The Mystery of a Hansom Cab quotes

Love? No, it wasn’t that—men in love don’t go to such lengths in real life—they do in novels and plays, but I’ve never seen it occurring in my experience. Robbery? No, there was plenty of money in his pocket.

Revenge? Now, really it might be that⁠—it’s a kind of thing that carries most people further than they want to go.

There was no violence used, for his clothes weren’t torn, so he must have been taken sudden, and before he knew what the other chap was up to.

Mrs. Hableton was a lady with a grievance, as anybody who happened to become acquainted with her soon found out.

It is Beaconsfield who says, in one of his novels, that no one is so interesting as when he is talking about himself; and, judging Mrs. Hableton by this statement, she was an extremely fascinating individual, as she never by any chance talked upon any other subject.

What was the threat of a Russian invasion to her so long as she had her special grievance—once let that be removed, and she would have time to attend to such minor details as affected the colony.

It was little consolation to her that she was but a type of many women, who, hardworking and thrifty themselves, are married to men who are nothing but an incubus to their wives and to their families.

Small wonder, then, that Mrs. Hableton should condense all her knowledge of the male sex into the one bitter aphorism, “Men is brutes.”

Possum Villa was an unpretentious-looking place, with one bow-window and a narrow verandah in front. It was surrounded by a small garden in which were a few sparse flowers—the especial delight of Mrs. Hableton.

“Ah! then I’ll come down this evening on chance of seeing him,” replied the detective. “

Coincidences happen in real life as well as in novels, and the gentleman in question may turn up in the nick of time.

Now, what else about Mr. Whyte?”

The old Greek legend of Midas turning everything he touched into gold, is truer than most people imagine.

Medieval superstition changed the human being who possessed such a power into the philosopher’s stone—the stone which so many alchemists sought in the dark ages. But we of the nineteenth century have given back into human hands this power of transformation.

But we do not ascribe it either to Greek deity, or to superstition; we call it luck. And he who possesses luck should be happy notwithstanding the proverb which hints the contrary.

Luck means more than riches⁠—it means happiness in most of those things, which the fortunate possessor of it may choose to touch.

Should he speculate, he is successful; if he marry, his wife will surely prove everything to be desired; should he aspire to a position, social or political, he not only attains it, but does so with comparative ease.

He brought letters of introduction to Mark Frettlby, and that gentleman, taking a fancy to him, assisted him by every means in his power. Under Frettlby’s advice Brian bought a station, and, to his astonishment, in a few years he found himself growing rich.

The Fitzgeralds had always been more famous for spending than for saving, and it was an agreeable surprise to their latest representative to find the money rolling in instead of out.

He began to indulge in castles in the air concerning that other castle in Ireland, with the barren acres and discontented tenants. In his mind’s-eye he saw the old place rise up in all its pristine splendour from out its ruins;

She, womanlike, coquetted with him for some time, but at last, unable to withstand the impetuosity of her Irish lover, confessed in a low voice, with a pretty smile on her face, that she could not live without him.

Whereupon⁠—well⁠—lovers being of a conservative turn of mind, and accustomed to observe the traditional forms of wooing, the result can easily be guessed.

Brian hunted all over the jewellers’ shops in Melbourne with lover-like assiduity, and having obtained a ring wherein were set turquoise stones as blue as his own eyes, he placed it on her slender finger, and at last felt that his engagement was an accomplished …

“Good news, bad news, and such news as you have never heard of,” quoted Rolleston gravely. “Yes, I have a bit of news—haven’t you heard it?”

Rolleston felt he held sensation in his hands. There was nothing he liked better.

“Well, do you know,” he said, gravely fixing in his eyeglass, “they have found out the name of the fellow who was murdered in the hansom cab.”

“I’m afraid if that were the case,” said Mr. Frettlby, with an amused smile, “criminals would be pretty safe.”

“Oh, I don’t know so much about that,” answered Felix, shrewdly; “some fellows are like trifle at a party, froth on top, but something better underneath.”

“What a greedy simile,” said Calton, sipping his wine; “but I’m afraid the police will have a more difficult task in discovering the man who committed the crime. In my opinion he’s a deuced clever fellow.”

But Brian could see the white wavelets breaking lightly on the sands. The long narrow pier ran out like a black thread into the sheet of gleaming silver, and away in the distance the line of the Williamstown lights sparkled like some fairy illumination.

Over all this placid scene of land and water was a sky such as Doré loved⁠—a great heavy mass of rain-clouds heaped one on top of the other, as the rocks the Titans piled to reach Olympus.

Then a break in the woof, and a bit of dark blue sky could be seen glittering with stars, in the midst of which sailed the serene moon, shedding down her light on the cloudland beneath, giving to it all, one silver lining.

Yet, notwithstanding all his efforts the change in his appearance did not escape the eye of his landlady. She was a small, dried-up little woman, with a wrinkled yellowish face. She seemed parched up and brittle.

Whenever she moved she crackled, and one went in constant dread of seeing a wizen-looking limb break off short like the branch of some dead tree.

When she spoke it was in a voice hard and shrill, not unlike the chirp of a cricket. When—as was frequently the case—she clothed her attenuated form in a faded brown silk gown, her resemblance to that lively insect was remarkable.

“Ah! that’s because ye ain’t got enough blood in yer ’ead,” said Mrs. Sampson, wisely, for she had her own ideas on the subject of health. “

If you ain’t got blood you ain’t got sleep.

”

As soon as the door was closed, Brian put down his paper and roared, in spite of his worries.

He had that extraordinary vivacious Irish temperament, which enables a man to put all trouble behind his back, and thoroughly enjoy the present.

His landlady, with her Arabian Night-like romances, was a source of great amusement to him, and he felt considerably cheered by the odd turn her humour had taken this morning. After a time, however, his laughter ceased, and his troubles came crowding on him again.

The same thing no doubt occurred in the Appian Way, the fashionable street of Imperial Rome, when Catullus talked gay nonsense to Lesbia, and Horace received the congratulations of his friends over his new volume of society verses.

History repeats itself, and every city is bound by all the laws of civilisation to have one special street, wherein the votaries of fashion can congregate.

Collins Street is not, of course, such a grand thoroughfare as those above mentioned, but the people who stroll up and down the broad pavement are quite as charmingly dressed, and as pleasant as any of the peripatetics of those famous cities.

Collins Street is not, of course, such a grand thoroughfare as those above mentioned, but the people who stroll up and down the broad pavement are quite as charmingly dressed, and as pleasant as any of the peripatetics of those famous cities.

As the sun brings out bright flowers, so the seductive influence of the hot weather had brought out all the ladies in gay dresses of innumerable colours, which made the long street look like a restless rainbow.

Carriages were bowling smoothly along, their occupants smiling and bowing as they recognised their friends on the side walk. Lawyers, their legal quibbles finished for the week, were strolling leisurely with their black bags in their hands;

portly merchants, forgetting Flinder’s Lane and incoming ships, walked beside their pretty daughters; and the representatives of swelldom were stalking along in their customary apparel of curly brimmed hats, high collars, and immaculate suits.

Altogether, it was a pleasant and animated scene, which would have delighted the heart of anyone who was not dyspeptic, or in love⁠—dyspeptic people and lovers (disappointed ones, of course) being wont to survey the world in a cynical vein.

Madge Frettlby was engaged in that occupation so dear to every female heart—shopping.

“No, you are wrong,” said Brian, as he alighted and helped her out; “I am the host in myself this time.”

“If there is one thing I hate above another,” observed Miss Frettlby, calmly, “it’s a pun, and especially a bad one.”

Mrs. Sampson was very much astonished at the early arrival of her lodger’s guests, and did not hesitate to express her astonishment.

“What a curious thing that landlady of yours is, Brian,” said Madge, from the depths of a huge armchair. “I believe she’s a grasshopper from the Fitzroy Gardens.”

“Oh, no, she’s a woman,” said Mr. Frettlby, cynically. “You can tell that by the length of her tongue.”

“A popular error, papa,” retorted Madge, sharply. “I know plenty of men who talk far more than any woman.”

“Very likely not,” answered Brian; “midsummer out here is so hot that one gets no sleep, and, consequently no dreams.

Depend upon it, if the four lovers whom Puck treated so badly had lived in Australia they wouldn’t have been able to sleep for the mosquitoes.

”

Startling Revelations in High Life

It is needless to say that some of the reporters had painted the lily pretty freely, but the public were ready to believe everything that came out in the papers.

Mr. Frettlby, the day after Brian’s arrest, had a long conversation with his daughter, and wanted her to go up to Yabba Yallook Station until the public excitement had somewhat subsided. But this Madge flatly refused to do.

“I will not deny,” went on Calton, “that there is a little bit of professional curiosity about me. This case is such an extraordinary one, that I feel as if I were unable to let slip an opportunity of doing something with it.

I don’t care for your humdrum murders with the poker, and all that sort of thing, but this is something clever, and therefore interesting.

When you are safe we will look together for the real criminal, and the pleasure of the search will be proportionate to the excitement when we find him out.”

“What nonsense,” retorted Calton, sharply, “as if any circumstances should prevent a man from saving his own life.

But never mind, I like these objections; they make the nut harder to crack⁠—but the kernel must be worth getting at.

Now, I want you to answer certain questions.”

“

Probably not; but young men don’t wander about the streets at night without some object.

”

But now that one of the most fashionable young men in Melbourne had been arrested as the assassin, it bade fair to assume gigantic proportions.

Mrs. Grundy was shocked, and openly talked about having nourished in her bosom a viper which had unexpectedly turned and stung her.

Morn, noon, and night, in Toorak drawing-rooms and Melbourne Clubs, the case formed the principal subject of conversation. And Mrs. Grundy was horrified.

… of minor denominations—took the hansom cab murder as a text whereon to preach sermons on the profligacy of the age, and to point out that the only ark which could save men from the rising flood of infidelity and immorality was their own particular church.

“Gad,” as Calton remarked, after hearing five or six ministers each claim their own church as the one special vessel of safety, “there seems to be a whole fleet of arks!”

For Mr. Felix Rolleston, acquainted as he was with all concerned, the time was one of great and exceeding joy.

These people delight in expressing their sympathy with great scoundrels of the Ned Kelly order. They view them as the embodiment of heroism, unsympathetically and disgracefully treated by the narrow understanding of the law.

If one half the world does kick a man when he is down, the other half invariably consoles the prostrate individual with halfpence.

And therefore, even while the weight of public opinion was dead against Fitzgerald he had his share of avowed sympathy. There was a comfort in this for Madge. Not that if the whole countryside had unanimously condemned her lover she would have believed him guilty.

And therefore, even while the weight of public opinion was dead against Fitzgerald he had his share of avowed sympathy. There was a comfort in this for Madge. Not that if the whole countryside had unanimously condemned her lover she would have believed him guilty.

The element of logic does not enter into the championship of woman. Her love for a man is sufficient to exalt him to the rank of a demigod.

She absolutely refuses to see the clay feet of her idol. When all others forsake she clings to him, when all others frown she smiles on him, and when he dies she reveres his memory as that of a saint and a martyr.

Not that if the whole countryside had unanimously condemned her lover she would have believed him guilty. The element of logic does not enter into the championship of woman. Her love for a man is sufficient to exalt him to the rank of a demigod.

She absolutely refuses to see the clay feet of her idol.

When all others forsake she clings to him, when all others frown she smiles on him, and when he dies she reveres his memory as that of a saint and a martyr. Young men of the present day are prone to disparage their womenkind;

The element of logic does not enter into the championship of woman. Her love for a man is sufficient to exalt him to the rank of a demigod. She absolutely refuses to see the clay feet of her idol.

When all others forsake she clings to him, when all others frown she smiles on him, and when he dies she reveres his memory as that of a saint and a martyr.

Young men of the present day are prone to disparage their womenkind; but a poor thing is the man, who in time of trouble has no woman to stand by him with cheering words and loving comfort.

She absolutely refuses to see the clay feet of her idol. When all others forsake she clings to him, when all others frown she smiles on him, and when he dies she reveres his memory as that of a saint and a martyr.

Young men of the present day are prone to disparage their womenkind; but a poor thing is the man, who in time of trouble has no woman to stand by him with cheering words and loving comfort.

And so Madge Frettlby, true woman that she was, had nailed her colours to the mast. She refused surrender to anyone, or before any argument.

“If it’s for the sake of a woman,” he said to Brian, “I don’t care who she is, it’s absurdly quixotic.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and if my neck was in danger I’d spare neither man, woman, nor child to save it.

”

“An uncommonly plucky girl,” murmured the lawyer, as he looked out of the window. “If Fitzgerald is not a fool he will certainly tell her all—that is, of course, if he is able to—queer things these women are—

I quite agree with Balzac’s saying that no wonder man couldn’t understand woman, seeing that God who created her failed to do so.

”

“Nevertheless a true one,” answered Calton. “

Ever since the time of Father Adam it has been acknowledged that women influence the world either for good or evil more than men.

But this is not to the point,” he went on, rather impatiently. “What do you propose to do?”

It enabled him to come at information where his sharp-looking colleague might try in vain. The hearts of all went forth to Gorby’s sweet smile and insinuating manner.

But when Kilsip appeared people were wont to shut up, and to retire promptly, like alarmed snails, within their shells.

Gorby gave the lie direct to those who hold that the face is ever the index to the mind. Kilsip, on the other hand, with his hawk-like countenance, his brilliant black eyes, hooked nose, and small thin-lipped mouth, endorsed the theory.

The hearts of all went forth to Gorby’s sweet smile and insinuating manner. But when Kilsip appeared people were wont to shut up, and to retire promptly, like alarmed snails, within their shells.

Gorby gave the lie direct to those who hold that the face is ever the index to the mind.

Kilsip, on the other hand, with his hawk-like countenance, his brilliant black eyes, hooked nose, and small thin-lipped mouth, endorsed the theory. His complexion was quite colourless, and his hair was jet black. Altogether, he could not be called fair to look upon.

“No! of course you don’t, just because I’ve caught him; perhaps, when you see him hanged, you’ll believe it then?”

“You’re a smart man, you are,” retorted Kilsip; “but you ain’t the Pope to be infallible.”

“And what grounds have you for saying he’s not the right man?” demanded Gorby.

Kilsip accepted these little attentions with the utmost gravity, yet they were not without their effect on him, as the keen-eyed lawyer saw. Calton was a great believer in diplomacy, and never lost an opportunity of inculcating it into young men starting in life.

“Diplomacy,” said Calton, to one young aspirant for legal honours, “is the oil we cast on the troubled waters of social, professional, and political life; and if you can, by a little tact, manage mankind, you are pretty certain to get on in this world.”

Calton was a man who practised what he preached. He believed Kilsip to have that feline nature, which likes to be stroked, to be made much of, and he paid him these little attentions, knowing full well they would bear their fruit.

Then, further up, just on the verge of the pavement, three violins and a harp are playing a German waltz to an admiring crowd of attentive spectators.

If there is one thing which the Melbourne folk love more than another, it is music. Their fondness for it is only equalled by their admiration for horse-racing.

Any street band which plays at all decently, may be sure of a good audience, and a substantial remuneration for their performance. Some writer has described Melbourne, as Glasgow with the sky of Alexandria;

“Keep close to me,” whispered Kilsip, touching the barrister on the arm; “we may meet some nasty customers about here.”

It was not quite dark, for the atmosphere had that luminous kind of haze so observable in Australian twilights, and this weird light was just sufficient to make the darkness visible.

Kilsip and the barrister kept for safety in the middle of the alley, so that no one could spring upon them unaware, and they could see sometimes on the one side, a man cowering back into the black shadow, or on the other, a woman …

He wore a greasy brown velvet coat, much patched, and a black wide-awake hat, pulled down over his eyes.

From his expression⁠—so scowling and vindictive was it⁠—the barrister judged his ultimate destiny to lie between Pentridge and the gallows.

As they entered, the fortune-teller raised her head, and, shading her eyes with one skinny hand, looked curiously at the newcomers. Calton thought he had never seen such a repulsive-looking old crone;

“Werry likely,” retorted the hag, with a repulsive grin, tying the money up in a piece of her dress, which she tore off for the purpose.

“I’m a forting to the public-’ouse, I am, an’ it’s the on’y pleasure I ’ave in my life, cuss it.”

The sight of money had a genial effect on her nature, for she held the candle at the head of the stairs, as they went down, so that they should not break their heads.

“Wanted to get rid of the Army, I expect,” answered Kilsip, dryly. “

The straying lamb did not care about being hunted back to the fold.

”

It will resolve itself into a question of identification, I expect. However, if the police can’t find her, we will put an advertisement in the papers offering a reward, and send out handbills to the same effect. She must be found.

Brian Fitzgerald’s life hangs on a thread, and that thread is Sal Rawlins.

”

Mr. Calton, to whom she said this, shook his head doubtfully.

“God has permitted it to take place before,” he answered softly; “and we can only judge the future by the past.”

At last, the day of the long-expected trial came, and as Calton sat in his office looking over his brief, a clerk entered and told him Mr. Frettlby and his daughter wished to see him.

“Ah, yes,” he said lightly; “exactly.

I daresay Eve only ate the apple because she didn’t like to see such a lot of good fruit go to waste.

”

… much praise on all sides for his presumed perspicuity, that he soon began to think that he had believed in Fitzgerald’s innocence by a calm course of reasoning, and not because of a desire to differ from everyone else in their opinion of the case.

After all, Felix Rolleston is not the only man who has been astonished to find greatness thrust upon him, and come to believe himself worthy of it.

He was a wise man, however, and while in the full tide of prosperity he seized the flying moment, and proposed to Miss Featherweight, who, after some hesitation, agreed to endow him with herself and her thousands.

“Ah,” said Calton, when he heard the sermon, “if this unique theory is a true one, what a truly pious man that clergyman must be!” This allusion to the looks of the reverend gentleman was rather unkind, for he was by no means bad-looking.

But then Calton was one of those witty men who would rather lose a friend than suppress an epigram.

When the prisoner was brought in, a murmur of sympathy ran through the crowded Court, so ill and worn-out he looked;

A trouble which would pass lightly over a man, leaves an indelible mark on a woman, both physically and mentally, and the terrible episode of Whyte’s murder had changed Madge from a bright and merry girl into a grave and beautiful woman.

Sorrow is a potent enchantress. Once she touches the heart, life can never be quite the same again.

We never more surrender ourselves entirely to pleasure; and often we find so many of the things we have longed for are after all but dead sea fruit.

Once she touches the heart, life can never be quite the same again. We never more surrender ourselves entirely to pleasure; and often we find so many of the things we have longed for are after all but dead sea fruit.

Sorrow is the veiled Isis of the world, and once we penetrate her mystery and see her deeply-furrowed face and mournful eyes, the magic light of romance dies all away, and we realise the hard bitter fact of life in all its nakedness.

Madge felt something of all this. She saw the world now, not as the fantastic fairyland of her girlish dreams, but as the sorrowful vale of tears through which we must all walk till we reach the “Promised Land.”

Who does not value as the sweetest in the whole twenty-four the hour when, seated at an artistically-laid table, with delicately-cooked viands, good wines, and pleasant company, all the cares and worries of the day give place to a delightful sense of absolute enjoyment?

Dinner with the English people is generally a very dreary affair, and there is a heaviness about the whole thing which communicates itself to the guests, who eat and drink with a solemn persistence, as though they were occupied in fulfilling some sacred rite.

But there are men—alas! few and far between—who possess the rare art of giving good dinners—good in the sense of sociality as well as in that of cookery.

“It hasn’t got one,” replied Felix, complacently. “

Surely you don’t want every song to have a moral, like a book of Aesop’s Fables?

”

“Ah, but you will have,” he answered with a careless laugh. “There are, no doubt, democratic as well as aristocratic ghosts; but, pshaw!” he went on, impatiently, “what nonsense I talk.

There are no ghosts, except of a man’s own raising. The ghosts of a dead youth⁠—the ghosts of past follies⁠—the ghosts of what might have been⁠—these are the spectres which are more to be feared than those of the churchyard.

”

“That puts me in mind of what I heard Dr. Chinston say yesterday,” she said. “

This is the age of unrest, as electricity and steam have turned us all into Bohemians.

”

Rosanna Moore was pretty, and was evidently one of those women who—rakes at heart—prefer the untrammelled freedom of being a mistress, to the sedate bondage of a wife.

In questions of morality, so many people live in glass houses, that there are few nowadays who can afford to throw stones.

Calton did not think any the worse of Frettlby for his youthful follies. But what did surprise him was that Frettlby should be so heartless, as to leave his child to the tender mercies of an old hag like Mother Guttersnipe.

He felt ill and weary, the want of sleep, and mental worry, telling on him terribly, and he looked ten years older than he did before the murder of Whyte.

It is trouble which draws lines on the smooth forehead and furrows round the mouth.

If a man has any mental worry, his life becomes a positive agony to him. Mental tortures are quite as bad as physical ones, if not worse.

Mental tortures are quite as bad as physical ones, if not worse. The last thing before dropping off to sleep is the thought of trouble, and with the first faint light of dawn, it returns and hammers all day at the weary brain.

But while a man can sleep, life is rendered at least endurable; and of all the blessings which Providence has bestowed, there is none so precious as that same sleep, which, as wise Sancho Panza says, “Wraps every man like a cloak.”

Brian felt the need of rest, so sending a telegram to Calton to call on him in the morning, and another to Madge, that he would be down to luncheon next day, he stayed indoors all day, and amused himself with smoking and reading.

“Most landladies’ ideas are,” retorted Fitzgerald, resuming his breakfast. “

Unless Heaven invents some new animal, lodgers will go on getting beef and mutton, alternated with hash, until the end of the world.

”

But men found out that she had not been altogether useless as a scapegoat upon which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings, so they created a new deity called Fate, and laid any misfortune which happened to them to her charge.

Her worship is still very popular, especially among lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves on the ground that whether they do so or not their lives are already settled by Fate.

After all, the true religion of Fate has been preached by George Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome of our actions.

After all, the true religion of Fate has been preached by George Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome of our actions.

Set up any idol you please upon which to lay the blame of unhappy lives and baffled ambitions, but the true cause is to be found in men themselves.

Every action, good or bad, which we do has its corresponding reward, and Mark Frettlby found it so, for the sins of his youth were now being punished in his old age.

It belied its reputation, however, for it was very soon thrown on the table with a look of disgust, and rising from her seat Madge walked up and down the room, and wished some good fairy would hint to Brian that he was wanted.

If man is a gregarious animal, how much more, then, is a woman?

This is not a conundrum, but a simple truth. “A female Robinson Crusoe,” says a writer who prided himself upon being a keen observer of human nature—“a female Robinson Crusoe would have gone mad for want of something to talk to.”

“She’s a clever girl that,” whispered Calton to Fitzgerald. “Curious thing she should have taken up her proper position in her father’s house.

Fate is a deal cleverer than we mortals think her.

”