World’s End

It is not generally known that the mighty city of Stirmingham owes its existence to a water-rat. Stirmingham has a population of half a million, and is the workshop of the earth. It is a proud city, and its pressmen have traced its origin back into the dim vista of the past, far before Alfred the Great’s time, somewhere in the days of those monarchs who came from Troy, and whose deeds Holinshed so minutely chronicles.

But this is all trash and nonsense, and is a cunning device of the able editors aforesaid, who confound⁠—for their own purposes⁠—the city proper with the tiny hamlet of Wolf’s Glow. This little village or cluster of houses, which now forms a part, and the dirtiest part, of the city, can indeed be traced through Hundred Rolls, Domesday Book, and Saxon Charters, almost down to the time of the Romans. But Stirmingham, the prosperous and proud Stirmingham, which thinks that the world could not exist without its watches and guns, its plated goods, its monster factories and mills, which sends cargoes to Timbuktu, and supplies Java and Malabar with idols⁠—this vast place, whose nickname is a byword for cheating, for fair outward show and no real solidity, owes its existence to a water-rat. This is a fact. And it happened in this way.

Once upon a time there was a wide expanse of utterly useless land, flat as this sheet of paper, without a trace of subsoil or any kind of earth in which so much as a blade of grass could grow.

Old Sibbold, of course, suffered most. Tapping a cider barrel, he found it quite empty. The old man was beside himself with rage; but he said nothing. He studied retaliation. He watched his barns⁠—the wheat seemed to disappear under his very eyes. One night as he was returning from his barn, carrying his long-barrelled flintlock under his arm, he fancied he saw a gleam of light in the ivy, which almost hid the cellar window. Stealthily he peeped through. There was a man stooping down, drawing off the cider from a barrel into a bucket.

Old Sibbold’s lips compressed; a fire came into his eyes. He grasped his gun. Just then the thief held up the candle in his left hand, and revealed the features of old Will Baskette, the very chief of the Swamp. Sibbold hated him more particularly because he knew that Arthur frequented his hut. Up went the long gun. The gleam of light from the candle guided the aim. The muzzle was close to the lattice window. A cruel eye glanced along the barrel, a finger was on the trigger. The flint struck the steel with a sharp snick⁠—a spark flew out⁠—an explosion⁠—the window-glass smashed⁠—a cloud of smoke⁠—one groan, and all was still.

Sibbold rushed round the house, opened the door gently, locked it behind him, and stole upstairs. On the landing he met his youngest son James. For a moment they looked at one another. The young man spoke first.

“Quick, and load your gun,” he said. “Then put it in the rack and get into bed. Give me your breeches.”

They wore breeches and gaiters in those days.

Yet this very economy increased the popular belief in his riches. He was a miser. Give a man that name, let it once stick to him, and there is no limit to the fables that will be eagerly received as truth. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. Call a man a miser, and, if he is so inclined, he can roll in borrowed money, dine every day on presents of game and fish, and marry anyone he chooses. I only wish I had the reputation.

No one listened to Sternhold’s constant reiteration of what was true⁠—that he was really poor. It was looked upon as the usual stock-in-trade language of a miser. His fame spread. Popular rumour magnified and magnified the tale till it became like a chapter from the Arabian Nights.

After all, there was some grain of truth in it. If he could have grasped all that was his, he would have surpassed all that was said about his riches.

At last the Stirmingham Daily News hit upon a good idea to outdistance its great rival the Stirmingham Daily Post. This idea was a “Life of Sternhold Baskette, the Miser of Stirmingham.” After the editor had considered a little, he struck out “miser,” and wrote “capitalist”⁠—it had a bigger sound.

There was a girl there⁠—or rather a woman, for she was all five-and-twenty⁠—who was certainly as fine a specimen of female humanity as ever walked. Tall, but not too tall, she presented a splendid development of bust, torso, and limbs. Her skin was of that peculiar dusky hue⁠—not dark, but dusky⁠—which gives the idea of intense vitality. Her eyes were as coals of fire⁠—large, black, deep-set, under heavy eyebrows. Her hair at a distance was superb⁠—like night in hue, and glossy, curling in rich masses. Examined closer it was coarse, like wire. Her nose was the worse feature; it wanted shape, definition. It was a decided retroussé, and thick; but in the flush of her brilliant colour, her really grand carriage, this was passed over. Her lips were scarlet, and pouted with a tempting impudence.

This was the very woman Sternhold sought. She was vitality itself impersonified. He saw her, offered his hand, and was instantly accepted. He wished her to keep it quiet; and notwithstanding her feminine triumph she managed to do so, and not a soul in Stirmingham guessed what was in the wind.

Sternhold went to London, got a special licence, and the pair were married in Sternhold’s private apartments at his hotel in the presence of three people only, one of whom was the astounded Dodd. They left by the next train for London, where the bride went to Regent Street to choose her trousseau, with her husband at her side.

Not a bell was rung in Stirmingham. The news spread like wildfire, and confounded the city. People gathered at the corners of the streets.

“He is certainly mad,” they said. Most of them were in some way disappointed.

Aymer waited for her. Till now Violet had been comparatively calm; but now, face to face with the clergyman robed in white, near to the altar and its holy associations, as the first tones of his sonorous voice fell upon her ear, what wonder that her knees trembled and the blood forsook her cheek. Aymer surreptitiously, and before he had a right in etiquette to do so, touched her hand gently⁠—it strengthened and revived her; she blushed slightly, and the vicar’s voice, as he gazed upon her beauty, involuntarily softened and fell. While his lips uttered the oft-repeated words, so known by heart that the book in his hand was unneeded, his soul offered up a prayer that this fair creature⁠—yes, just this one⁠—should be spared those pains and miseries which were ordained upon the human race.

The flag upon the church tower waved in the gentle breeze; the children were marshalled beside the path in two long rows, with their hands full of flowers; the women in the cottages were hunting up the old slippers and shoes; the men looked to the caps upon the nipples of their guns; the handsome greys snorted at the gate; and the grand old sun, above all, bathed the village in a flood of light. I cannot linger over it longer.

The solemn adjuration was put, the question asked, and Aymer in an audible voice replied, “I will.” The still more solemn adjuration to the woman was repeated⁠—it is but a few words, but it conveys a world of meaning, it sums up a lifetime⁠—and Violet’s answer was upon her lips, when, before she could form the words, the chancel side-door burst open, and there⁠—