Albert Kinross

“ And then on one morning I began to write something, and on the next morning to add to it, and the same the day after. There was little else to do. I had forgotten all about monsignor and most about Perkin Warbeck, for I was writing about myself rather than of that hero.
I was writing of myself, poor, lonely, and obscure, adventuring here among the powerful, much as he had adventured at the French, the Burgundian, and Scottish courts. There was a remote resemblance. It extended to Hugh Janvier, who became each king in turn; it embraced even George the man-servant. My Perkin became a hero. ”

“ There exists no life, there has been no memoir, of the greatest adventurer who ever lived."
I pricked up my ears at this.
"The greatest adventurer who ever lived," he repeated, and then added: "I am no hand at a novel, but with your magic pen—the pen of a wizard, if I may say so—we might do something considerable. I have all the materials; the research work is done; it only remains for you to write the story." ”

“ Give me a king or queen, a knight or bishop! I want life, blood, the joy and fire of passion, the surge of great events; I want the clash of weapons, a dazzling, fated, or romantic figure—"
What else I might have said to that poor man I do not know, for at this particular juncture he leaped up from his seat.
"But I have spent ten years over it!" he cried in desperation. "And Perkin Warbeck was the greatest adventurer—ah, here is Mr. Janvier."
The reader will guess the cause of this diversion: we had been interrupted by no less a personage than the lord and master of Wexford House himself. ”

“ So much for the front of Wexford House. My next course was to take it in the rear. I found the narrow outlet which connects St. James's Place with St. James's Park, and discovered that the mansion possessed a garden of its own and rose to five sheer stories. A score of windows overlooked the park, and the little garden had its gate of entry. For London this was luxury indeed. I thought of my own penurious quarters and my hemmed-in view. Roofs and chimney-stacks were all I saw with the bodily eye, and at night I often rose to deal with cats. ”

“ Below, where I next ventured, I found a hall, a library, a ball-room, and a winter-garden, and there was every conceivable kind of servant. They let me roam and gape at them until luncheon.
To-day I can hardly recover the full effect of that first impression. I refer, of course, to my initial meeting with Bettina Janvier. I had never spoken to a beautiful and high-born girl before, nor been in the same room with one, and as for sitting alone at the same table—I leave the situation to the imaginative reader. He or she may do it justice; I cannot. ”

“ Call on me one afternoon. I am an old man, and you, I judge, are a young one. I am often in London, and you will find me at Wexford House in St. James's Place. I should be delighted to make the acquaintance of a writer who has given me so much pleasure, and hear something of his plans for the future; and, moreover, I have a proposal to make which I think will interest you. I shall be in town all next week. Perhaps you can let me know on what afternoon I may expect you. ”

“ I had looked for more sense in a monsignor, a more genuine culture in Wexford House, St. James's Place. I was at that time young enough to be honest, so I told him exactly what I felt about it.
"This Perkin Warbeck," I said, "as you describe him, and as no doubt he is depicted by your leaky chroniclers, is nothing more than a driveling, base-born coward, as passive as a Hindu, yet without the Hindu's deep philosophy. His adventures seem to be forced on him; they arise from no inner need or impulse. When they become at all dangerous, he runs away, and leaves his followers in the lurch ”

“ I was a prowler and a nobody, with a high, romantic passion for the unknown, and, living in London as I did on the hazardous earnings of a bookish hack, was I not altogether surrounded by the mysterious and inaccessible? It is a city the wealth and power and splendor of which would leave such a one as I was then gasping and ever open-mouthed. Of its squalor, rascality, and evil I saw much and yet saw nothing. Youth has that knack, and middle age mourns the loss of it.
I return once more to Wexford House in St. ”

“ He is supposed to be a pretender to the throne of England, and to win that throne he tries on five separate occasions, with more or less success, to raise the country against Henry VII. In reality, or, rather, as you have described him to me, he is ever the tool of greater men, the weakling, the cat's-paw, ready to their hand, the victim of their policy or their ambitions. ”

“ His courtesy contrasted well with that of the disdainful man-servant. He did his best to put me at my ease. Breeding is breeding, and no matter how lamentable the personage, it is the last thing to decay. ”

“ In a public house I consulted the London Directory. Wexford House, I soon discovered, lay between the residences of the Duke of Mells and the Earl of Templehaven, the latter of which has no special name, but only a number. I found that number in St. James's Place, and so to Wexford House.
In the directory the present tenant was inscribed as plain Hugh Janvier. The name meant nothing to me then. He must be a rich man, and possibly the friend or patron of monsignor, if one so highly placed could suffer such protection. Hugh Janvier, I decided, was his friend. ”

“ I looked from one to the other.
"I have already spent a thousand pounds in travel and the collection of materials," chimed in monsignor.
"Leave Mr. Loughborough to me," interposed our host; and, taking me by the shoulder, added, "I am monsignor's man of business. Monsignor is a child when it comes to business. Rewritten as a historical novel, he feels that his 'Life of Perkin Warbeck' would be the novel of the year. He tells me that he is unable to write a novel, but that, helped by your brilliant pen—"
"Really," I interrupted, "I am afraid that monsignor is mistaken. ”

“ It must have been at some small hour in the morning that I was aroused and gagged and pinioned. The sturdy man-servant saw to this, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy it. Hugh Janvier, in evening dress and a fur coat, stood over us and issued his directions.
"We are motoring into the country," said he. "London in the winter months is more than I can stand." And into the country we went.
I was carried down-stairs, bundled into the waiting car, and oft we started. The man-servant sat on the box beside the driver ”

“ And every, day. after this there was an instalment waiting her pleasure if she would listen. She rarely failed me. Once free of the tea-table, she came down to the library, where I worked, and asked me to go on.
Hugh Janvier smiled broadly when he heard the news.
"I said he'd get busy. People always do what I tell them to do," he cried; and he telegraphed an exclamatory despatch to monsignor. That watery biographer had ceased to trouble me. He was now somewhere in Italy, making a long stay with his cousin, the Earl of Chart.
VI
The public is familiar with my story of Perkin Warbeck ”