CHAPTER I.
"I LOVE
Rhododendron Flowers," O'Brien Benjudah said,
looking defiantly at his stepfather.
"Why did I marry your mother, and bring you into my
family?" was the only reply, delivered in the low, icy tones that
had procured the speaker much hate and more esteem.
"Why! Tell me, my stepfather; was it leap year when
your troth was plighted? Tell me, most pleonastic trifler!" was
the scornful rejoinder.
"The pen is mightier than the sword," his stepfather
sneered.
"Stay, touch me not; insert the pen but one-thousandth part
of an inch in my arm, and I scream for help."
Mr. Apothem smiled bitterly.
"Ill blows the wind that profits nobody."
His stepson turned upon his father, his magnificent face
glowing with the erubescent flame of a maddened soul, and thus
spoke:
"Once and for all time, I tell you that I defy you. Do your
worst."
"I shall not take upon myself so much responsibility and
trouble."
"You refuse?"
"A prolongation of this turbid interview? I do."
Mr. Apothem moved towards the door, and, holding the
handle in his hand, said:
"O'Brien Benjudah, you disgust me. Your kaleidoscopic
changes are too much for my attenuated mind. Born a Jew —
deny it not, your name betrays you — you were received into the
Christian Church at the age of one month; when you were ten
years old you became a Calvinistic Methodist; fifteen found you
a Roman Catholic priest; your twentieth Christmas beheld an
Agnostic, your twenty-first a Buddhist; and now, at twenty-two,
you are a clergyman of the Church of England, and engaged to
be married."
"It is true," he said brokenly. "It is true."
"Do you contemplate another change?" was the question,
biting as the winter blast.
There was no answer. O'Brien was thinking.
"To thine own self be true, and —–"
"No more," the victim shrieked.
The door closed on Mr. Apothem.
CHAPTER II.
A FACE
of surpassing delicacy, a form of rarest loveliness, were
the dowry of Rhododendron Flowers.
Her father having been, by Fate's adverse decree, relegated
to the comparative obscurity of a gamekeeper's lodge, was without
ambition on thirty-eight shillings a week, "all found." Her
mother, who took in washing when she could get it — and her
customers very frequently — deprecated the methods and ends
of the Blue Ribbon Army.
Rhodo was but a gamekeeper's daughter, yet she was
endowed by nature with the attributes expectable in a scion
of a noble race. She was well educated, for had not O'Brien
taught her the elements of astronomy, and initiated her into the
mysteries of esoteric Buddhism? She was refined; yes,
despite her horribly mundane surroundings, her mind was
beautiful.
Her lover, O'Brien, was the stepson of her father's
employer — a harsh, cold, intellectual man with gray hair and
steely eyes.
She loved him not, but O'Brien, the member of an ancient
race, whose faith he had forsworn, she worshipped.
CHAPTER III.
A GLORIOUS
summer evening it was when Mr. Apothem walked
down to the gamekeeper's lodge.
"Is your daughter within?" he inquired of Mrs. Flowers.
The lady dropped the pewter, into the composition of whose
contents she was making minute investigation, and said —
"Yes."
A simple word, and simply said.
She called to her daughter, and Rhodo, without stopping
to change her dress, slipped a gossamer silk shawl over her
shoulders and came out.
"My new dress has not arrived," she blushingly explained,
looking disdainfully at her spotless muslin gown.
"There is no new thing under the sun," Mr. Apothem said,
not unkindly.
She mutely assented.
"You love my son?"
She blushed.
"Know you not that he loves another?" he asked, emphatic
in his erotetic brutality.
"It is false."
He laughed harshly.
"Many waters cannot quench love, but the Binomial
Theorem can."
"Have mercy upon me!" And staring wildly at her
oppressor, she fell to the ground in a fit.
At that moment O'Brien rushed up to where she lay.
"Scoundrel, villain, what have you done to her?" he cried.
"I told her what you have never suspected; she does not
understand the Binomial Theorem."
With a loud cry, he buried his face in his hands, and
disappeared in the recesses of the wood.
"Man wants but little, nor that little long." And so saying
Mr. Apothem kindled a fusee and revivified the swooning
girl.
CHAPTER IV.
"SOME
are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have
greatness thrust upon them."
Thus mused Mr. Apothein, as he paced up and down with
reckless monotonous persistency the tesselated floor of his
baronial hall. He contorted his face into a smile, and, little
caring who might overhear him, thought aloud:—
"I was born great, but there it ends. I am an intellectual
creation, the happy resultant of the forces of mind and ethereal
space. I love no one, — not even excepting myself. I have a
political and philosophical creed. I have no religious belief.
O'Brien Benjudah is an enthusiast. He blindly, with the dull
steadfastness of a parasite, worships Rhododendron Flowers,
and is now a wanderer on the face of the earth. I do not
blame him, in fact it was I who awoke him to the gravity of
his position. Who could wed a girl who comprehended not the
niceties of the Binomial Theorem? If the Arian Heresy, the
Differential Calculus, the Newtonian Philosophy, the
Transcendentalism of Kant, or even the Ars Amoris had been the
stumbling block, it could have been borne — but the Theorem!"
He was as profoundly agitated as a professional philosopher
can be, and with a blow of his hand laid three geraniums low,
afterwards resuming his walk.
"Ha, ha," he cried, as a servant appeared, bearing a
brown-enveloped telegram on an elegantly-chased silver salver, "what
is this?"
He opened it. The telegram was dated Constantinople, and
ran:—
"This morning I became a Dancing Dervish. — O'BRIEN
BENJUDAH."
"Ill news is wing'd with fate, and flies apace," the philosopher
muttered, and took out his annotated "Aristotle."
CHAPTER V.
THE
scene was the Temple of the Dancing Dervishes at
Constantinople. The sacred edifice was thronged with
spectators, and behind the lattice-work sat rows of dark-eyed Eastern
beauties. The Dervishes had been, as is their wont, for half an
hour or more, slowly gyrating to the music of a wheezy pipe and
muffled drum, above whose din the voice of the chanter could be
piercingly heard praising Allah and his prophet, Mahomet.
At last he ceased, and emitting a loud cry, made three low
reverences, and wept exceeding bitterly.
He was thinking of home and the Binomial Theorem, for
O'Brien Benjudah was the chanter. "I can never marry her now,
my Religion, as well as the Theorem, parts us. But I love her,
although she is afflicted with lowly origin and bibulous parents."
Anything for her.
That night he resigned his office, and started for England
by the next train.
CHAPTER VI.
THE
young Marquis had ordered no less than £120,000 worth of
flowers wherewith to deck his voluptuous palace. Heavily-laden
carts had for some days been arriving at the tradesmen's
entrance; the local shopkeepers were paralysed by the thought
of cent. per cent. profits; and all because Mr. Apothem had
forced the lovely Rhododendron to accept the hand and heart
of the Marquis of Park Street.
A royal home was being prepared for the bride he had
wooed and won in the green meadows around the mighty pile,
"Hide-and-Seek" Castle, whose pediments, stylobates, and
architraves signified modernity and magnificence. To-morrow
he was to wed her.
This was his last night of bachelorhood, and in the silken
folds of a hammock he lounged, dilating on his future happiness.
His friends sat around him, talking little, eating not at all, but
drinking with infinite gusto.
"Friends," he cried, "you know that I am noble, you know
that I am rich, and you must see that I am worthy of the love.
of Rhodo. Be in time, twelve o'clock, St. Peter's, to-morrow."
But, hark! A struggle was heard in the passage, and
speedily the affrighted guests saw an Oriental personage, sword
in hand, rush into the room.
"Benjudah!" the young Marquis shrieked.
"The same, you caitiff!" was the fierce answer.
"What will you with me?"
"Your life, or your fiancée."
"Then take the latter," and with imperturbable good humour
and a truly wonderful sang froid, he took a diamond cluster ring
off his finger, and presented it to his rival.
"Take it, her, and happiness."
O'Brien Benjudah kissed the hand that gave it, and left
the house.
CHAPTER VII.
A SULTRY
summer day was drawing to its close, the sun's
burning blighting beams rendered all nature sluggish, dreamy
and listless. The wind stirred not the lazily lying leaves; a
glorious, almost tropical day, a fitting day to woo and win.
In the parched cornfield, two human souls were
communing together, and feeding on each other's strength.
The man was speaking.
"Confess, I pray you, round-cheeked daughter of the gods,
that although a raging fire has consumed me — or rather
attempted to do so — since the day I first met you, I have never
so far forgotten myself as to make love to you."
"You are, as usual, right," the girl replied, meekly.
"Your commendation pleases me much, fair Rhodo; and I
will proceed to put a proposal of
marriage before you."
"The Theorem difficulty having been surmounted, the trifling
difference in religious belief put aside, the disparity in our positions
disregarded, I venture to suggest that in the interests of
humanity it would be desirable that we should marry."
She blushed faintly.
"As you will."
"But there is one topic I desire to discuss with you: the
Marquis of Park Street. Did you ever regard him with
affection?"
"Never, I swear it," she said, indignantly.
"That is very satisfactory."
"I understand you have no fortune."
"I have not."
"Again, good. I have enough for both of us."
"Yes, dear!"
"Rhodo, you may kiss me."
She smiled, and upturning her fresh young face to his rugged
features, with love pouring from out her eyes, she touched his
lips so imperceptibly, so chastely, that passion was awed into
self-regarding absence.
"Thank you, dear."
And thus their long courtship was begun and ended.
CHAPTER VIII.
"PRIDE
goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before
a fall."
"You cannot marry her, O'Brien."
"You are unpleasantly cruel, stepfather."
"I deny it."
"Your reason, most puissant ascendant by marriage?"
"You cannot marry her, I repeat."
"The reason?"
"Her great-grandfather held views antagonistic to those
you have adopted on the question of Bi-metallism."
"Alas!"
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. .
With desperation written on his face, O'Brien Benjudah
sought the water's edge, and, divesting himself of his boots,
boldly plunged in.
The water was cold, but he persevered, and in something
under the hour was dead.
"It's a long lane that has no turning," was the only remark
made by Mr. Apothem when tidings of the inauspicious
occurrence were brought to him.
CHAPTER IX.
RHODODENDRON FLOWERS
was taken ill the next day. The
shock was too much for her, and a severe headache racked her.
She refused to be comforted.
CHAPTER X.
THE
marriage-bells were pealing out a gladsome strain, when
down the aisle of St. Peter's walked the Marquis of Park Street
and his bride.
"Sweetest Rhododendron," whispered the Young Marquis,
"have you got the diamonds safe?"
"My lord, I have."
"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," said Mr. Apothem,
who had witnessed the scene.
GEORGE D'ISRAELI-MEREDITH-WARD-NEMO.
(THE END)
