was used to these outbursts of nervous anxiety before every display, and on most evenings he would have humoured Madame by bullying the various assistants and have enjoyed giving such an exhibition of his authority. But this evening he would not have been sorry to see the damp air make the whole display such a fiasco as Madame feared, for he bitterly resented the public appearance of Letizia Oriano, not so much for the danger of the proposed feat, but for the gratification the sight of her shapely legs would afford the crowd. In fact when Madame had summoned him to her side, he was actually engaged in a bitter argument with Letizia herself and had even gone so far as to beg her to defy her mother and refuse to make the fire-clad descent.

“There won’t be enough dew to prevent the firing,” he argued. “And more’s the pity,” he added, gathering boldness as jealousy began once more to rack him. “More’s the pity, I say, when you’re letting your only child expose her—expose herself to danger.” He managed to gulp back the words he just lacked the courage to fling at her, and though his heart beat “Jezebel! Jezebel!” he dared not say it out.

“Dere is nottings dangerous,” she snapped. “She has walked the slacka rope and the tighta rope since she was a bambina. Her fazer has learnt her to do it.”

Caleb groaned within himself. Letizia’s father was as mythical and as many-sided as Proteus. Italian prince, English nobleman, play-actor, ballet-master, acrobat, with as many aliases as a thief, he was whatever Madame chose he should be to suit her immediate argument. Nobody knew his real name or his real profession. Once, when Caleb had remonstrated with her for being apparently willing to sell Letizia to a rich and snivelling old rake, she had actually dared to argue that she was better capable of guarding her daughter’s virtue than anybody else because the father of her had been a cardinal. Caleb, who was sick with love for Letizia and sick with hate for Popery, was near losing his reason. Luckily, however, the old suitor fell into a hopeless palsy, and since then Madame’s financial affairs had prospered sufficiently to make her independent of Letizia’s cash value. That her affairs had prospered was largely due to Caleb himself, who, entering her service as a clerk when he was hardly nineteen, had lost no time in gathering into his own plump white hands the tangled skeins of the business so that he might unravel them at his own convenience without ever again letting them go.

Madame Oriano had been glad enough to put the financial side of the business in Caleb’s hands, for, having inherited from her father, Padua’s chief artist in pyrotechny, a genuine passion for inventing new effects, she devoted herself to these with renewed interest, an interest moreover that was no longer liable to be interrupted by amours. She had grown gaunt and her temper, never of the sweetest, had long made her an impossible mistress for any man however young he might be. At the age of sixteen she had eloped from her father’s house in Padua with an English adventurer. After a year of doubtful bliss he had left her stranded in a Soho garret with a cageful of love-birds and twenty pairs of silk stockings—he had intended these as a present for the schoolgirl he was planning to abduct, but in the confusion of escaping from his old sweetheart he had left them behind him. Maria Oriano entered upon a period of fortune-telling, then went into partnership with an Italian pyrotechnist to whom with intervals of amorous escapades she remained loyal for ten years, in fact till he died, after which she carried on the business in her own name. Letizia was born when her mother was approaching forty, and since neither Letizia nor anybody else ever discovered who the father was, it may safely be assumed that Madame really did not know herself which of her lovers might be congratulated. She had a dozen in tow about this time. No solution of the mystery had ever been provided by Letizia herself, who now, at seventeen, was the image of her own mother when she, a year younger, ran away from Padua, a dark and slim and supple and lustrous-eyed young termagant.

There she was now, fretfully tapping the floor of the alcove with her dainty foot and wondering what her mother could want with Caleb. It was not that she wanted Caleb so much for herself, not at any rate for the pleasure of his conversation. But she was used to quarrelling with him, and she missed his company much as a child might miss a toy that it could maltreat whenever it was in the mood to do so. She might laugh at his awkward attempts to make love to her, but she would have been piqued by his indifference, piqued and puzzled by it as she would have been puzzled by the failure of her spaniel to wag its tail when she entered a room. There was Caleb bowing and scraping to her mother (who looked a pretty sight in that yellow satin gown) while she who after all was this evening indubitably the attraction was left alone in this dull alcove without so much as a glass of champagne to sip. How much would her mother worry about the dampness of the fireworks, were she to announce that she could not make the descent that was to bring the display to such a grand conclusion? It would serve them all right if she did rebel. They would appreciate her much more were she sometimes to assert herself. Letizia pulled open the cloak of light blue velvet that she was wearing over her costume and contemplated her slim legs and the beautifully unwrinkled tights. The upper part of her dress consisted of an abbreviated tunic of asbestos round which the unlit fireworks coiled like blue snakes.

“Or sausages,” murmured Letizia resentfully. “If I did not look like Guy Fawkes and if it were a little darker, I’d put on a mask and have such fun amongst the crowd. Oh gemini, wouldn’t I just!”

She jumped up in a fit of impatience. Her foot pressed the concealed mechanism in the floor of the alcove, and immediately there sprang up before her a life-size Mother Shipton, quivering all over and shaking her steeple hat, and seeming in the twilight most horribly real.

“Gesù Maria, Giuseppe!” she shrieked, crossing herself in an agony of terror.

Caleb, whose first thought was that some young buck was trying to kiss Letizia, paid no more attention to Madame Oriano’s complaints of Gumm’s drunkenness and the dewy nightfall, but plunged off to the rescue, splitting the seat of his pantaloons in an effort to move his clumsy legs really fast.

“Oh gemini, Caleb, the Devil’s been sitting beside me all the time and I never knew it,” Letizia cried, when she saw him.

“I make no doubt he has,” said Caleb in lugubrious agreement. “But this ain’t him. This ain’t no more than one of those fortune-telling figures you’ll see at fairs. That’s what they call fun, that is,” he groaned.

“It sprang up so sudden, Caleb. The Devil couldn’t have sprung up no faster. Oh gemini, it set me off praying, Caleb.”

“Praying!” he scoffed. “I wouldn’t give much for you if the Devil did come to take you, and you had to trust to your prayers.”

“It’s made my heart thump, Caleb. Only feel how fast it beats.”

The young man snatched his hand away from her.

“Hussy! Nought would please you so well as to lead me on into sin.”

It was Caleb’s heart that was beating now, so fast indeed that he turned in desperation to strike down the puppet that seemed to be leering at him like an old bawd in a dark entry.

“Oh, you sicken me,” she pouted. “I’ll surely never have the courage to mount to the top of the mast now. At least, I won’t unless I have some champagne, Caleb.”

There was no answer.

“Did you hear me, Caleb?” she pressed softly. “I said champagne.”

He turned his back and feigned not to hear. But a passing waiter heard and came into the alcove, rubbing his hands in anticipation of serving them.

“Champagne, Caleb.”

“Yes, ma’am. Certainly, ma’am.”

“No,” Caleb shouted.

The waiter inclined his head in sarcastic acknowledgment.

“And light the lamp,” Caleb told him.

Above the circular stone hung a great green globe painted over with fish, which when lighted up shed a kind of subaqueous sheen upon the alcove.

“And the champagne, sir?” the waiter asked.

“Bring a bottle quickly,” Letizia commanded with a laugh of mockery.

“Bring nothing at all,” cried Caleb, swinging round on his heels in a rage.

“Oh gemini, Caleb,” Letizia cried. “Your handkerchief’s falling out of your pocket.”

She grabbed at it, and pulled out the tail of his shirt.

Letizia flung herself into a chair, clapping her hands and throwing her legs into the air in a very ecstasy of delight.

“Oh gemini, Mr. Waiter; bring two bottles,” she cried. “And a needle and a thread, for I’ll burst my own trunks next and never dare stand on a chair, let alone come sliding down to the ground from a mast.”

The waiter departed to obey her commands, a wide grin on his insolent face.

“Listen to me, Letizia,” Caleb cried in a rage, seizing her wrist. “I’ll pay for not one drop of champagne, d’ye hear me? Little Jezebel that you are! You love to make me suffer for your wantonness. I was pure till your Popish gipsy eyes crossed mine and turned them to thoughts of sin. Isn’t it enough that you’re going to mount that accursed firework platform for every gay young sprig to stare at you carnally and gloat on your limbs and lust after you? Isn’t it enough, I say, for one evening?”

“You’re a fine one to accuse me of making myself a show,” she retorted, wresting herself from his grasp. “And you with the tail of your shirt sticking out of your breeches! You’d better call it your flag of truce, Caleb, and cry peace.”

“I’ll make no peace with you, young Jezebel, in this wanton humour.”

“Why then, catch me if you can, Mr. Preacher, for I’ll have my champagne, and Mr. Devil can pay for it, if you won’t.”

With this she stood mocking him from the lawn outside.

“Come back,” he groaned, the sweat all beady on his forehead.

“I won’t come back neither,” laughed Letizia, pirouetting.

“Pull your cloak round you, shameless minx.”

“No, and I won’t do that, neither.”

She flung it farther from her and taunted him with the sight of her legs so slim and so shapely in the light blue silk.

“You dursn’t run after me, Caleb, or you’ll be taken to Bedlam for a lunatic when the people see you running after me like a draggle-tailed duck. Quack-quack, Caleb! I’m the grand finale to-night, and if you won’t give me champagne I’ll find some one who will, and he’ll have the grandest finale of all.”

Unfortunately for Letizia when she turned round to run away she ran into her mother, who caught her by the ear and led her back into the alcove.

“Sei pazza?” she demanded.

“If I am mad, it’s his fault,” protested Letizia angrily. “Let go of my ear, mamma! You’re hurting me.”

“Vuoi far la putanella, eh?”[3] cried Madame Oriano furiously, squeezing her daughter’s ear even harder.

[3] “You want to play the little wanton, eh?”

“Eh, basta,[4] mamma! Or I’ll be no grand finale to-night for you or nobody else. I only asked for champagne because that old witch jumped up out of the floor and frightened me. If you hadn’t been screaming so loud yourself, you might have heard me scream.”

[4] Enough.

“Insolente,” cried Madame, making coral of her daughter’s ivory cheeks with several vicious slaps.

Luckily for Letizia the waiter came back at this moment with a tray on which were glasses and the bottle of champagne. This gave Madame Oriano a real opportunity. Picking up her skirt as if she were going to drop a curtsey, she raised one foot and kicked the tray and its contents up to the oyster-inlaid ceiling of the alcove. She might have been giving the signal for the fireworks to begin, for just as the contents of the tray crashed to the ground the thunder of the maroons reverberated about the pale sapphire of the nine o’clock sky.

Madame hurried out into the excited crowd of spectators, clapping her skinny hands and crying, “Bravo! Bravimissimo!” at the top of her voice. She believed in the power of the claque and always led the applause of her own creations. Immediately after the maroons the Bengal light flared and turned the upturned faces of the crowd to a lurid rose, the glassy waters of the basin to garnets. Letizia, who had been sobbing with pain and fury while the maroons were exploding, responded with all her being to the excitement of the Bengal light. She forgot her pain, her rage, her disappointment. She quivered like the Mother Shipton, became like the puppet a mere dressed-up spring. She longed for the moment when she should be summoned to ascend the platform and climb the mast to the crow’s-nest on the summit, and most of all for the moment she should hear the sausages round her asbestos tunic fizz and cackle and spit, and when wreathed in flames, balancing herself with a flashing Italian streamer in each hand, she should slide down the long rope into the tumultuous cheers of the public below.

Caleb was aware of her eagerness and, having in himself nothing of the mountebank, supposed that she was merely longing to display her legs to the mob. He vented the bile of his jealousy upon the waiter.

“I’ll report you to Mr. Seedwell,” he stormed. “How dare you bring champagne without an order?”

“Madame....”

“Get out of here,” Caleb shouted. “This is no madam, you lousy wretch. I’ll have no rascals like you come pimping round this young lady.”

Sky rockets were shedding their fiery blossoms upon the air, and the water below was jewelled with their reflections. Tourbillions leapt up to tremble for a moment in golden spirals. Mutation followed mutation as shivered wheels of rubies turned to fountains of molten emeralds and amethysts and blazing showers of topaz. Above the explosions, above the applause, the shrill voice of Madame Oriano rang out continually, “Bravo! Bravissimo! Ancora! Bene! Benissimo! Che Splendore! Che magnificenza!”

Letizia stood rapt like a saint that expects a corporeal assumption to the seventh heaven.

“It’s time I went up,” she breathed.

“Not yet,” Caleb pleaded, in horror of the moment when that lewd and accursed mob should gloat upon her slim form.

“It is. It is! Let me go, Caleb! Gemini, you crazy fool, you’ll make me late.”

Letizia sprang away from his detaining arms.

“Why don’t you set fire to your shirt, Caleb, and slide down behind me?” she called back to him in mockery.

There were shouts of enthusiasm when the figure of Letizia stood up dimly against the stars. Followed a silence. Old John Gumm fired the fizgigs and the serpents. With a shriek of triumphant joy Letizia launched herself from the mast. High above the wondering murmurs of the crowd her mother’s voice resounded.

“Che bella ragazza![5] Brava! Bravissima! Avanti, figlia mia! Che forma di Venere!”[6]

[5] “What a lovely girl!”

[6] “Forward, my daughter! What a figure of Venus!”

“Almighty God,” Caleb groaned. “She might be naked.”

When the flaming vision touched earth, he rushed forward to recapture it; but Letizia, intoxicated with success, flung herself into the arms of three or four young bucks who were waiting to carry her off to champagne, while from the grotto in the middle of the lawn the Triton orchestra struck up Weber’s seductive Invitation to the Waltz.

CHAPTER II

THE FACTORY

Caleb was in such a turmoil of jealous agitation for several hours after the grand finale as to be almost beside himself; and although Madame Oriano, in high good humour over the success of the fireworks, offered to sew up the split in his pantaloons, she could not sew up the rents that Letizia’s behaviour was tearing in her manager’s peace of mind. Once he ventured to approach the alcove where she sat drinking and flirting with half-a-dozen hopeful courtiers, and asked her to come with him. Letizia shrieked with laughter at such a notion and shrieked louder when her companions began to pelt Caleb with crusts of bread; and maybe she would not have laughed much less loudly if they had gone on to pelt him with bottles as they threatened they would do unless he quickly took himself off and ceased to annoy them. Caleb, to do him justice, would not have cared a jot if he could have rescued Letizia from their company at the cost of a broken crown; but he did not want to expose himself to the mortification of being vanquished and, since he felt positive that this could be the only result of his intervention, he retreated to brood over his wrongs in a secluded arbour, from which he had the minor satisfaction of driving away the amorous couples that in turn hopefully sought its dark protection throughout that warm and starry July night.

Was Madame Oriano dependent enough yet upon his help in the business to insist on her daughter’s marrying him? That was the question. Caleb felt convinced that she would not object, but if the little hussy herself refused, would her mother compel her? Brought up in the egocentric gloom of an obscure Protestant sect known as the Peculiar Children of God, Caleb’s first thought was always the salvation of his own soul. This, as often happens, had become a synonym for the gratification of his own desires. He desired Letizia. Therefore he must have her, or his soul would be imperilled. What she felt about it was of little importance. Besides, she so clearly had in her the makings of a wanton that it was his duty to save her soul as well, which he had every reason to suppose he should be able to do could he but safely secure her for a wife. The state of affairs could not continue as it was at present. His imagination must not remain for ever the tortured prey of carnal visions. Letizia’s white neck ... Letizia’s girlish breasts ... Letizia’s red alluring lips ... Letizia’s twining fingers ... and at this moment in the alcove those drunken sons of Belial were gloating upon her.... No, it could not go on like this! She must be his with God’s benign approval. Caleb sat for an hour, two hours, three hours maybe, in a dripping trance of thwarted passion, burning as fiercely with the hot itch of jealousy as if he had actually been flung into a steaming nettle-bed.

Dawn, a lucid primrose dawn, was bright beyond the towers of Lambeth Palace when the hackney-coach with Madame Oriano, Letizia, and Caleb went jogging homeward over Westminster Bridge. Even now, though Letizia had fallen deliciously asleep on his shoulder, Caleb was not at peace, for the semioctagonal turrets which were set at intervals along the parapet to serve as refuges for the homeless, reminded him of the alcoves at “Neptune’s Grotto,” and his mind was again tormented by the imagination of her behaviour that night. She reeked too, of wine, in this fresh morning air. He shook her roughly:

“Wake up! We’re nearly home.”

Madame Oriano was snoring on the opposite seat.

“Why don’t you poke mamma like that?” Letizia cried out resentfully.

An impulse to crush her to his heart surged over Caleb, but he beat off the temptation, panting between desire of her and fear for himself. Kisses would forge no chain to bind this wanton, and he, should he once yield to kissing her, would be led henceforth by a Delilah. The hackney-coach jogged on into the Westminster Road.

Madame Oriano’s factory consisted of the unused rooms in an ordinary York Street dwelling-house. Special precautions to isolate the dangerous manufacture were practically unknown at this date. All firework-making by an Act of Dutch William was still illegal, and from time to time prosecutions of pyrotechnists were set on foot at the instigation of the magistrates when the boys of a neighbourhood became too great a nuisance on the Fifth of November. Inasmuch, however, as firework displays were a feature of coronations, peace declarations, births of royal heirs, and other occasions of public rejoicing, the Law adopted then as ambiguous an attitude as it does now in this early twentieth century, toward betting. Until Caleb arrived in London from the Cheshire town where he had been born and bred, Madame Oriano produced her fireworks in fits and starts of inventive brilliance that were symbolical of the finished product. Most of her workmen were habitual drunkards. No kind of attempt was made to run the business side with any financial method. From time to time the proprietress put a card in the window advertising her need for an accountant. Clerks came and clerks went until she began to look on the whole class as no better than predatory nomads. It was in answer to one of these cards in her window that Caleb presented himself. His conscience troubled him at first when he found with what mountebank affairs firework-making was likely to bring him into contact, but he was seized by a missionary fervour and began to devote all his energy to making the business respectable. Only John Gumm, the chief firer, managed to survive Caleb’s cleansing zeal. The rest of the drunken workmen were sacked one after another, and their places taken wherever it was possible by young lads and girls that Caleb procured from the poorhouse. The long hours and bad food he inflicted upon these apprentices seemed to bring the business nearer to genuine respectability. It showed sound economy, and the most censorious Puritan could not discover in those workrooms filled with listless children anything that pandered to the gratification of human pleasure. One could feel that when the fireworks left the factory there was nothing against their morality. Their explosion under the direction of Madame Oriano and drunken John Gumm was of course regrettably entertaining, but the rest of the business was impeccably moral. Not only did Caleb attend to the accounts, to the management of the workers, and to the judicious purchase of materials, but he also studied the actual art of pyrotechny, and early this very year he had discovered how to apply chlorate of potash to the production of more brilliant colours than any that had hitherto been seen. He had not yet revealed this discovery to Madame Oriano, because he was planning to use the knowledge of it as a means of persuading her to insist on Letizia’s marrying him. She would be so much astonished by the green he had evolved by combining nitrate of baryta with chlorate of potash that she would give him anything he demanded. And as for the red he could now produce by adding nitrate of strontia to his chlorate of potash, why, if such a red could only be bought in the ultimate depths of Hell, Madame would have to buy.

The hackney-coach drew up in front of the dingy house in York Street, and by the time Caleb had done arguing with the driver about his fare mother and daughter had tumbled into bed. In spite of the nervous strain he had been enduring all night Caleb could not make up his mind to go to sleep himself. He was indeed feeling very much awake. It was now full day. The sunlight was glinting on the grimy railings of the area, and the footsteps of early workers shuffled past along the pavement at intervals. Caleb looked round the room and frowned at the tools lying idle on the tables and benches. He was filled with indignation at the thought that all those misbegotten apprentices should be snoring away these golden hours of the morning in their garret. He was too lenient with them, far too lenient. It would do the brats good to be awakened a little earlier than usual. He was up and dressed; why should they still be snoring? The back of his mind, too, itched with an evil desire to make somebody pay for what he had suffered last night. Caleb set off upstairs to rouse the apprentices. As he drew near the bedroom where Madame Oriano and Letizia slept together in that gilded four-poster which so much revolted his sense of decency, Caleb paused, for the door was wide open. He tried to keep his face averted while he hurried past; but his will failed him and, turning, he beheld the vision of Letizia, so scantily wrapped in her cloak of sky-blue that her white body appeared as shamelessly unclad as the vicious little Cupids that supported the canopy of the bed. Caleb staggered back. Had there been a knife in his hand, he might have cut Letizia’s throat, such an intolerable loathing of her beauty seized him. He rushed madly past the open door, and a moment or two afterwards he stood in the garret, surveying with hate the sleeping forms of the apprentices. A sunbeam glinting through the broken lattice of the dormer lit up the four flushed faces, spangled the hair of the youngest and fairest, and for Caleb pointed at the spectacle of brazen sloth.

“Get up, you charity brats,” he shouted, pulling off the dirty coverlet. “Get up and work, or I’ll report you to the overseers for incorrigibles.”

The children sat up in bed dazed by this sudden awakening.

“Don’t loll there, rubbing your eyes and staring at me,” Caleb snarled. “If you aren’t downstairs and hard at work on those composition stars in five minutes, I’ll see what a good flogging will do for you.”

From the boys’ garret Caleb went across to visit the girls’.

“Get down to your scissors and paste, you lazy hussies,” he bellowed in the doorway.

The little girls, the eldest of whom was hardly twelve, sat up in a huddle of terror. The shift of the youngest, who might be ten, was torn so that her bare shoulder protruded to affront Caleb’s gaze. He strode into the room and struck the offending few inches of skin and bone.

“Will nothing teach you modesty?” he gibbered. “Aren’t you afraid of burning in Hell for your wickedness? Shame on you, I say. Have you no needle and thread, Amelia Diggle? You ought to be whipped, and I hope Madame will whip you well. Now stop that blubbering and dress yourself, and in five minutes let me find you all hard at work.”

Caleb retired to his own bedroom, where after a miserly use of soap and water he changed out of his rusty black evening clothes into the drab of daily life. He was then able to bend down and say his prayers, partly because the drab breeches were not as tight as the black pantaloons and partly because they did not show the dust so easily.

In contemplating Caleb while he is kneeling to ask his savage deity to give him Letizia and to bless his discovery of chlorate of potash as a colour intensifier and to fructify his savings and to visit His wrath upon all unbelievers, one may feel that perhaps it was being unduly sentimental last night, a trifle wrought upon by music and starshine and coloured lamps, to wish that this tale might remain in the year of grace 1829.

Caleb rose from his knees and, fortified by his prayers, succeeded this time in passing the open door of Letizia’s bedroom without so much as one swift glance within. He came down to the basement and with a good deal of complacency gloated over the sight of those children all so beautifully hard at work. He would have liked to tell them how lucky they were to be in the care of somebody who took all this trouble to rouse them early and teach them the joys of industry. The thought of how many more composition stars would be made to-day than were made yesterday was invigorating. He regarded the tousled heads of the apprentices with something like good-will.

“That’s the way, boys, work hard and well and in three hours you’ll be enjoying your breakfast,” he promised. Then suddenly he looked sharply round the room. “Why, where’s Arthur Wellington?”

At this moment the foundling thus christened, a fair-haired child of eleven, appeared timidly in the doorway, and shrank back in terror when his master demanded where he had been.

“Please, Mr. Fuller, I was looking for my shoe,” he stammered, breathing very fast.

“Oh, you were looking for your shoe, were you, Arthur Wellington? And did you find your shoe?”

“No, Mr. Fuller,” the boy choked. “I think it must have fell out of the window.”

His blue eyes were fixed reproachfully, anxiously, pleadingly, on Joe Hilton the eldest apprentice who bent lower over his task of damping with methylated spirit the composition for the stars, the while he managed to scowl sideways at Arthur.

“So you’ve been loitering about in your room while your companions have been hard at work, Arthur Wellington?”

“I haven’t been loitering. I’ve been looking for my shoe.”

“Contradict me, will you, Arthur Wellington?” said Caleb softly. “Show me your other shoe. Come nearer, Arthur. Nearer. Take it off and give it to me.”

The boy approached, breathing faster; but he still hesitated to take off the shoe.

“Don’t keep me waiting, Arthur,” Caleb said. “You’ve kept me waiting long enough this lovely summer morning. Give me the shoe.”

Arthur did as he was told.

“Don’t go away, Arthur Wellington. I’m talking to you for your good. This lovely summer morning, I said. Perhaps you didn’t hear me? Eh? Perhaps you’re deaf? Deaf, are you, you workhouse brat?”

Caleb gripped the boy’s puny shoulder and banged him several times on the head with the shoe.

“Perhaps you won’t be so deaf when I’ve knocked some of the deafness out of you,” he growled. “Blubbering now, eh, you miserable little bastard? Look up, will you! Look up, I say! Oh, very well, look down,” and Caleb pushed the boy’s head between his own legs and thrashed him with the first weapon that came to hand, which was a bundle of rocket-sticks.

“Button yourself up, Arthur Wellington,” said Caleb, when he had finished with him and flung him to the floor where he lay writhing and shrieking and unbraced. “If I were you, Arthur Wellington, I’d be ashamed to make such an exhibition of myself in front of girls. That’s enough! Stop that blubbering. Do you hear? Stop it, and get to work. Stop it, will you, Arthur Wellington, unless you want another thrashing twice as bad.”

One of the apprentices was placing the stars on the fender to dry them before the fire which Caleb had lighted to make himself the tea.

“Be careful, Edward Riggs, not to put those stars too close, or you’ll be having an accident.”

“They’re all right where they are, aren’t they, Mr. Fuller?”

“Yes, as long as you’re careful,” said Caleb. “Now I’m going upstairs to my office to work. We all have our work to do, you know. And if I hear any laughing or chattering down here, I’ll make some of you see more stars than you’ll ever make in a week.”

One of the girls managed to titter at this and was rewarded by one of Caleb’s greasy smiles. Then he left the apprentices to their work and went into the question of accounts, hidden in his sanctum, which was on the first floor and hardly bigger than a powder-closet. Indeed, Caleb’s high stool and desk with two ledgers and an iron box chained to a staple in the floor filled it so nearly full that when the manager was inside and hard at work nobody could get in unless he squeezed himself into the corner. Caleb’s expressed object in keeping Madame Oriano’s books so meticulously was that if at any moment a purchaser came along with a firm offer for the business, lock, stock, and barrel, he would obtain a better price for it. It was useless for the owner to protest that no inducement or offer of any kind would tempt her into a sale, Caleb insisted. He was as always outwardly subservient to his mistress, but he insisted. And she would tire of arguing with him when she had fired off a few Italian oaths and shrugged her shoulders in contempt of such obstinacy.

“Besides,” Caleb used to point out, “so long as I keep my books properly, anybody can see my honesty. If I kept no books, people would be saying that I was robbing you.”

“I would notta believe them.”

“No, you mightn’t believe them until you were angry with me about something else; but you might believe it then, and I shouldn’t care to be accused of robbing you. It would hurt me very deeply, ma’am.”

As a matter of fact Caleb had robbed Madame Oriano with perfect regularity for the last five years. The humble savings, to which from time to time with upturned eyes he would allude, were actually the small clippings and parings he had managed to make from her daily profits. He did not feel the least guilt in thus robbing her, for not merely could he claim that he was the only person who did rob her nowadays, but he could also claim that these robberies practically amounted to the dowry of her daughter. It was not as if the money were going out of the family. Whether, in the event of his failing to marry Letizia, Caleb would have made the least reparation is doubtful. He would have found another excuse for his behaviour. One of his principles was never to admit even to his tribal deity that he had been or was wrong. He could imagine nothing more corruptly humiliating than the Popish habit of confession. On the other hand, he was always willing to admit that he was liable to err, and he always prayed most devoutly to be kept free from temptation.

In his dusty little office that morning the various emotions to which he had been subjected since yesterday began to react at last upon Caleb’s flabby body. Leaning forward upon his desk, he put his head down upon his folded arms and fell into a heavy sleep.

He was awakened by a series of screams, and jumping off his stool he hurried out into the passage just as one of the girl apprentices enveloped in flames came rushing up the stairs from the basement. He tried to stop her from going higher, but she eluded him, and as she went flashing up the stairs toward the upper part of the house she screamed:

“It was Arthur Wellington done it! Don’t laugh at him, Joe Hilton. Don’t laugh at him no more, or he’ll throw the stars on to the fire. Where’s a window? Where’s a window?”

The wretched child vanished from sight, and the moment after a ghastly scream announced that she had found a window and flung herself from it into the street.

Letizia’s spaniel came barking down from the room above. Simultaneously there was a frenzied knocking on the front door, flashes and crashes everywhere, smoke, more shrieks of agony, and at last a deafening explosion. It seemed to Caleb that the whole house was falling to pieces on top of him, as indeed when he was dragged out of the ruins he found that it had.

CHAPTER III

THE PROPOSAL

Accidents in firework factories occurred so often in those days, when the law had not yet recognised gunpowder as a means to provide popular diversion and taken steps in the Explosives Act to safeguard its employment, that for six poorhouse children to lose their lives and for two others to be permanently maimed was hardly considered as serious as the destruction of two comparatively new houses in York Street. Madame Oriano’s own escape was voted miraculous, especially when it was borne in mind that both her legs had to be amputated; and while some pointed out that if she had not been sleeping in that florid four-post bed she need not have had her legs crushed by the canopy, others were equally quick to argue that it was precisely that canopy which saved the rest of her body from being crushed as completely as her legs. The bed certainly saved Letizia.

The accident was attributed to the inhuman carelessness of a parish apprentice known as Arthur Wellington, whereby he had placed a composition star on the hob of a lighted fire in order to dry it more expeditiously before being rammed into the casing of a Roman candle. Caleb in his evidence suggested that parish apprentices were inclined to make up for lost time in this abominable way. Everybody shook his head at the wickedness of parish apprentices, but nobody thought of blaming Caleb for the arrangement of a workroom that permitted such a dangerous method of making up for lost time. As for Caleb himself, when he had recovered from the shock of so nearly finding himself in Heaven before he had planned to retire there from the business of existence, he began to realise that the destruction of the factory was the best thing that could have happened for an earthly future that he hoped long to enjoy. He took the first opportunity of laying before Madame Oriano his views about that future. Should his proposal rouse her to anger, he could feel safe, inasmuch as she could certainly not get out of bed to attack him and was unlikely to leave the hospital for many weeks to come.

“Well, I willa always say dissa one ting, my friend, and datta is I have never had no esplosione in alla my life before dissa one. Such fortuna could never last for ever, I am secure. My legs, they makka me a little bad, datta is all.”

Caleb regarded his mistress where she was lying in bed looking like a sharp-eyed bird in tropical vegetation, under the gaudy satin coverlet of her four-poster which she had insisted on having mended and brought to the hospital.

“I’m sure we ought all of us to be very thankful to our Father Who put His loving arms around us and kept us safe,” he oozed.

Madame Oriano, become an old lady since her accident, smiled grimly.

“Peccato che Nostro Padre non ha pensato per mie povere gambe!” she muttered.

“What did you say?” Caleb asked timidly. He could never quite rid his mind of the fancy that the Italian language had a dangerous magic, an abracadabral potency which might land him in Hell by merely listening to it.

“I say it issa damn pity He does not putta His arms around my legs. Dat is what I say, Caleb.”

“He knows best what is good for us,” Caleb gurgled, turning up his eyes to the ceiling.

“Può essere,” the old lady murmured. “Perraps He do.”

“But what I’ve really come to talk about,” Caleb went on, “is the future of the business. Your presence, of course, will be sadly missed; but you’ll be glad to hear that I have managed to fulfil all our engagements up to date, though naturally with such a terrible loss of material the profits will be small—dreadfully small.”

No doubt Caleb was right, and even what profit there was he probably put in his iron box which had comfortably survived the destruction of the factory.

“I don’ta aspect no profit,” said Madame Oriano.

“But I have been turning things over in my mind,” Caleb pressed, “and I hope very much that you will be pleased with the result of my—er—turnings. Yes, I’m hoping that very much indeed.” Caleb took a deep gulp before he went on, staring away out across the chimney-stacks to escape the old lady’s arched eyebrows.

“Madame Oriano, when I came to London six years ago and entered your service, you were a mother to me. I can never forget your beautiful maternal behaviour, ma’am, and, oh, ma’am, I am so anxious to be a son to you now in the hour of your trouble—a true son.”

“You never could notta be a son for me, Caleb. Siete troppo grasso, caro. You are too big. How you say? Too fat.”

“Ah, Madame Oriano, don’t say you won’t let me be a son to you till you’ve heard all I have to tell you. I want to marry your daughter, ma’am. I want to marry your Letizia. I loved her from the first moment I set eyes on her, although of course I knew my position too well to allow myself to indulge in any hopes that would have been wanting in respect to my employer. But I have worked hard, ma’am. Indeed, I venture to think that my love for your daughter is not near so presumptuous at this moment as it would have been when I first entered your service.”

“Sicuro! She hassa seventeen years old now,” said Madame Oriano sharply. “She hadda only eleven years then.”

“Sweet seventeen!” Caleb sighed.

“Non credo che sia tanto dolce.”

“Oh, I do wish that I understood Italian a little better,” Caleb groaned unctuously.

“I say I do notta tink she issa so very damn sweet. I tink she issa—how you say in English—one beech.”

No doubt, Caleb profoundly agreed with this characterisation of Letizia, held he up never so plump a protestant hand.

“Oh, do give your consent to our marriage,” he gurgled. “I know that there is a difference of religion. But I have ventured to think once or twice that you could overlook that difference. I have remarked sometimes that you did not appear to attach very great importance to your religion. I’ve even ventured to pray that you might come in time to perceive the errors of Romanism. In fact, I have dreamed more than once, ma’am, that you were washed in the blood of the Lamb. However, do not imagine that I should try to influence Letizia to become one of the Peculiar Children of God. I love her too dearly, ma’am, to attempt any persuasion. From a business point of view—and, after all, in these industrious times it is the business point of view which is really important—from a business point of view the match would not be a very bad one. I have a few humble savings, the fruit of my long association with you in your enterprises.”

Caleb paused a moment and took a deep breath. He had reached the critical point in his temptation of Madame Oriano, and he tried to put into his tone the portentousness that his announcement seemed to justify.

“Nor have I been idle in my spare time, ma’am. No, I have devoted much of that spare time to study. I have been rewarded, ma’am. God has been very good to me and blessed the humble talent with which he entrusted me. Yes, ma’am. I have discovered a method of using chlorate of potash in combination with various other chemicals which will undoubtedly revolutionise the whole art of pyrotechny. Will you consider me presumptuous, ma’am, when I tell you that I dream of the moment when Fuller’s Fireworks shall become a byword all over Great Britain for all that is best and brightest in the world of pyrotechny?”

Madame Oriano’s eyes flashed like Chinese fire, and Caleb, perceiving that he had made a false move, tried to retrieve his position.

“Pray do not suppose that I was planning to set myself up as a manufacturer of fireworks on my own. So long as you will have me, ma’am, I shall continue to work for you, and if you consent to my marrying your Letizia I shall put my new discovery at your service on a business arrangement that will satisfy both parties.”

Madame Oriano pondered the proposal in silence for a minute.

“Yes, you can have Letizia,” she said at last.

Caleb picked up the hand that was hanging listlessly over the coverlet and in the effusion of his gratitude saluted it with an oily kiss.

“And you’ll do your best to make Letizia accept me as a husband?” he pressed.

“If I say you can have Letizia, caro, you willa have her,” the mother declared.

“You have made me the happiest man in England,” Caleb oozed.

Whereupon he walked on tiptoe from the room with a sense even sharper than usual that he was one of the Lord’s chosen vessels, a most peculiar child even among the Peculiar Children of God.

Just when the hot August day had hung two dusky sapphire lamps in the window of the room, Madame Oriano, who had been lying all the afternoon staring up at the shadows of the birds that flitted across the ceiling, rang the bell and demanded her daughter’s presence.

“Letizia, devi sposarti,” she said firmly.

“Get married, mamma? But I don’t want to be married for a long time.”

“Non ci entra, cara. Devi sposarti. Sarebbe meglio—molto meglio. Sei troppo sfrenata.”[7]

[7] “That doesn’t come into it, my dear. You must get married. It would be better—much better. You are too harum-scarum.”

“I don’t see why it should be so much better. I’m not so harum-scarum as all that. Besides, you never married at my age. You never married at all if it comes to that.”

“Lo so. Perciò dico che tu devi sposarti.”[8]

[8] “I know that. That’s why I say that you must get married.”

“Thanks, and who am I to marry?”

“Caleb.”

“Caleb? Gemini! Caleb? Marry Caleb? But he’s so ugly! And he don’t wash himself too often, what’s more.”

“Bello non é ... ma che importa? La bellezza passa via.”

“Yes, I daresay beauty does pass away,” said Letizia indignantly. “But it had passed away from Caleb before ever he was born.”

“Che importa?”

“I daresay it don’t matter to you. But you aren’t being expected to marry him. Besides, you’ve had all the beaux you wanted. But I haven’t, and I won’t be fobbed off with Caleb. I just won’t be, and you may do what you will about it.”

“Basta!” Madame Oriano exclaimed. “Dissa talk is enough.”

“Basta yourself and be damned, mamma,” Letizia retorted. “I won’t marry Caleb. I’d sooner be kept by a handsome gentleman in a big clean cravat. I’d sooner live in a pretty house he’d give me and drive a crimson curricle on the Brighton Road like Cora Delaney.”

“It does not import two pennies what you wish, figlia mia. You willa marry Caleb.”

“But I’m not in love with him, the ugly clown!”

“Love!” scoffed her mother. “L’amore! L’amore! Love is mad. I have hadda so many lovers. Tanti tanti amanti! Adesso, sono felice? No! Ma sono vecchia assai. Yes, an old woman—una vecchia miserabile senza amanti, senza gambe—e non si fa l’amore senza gambe, cara, ti giuro—senza danaro, senza niente.”

Sans love, sans legs, sans money, sans everything, the old woman dropped back on her pillows utterly exhausted. A maid came in with candles and pulled the curtains to shut out the dim grey into which the August twilight had by now gradually faded. When the maid was gone, she turned her glittering, sombre eyes upon her daughter.

“You willa marry Caleb,” she repeated. “It willa be better so—molto meglio cosi. Gli amanti non valgono niente. All who I have been loving, where are dey now? Dove sono? Sono andati via. Alla gone away. Alla gone. You willa marry Caleb.”

Letizia burst into loud sobs.

“But I don’t want to marry, mamma.”

“Meglio piangere a diciasette che rimpiangere a sessanta,”[9] said Madame Oriano solemnly. “You willa marry Caleb.”

[9] “Better to weep at seventeen than to repine at sixty.”

Letizia felt incapable of resisting this ruthless old woman any longer. She buried her head in the gaudy satin coverlet and wept in silence.

“Allora dammi un bacio.”

The obedient daughter leaned over and kissed her mother’s lined forehead.

“Tu hai già troppo l’aria di putana, figlia mia. Meglio sposarti. Lasciammi sola. Vorrei dormire. Sono stanca assai ... assai.”[10]

[10] “You have already too much the air of a wanton, my daughter. Better to get married. Leave me alone. I want to sleep. I’m very tired.”

Madame Oriano closed her eyes, and Letizia humbly and miserably left her mother, as she wished to be left, alone.

CHAPTER IV

MARRIED LIFE

So, Caleb Fuller married Letizia Oriano and tamed her body, as without doubt he would have succeeded in taming the body of any woman of whom he had lawfully gained possession.

Madame Oriano did not long survive the marriage. The effort she made in imposing her will upon her daughter was too much for a frame so greatly weakened. Once she had had her way, the desire to live slowly evaporated. Yet she was granted a last pleasure from this world before she forsook it for ever. This was the satisfaction of beholding with her own eyes that her son-in-law’s discovery of the value of chlorate of potash as a colour intensifier was all that he claimed for it. That it was likely to prove excessively dangerous when mixed with sulphur compounds did not concern this pyrotechnist of the old school. The prodigious depth and brilliant clarity of those new colours would be well worth the sacrifice of a few lives through spontaneous ignition in the course of manufacturing them.

The first public demonstration that Caleb gave was on the evening of the Fifth of November in a Clerkenwell tea-garden. It is unlikely that Madame Oriano ever fully comprehended the significance of these annual celebrations. If she ever did wonder who Guy Fawkes was, she probably supposed him to be some local English saint whose martyrdom deserved to be commemorated by an abundance of rockets. As for Caleb, he justified to himself some of the pleasure that his fireworks gave to so many people by the fact that the chief festival at which they were employed was held in detestation of a Papist conspirator.

On this particular Fifth of November the legless old lady was carried in an invalid’s chair through the press of spectators to a favourable spot from which she could judge the worth of the improved fireworks. A few of the rabble jumped to the conclusion that she was a representation of Guy Fawkes himself, and set up the ancient chorus:

Please to remember the Fifth of November

Gunpowder treason and plot;

We know no reason why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot!

A stick and a stake for King George’s sake,

A stick and a stump for Guy Fawkes’s rump

Holla, boys! holla, boys! huzza-a-a!

Madame Oriano smiled grimly when Caleb tried to quiet the clamour by explaining that she was flesh and blood.

“Letta dem sing, Caleb. Non fa niente a me. It don’ta matter notting to me.”

A maroon burst to mark the opening of the performance. This was followed by half-a-dozen rockets, the stars of which glowed with such greens and blues and reds as Madame Oriano had never dreamed of. She tried to raise herself in her chair.

“Bravo, Caleb! Bravissimo! Ah dio, non posso più! It is the besta colore I havva ever seen, Caleb. E ottimo! Ottimo, figlio mio.”

She sat entranced for the rest of the display; that night, like a spent firework, the flame of her ardent life burnt itself out.

The death of his mother-in-law allowed Caleb to carry out a plan he had been contemplating for some time. This was to open a factory in Cheshire on the outskirts of his native town. He anticipated trouble at first with the Peculiar Children of God, who were unlikely to view with any favour the business of making fireworks. He hoped, however, that the evidence of his growing prosperity would presently change their point of view. There was no reason to accuse Caleb of hypocrisy, or to suppose that he was anything but perfectly sincere in his desire to occupy a high place in the esteem of his fellow believers. Marriage with a Papist had in truth begun to worry his conscience more than a little. So long as Letizia had been a temptation, the fact of her being a daughter of Babylon instead of a Peculiar Child of God had only made the temptation more redoubtable, and the satisfaction of overcoming it more sharp. Now that he was licensed to enjoy her, he began to wonder what effect marriage with a Papist would have on his celestial patron. He felt like a promising young clerk who has imperilled his prospects by marrying against his employer’s advice. It began to seem essential to his salvation that he should take a prominent part in the prayer-meetings of the Peculiar Children of God. He was ambitious to be regarded himself as the most peculiar child of all those Peculiar Children. Moreover, from a practical standpoint the opening of a factory in the North should be extremely profitable. He already had the London clients of Madame Oriano; he must now build up a solid business in the provinces. Fuller’s Fireworks must become a byword. The King was rumoured to be ill. He would be succeeded by another king. That king would in due course have to be solemnly crowned. Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, and many other large towns would be wanting to celebrate that coronation with displays of fireworks. When the moment arrived, there must be nobody who would be able to compete with Fuller and his chlorate of potash.

So to Brigham in Cheshire Caleb Fuller brought his wife. In some fields on the outskirts of the town in which he had spent a poverty-stricken youth he built his first sheds, and in a dreary little street close to Bethesda, the meeting-house of the Peculiar Children of God, he set up his patriarchal tent. Here on a dusty September dawn just over two years after her last public appearance at “Neptune’s Grotto,” Letizia’s eldest daughter was born. The young wife of Caleb was not yet thoroughly tamed, for she produced a daughter exactly like herself and called her Caterina in spite of the father’s objection to a name associated with the wheels of which he made so many. Not only did she insist on calling the child Caterina, but she actually took it to the nearest Catholic chapel and had it baptised by a priest.

It happened about this time that one of the apostles of the meeting-house was gravely ill, and Caleb, who had designs on the vacant apostolic chair, decided that his election to it must not be endangered by the profane behaviour of his young wife. When he remonstrated with her, she flashed her eyes and tossed her head as if he were still Caleb the clerk and she the spoilt daughter of his employer.

“Letizia,” he said lugubriously, “you have destroyed the soul of our infant.”

“Nonsense!”

“You have produced a child of wrath.”

“My eye!” she scoffed.

Caleb’s moist lips vanished from sight. There was a long silence while he regarded his wife with what seemed like two pebbles of granite. When at last he spoke, it was with an intolerable softness.

“Letizia, you must learn to have responsibilities. I am frightened for you, my wife. You must learn. I do not blame you entirely. You have had a loose upbringing. But you must learn.”

Then, as gently as he was speaking, he stole to the door and left Letizia locked behind him in her bedroom. Oh, yes, he tamed her body gradually, and for a long time it looked as if he would tame her soul. She had no more daughters like herself, and each year for many years she flashed her eyes less fiercely and tossed her head less defiantly. She produced several other children, but they all took after their father. Dark-eyed Caterina was followed by stodgy Achsah. Stodgy Achsah was followed by podgy Thyrza. These were followed by two more who died almost as soon as they were born, as if in dying thus they expressed the listlessness of their mother for this life. Maybe Letizia herself would have achieved death, had not the way Caleb treated little Caterina kept her alive to protect the child against his severity.

“Her rebellious spirit must be broken,” he declared, raising once more the cane.

“You shall not beat her like this, Caleb.”

“Apostle Jenkins beat his son till the child was senseless, because he stole a piece of bread and jam.”

“I wish I could be as religious as you, Caleb,” said his wife.

He tried to look modest under the compliment.

“Yes,” she went on fiercely, “for then I’d believe in Hell, and if I believed in Hell I’d sizzle there with joy just for the pleasure of seeing you and all your cursed apostles sizzling beside me.”

But Letizia did not often break out like this. Each year she became more silent, taking refuge from her surroundings in French novels which she bought out of the meagre allowance for clothes that her husband allowed her. She read French novels because she despised the more sentimental novelists of England that were so much in vogue at this date, making only an exception in favour of Thackeray, whom she read word for word as his books appeared. She was learning a bitter wisdom from literature in the shadows and the silence of her wounded heart. After eight years of married life she bore a son, who was called Joshua. There were moments when Letizia was minded to smother him where he lay beside her, so horribly did this homuncule reproduce the lineaments of her loathed husband.

Meanwhile, the factory flourished, Caleb Fuller became the leading citizen of Brigham and served three times as Mayor. He built a great gloomy house on the small hill that skirted the mean little town. He built, too, a great gloomy tabernacle for the Peculiar Children of God. He was elected chief apostle and sat high up in view of the congregation on a marble chair. He grew shaggy whiskers and suffered from piles. He found favour in the eyes of the Lord, sweating the poor and starving even the cows that gave him milk. Yes, the renown of Fuller’s Fireworks was spread far and wide. The factory grew larger year by year. And with it year by year waxed plumper the belly and the purse of Caleb himself, even as his soul shrivelled.

In 1851 after twenty years of merciless prosperity Caleb suffered his first setback by failing to secure the contract for the firework displays at the Great Exhibition. From the marble chair of the chief apostle he called upon the Peculiar Children of God to lament that their Father had temporarily turned away His countenance from them. Caleb beat his breast and bellowed and groaned, but he did not rend his garments of the best broadcloth, because that would have involved his buying new ones. The hulla-balloo in Bethesda was louder than that in a synagogue on the Day of Atonement, and after a vociferous prayer-meeting the Peculiar Children of God went back to their stuffy and secretive little houses, coveting their neighbours’ wives and their neighbours’ maids, but making the best of their own to express an unattainable ideal. Horrid stuffy little bedrooms with blue jets of gas burning dimly through the night-time. Heavy lumps of humanity snoring beneath heavy counterpanes. Lascivious backbiting of the coveted wives and maids on greasy conjugal pillows. Who in all that abode of prurient respectability and savage industrialism should strip Caleb’s soul bare? Who should not sympathise with the chief apostle of the Peculiar Children of God?

Yet, strange to say, Caleb found that God’s countenance continued to be averted from his own. He was still licking the soreness of his disappointment over the Exhibition fireworks when one morning in the prime of June his eldest daughter left the great gloomy house on the hill, never to return. While Caleb stormed at his wife for not taking better precautions to keep Caterina in bounds, he was aware that he might as well be storming at a marble statue. He lacked the imagination to understand that the soul of Letizia had fled from its imprisonment in the guise of Caterina’s lissom body. But he did apprehend, however dimly, that henceforth nothing he might say or do would ever again affect his wife either for good or for ill.

Cold dark eyes beneath black arched brows surveyed him contemptuously. He had never yet actually struck Letizia; but he came near to striking her at that moment.

“She wanted to go on the stage.”

“A play-actress! My eldest daughter a play-actress!”

“Alas, neither she nor I can cup those drops of blood she owes to you. But her soul is hers and mine. You had no part in making that. Even if you did crawl over my body and eat the heart out of me, you slug! Do what you like with the others. Make what you can of them. But Caterina is mine. Caterina is free.”

“As if I had not suffered enough this year,” Caleb groaned.

“Suffered? Did you say that you had suffered?” His wife laughed. “And what about the sufferings of my Caterina all these years of her youth?”

“I pray she’ll starve to death,” he went on.

“She was starving to death in this house.”

“Ay, I suppose that’s what the Church folk will be saying next. The idle, good-for-nothing slanderers! Not content with accusing me of starving my cows, they’ll be accusing me of starving my children now. But the dear Lord knows....”

“You poor dull fool,” Letizia broke in, and with one more glance from her cold dark eyes she left him.

Caterina had as dissolute a career as her father could have feared and as miserable an end as he could have hoped, for about twelve years later, after glittering with conspicuous shamelessness amid the tawdry gilt of the Second Empire, she died in a Paris asylum prematurely exhausted by drink and dissipation.

“Better to die from without than from within,” said her mother when the news was brought to Brigham.

“What do you mean by that?” Caleb asked in exasperated perplexity. “It’s all these French novels you read that makes you talk that high-flown trash. You talk for the sake of talking, that’s my opinion. You used to talk like a fool when I first married you, but I taught you at last to keep your tongue still. Now you’ve begun to talk again.”

“One changes in thirty-four years, Caleb. Even you have changed. You were mean and ugly then. But you are much meaner and much uglier now. However, you have the consolation of seeing your son Joshua keep pace with you in meanness and in ugliness.”

Joshua Fuller was now twenty-six, an eternal offence to the eyes of his mother, who perceived in him nothing but a dreadful reminder of her husband at the same age. That anybody could dare to deplore Caterina’s life when in Joshua the evidence of her own was before them enraged Letizia with human crassness. But Joshua was going to be an asset to Fuller’s Fireworks. Just as his father had perceived the importance of chlorate of potash in 1829, so now in 1863 did Joshua perceive the importance of magnesium, and the house of Fuller was in front of nearly all its rivals in utilising that mineral, with the result that its brilliant fireworks sold better than ever. The Guilloché and Salamandre, the Girandole and Spirali of Madame Oriano, so greatly admired by old moons and bygone multitudes, would have seemed very dull affairs now. Another gain that Joshua provided for the business was to urge upon his father to provide for the further legislation about explosives that sooner or later was inevitable. With an ill grace Caleb Fuller had complied with the provisions of the Gunpowder Act of 1860; but, when the great explosion at Erith occurred a few years later, Joshua insisted that more must be done to prepare for the inspection of firework establishments that was bound to follow such a terrific disaster. Joshua was right, and when the Explosives Act of 1875 was passed the factory at Brigham had anticipated nearly all its requirements.

By this time Joshua was a widower. In 1865, at the age of twenty-eight, he had married a pleasant young woman called Susan Yardley. After presenting him with one boy who was christened Abraham, she died two years later in producing another who was christened Caleb after his grandfather.

The elder of these two boys reverted both in appearance and in disposition to the Oriano stock, and old Mrs. Fuller—she is sixty-three now and may no longer be called Letizia—took a bitter delight in never allowing old Mr. Fuller to forget it. She found in the boy, now a flash of Caterina’s eyes, now a flutter of Madame Oriano’s eyelids. She would note how much his laugh was like her own long ago, and she would encourage him at every opportunity to thwart the solicitude and defy the injunctions of Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza. When her son protested against the way she applauded Abraham’s naughtiness, she only laughed.

“Bram’s all right.”

“I wish, mamma, you wouldn’t call him Bram,” Joshua protested. “It’s so irreverent. I know that you despise the Bible, but the rest of us almost worship it. I cannot abide this irreligious clipping of Scriptural names. And it worries poor papa terribly.”