Some Persons Unknown. Hornung Ernest William

Mr. Harwood never knew why.

      In the garden they heard the cry, and sped into the house, and up the stairs and into the room, warm from their game. They opened the door and stood still; for they saw Kenyon as none ever had seen him before, with his face upon his father's shoulder, and a smile there such as Forrester himself had never won.

      A LITERARY COINCIDENCE

      It was twenty-five minutes past eight, and a fine October morning, when Mr. Wolff Mason, the popular novelist and editor of Mayfair, emerged from the dressing-room of his house in Kensington and came downstairs dabbing his chin with his clean pocket-handkerchief. The day had begun badly with the man of letters, whose boast it was that he had shaved for upwards of forty years without cutting himself anything like forty times. He entered the dining-room with a comically rueful expression on his kindly humorous face, and with a twitching behind the spectacles which would have led those who knew him best to prick their ears for one of the delightful things which the novelist was continually saying at his own expense. His face fell, however, when he found no one in the room but the maid who was lighting the wick beneath the plated kettle on the breakfast table.

      "Has Miss Ida not come down yet?"

      "Not that I know of, sir. Shall I go and see?"

      "Oh, never mind, never mind," said the novelist, cursorily examining the letters on his plate, and opening none of them. "Well, upon my word, I don't know what has come over Ida," he added to himself, as he undid the fastenings of the French window which led down iron steps into the little London garden behind the house. "Yesterday morning she ran it pretty fine. The day before she was a good minute late. Of course she may be in time yet, but I do wish I could teach her to be five minutes early for everything, as I am. Ida is worse than either of her sisters in this respect; and she began by being the best of the three."

      Wolff Mason sighed as he thought of his daughters. The two elder ones were married and settled, very comfortably, it is true; but if Ida followed their example, what on earth was to become of her unfortunate father? Who was to typewrite his manuscript, and correct his proofs, and peel the stamps from the enclosed envelopes of the people who wrote for the novelist's autograph? No, he could not do without Ida at any price; and Mr. Mason shook his head as he passed out into the fresh air and down the iron steps into the garden. He did more: he shook his daughters, and all creatures of mere flesh and blood, quite out of his mind.

      For it was Wolff Mason's habit to spend five minutes in the garden, every morning before breakfast, when it was fine; and when it was not, to walk round the breakfast table four-and-twenty times. That filled the five minutes which he always spent in the exclusive company of the characters of his current novel. He had been heard to say that he did his day's work in those five minutes; that at the office, where he worked at his novel all the morning, he had only to sit with his pen in his hand for three hours, and fifteen hundred words of fiction was the inevitable result. That part was purely mechanical, the novelist said. He had really written it in the five minutes before breakfast. It is not generally known, however, how curiously Wolff Mason delighted in humorous depreciation of his own work and methods. One would have liked his critics to hear him on the subject; they took his writings so very much more seriously than he did himself, that they little dreamt how highly their clever elaborate reviews entertained the philosophic object of their censure. It was an open secret that Wolff Mason professed a wholesome and unaffected disregard for posterity and the critics; but if the books that delighted two generations are forgotten by a third, their writer will certainly be remembered as the most charming talker, the kindest-hearted editor, and the most methodical man of letters of his day.

      To method and to habit, indeed, the novelist had been a slave all his literary life. This he admitted quite freely. On the other hand, he argued that as his habits were all good ones in themselves (with the possible exception of that ounce of tobacco which he managed to consume daily), while his methods produced a not wholly unsuccessful result, the slavery suited him very well. Certainly it was good to be five minutes early for everything, and to start most things as the clocks were striking. The dining-room clock struck the half-hour after eight as Mr. Mason re-entered and shut the French window behind him. He had thought out the half-chapter for that day with even more than his customary minute prevision. This was all very good indeed. It was bad, however, that he should find himself now quite alone in the room, with the hot plates and the bacon growing cold, the kettle steaming furiously over the thin blue flame, and no Ida to make the tea.

      Mr. Mason took up his position with an elbow on the mantel-piece and one foot to the fire, and stared solemnly at the clock. It was a worse case than yesterday. Two, three, four minutes passed. Then there was a rustle in the hall; light, quick footsteps ran across the room, and a nervous little hand was laid upon the novelist's shoulder. In another instant he was looking down into great dark eyes filled with the liveliest contrition, and making a mental note of the little black crescents underneath.

      "Dear father, can you forgive me?"

      "I'll try to, my dear, since you look so – penitent."

      He had been about to say "pale." As he kissed the girl's cheek, its pallor was indeed conspicuous. As a rule she had the loveliest colour, which harmonised charmingly with the sweet clear brown of her eyes and hair. Ida Mason was in fact a very beautiful and graceful girl, but lately she had grown thin and quiet, and the salt was gone out of her in many subtle ways which did not escape the spectacles of that trained observer, her father. Mr. Mason glanced over the Times while his tea was being made, and knew all that was in it before his cup was poured out, the bacon on his plate, and the toast-rack set within easy reach of his hand.

      "A singularly dull paper," said he, as he flung it aside and Ida sat down.

      "Yes?"

      "It is absolutely free from news. At this time of year there's more fun in the papers that lend themselves to egregious contributions from the public. I see, however, that Professor Palliser died last night – "

      "How dreadful!"

      "In his ninety-third year," added Mr. Mason, dryly, to his own sentence.

      "I'm afraid I was thinking of someone else," said Ida lamely.

      "Of me, my dear? Then I will take another piece of sugar, if you don't object. The fact is, you didn't give me any at all. No, that's the salt!"

      Ida laughed nervously. "I am so stupid this morning! Please forgive me, dear father."

      "I hope there is nothing the matter?"

      "Nothing at all."

      "That's right. I fear that the religious novel is to have a most undesirable vogue. The Times reviews three in one column. We have to thank 'Robert Elsmere' for this."

      "And 'Humphry Ward, Preacher,'" suggested Ida.

      The novelist arched his eyebrows and bent forward over his plate. "Exactly," said he, after a slight pause. He did not look at his daughter. Otherwise he would have seen that she was eating nothing, and that her eyes were full of tears. It was plain to him, however, that for some reason or other, into which it was not his business to inquire, it would be unkind to press further conversation upon Ida, whom he merely thanked more affectionately than usual for moving his plate and for pouring out his second cup of tea. Over breakfast the novelist always took half an hour precisely. The clock was striking nine when he rose from the table and went upstairs to take leave of his wife.

      Mrs. Mason was a sweet, frail woman of sixty, who for years had breakfasted in her own room. Without being actually an invalid, she owed it to her quiet mornings upstairs that she was still able to see her friends in the afternoon, and to dine out at moderate intervals. For five-and-thirty years his wife had been Wolff Mason's guardian angel. On her wedding-day she had been just as proud of her unknown bridegroom as she was now of the celebrated littérateur, and had loved the stalwart young fellow of eight-and-twenty only less dearly than the white old man of sixty-three. He found her with her tea and toast growing cold on the bed-table at her side; she was reading Ida's typewritten copy of the novel upon which he himself was then engaged.

      "My dear Wolff," Mrs. Mason exclaimed, greeting her husband with the enthusiastic smile which had inspired and consoled him in the composition of so many works of