Peeps at People

"Then you do not know of the privations of American travel," he cried. "Consider me, Nansen, compelled, after the delightful discomfort of the Fram, to have to endure the horrid excellence of your Pullman service. Consider me, Nansen, after having subsisted on dogs and kerosene oil for months, having to eat a breakfast costing a dollar at one of your American hotels, consisting of porridge, broiled chicken, deviled kidney, four kinds of potatoes, eggs in every style, real coffee, and buckwheat cakes! Consider me – "

"Nansen?" I inquired.

"Yes, Nansen," said he. "Consider me, Nansen, used to the cold of the Arctic regions, the Arctic perils, having to wake up every morning in an American hotel or an American parlor-car, warm, without peril, comfortable, without anything whatsoever to growl about."

"It must have been devilish," said I.

"It was," said he.

"Well, Mr. Nansen," I put in, rising, "you can stand it. You are cold enough

to stay in Hades for forty-seven years without losing your outside garments. How much do I owe you?"

"Fifteen thousand dollars, please," said he.

I gave him the money and swam away.

"Good-bye," he cried, as I reached the outer edge of the Maelstrom. "I hope, next time I go to America, that I shall meet you."

"Many thanks," said I. "When do you expect to come?"

"Never," he replied, "Deo volente!"

Charming chap, that Nansen. So warm, you know.

MR. HALL CAINE

I do not know why it should have happened so, but it did happen that after my interview with Nansen I felt gloomy in my soul, and hence naturally sought congenial company. My first inclination was to run down to Greece and take luncheon with King George, but when I came to look over my languages, the only bit of Greek I could speak fluently turned out to be hoi polloi, and from private advices I gather that that is the only bit of Greek that his honor the King has no use for. Therefore I bought a ticket straight through to Gloomster Abbey, Isle of Man – the residence of Hall Caine.

Appropriately enough, it was midnight when I arrived. It was a moonlight night, but there were a dozen clouds on the horizon and directly in the wake of the moon's rays, so that all was dark. From the abbey itself no single ray of light gleamed, and all was still, save the croaking of the tree-toads in the moat, and the crickets on the roof of the parapet.

Any one else would have been chilled to the marrow; but I, having visited Nansen, had to use a fan to overcome the extreme cordiality of the scene. With the thermometer at 32° I nearly swooned with the heat.

"Is this Gloomster Abbey?" I asked of my hackman.

"Yes," said he; "and, for Humanity's sake, pay your fare and let me go. I am the father of seven orphans, and the husband of their widowed mother. If I stay here ten minutes I'll die, and my wife will marry again, Heaven help her!"

I paid him £6 10s. 6d. and let him go. He was nothing to me, but his family had my sympathy.

Then I knocked on the portcullis with all my might, and was gratified to find that, like a well-regulated portcullis, it fell, and with a loud noise withal.

An intense silence intervened, and then out of the blackness of the blue above me there came a voice with a reddish tinge to it.

"Who's there?" said the voice. "If you are a burglar, come in and rob. If you are a friend, wait a minute. If you are an interviewer from an American Sunday newspaper, accept my apologies for keeping you waiting, turn the knob, and walk in. I'll be down as soon as I can get there."

It was Hall Caine himself who spoke.

I turned the knob and walked in. All was still, dark, and cold, but I did not mind, for it fitted into my mood exactly.

In the darkness of the corridor within I barked what if I were a man I should call my shins. As it happened, being a woman, I merely bruised my ankles, when he appeared – Hall Caine himself. There

was no gas-light, no electric light. Nothing but the blackness of the night, and He Appeared! I suppose it was all due to the fact that he is a brilliant man, who would shine anywhere. However it may have been, I suddenly became conscious of a being that walked towards me as plainly discernible as an ocean steamship at sea at night, with every electric light burning in the saloon, and the red and green lanterns on the starboard and port sides of its bow.

"Mr. Caine?" said I, addressing his starboard side.

"That's I," said he, grammatically and with dignity. A man less great would have said "That's me," which is why in the darkness I knew it was Mr. Caine and not his hired man I was speaking to – or with, as your style may require.

"Mr. Caine," said I, not without nervousness, "I have come – "

"So I perceive," said he; and then an inspiration came to me.

" – to lay my gloom at your feet," I said, with apparent meekness. "It is all I have, but such as it is you are welcome to it. Some people would have brought you rich gifts in gold and silver; some would have come with compliments and requests for your autograph; I bring you only a morbid heart bursting with gloom. Will you take it?"

"I appreciate the courtesy, madame," replied the great man, wiping a tear from the end of his nose, which twinkled like a silver star in the blackness of the corridor, "but I cannot accept your offering. I have more gloom on hand than I know what to do with. I am, however, deeply touched, and beg to offer you the hospitality of the moat, unless you have further business with me at my regular rates."

A dreadful, blood-curdling wail, like that of a soul in torment, interrupted my answer. It seemed to come from the very centre of the earth directly beneath my feet. I was frozen with horror, and my host, with a muttered imprecation, turned and ran off.

"I haven't time to see you now," he cried, as he disappeared down the steps of a yawning hole at the far end of the corridor. "I can't afford to miss the experiment for anything so small and cheap as a morbid heart bursting with gloom."

I followed closely after, although he had not granted permission. I didn't feel that I could afford to miss the experiment either, and ere he had time to slam to the door of the dungeon which we ultimately reached, I was inside his workshop.

If it was chill without, it was deadly within, save that the darkness was not so intense, red lights burning dimly in each of the four corners of the dungeon. The walls were covered with a green trickling ooze from the moat, and under foot the ground was dank and almost mushy.

In the very centre of the place was a huge rack, a relic of some by-gone age of torture, and stretched at full length upon it was a man of, I should say, about forty years of age. Two flunkies in livery – red plush trousers and powdered wigs – now and then turned the screw, and with each turn horrid shrieks would come from the victim, mingled with alternate prayers and curses.

"What on earth is the meaning of this?" I cried, in horror.

"It means, madame," replied the famous author, calmly, "that I never fake. All my situations, all my passages descriptive of human emotions and sufferings, are drawn from life, and not from the imagination."

"You work from living models?" I gasped. "Why would not a lay figure do as well for torture?"

"Because lay-figures do not shriek and pray and curse. I am surprised that you should be so dull. James, turn the thumb-screw three times; and, Grimmins, take your cricket-bat and give the patient a bastinado on his right foot."

"It is a pitiless shame!" I cried.

"It is in the interest of art, madame," said the novelist, shrugging his shoulders. "Just as our surgeons have to vivisect for

the advancement of science, so must I conduct experiments here in the interest of letters. My new novel has a stirring episode in it based upon the capture and torture of a newspaper correspondent in Thibet. I might, I suppose, have imagined the whole thing, but this so far surpasses the imagination that I am convinced it is the better way of getting my color."

"There isn't any doubt about that," said I; "but consider this man here, whose limbs you are stretching beyond all endurance – "

"He should regard it as a splendid sacrifice," vouchsafed the novelist, lighting a cigarette and winking pleasantly at his victim.

"Is his a voluntary sacrifice?" I demanded.

"Rather good joke that, eh, Rogers?" laughed Mr. Caine, addressing the sufferer. "This simple-minded little American girl asks if you are there because you like it. Ha! ha! What a droll idea! Thinks you do this for pleasure, Rogers. Has an idea you tied yourself on there and racked yourself at first, so she has. Thinks you shriek so as to smother your laughter, which would be very inappropriate to the occasion."

The sufferer groaned deeply, and the novelist, turning to me, observed: