The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
into the seat with a curse, and stared dismally at the two or three
drops of moisture on the apron.
He shuddered.
"Well! I suppose I shall be the first. _Phew_! Anyhow, I shall be a
Martyr. That's something. But it is a filthy death, nevertheless. I
wonder if it hurts as much as they say."
Presently a thought occurred to him--he groped between his feet. A
little drop was still in the broken end of the tube, and he drank that
to make sure. It was better to make sure. At any rate, he would not
fail.
Then it dawned upon him that there was no further need to escape the
Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and
got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid
stuff this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to
speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast
awaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic
in his pose. The sense of imminent death gave him a certain dignity.
He greeted his pursuer with a defiant laugh.
"Vive l'Anarchie! You are too late, my friend. I have drunk it. The
cholera is abroad!"
The Bacteriologist from his cab beamed curiously at him through his
spectacles. "You have drunk it! An Anarchist! I see now." He was about
to say something more, and then checked himself. A smile hung in the
corner of his mouth. He opened the apron of his cab as if to descend,
at which the Anarchist waved him a dramatic farewell and strode off
towards Waterloo Bridge, carefully jostling his infected body against
as many people as possible. The Bacteriologist was so preoccupied with
the vision of him that he scarcely manifested the slightest surprise
at the appearance of Minnie upon the pavement with his hat and shoes
and overcoat. "Very good of you to bring my things," he said,
and remained lost in contemplation of the receding figure of the
Anarchist.
"You had better get in," he said, still staring. Minnie felt
absolutely convinced now that he was mad, and directed the cabman home
on her own responsibility. "Put on my shoes? Certainly dear," said
he, as the cab began to turn, and hid the strutting black figure,
now small in the distance, from his eyes. Then suddenly something
grotesque struck him, and he laughed. Then he remarked, "It is really
very serious, though."
"You see, that man came to my house to see me, and he is an Anarchist.
No--don't faint, or I cannot possibly tell you the rest. And I wanted
to astonish him, not knowing he was an Anarchist, and took up a
cultivation of that new species of Bacterium I was telling you of,
that infest, and I think cause, the blue patches upon various monkeys;
and like a fool, I said it was Asiatic cholera. And he ran away with
it to poison the water of London, and he certainly might have made
things look blue for this civilised city. And now he has swallowed it.
Of course, I cannot say what will happen, but you know it turned
that kitten blue, and the three puppies--in patches, and the
sparrow--bright blue. But the bother is, I shall have all the trouble
and expense of preparing some more.
"Put on my coat on this hot day! Why? Because we might meet Mrs
Jabber. My dear, Mrs Jabber is not a draught. But why should I wear a
coat on a hot day because of Mrs--. Oh! _very_ well."
THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID
The buying of orchids always has in it a certain speculative flavour.
You have before you the brown shrivelled lump of tissue, and for
the rest you must trust your judgment, or the auctioneer, or your
good-luck, as your taste may incline. The plant may be moribund or
dead, or it may be just a respectable purchase, fair value for your
money, or perhaps--for the thing has happened again and again--there
slowly unfolds before the delighted eyes of the happy purchaser, day
after day, some new variety, some novel richness, a strange twist
of the labellum, or some subtler colouration or unexpected mimicry.
Pride, beauty, and profit blossom together on one delicate green
spike, and, it may be, even immortality. For the new miracle of Nature
may stand in need of a new specific name, and what so convenient as
that of its discoverer? "Johnsmithia"! There have been worse names.
It was perhaps the hope of some such happy discovery that made
Winter-Wedderburn such a frequent attendant at these sales--that hope,
and also, maybe, the fact that he had nothing else of the slightest
interest to do in the world. He was a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual
man, provided with just enough income to keep off the spur of
necessity, and not enough nervous energy to make him seek any exacting
employments. He might have collected stamps or coins, or translated
Horace, or bound books, or invented new species of diatoms. But, as it
happened, he grew orchids, and had one ambitious little hothouse.
"I have a fancy," he said over his coffee, "that something is going to
happen to me to-day." He spoke--as he moved and thought--slowly.
"Oh, don't say _that_!" said his housekeeper--who was also his remote
cousin. For "something happening" was a euphemism that meant only one
thing to her.
"You misunderstand me. I mean nothing unpleasant ... though what I do
mean I scarcely know.
"To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to sell a
batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and
see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good, unawares.
That may be it."
He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.
"Are these the things collected by that poor young fellow you told me
of the other day?" asked his cousin as she filled his cup.
"Yes," he said, and became meditative over a piece of toast.
"Nothing ever does happen to me," he remarked presently, beginning
to think aloud. "I wonder why? Things enough happen to other people.
There is Harvey. Only the other week; on Monday he picked up sixpence,
on Wednesday his chicks all had the staggers, on Friday his cousin
came home from Australia, and on Saturday he broke his ankle. What a
whirl of excitement!--compared to me."
"I think I would rather be without so much excitement," said his
housekeeper. "It can't be good for you."
"I suppose it's troublesome. Still ... you see, nothing ever happens
to me. When I was a little boy I never had accidents. I never fell in
love as I grew up. Never married.... I wonder how it feels to have
something happen to you, something really remarkable.
"That orchid-collector was only thirty-six--twenty years younger than
myself--when he died. And he had been married twice and divorced once;
he had had malarial fever four times, and once he broke his thigh. He
killed a Malay once, and once he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in
the end he was killed by jungle-leeches. It must have all been
very troublesome, but then it must have been very interesting, you
know--except, perhaps, the leeches."
"I am sure it was not good for him," said the lady, with conviction.
"Perhaps not." And then Wedderburn looked at his watch. "Twenty-three
minutes past eight. I am going up by the quarter to twelve train,
so that there is plenty of time. I think I shall wear my alpaca
jacket--it is quite warm enough--and my grey felt hat and brown shoes.
I suppose--"
He glanced out of the window at the serene sky and sunlit garden, and
then nervously at his cousin's face.
"I think you had better take an umbrella if you are going to London,"
she said in a voice that admitted of no denial. "There's all between
here and the station coming back."
When he returned he was in a state of mild excitement. He had made a
purchase. It was rare that he could make up his mind quickly enough to
buy, but this time he had done so.
"There are Vandas," he said, "and a Dendrobe and some Palaeonophis."
He surveyed his purchases lovingly as he consumed his soup. They were
laid out on the spotless tablecloth before him, and he was telling his
cousin all about them as he slowly meandered through his dinner. It
was his custom to live all his visits to London over again in the
evening for her and his own entertainment.
"I knew something would happen to-day. And I have bought all these.
Some of them--some of them--I feel sure, do you know, that some of
them will be remarkable. I don't know how it is, but I feel just
as sure as if someone had told me that some of these will turn out
remarkable.
"That one"--he pointed to a shrivelled rhizome--"was not identified.
It may be a Palaeonophis--or it may not. It may be a new species,
or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ever
collected."
"I don't like the look of it," said his housekeeper. "It's such an
ugly shape."
"To me it scarcely seems to have a shape."
"I don't like those things that stick out," said his housekeeper.
"It shall be put away in a pot to-morrow."
"It looks," said the housekeeper, "like a spider shamming dead."
Wedderburn smiled and surveyed the root with his head on one side. "It
is certainly not a pretty lump of stuff. But you can never judge of
these things from their dry appearance. It may turn out to be a very
beautiful orchid indeed. How busy I shall be to-morrow! I must see
to-night just exactly what to do with these things, and to-morrow I
shall set to work."
"They found poor Batten lying dead, or dying, in a mangrove swamp--I
forget which," he began again presently, "with one of these very
orchids crushed up under his body. He had been unwell for some days
with some kind of native fever, and I suppose he fainted. These
mangrove swamps are very unwholesome. Every drop of blood, they say,
was taken out of him by the jungle-leeches. It may be that very plant
that cost him his life to obtain."
"I think none the better of it for that."
"Men must work though women may weep," said Wedderburn with profound
gravity.
"Fancy dying away from every comfort in a nasty swamp! Fancy being ill
of fever with nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine--if men were
left to themselves they would live on chlorodyne and quinine--and no
one round you but horrible natives! They say the Andaman islanders are
most disgusting wretches--and, anyhow, they can scarcely make good
nurses, not having the necessary training. And just for people in
England to have orchids!"
"I don't suppose it was comfortable, but some men seem to enjoy that
kind of thing," said Wedderburn. "Anyhow, the natives of his party
were sufficiently civilised to take care of all his collection until
his colleague, who was an ornithologist, came back again from the
interior; though they could not tell the species of the orchid and had
let it wither. And it makes these things more interesting."
"It makes them disgusting. I should be afraid of some of the malaria
clinging to them. And just think, there has been a dead body lying
across that ugly thing! I never thought of that before. There! I
declare I cannot eat another mouthful of dinner."
"I will take them off the table if you like, and put them in the
window-seat. I can see them just as well there."
The next few days he was indeed singularly busy in his steamy little
hothouse, fussing about with charcoal, lumps of teak, moss, and all
the other mysteries of the orchid cultivator. He considered he was
having a wonderfully eventful time. In the evening he would talk about
these new orchids to his friends, and over and over again he reverted
to his expectation of something strange.
Several of the Vandas and the Dendrobium died under his care, but
presently the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was
delighted and took his housekeeper right away from jam-making to see
it at once, directly he made the discovery.
"That is a bud," he said, "and presently there will be a lot of leaves