My Lady Nicotine Part 9

P.S.--I told my father about the Arcadia Mixture, and that is why he is coming to London.

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CHAPTER XXI.

ENGLISH-GROWN TOBACCO.

Pettigrew asked me to come to his house one evening and test some tobacco that had been grown in his brother's Devons.h.i.+re garden. I had so far had no opportunity of judging for myself whether this attempt to grow tobacco on English soil was to succeed. Very complimentary was Pettigrew's a.s.sertion that he had restrained himself from trying the tobacco until we could test it in company. At the dinner-table while Mrs. Pettigrew was present we managed to talk for a time of other matters; but the tobacco was on our minds, and I was glad to see that, despite her raillery, my hostess had a genuine interest in the coming experiment. She drew an amusing picture, no doubt a little exaggerated, of her husband's difficulty in refraining from testing the tobacco until my arrival, declaring that every time she entered the smoking-room she found him staring at it. Pettigrew took this in good part, and informed me that she had carried the tobacco several times into the drawing-room to show it proudly to her friends. He was very delighted, he said, that I was to remain over night, as that would give us a long evening to test the tobacco thoroughly. A neighbor of his had also been experimenting; and Pettigrew, who has a considerable sense of humor, told me a diverting story about this gentleman and his friends having pa.s.sed judgment on home-grown tobacco after smoking one pipe of it! We were laughing over the ridiculously unsatisfactory character of this test (so called) when we adjourned to the smoking-room. Before we did so Mrs.

Pettigrew bade me good-night. She had also left strict orders with the servants that we were on no account to be disturbed.

As soon as we were comfortably seated in our smoking-chairs, which takes longer than some people think, Pettigrew offered me a Cabana. I would have preferred to begin at once with the tobacco; but of course he was my host, and I put myself entirely in his hands. I noticed that, from the moment his wife left us, he was a little excited, talking more than is his wont. He seemed to think that he was not doing his duty as a host if the conversation flagged for a moment, and what was still more curious, he spoke of everything except his garden tobacco. I emphasize this here at starting, lest any one should think that I was in any way responsible for the manner in which our experiment was conducted. If fault there was, it lies at Pettigrew's door. I remember distinctly asking him--not in a half-hearted way, but boldly--to produce his tobacco. I did this at an early hour of the proceedings, immediately after I had lighted a second cigar. The reason I took that cigar will be obvious to every gentleman who smokes. Had I declined it, Pettigrew might have thought that I disliked the brand, which would have been painful to him. However, he did not at once bring out the tobacco; indeed, his precise words, I remember, were that we had lots of time.

As his guest I could not press him further.

Pettigrew smokes more quickly than I do, and he had reached the end of his second cigar when there was still five minutes of mine left. It distresses me to have to say what followed. He hastily lighted a third cigar, and then, unlocking a cupboard, produced about two ounces of his garden tobacco. His object was only too plain. Having just begun a third cigar he could not be expected to try the tobacco at present, but there was nothing to prevent my trying it. I regarded Pettigrew rather contemptuously, and then I looked with much interest at the tobacco. It was of an inky color. When I looked up I caught Pettigrew's eye on me.

He withdrew it hurriedly, but soon afterward I saw him looking in the same sly way again. There was a rather painful silence for a time, and then he asked me if I had anything to say. I replied firmly that I was looking forward to trying the tobacco with very great interest. By this time my cigar was reduced to a stump, but, for reasons that Pettigrew misunderstood, I continued to smoke it. Somehow our chairs had got out of position now, and we were sitting with our backs to each other.

I felt that Pettigrew was looking at me covertly over his shoulder, and took a side glance to make sure of this. Our eyes met, and I bit my lip. If there is one thing I loathe, it is to be looked at in this shame-faced manner.

I continued to smoke the stump of my cigar until it scorched my under-lip, and at intervals Pettigrew said, without looking round, that my cigar seemed everlasting. I treated his innuendo with contempt; but at last I had to let the cigar-end go. Not to make a fuss, I dropped it very quietly; but Pettigrew must have been listening for the sound.

He wheeled round at once, and pushed the garden tobacco toward me.

Never, perhaps, have I thought so little of him as at that moment. My indignation probably showed in my face, for he drew back, saying that he thought I "wanted to try it." Now I had never said that I did not want to try it. The reader has seen that I went to Pettigrew's house solely with the object of trying the tobacco. Had Pettigrew, then, any ground for insinuating that I did not mean to try it? Restraining my pa.s.sion, I lighted a third cigar, and then put the question to him bluntly. Did he, or did he not, mean to try that tobacco? I dare say I was a little brusque; but it must be remembered that I had come all the way from the inn, at considerable inconvenience, to give the tobacco a thorough trial.

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As is the way with men of Pettigrew's type, when you corner them, he attempted to put the blame on me. "Why had I not tried the tobacco,"

he asked, "instead of taking a third cigar?" For reply, I asked bitingly if that was not his third cigar. He admitted it was, but said that he smoked more quickly than I did, as if that put his behavior in a more favorable light. I smoked my third cigar very slowly, not because I wanted to put off the experiment; for, as every one must have noted, I was most anxious to try it, but just to see what would happen. When Pettigrew had finished his cigar--and I thought he would never be done with it--he gazed at the garden tobacco for a time, and then took a pipe from the mantelpiece. He held it first in one hand, then in the other, and then he brightened up and said he would clean his pipes. This he did very slowly. When he had cleaned all his pipes he again looked at the garden tobacco, which I pushed toward him. He glared at me as if I had not been doing a friendly thing, and then said, in an apologetic manner, that he would smoke a pipe until my cigar was finished. I said "All right" cordially, thinking that he now meant to begin the experiment; but conceive my feelings when he produced a jar of the Arcadia Mixture.

He filled his pipe with this and proceeded to light it, looking at me defiantly. His excuse about waiting till I had finished was too pitiful to take notice of. I finished my cigar in a few minutes, and now was the time when I would have liked to begin the experiment. As Pettigrew's guest, however, I could not take that liberty, though he impudently pushed the garden tobacco toward me. I produced my pipe, my intention being only to half fill it with Arcadia, so that Pettigrew and I might finish our pipes at the same time. Custom, however, got the better of me, and inadvertently I filled my pipe, only noticing this when it was too late to remedy the mistake. Pettigrew thus finished before me; and though I advised him to begin on the garden tobacco without waiting for me, he insisted on smoking half a pipeful of Arcadia, just to keep me company. It was an extraordinary thing that, try as we might, we could not finish our pipes at the same time.

About 2 A.M. Pettigrew said something about going to bed; and I rose and put down my pipe. We stood looking at the fireplace for a time, and he expressed regret that I had to leave so early in the morning. Then he put out two of the lights, and after that we both looked at the garden tobacco. He seemed to have a sudden idea; for rather briskly he tied the tobacco up into a neat paper parcel and handed it to me, saying that I would perhaps give it a trial at the inn. I took it without a word, but opening my hand suddenly I let it fall. My first impulse was to pick it up; but then it struck me that Pettigrew had not noticed what had happened, and that, were he to see me pick it up, he might think that I had not taken sufficient care of it. So I let it lie, and, bidding him good-night, went off to bed. I was at the foot of the stair when I thought that, after all, I should like the tobacco, so I returned.

I could not see the package anywhere, but something was fizzing up the chimney, and Pettigrew had the tongs in his hand. He muttered something about his wife taking up wrong notions. Next morning that lady was very satirical about our having smoked the whole two ounces.

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CHAPTER XXII.

HOW HEROES SMOKE.

On a tiger-skin from the ice-clad regions of the sunless north recline the heroes of Ouida, rose-scented cigars in their mouths; themselves gloriously indolent and disdainful, but perhaps huddled a little too closely together on account of the limited accommodation. Strathmore is here. But I never felt sure of Strathmore. Was there not less in him than met the eye? His place, Whiteladies, was a home for kings and queens; but he was not the luxurious, magnanimous creature he feigned to be. A host may be known by the cigars he keeps; and, though it is perhaps a startling thing to say, we have good reason for believing that Strathmore did not buy good cigars. I question very much whether he had many Havanas, even of the second quality, at Whiteladies; if he had, he certainly kept them locked up. Only once does he so much as refer to them when at his own place, and then in the most general and suspicious way. "Bah!" he exclaims to a friend; "there is Phil smoking these wretched musk-scented cigarettes again! they are only fit for Lady Georgie or Eulalie Papellori. What taste, when there are my Havanas and cheroots!" The remark, in whatever way considered, is suggestive. In the first place, it is made late in the evening, after Strathmore and his friend have left the smoking-room. Thus it is a safe observation. I would not go so far as to say that he had no Havanas in the house; the likelihood is that he had a few in his cigar-case, kept there for show rather than use. These, if I understand the man, would be a good brand, but of small size--perhaps Reinas--and they would hardly be of a well-known crop. In color they would be dark--say maduro--and he would explain that he bought them because he liked full-flavored weeds.

Possibly he had a Villar y Villar box with six or eight in the bottom of it; but boxes are not cigars. What he did provide his friends with was Manillas. He smoked them himself, and how careful he was of them is seen on every other page. He is constantly stopping in the middle of his conversation to "curl a loose leaf round his Manilla;" when one would have expected a hero like Strathmore to fling away a cigar when its leaves began to untwist, and light another. So thrifty is Strathmore that he even laboriously "curls the leaves round his cigarettes"--he does not so much as pretend that they are Egyptian; nay, even when quarrelling with Errol, his beloved friend (whom he shoots through the heart), he takes a cigarette from his mouth and "winds a loosened leaf"

round it.

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If Strathmore's Manillas were Capitan Generals they would cost him about 24s. a hundred. The probability, however, is that they were of inferior quality; say, 17s. 6d. It need hardly be said that a good Manilla does not constantly require to have its leaves "curled." When Errol goes into the garden to smoke, he has every other minute to "strike a fusee;" from which it may be inferred that his cigar frequently goes out. This is in itself suspicious. Errol, too, is more than once seen by his host wandering in the grounds at night, with a cigar between his teeth.

Strathmore thinks his susceptible friend has a love affair on hand; but is it not at least as probable an explanation that Errol had a private supply of cigars at Whiteladies, and from motives of delicacy did not like to smoke them in his host's presence? Once, indeed, we do see Strathmore smoking a good cigar, though we are not told how he came by it. When talking of the Vavasour, he "sticks his penknife through his Cabana," with the object, obviously, of smoking it to the bitter end.

Another lady novelist, who is also an authority on tobacco, Miss Rhoda Broughton, contemptuously dismisses a claimant for the heros.h.i.+p of one of her stories, as the kind of man who turns up his trousers at the foot. It would have been just as withering to say that he stuck a penknife through his cigars.

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There is another true hero with me, whose creator has unintentionally misrepresented him. It is he of "Comin' thro' the Rye," a gentleman whom the maidens of the nineteenth century will not willingly let die. He is grand, no doubt; and yet, the more one thinks about him, the plainer it becomes that had the heroine married him she would have been bitterly disenchanted. In her company he was magnanimous; G.o.d-like, prodigal; but in his smoking-room he showed himself in his true colors. Every lady will remember the scene where he rushes to the heroine's home and implores her to return with him to the bedside of his dying wife. The sudden announcement that his wife--whom he had thought in a good state of health--is dying, is surely enough to startle even a miser out of his n.i.g.g.ardliness, much less a hero; and yet what do we find Vasher doing?

The heroine, in frantic excitement, has to pa.s.s through his smoking room, and on the table she sees--what? "A half-smoked cigar." He was in the middle of it when a servant came to tell him of his wife's dying request; and, before hastening to execute her wishes, he carefully laid what was left of his cigar upon the table--meaning, of course, to relight it when he came back. Though she did not think so, our heroine's father was a much more remarkable man than Vasher. He "blew out long, comfortable clouds" that made the whole of his large family "cough and wink again." No ordinary father could do that.

Among my smoking-room favorites is the hero of Miss Adeline Sergeant's story, "Touch and Go." He is a war correspondent; and when he sees a body of the enemy bearing down upon him and the wounded officer whom he has sought to save, he imperturbably offers his companion a cigar. They calmly smoke on while the foe gallop up. There is something grand in this, even though the kind of cigar is not mentioned.

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I see a bearded hero, with slouch hat and shepherd's crook, a clay pipe in his mouth. He is a Bohemian--ever a popular type of hero; and the Bohemian is to be known all the world over by the pipe, which he prefers to a cigar. The tall, scornful gentleman who leans lazily against the door, "blowing great clouds of smoke into the air," is the hero of a hundred novels. That is how he is always standing when the heroine, having need of something she has left in the drawing-room, glides down the stairs at night in her dressing-gown (her beautiful hair, released from its ribbons, streaming down her neck and shoulders), and comes most unexpectedly upon him. He is young. The senior, over whose face "a smile flickers for a moment" when the heroine says something nave, and whom she (entirely misunderstanding her feelings) thinks she hates, smokes unostentatiously; but though a little inclined to quiet "chaff," he is a man of deep feeling. By and by he will open out and gather her up in his arms. The scorner's chair is filled. I see him, shadow-like, a sad-eyed, _blase_ gentleman, who has been adored by all the beauties of fifteen seasons, and yet speaks of woman with a contemptuous sneer.

Great, however, is love; and the vulgar little girl who talks slang will prove to him in our next volume that there is still one peerless beyond all others of her s.e.x. Ah, a wondrous thing is love! On every side of me there are dark, handsome men, with something sinister in their smile, "casting away their cigars with a m.u.f.fled curse." No novel would be complete without them. When they are foiled by the brave girl of the narrative, it is the recognized course with them to fling away their cigars with a m.u.f.fled curse. Any kind of curse would do, but m.u.f.fled ones are preferred.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS EVE.

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A few years ago, as some may remember, a startling ghost-paper appeared in the monthly organ of the Society for Haunting Houses. The writer guaranteed the truth of his statement, and even gave the name of the Yorks.h.i.+re manor-house in which the affair took place. The article and the discussion to which it gave rise agitated me a good deal, and I consulted Pettigrew about the advisability of clearing up the mystery.

The writer wrote that he "distinctly saw his arm pa.s.s through the apparition and come out at the other side," and indeed I still remember his saying so next morning. He had a scared face, but I had presence of mind to continue eating my rolls and marmalade as if my brier had nothing to do with the miraculous affair.

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Seeing that he made a "paper" of it, I suppose he is justified in touching up the incidental details. He says, for instance, that we were told the story of the ghost which is said to haunt the house, just before going to bed. As far as I remember, it was only mentioned at luncheon, and then sceptically. Instead of there being snow falling outside and an eerie wind wailing through the skeleton trees, the night was still and muggy. Lastly, I did not know, until the journal reached my hands, that he was put into the room known as the Haunted Chamber, nor that in that room the fire is noted for casting weird shadows upon the walls. This, however, may be so. The legend of the manor-house ghost he tells precisely as it is known to me. The tragedy dates back to the time of Charles I., and is led up to by a pathetic love-story, which I need not give. Suffice it that for seven days and nights the old steward had been anxiously awaiting the return of his young master and mistress from their honeymoon. On Christmas eve, after he had gone to bed, there was a great clanging of the door-bell. Flinging on a dressing-gown, he hastened downstairs. According to the story, a number of servants watched him, and saw by the light of his candle that his face was an ashy white. He took off the chains of the door, unbolted it, and pulled it open. What he saw no human being knows; but it must have been something awful, for, without a cry, the old steward fell dead in the hall. Perhaps the strangest part of the story is this: that the shadow of a burly man, holding a pistol in his hand, entered by the open door, stepped over the steward's body, and, gliding up the stairs, disappeared, no one could say where. Such is the legend. I shall not tell the many ingenious explanations of it that have been offered.

Every Christmas eve, however, the silent scene is said to be gone through again; and tradition declares that no person lives for twelve months at whom the ghostly intruder points his pistol.

On Christmas Day the gentleman who tells the tale in a scientific journal created some sensation at the breakfast-table by solemnly a.s.serting that he had seen the ghost. Most of the men present scouted his story, which may be condensed into a few words. He had retired to his bedroom at a fairly early hour, and as he opened the door his candle-light was blown out. He tried to get a light from the fire, but it was too low, and eventually he went to bed in the semi-darkness. He was wakened--he did not know at what hour--by the clanging of a bell.

He sat up in bed, and the ghost-story came in a rush to his mind. His fire was dead, and the room was consequently dark; yet by and by he knew, though he heard no sound, that his door had opened. He cried out, "Who is that?" but got no answer. By an effort he jumped up and went to the door, which was ajar. His bedroom was on the first floor, and looking up the stairs he could see nothing. He felt a cold sensation at his heart, however, when he looked the other way. Going slowly and without a sound down the stairs, was an old man in a dressing-gown. He carried a candle. From the top of the stairs only part of the hall is visible, but as the apparition disappeared the watcher had the courage to go down a few steps after him. At first nothing was to be seen, for the candle-light had vanished. A dim light, however, entered by the long, narrow windows which flank the hall door, and after a moment the on-looker could see that the hall was empty. He was marvelling at this sudden disappearance of the steward, when, to his horror, he saw a body fall upon the hall floor within a few feet of the door. The watcher cannot say whether he cried out, nor how long he stood there trembling.

He came to himself with a start as he realized that something was coming up the stairs. Fear prevented his taking flight, and in a moment the thing was at his side. Then he saw indistinctly that it was not the figure he had seen descend. He saw a younger man, in a heavy overcoat, but with no hat on his head. He wore on his face a look of extravagant triumph. The guest boldly put out his hand toward the figure. To his amazement his arm went through it. The ghost paused for a moment and looked behind it. It was then the watcher realized that it carried a pistol in its right hand. He was by this time in a highly strung condition, and he stood trembling lest the pistol should be pointed at him. The apparition, however, rapidly glided up the stairs and was soon lost to sight. Such are the main facts of the story, none of which I contradicted at the time.

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I cannot say absolutely that I can clear up this mystery, but my suspicions are confirmed by a good deal of circ.u.mstantial evidence. This will not be understood unless I explain my strange infirmity. Wherever I went I used to be troubled with a presentiment that I had left my pipe behind. Often, even at the dinner-table, I paused in the middle of a sentence as if stricken with sudden pain. Then my hand went down to my pocket. Sometimes even after I felt my pipe, I had a conviction that it was stopped, and only by a desperate effort did I keep myself from producing it and blowing down it. I distinctly remember once dreaming three nights in succession that I was on the Scotch express without it.