The Fabulists Mills & Boon's Spring Novels
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1^- *tH^r-' V" THORP'S Subscription Xibrar?, 109 & 110, High St, GUILDFORD. A SAN D.EGO II lllllfll lllll lill?IW? |V£», 3 1822 01962 2448 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. ^Date Due >-- J t _b 1 1 Q DEC 4 19 5 CI 39 (2/95) UCSDLt. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/fabulistsOOcapeiala THE FABULISTS MILLS & BOON'S SPRING NOVELS Crown 8vo. 6s. each. THE MUTINY OF THE ELSINORE Jack London ALLWARD E. S. Stevens THE TEMPLE OF DAWN I. A. R. Wylie SPRAY ON THE WINDOWS J. E. Buckrose BIG TREMAINE Marie Van Vorst BEYOND THE SHADOW Joan Sutherland FLOWER OF THE MOON Louise Gerard CLARK'S FIELD Robert Herrick MOYLE CHURCH-TOWN John Trevena OLGA NAZIMOV and other stories W. L. George CHAPMAN'S WARES H. B. Marriott Watson HIGH STAKES Ruth Kauffman WHITE HEAT Pan THE FLAME OF DARING Harold Spender THE HOUSE OF DAFFODILS Louise Mack STRUGGLE (2s. net) Cassels Cobb THE FABULISTS Bernard Capes LONG FURROWS Mrs. Fred Reynolds TWO YOUNG PIGEONS Mrs. H. H. Penrose THE NET OF CIRCUMSTANCE Mr. and Mrs. O. L'Artsau SKIRTS OF STRAW Sophie Cole MR. LYNDON AT LIBERTY Victor Bridges THE FABULISTS BY BERNARD CAPES MILLS & BOON LTD 49 RUPERT STREET LONDON W Published 1915 The bulk of these Utile tales were first printed in " The New Witness." One appeared in " The Queen," one in " The New Weekly." To the Editors of these periodicals, and to the Editors of " Cassell's," " The Pall Mall," and " Hulton's Magazines," who gave first hospitality in their pages to some of the longer stories, the author here makes his best acknowledgments. CONTENTS PAGE Foreword 7 Life : Poem .... 9 Gun Practice 10 The Petroleuse . 15 The Sign of the Cross 20 R.I.P. : Poem 25 A Danse-Macabre . 26 The Marble Hands 30 The Soul of a Bottle 35 The Doctor's Instance 40 The Glass Ball . 45 A Lucky Thrust . 50 - To N. C. C. : Poem 54 Woman . 56 The Queer Picture 60 " " Too too Will in Two 65 " 0, Never a Room," Etc. : Poen ( 71 The Apothecary's Revenge 72 The Footsteps . 77 A Cure for Consumption 82 An Apostolic Catspaw . 87 The White Hare . 92 Deus ex Machina 95 The Operation 100 The Thing in the Forest 105 5 —— G CONTENTS The Gunpowder Ship To Anemones : Poem A Miracle . Joy-Homicide The Last Drop A Match : Poem Sub Specie . The Accident The Lost Panacea v The Lost Child : Poem Strange Disappearances : I. James Wedmore The Dark Compartment The Bloodhound . Uninsured : Poem Strange Disappearances : II. Abel Kent The Blue Dragon Providence . The Broken Window : Poem A Pathetic Expiation The Shadow-Dance A Queer Cicerone Old Harry . The Closed Door Cox's Patent To R. B. C. : Poem The Lady Hope Once Too Often The Van on the Road The Mask Chivalry : Poem FOREWORD During the year that is past (writes Duxbury) a company of four young men essayed a new experi- ment, but on old lines, in the way of itinerant enter- tainment. They went from village to village telling short stories. They were all men of substance, ingenious, inventive and, withal, true patriots, their object being to revitalise gratuitously the litera- ture of the wayside, and reclaim to the wandering Fabulist his romantic prerogatives, long lost to him through the mechanic production and perpetuation of what of its nature should be as ephemeral as a tale told by a bird in a pause of the wind. Each member of the party was equipped, for his sole baggage, with a lightly-furnished knapsack and a camp-stool. One carried a guitar in addition. They all wore efficient waterproof suits and soft hats of an impermeable material. When they reached a village, they would seat themselves on their camp-stools on the green, or in some be- " fitting leafy spot, and call upon the " Guitar to charm about them, with his melodious " Ducdame," the first circle of an audience. That purpose accomplished, each would then rise in turn to tell his story. 7 ; 8 FOREWORD The names of the little company were Raven, Duxbury, Scarrott, and Heriot, who sang. A selection from their pieces is here given. They stand for the most part as written to be delivered though, in actual process of delivery, policy had occasionally to counsel the simplifying of a phrase or the omission of an obscure passage. The majority of the sketches are of the briefest description but a few of greater length, designed for weather- bound occasions in bar parlours, or about the post- prandial fire in commercial rooms, are added for ballast. Duxbury is responsible for the choice, throughout. — ; LIFE Heriot Sings. Venture and rise, venture and fall Round on the spindle comes the ball. Life is a game of Rouge et Noir We may chance to win whatever are we ; We may chance to win, we may chance to lose, Be praised for a swan or plucked for a goose. is Life a game of Rouge et Noir ; Nothing depends upon what we are, Worthy a noose, Worthy a star. The man who has luck is the man to choose, And he alone shall be god in the car. GUN PRACTICE Duxbury Speaks. Picture to yourself a waste of troubled sea, grey- green as ploughed stubble, and sown all over with white bosses like scattered stones. The wind is southerly and vicious, the sky stoops torn and low. Away there over the long Bill of Portland stretches a tiny streak, whose ashen under-shadows half obscure, half reveal, a populous city of battleships, as unsubstantial in seeming as lightning-charged clouds. But long ago there was one which, de- taching itself from the mists, forged slowly into definite being, and now rests inert, preparing for gun practice, some three miles off the coast of Lulworth where we stand. To the north you can see the target, in charge of an Admiralty tug. Laboriously the little vessel hauls the floating mark to its ground, moors it in position at a range of some 2,000 yards or so, and casts off. You know the moment by the sudden increase in its speed, patent even at this distance. You can see it pitch and roll, wallowing like a porpoise as it tears away, hidden sometimes for seconds, in a manner to bring your heart into your mouth, then emerging, a blink 10 GUN PRACTICE 11 of sunlight firing its copper funnel, so that it looks like a flaring buoy. It is in a flurry to escape. Snap ! As you look, a light winks from the watch- ing monster, and over the stubble-field rise in succession three little puffs of white dust. Not till the third has sprung up does the slam reach your ears, and by then the engulfed shot is wobbling down to its everlasting rest on the ocean floor. All that you can see or imagine ; but what you cannot see or imagine is the tragedy that has occurred between the casting-off from the target and the firing of the first gun. During those hurried minutes a man has fallen overboard, un- noticed, from the tug, and his loss has never been observed until all hope of recovering him from that trackless welter is seen to be a vain thing. The poor fellow has perforce to be abandoned to his fate. Years after I had the story from this man's own lips. He was one of the strangest looking souls I have ever seen, perfectly colourless, and with his skin all over fine crackles like china. He was young, and yet his hair was white. If a child screamed or a boy whistled near him he would involuntarily duck his head. But his manner was quite quiet, and his voice low. " It was blowing stirfish when it happened, with a nasty sea. A gust took me under the oilies as I was bending down and, the tug heeling at that moment, lifted me clean over the side like an 12 THE FABULISTS umbrella. There was one that noticed me with the tail of his eye, and thought it just a tarpaulin flapping. I went down, sir, and the screw thrashed at me, and missed. I had my sea-boots on, and what with them and the oilies I believed I was done. Somehow I came to the top, where I kicked and struggled free of all. But by then, at the rate she was going, and in that wind and sea, the tug was out of hail, even if I'd had a voice to hail her with. I swam after, desperate-like, but she ran away, 20 yards to my one, and it was evident that those aboard hadn't missed me. My God, thought I, it's all over, and I stopped, treading water. Then I looked back and saw the target. With luck I might reach it—and what then ? But it was a chance anyway and my only one. " I wasn't a fanciful man—not then. I reached the target, pretty nigh spent, and clung on to the raft with both hands, gasping to get back my heart. And then suddenly the truth burst upon me. Not that patched triangle of canvas, but I, was the devil's mark for the guns pointing at us a mile and a half away. " In the first shock of the thought I was for scrambling up on the raft, in the hopes that they might see me and stay their hands.