of a face, is really extraordinary. There is for the cage with the red-hot bars, while the surely no one who can look at the seal in these furnace is represented by an element which, gardens without almost a feeling of regard. however satisfactory in itself, is something of a The expression of its eyes is more intelligent surprise when you have expected a fire-in a and beautiful than that of any other creature-word, the tank is full of water! not excepting the elephant even-in the whole collection; and its action, as it hops along after its keeper and follows him when he leaves its enclosure with its eyes, is quite touching in its helplessness. But it is time to get to the Salamander. The sea-anemones, the discontented-looking fresh-water fish, the little dapper water-fowl, and a hundred other attractive subjects on which to moralise and speculate, must be left undiscussed. There is no time even to inquire why it is that the Polar bear amuses himself by walking backwards, and waving his head from side to side as he looks up to the sky. There is no time to notice the little shy agouti who runs out of his hole as you approach his cage, and hastens down his little front garden to see who you are, and who, finding you are not the man he expected, trots back again as fast as he came out. There is no time for anything but the Salamander and the whale headed storks. And first, the Salamander. What does the world expect a Salamander to be like? What did your Eye-witness anticipate when he hurried off to inspect this creature? Did he imagine that he should find an enormous furnace roaring and blazing in a cage of red-hot bars, and that, standing aloof from this, and peering into the hottest and most central portion of the flame, he would there behold an enormous Red Monster distantly resembling the griffin of heraldry lifting its spined and batlike wings, and flapping them in burning joy over its head? If perfect candour is to characterise the communications of the E.-W., he must own that there was some such thing in his thoughts. The vile ancients are to blame for this. They have described a creature "that is bred from heat, that lives in the flames, and feeds upon fire as its proper nourishment. As they saw every other element, the air, the earth, and the water, inhabited, fancy was set to work to find or make an inhabitant in fire, and thus to people every part of nature." Those wretched ancients! As if an element could be inhabited that is only occasionally existent. What becomes of the animal whose natural element is fire, when the fire is extinguished. Does a new Salamander spring into existence every time a fire is lighted, and what becomes of the familiar Salamander of your Eye-witness when Thirza, the housemaid, lets his bedroom fire out. These same ancients (whom, by-the-by, everything proves to have been arrant liars) have called the Salamander "the daughter of fire, giving it, however, a body of ice." This was the Salamander of the ancients, of the classics, and (if the truth must be told), of the Eye-wit It is full also of eels: of little eels and trumpery minnows, or small gudgeons, which are swimming about, apparently in discomfort, for they keep very near the surface, and some of them are turning up their little white stomachs in the agonies of death. This was all that your servant saw, except that in the darkest corner of the tank, and under a ledge, there appeared to be a sort of eft, or lizard, of enormous size, brown, bloated, and hideous. Your Eye-witness was on the point of deserting the tank, as a thing which did not concern him, when the words " Gigantic Salamander," at the head of a printed paper affixed to it, arrested his attention, and caused him once more to examine the contents of the cistern with still greater scrutiny. Unable to make out anything more than he had seen at first, your servant was coming to the conclusion that the Salamander had blazed himself out of the gardens altogether, leaving his descriptive notice behind him, when a sudden thought struck him, and struck him so hard that it almost took his breath away. "Perhaps it's the eft ?" said the Eye-witness. The Everything went to prove it was so. fact that the animal was in the water when it ought to have been in the fire; that it had secreted itself, as every exhibited animal does, in the most inscrutable part of its den; that it refused to give any token of life whatever; that it was in no respect what it was expected to be-all these things were convincing proofs that the bloated and abhorrent eft was what the printed paper announced as the Gigantic Salamander, the Sieboldia maxima of Japan. "This animal," the descriptive notice goes on to say, "is the largest specimen of the true amphibious known to exist. . . . It is the nearest living analogue of the fossil salamander of the tertiary fresh-water formation of Eningen, described by Scheuchzer as a fossil man (Homo diluvii testis), and since called Andreas Scheuchzeri." Against the earlier and more scientific portion of this description, your servant has nothing to say. He has no objection to make to the announcement that this noisome animal is of "the tertiary fresh-water formation of Eningen," because he has not the remotest idea what that is. To all this sort of thing he is ready to agree; but against the notion of the "fossil man" as a term under any circumstances applicable to this huge and bloated eft, he desires to take instant and indignant exception. The fossil man of our Andrew is a creature about two feet in its extreme length from the end of its most appalling snout to the extremity of its hideous tail. It is a crawling dragon; Let us turn from it to the Salamander of the an exaggerated eft; a pestiferous and appalnineteenth century, and of the Zoological Gar-ling lizard; a soft and dwarfish crocodile. dens. A tank in a dark corner is substituted What is it not, that is unclean and fearful? ness. 144 From end to end it is covered, and on its huge and flattened head especially, with blotchy manginess of a diseased and mouldy order. And this is your notion, Andrew, of a fossil man, is it? Oh, Andrew, Andrew! He has read its label. He has gazed through the bars, and studied minutely every fibre of the neatly arranged straw in one corner of the den, but that is all. A heap of straw, or a blanket, or an empty cage, with what you take at first to be a larger pebble than usual in the sand, but which turns out to be the animal you are in search of so accustomed, that when he came to the abode of the whale-headed storks, or baleniceps, he was noway surprised to see simply an inner cage entirely concealed behind a straw blind, and nothing else. But this Salamander is the culminating point of all delusions, and of none more obviously than that which the Zoological Society seems-these are gratifications to which your servant is to have entertained with regard to its appetite. In their hospitality towards the stranger, this body has filled his tank with little fishes, even to overflowing, yet we read in Goldsmith of a specimen of this tribe which lived eight months without taking any nourishment whatever. "Indeed," the writer adds, "as many of this kind are torpid, or nearly so, during the winter, the loss of their appetite for so long a time is the less surprising." There never was a worse shot made than attributing any fiery properties to the Salamander. It appears to be one of the dampest and if the expression is allowable-sloppiest animals that exist. Salamanders," says Buffon, are fond of cold, damp places, thick shades, tufted woods, or high mountains, and the banks of streams that run through meadows. . . . it is commonly only when rain is about to fall that it comes forth from its secret asylum, as if by a kind of necessity to bathe itself, and to imbibe an element to which it is analogous. The moderns," Buffon continues, "have followed the ridiculous tales of the ancients, and as it is difficult to stop when once the bounds of probability are passed, some have gone so far as to think that the most violent fire could be extinguished by the land Salamander. Quacks sold this small lizard, affirming that if thrown into the greatest conflagration it would check its progress." The unhappy beast, too, has been in this respect the subject of many experiments, and because when it was thrown into the fire it was sure to burst and to eject its natural fluid in doing so, the Philosophical Transactions-with whose compilers we would rather, by-the-by, after this specimen, have philosophical transactions than business ones-tell us that this is the method taken by the animal to extinguish the flames. So much for the Salamander, the largest and ugliest lizard that ever was seen; and in that capacity, and as a zoological curiosity, well worth going to see. Your Eye-witness is always prepared for a heap of straw or a blanket-and nothing else-when there is any new animal at the Zoological Gardens about which public curiosity is much excited. Has anybody ever seen the apteryx? Your servant has friends who declare that they have examined this creature carefully, and who will go into particulars in their description of it. But are these friends to be trusted? Your Eye-witness owns at once that he has never seen this extraordinary wingless bird. He has frequently seen its cage. This is as it should be," said your E.-W., when a friendly-looking keeper, coming up with a bunch of keys in his hand, and seeing your servant staring through the bars, asked him if he would like to go in and have a look at them. With the exception of Livermore, who is always sick, and Chopfall, whose wife's mother lives in the house with him, the two birds which your Eye-witness discovered when he peeped behind the straw blind were the most melancholy living creatures he has ever beheld. Weak in the legs-the limbs of one of the two specimens had doubled up under him like elbows, or knees turned the wrong way-over-weighted in the bill, bald in the head, small and despairing in the eye, and shut in behind an eclipse of straw, the whale-headed stork is far from an exhilarating subject of contemplation. The keeper who showed them, sighed as he did so, and said " they had not been there long," as an excuse for their depression. But why whale-headed? Here is another fraud upon the public. Are whales possessed of enormous bills that weigh them down, and Have whales pull them forward to the earth? bald, flesh-coloured, fluffy heads? If such be the characteristics of whales, then has your servant been all his life deluded by wicked picturebooks, which have represented the whale without any of these remarkable and interesting features. Your Eye-witness gazed long, and with affectionate sympathy, at the two birds on whose privacy he had intruded. They were too melancholy to take the slightest notice of him. The specimen which had sunk down on its elbows was lost in astonished contemplation of its companion who still managed to keep erect: a circumstance which really did seem, considering its legs, and their obvious readiness to double up, no less creditable than surprising. They seem a little dull," said your Eyewitness, as he took his leave. "You see, sir," said the man once more, sighing heavily as he spoke-"you sec, sir, they've only just come." The Ninth Journey of THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, A SERIES OF OCCASIONAL JOURNEYS, The right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors. Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by C. WHITING, Beaufort House, Strand ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. N°. 57.] SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1860. [PRICE 2d. I OPEN a new page. I advance my narrative by one week. The history of the interval which I thus pass over must remain unrecorded. My heart turns faint, my mind sinks in darkness and confusion when I think of it. This must not be, if I, who write, am to guide, as I ought, you who read. This must not be, if the clue that leads through the windings of the Story is to remain, from end to end, untangled in my hands. A life suddenly changed-its whole purpose created afresh; its hopes and fears, its struggles, its interests, and its sacrifices, all turned at once and for ever into a new direction-this is the prospect which now opens before me, like the burst of view from a mountain's top. I left my narrative in the quiet shadow of Limmeridge church: I resume it, one week later, in the stir and turmoil of a London street. The street is in a populous and a poor neighbourhood. The ground floor of one of the houses in it is occupied by a small newsvendor's shop; and the first floor and the second are let as furnished lodgings of the humblest kind. I have taken those two floors, in an assumed name. On the upper floor I live, with a room to work in, a room to sleep in. On the lower floor, under the same assumed name, two women live, who are described as my sisters. I get my bread by drawing and engraving on wood for the cheap periodicals. My sisters are supposed to help me by taking in a little needlework. Our poor place of abode, our humble calling, our assumed relationship, and our assumed name, are all used alike as a means of hiding us in the house-forest of London. We are numbered no longer with the people whose lives are open and known. I am an obscure, unnoticed man, without patron or friend to help me. Marian Halcombe is nothing now, but my eldest sister, who provides for our household wants by the toil of her own hands. We two are at once the dupes and the agents of a daring imposture. We are the accomplices of mad Anne Catherick, who claims the name, the place, and the living personality of dead Lady Glyde. That is our situation. That is the changed aspect in which we three must appear, henceforth, in this narrative, for many and many a page to come. In the eye of reason and of law, in the estimation of relatives and friends, according to every received formality of civilised society, Laura, Lady Glyde," lay buried with her mother in Limmeridge churchyard. Torn in her own lifetime from the list of the living, the daughter of Philip Fairlie and the wife of Percival Glyde, might still exist for her sister, might still exist for me, but to all the world besides she was dead. Dead to her uncle who had renounced her; dead to the servants of the house, who had failed to recognise her; dead to the persons in authority who had transmitted her fortune to her husband and her aunt; dead to my mother and my sister, who believed me to be the dupe of an adventuress and the victim of a fraud; socially, morally, legally-dead. And yet alive! Alive in poverty and in hiding. Alive, with the poor drawing-master to fight her battle, and to win the way back for her to her place in the world of living beings. Did no suspicion, excited by my own knowledge of Anne Catherick's resemblance to her, cross my mind, when her face was first revealed to me? Not the shadow of a suspicion, from the moment when she lifted the veil by the side of the inscription which recorded her death. Before the sun of that day had set, before the last glimpse of the home which was closed against her had passed from our view, the farewell words I spoke, when we parted at Limmeridge House, had been recalled by both of us; repeated by me, recognised by her. "If ever the time comes, when the devotion of my whole heart and soul and strength will give you a moment's happiness, or spare you a moment's sorrow, will you try to remember the poor drawing-master who has taught you?" She, who now remembered so little of the trouble and the terror of a later time, remembered those words, and laid her poor head innocently and trustingly on the bosom of the man who had spoken them. In that moment, when she called me by my name, when she said, "They have tried to make me forget everything, Walter; but I remember Marian, and I remember you"-in that moment, I who had long since given her my love, gave her my life, and thanked God that it was mine to bestow on her. Yes! the time had come. From thousands on thousands of miles away; VOL. III. 57 through forest and wilderness, where com- keeper. They parted there; Mrs. Michelson panions stronger than I had fallen by my side; previously informing Miss Halcombe of her through peril of death thrice renewed, and thrice address, in case they might wish to communicate escaped, the Hand that leads men on the dark at a future period. road to the future, had led me to meet that time. Forlorn and disowned, sorely tried and sadly changed; her beauty faded, her mind clouded; robbed of her station in the world, of her place among living creatures, the devotion I had promised, the devotion of my whole heart and soul and strength might be laid blamelessly, now, at those dear feet. In the right of her calamity, in the right of her friendlessness, she was mine at last! Mine to support, to protect, to cherish, to restore. Mine to love and honour as father and brother both. Mine to vindicate through all risks and all sacrifices-through the hopeless struggle against Rank and Power, through the long fight with armed Deceit and fortified Success, through the waste of my reputation, through the loss of my friends, through the hazard of my life. II. My position is defined; my motives are acknowledged. The story of Marian and the story of Laura must come next. On parting with the housekeeper, Miss Halcombe went at once to the office of Messrs Gilmore and Kyrle, to consult with the latter gentleman, in Mr. Gilmore's absence. She mentioned to Mr. Kyrle, what she had thought it desirable to conceal from everyone else (Mrs. Michelson included)—her suspicion of the circumstances under which Lady Glyde was said to have met her death. Mr. Kyrle, who had previously given friendly proof of his anxiety to serve Miss Halcombe, at once undertook to make such inquiries as the delicate and dangerous nature of the investigation proposed to him would permit. To exhaust this part of the subject before going farther, it may be here mentioned that Count Fosco offered every facility to Mr. Kyrle, on that gentleman's stating that he was sent by Miss Halcombe to collect such particulars as had not yet reached her of Lady Glyde's decease. Mr. Kyrle was placed in communication with the medical man, Mr. Goodricke, and with the two servants. In the absence of any means of ascertaining the exact date of Lady Glyde's departure from Blackwater Park, the result of the doctor's and the servants' evidence, and of the volunteered statements of Count Fosco and his wife, was conclusive to the mind of Mr. Kyrle. He could only assume that the intensity of Miss Halcombe's suffering under the loss of her The story of Marian begins, where the narra-sister, had misled her judgment in a most deplortive of the housekeeper at Blackwater Park I shall relate both narratives, not in the words (often interrupted, often inevitably confused) of the speakers themselves, but in the words of the brief, plain, studiously simple abstract which I committed to writing for my own guidance, and for the guidance of my legal adviser. So the tangled web will be most speedily and most intelligibly unrolled. left off. On Lady Glyde's departure from her husband's house, the fact of that departure, and the necessary statement of the circumstances under which it had taken place, were communicated to Miss Halcombe by the housekeeper. It was not till some days afterwards (how many days exactly, Mrs. Michelson, in the absence of any written memorandum on the subject, could not undertake to say) that a letter arrived from Madame Fosco announcing Lady Glyde's sudden death in Count Fosco's house. The letter avoided mentioning dates, and left it to Mrs. Michelson's discretion to break the news at once to Miss Halcombe, or to defer doing so until that lady's health should be more firmly established. Having consulted Mr. Dawson (who had been himself delayed, by ill health, in resuming his attendance at Blackwater Park), Mrs. Michelson, by the doctor's advice and in the doctor's presence, communicated the news, either on the day when the letter was received, or on the day after. It is not necessary to dwell here upon the effect which the intelligence of Lady Glyde's sudden death produced on her sister. It is only useful to the present purpose to say that she was not able to travel for more than three weeks afterwards. At the end of that time she proceeded to London, accompanied by the house able manner; and he wrote her word that the shocking suspicion to which she had alluded in his presence, was, in his opinion, destitute of the smallest fragment of foundation in truth. Thus the investigation by Mr. Gilmore's partner began and ended. Meanwhile, Miss Halcombe had returned to Limmeridge House; and had there collected all the additional information which she was able to obtain. Mr. Fairlie had received his first intimation of his niece's death from his sister, Madame Fosco; this letter also not containing any exact reference to dates. He had sanctioned his sister's proposal that the deceased lady should be laid in her mother's grave in Limmeridge churchyard. Count Fosco had accompanied the remains to Cumberland, and had attended the funeral at Limmeridge, which took place on the 2nd of August. It was followed, as a mark of respect, by all the inhabitants of the village and the neighbourhood. On the next day, the inscription (originally drawn out, it was said, by the aunt of the deceased lady, and submitted for approval to her brother, Mr. Fairlie) was engraved on one side of the monument over the tomb. On the day of the funeral, and for one day after it, Count Fosco had been received as a guest at Limmeridge House; but no interview had taken place between Mr. Fairlie and himself, by the former gentleman's desire. They had communicated by writing; and, through ings of its inmates, to be privately watched. this medium, Count Fosco had made Mr. Fairlie Nothing doubtful was discovered. The same acquainted with the details of his niece's last result attended the next investigations, which illness and death. The letter presenting this were secretly instituted on the subject of Mrs. information added no new facts to the facts Rubelle. She had arrived in London, about six already known; but one very remarkable para- months before, with her husband. They had come graph was contained in the postscript. It re- from Lyons; and they had taken a house in the ferred to the woman Anne Catherick. neighbourhood of Leicester-square, to be fitted up as a boarding-house for foreigners, who were expected to visit England in large numbers to see the Exhibition of 1851. Nothing was known against husband or wife, in the neighbourhood. They were quiet people; and they had paid their way honestly up to the present time. The final inquiries related to Sir Percival Glyde. He was settled in Paris; and living there quietly in a small circle of English and French friends. The substance of the paragraph in question was as follows: It first informed Mr. Fairlie that Anne Catherick (of whom he might hear full particulars from Miss Halcombe when she reached Limmeridge) had been traced and recovered in the neighbourhood of Blackwater Park, and had been, for the second time, placed under the charge of the medical man from whose custody she had once escaped. Foiled at all points, but still not able to rest, Miss Halcombe next determined to visit the Asylum in which Anne Catherick was for the second time confined. She had felt a strong curiosity about the woman in former days; and she was now doubly interested-first, in ascertaining whether the report of Anne Catherick's attempted personation of Lady Glyde was true; and, secondly (if it proved to be true), in discovering for herself what the poor creature's real motives were for attempting the deceit. This was the first part of the postscript. The second part warned Mr. Fairlie that Anne Catherick's mental malady had been aggravated by her long freedom from control; and that the insane hatred and distrust of Sir Percival Glyde, which had been one of her most marked delusions in former times, still existed, under a newly-acquired form. The unfortunate woman's last idea in connexion with Sir Percival, was the idea of annoying and distressing him, and of elevating herself, as she supposed, in the esti- Although Count Fosco's letter to Mr. Fairlie mation of the patients and nurses, by assuming did not mention the address of the Asylum, that the character of his deceased wife; the scheme important omission cast no difficulties in Miss of this personation having evidently occurred to Halcombe's way. When Mr. Hartright had met her, after a stolen interview which she had suc- Anne Catherick at Limmeridge, she had inceeded in obtaining with Lady Glyde, and at formed him of the locality in which the house which she had observed the extraordinary acci- was situated; and Miss Halcombe had noted dental likeness between the deceased lady and down the direction in her diary, with all the herself. It was to the last degree improbable other particulars of the interview, exactly as she that she would succeed a second time in escap-heard them from Mr. Hartright's own lips. Acing from the Asylum; but it was just possible she might find some means of annoying the late Lady Glyde's relatives with letters; and, in that case, Mr. Fairlie was warned beforehand how to receive them. The postscript, expressed in these terms, was shown to Miss Halcombe, when she arrived at Limmeridge. There were also placed in her possession the clothes Lady Glyde had worn, and the other effects she had brought with her to her aunt's house. They had been carefully collected and sent to Cumberland by Madame Fosco. cordingly, she looked back at the entry, and extracted the address; furnished herself with the Count's letter to Mr. Fairlie, as a species of credential which might be useful to her; and started by herself for the Asylum, on the eleventh of October. She passed the night of the eleventh in London. It had been her intention to sleep at the house inhabited by Lady Glyde's old governess; but Mrs. Vesey's agitation at the sight of her lost pupil's nearest and dearest friend was so distressing, that Miss Halcombe considerately refrained from remaining in her presence, and removed to a respectable boarding-house in the neighbourhood, recommended by Mrs. Vesey's married sister. The next day, she proceeded to the Asylum, which was situated, not far from London, on the northern side of the metropolis. Such was the posture of affairs when Miss Halcombe reached Limmeridge, in the early part of September. Shortly afterwards, she was confined to her room by a relapse; her weakened physical energies giving way under the severe mental affliction from which she She was immediately admitted to see the prowas now suffering. On getting stronger prietor. At first, he appeared to be decidedly unagain, in a month's time, her suspicion of the willing to let her communicate with his patient. circumstances described as attending her sis- But, on her showing him the postscript to Count ter's death, still remained unshaken. She had Fosco's letter-on her reminding him that she heard nothing, in the interim, of Sir Percival was the "Miss Halcombe" there referred to; Glyde; but letters had reached her from Madame that she was a near relative of the deceased Lady Fosco, making the most affectionate inquiries on Glyde; and that she was therefore naturally inthe part of her husband and herself. Instead of terested, for family reasons, in observing for heranswering these letters, Miss Halcombe caused self the extent of Anne Catherick's delusion, in the house in St. John's Wood, and the proceed-relation to her late sister-the tone and manner |