Adventures and Enthusiasms Part 16

ON SECRET Pa.s.sAGES

I was hearing the other day of an old house in Suss.e.x where, while doing some repairs, the builders' men chanced on the mouth of an underground pa.s.sage which they traced for two miles. Why should that discovery be interesting? Why is everything to do with underground pa.s.sages so interesting? It is, I suppose, because they are usually secret, and the very word secret, no matter how applied (except perhaps to treaties) is alluring: secret drawers, secret cupboards, secret chambers; but the secret pa.s.sage is best, because it leads from one place to another, and either war or love called it into being: war or love, or, as in the case of priests' hiding holes, religious persecution, which is a branch of war.

Nothing can deprive the secret pa.s.sage of its glamour: not all the Tubes, or subways, or river tunnelling, through which we pa.s.s so naturally day after day. Any private excavation is exciting; to enter a dark cellar, even, carries a certain emotion. How mysterious are crypts!

How awesome are the catacombs of Rome! How it brings back the lawless, turbulent past of Florence merely to walk through that long pa.s.sage (not underground but overground, yet no less dramatic for that) which, pa.s.sing above the Ponte Vecchio, unites the Pitti and the Uffizi and made it possible, unseen by the Florentines, to transfer bodies of armed men from one side of the Arno to the other!

It was the underground pa.s.sage idea which gave the Druce Case such possibilities of mystery and romance. That a duke should masquerade as an upholsterer was in itself an engaging idea; but without the underground pa.s.sage connecting Baker Street with Cavendish Square the story was no more than an ordinary feuilleton. I shall always regret that it was not true; and even now some one ought to take it in hand and make a real romance of it, with the double-lived n.o.bleman leaving his own home so regularly every morning (by the trap door), doffing his coronet and robes and changing _en route_ somewhere under Wigmore Street, and appearing unseen (by another trap door) in the Bazaar, all smug and punctual and rubbing his hands. It would be not only thrilling, but such a satire on ducal dulness. And then the great Law Court scenes, the rival heirs, the impa.s.sioned counsel, the vast sums at stake, the sanction of the judge to open the grave, and finally the discovery that there was no body there after all--nothing but bricks--and the fantastic story really was fact! There has been no better plot since "Monte Cristo," and that, you remember, would be nothing had not the Abbe Faria excavated the secret pa.s.sage from his cell through which Edmond was able to re-enter the world and start upon his career of symmetrical vengeance.

What, of course, gave such likelihood to the Druce allegations was the circ.u.mstance that the Duke of Portland spent so much of his life at Welbeck underground. A man who is known to do that must expect to be the subject of romantic exaggerations.

Another reason for wishing the Druce story to be true is that, if it were true, if one aristocrat thus duplicated and enriched his life, others also would do so; for there are no single instances; and this means that London would be honey-combed by secret underground pa.s.sages constructed to promote these entertaining deceptions, and shopping would become an absorbing pastime, for we should never know with whom we were chaffering. But alas...!

Just as an ordinary desk takes on a new character directly one is told that it has a secret drawer, so does even a whisper of a secret pa.s.sage transfigure the most commonplace house. Arriving in Gloucester not so very long ago, and needing a resting-place for the night, I automatically chose the hotel which claimed, in the advertis.e.m.e.nt, to date from the fourteenth century and possess an underground pa.s.sage to the cathedral. The fact that, as the young lady in the office a.s.sured me, the pa.s.sage, if it ever existed, no longer is accessible, made very little difference: the idea of it was the attraction and determined the choice of the inn. The Y. M. C. A. headquarters at Brighton on the Old Steyne ceases to be under the dominion of those initials--four letters which, for all their earnest of usefulness, are as far removed from the suggestion of clandestine intrigue as any could be--and becomes a totally different structure when one is told that when, long before its conversion, Mrs. Fitzherbert lived there, an underground pa.s.sage existed between it and the Pavilion for the use of the First Gentleman in Europe. Whether it is fact or fancy I cannot say, but that the Pavilion has a hidden staircase and an underground pa.s.sage to the Dome I happen to know. A hidden staircase has hardly fewer adventurous potentialities than a secret pa.s.sage. I was told of one at Greenwich Hospital: in the wing built by Charles II. is a secret staircase in the wall leading to the apartments set apart for (need I say?) Mistress Eleanor Gwynne?

These rooms, such is the deteriorating effect of modernity, are now offices.

LITTLE MISS BANKS

To many people wholly free from superst.i.tion, except that, after spilling the salt, they are careful to throw a little over the left shoulder, and do not walk under ladders unless with crossed thumbs, and refuse to sit thirteen at table, and never bring May blossoms into the house--to these people, otherwise so free from superst.i.tion, it would perhaps be surprising to know what great numbers of their fellow-creatures resort daily to such a black art as fortune-telling by the cards.

Yet quite respectable, G.o.d-fearing, church-going old ladies, and probably old gentlemen too, treasure this practice, to say nothing of younger and therefore naturally more frivolous folk; and many make the consultation of the two-and-fifty oracles a morning habit.

Particularly women. Those well-thumbed packs of cards that we know so well are not wholly dedicated to "Patience," I can a.s.sure you.

All want to be told the same thing: what the day will bring forth. But each searcher into the dim and dangerous future has, of course, individual methods--some shuffling seven times and some ten, and so forth, and all intent upon placating the elfish G.o.ddess, Caprice.

There is little Miss Banks, for example.

Nothing would induce little Miss Banks to leave the house in the morning without seeing what the cards promised her, and so open and impressionable are her mind and heart that she is still interested in the colour of the romantic fellow whom the day, if kind, is to fling across her path. The cards, as you know, are great on colours, all men being divided into three groups; dark (which has the preference), fair, and middling. Similarly for you, if you can get little Miss Banks to read your fate (but you must of course shuffle the pack yourself), there are but three kinds of charmers: dark (again the most fascinating and to be desired), fair, and middling.

It is great fun to watch little Miss Banks at her necromancy. She takes it so earnestly, literally wrenching the future's secrets from their lair.

"A letter is coming to you from some one," she says. "An important letter."

And again, "I see a voyage over water."

Or very seriously, "There's a death."

You gasp.

"No, it's not yours. A fair woman's."

You laugh. "Only a fair woman's!" you say. "Go on."

But the cards have not only ambiguities, but strange reticences.

"Oh," little Miss Banks will say, her eyes large with excitement, "there's a payment of money and a dark man."

"Good," you say.

"But I can't tell," she goes on, "whether you pay it to him or he pays it to you."

"That's a nice state of things," you say, becoming indignant. "Surely you can tell."

"No, I can't."

You begin to go over your dark acquaintances who might owe you money, and can think of none.

You then think of your dark acquaintances to whom you owe money and are horrified by their number.

"Oh, well," you say, "the whole thing's rubbish, anyway."

Little Miss Banks's eyes dilate with pained astonishment.

"Rubbish!"--and she begins to shuffle again.

GENTLEMEN BOTH

Not all of us have the best manners always about us. The fortunate are they whose reaction is instant; but those also are fortunate who, after the first failure--during the conflict between, say, natural and acquired feelings--can recapture their best, too.

At a certain country house where a shooting party was a.s.sembled a picture stood on an easel in a corner of the dining-room. It was a noticeable picture by reason of its beauty and also by reason of a gash in the canvas. Coffee was on the table when one of the guests, looking round the walls, observed it for the first time, and, drawing his host's attention to its excellence, asked who was the painter; and the host, who was an impulsive, hearty fellow, full of money, after supplying the information and corroborating the justice of the criticism, remarked to the whole company, "Now here's a sporting offer. You see that cut across the paint in the middle"--pointing it out as he spoke--"well, I'll give any one a thousand pounds who can guess how it was done."

They all rose and cl.u.s.tered before the easel; for a thousand pounds are worth having a try for, even when one is rich--as most of them were.

"It was done only last week," the host continued, "and it was such a queer business that I don't intend to have it repaired. Now then, all of you, a thousand of the best for the correct answer."

He rubbed his hands and chuckled. It was a sure thing for him, and there would be a lot of fun in the suggestions.

The guests having re-examined the cut with minuteness, one by one, seated themselves again, and pencils and paper were provided so that the various possible solutions might be written down. The real business then began--no sound but pencils writing and the host chuckling.

Now it happened that one of the party, a year or so before, had seen somewhere in Yorkshire a picture with a not dissimilar rent, caused, he had been told, by a panic-stricken bird which had blundered into the room and couldn't get out again. Remembering this, and remembering also that history sometimes repeats itself, he wrote on his piece of paper that, according to his guess, the canvas was torn by a bird which had flown into the room and lost its head.

All the suggestions having been written down, the host called on their writers to read them, a jolly, confident smile lighting up his features, which grew more jolly and more confident as one after another incorrect solution was tendered.

And then came the turn of the man who had remembered about the bird, and who happened to be the last of all. "My guess is," he read out, "that the picture was damaged by a bird."

There was a roar of laughter, which gradually subsided when it was observed that the host was very far from joining in it. In fact, his face not only had lost all its good humour, but was white and tense.