Rodens Corner | Page 4

counterpane. Von Holzen bent over the bed and examined the
face. The sick man's eyes were closed. Suddenly he spoke in a
mumbling voice--"And now that you have what you want, you will go."

"No," answered Von Holzen, in a kind voice, "I will not do that. I will
stay with you if you do not want to be left alone. You are brave, at all
events. I shall be horribly afraid when it comes to my turn to die."
"You would not be afraid if you had lived a life such as mine. Death
cannot be worse, at all events." And the man laughed contentedly
enough, as one who, having passed through evil days, sees the end of
them at last.
Von Holzen made no answer. He went to the window and opened it,
letting in the air laden with the clean scent of burning peat, which
makes the atmosphere of The Hague unlike that of any other town; for
here is a city with the smell of a village in its busy streets. The German
scientist stood looking out, and into the room came again that strange
silence. It was an odd room in which to die, for every article in it was
what is known as an antiquity; and although some of these relics of the
past had been carefully manufactured in a back shop in Bezem Straat,
others were really of ancient date. The very glass from which the dying
man drank his milk dated from the glorious days of Holland when
William the Silent pitted his Northern stubbornness and deep
diplomacy against the fire and fanaticism of Alva. Many objects in the
room had a story, had been in the daily use of hands long since
vanished, could tell the history of half a dozen human lives lived out
and now forgotten. The air itself smelt of age and mouldering
memories.
Von Holzen came towards the bed without speaking, and stood looking
down. Never a talkative man, he was now further silenced by the
shadow that lay over the stricken face of his companion. The sick man
was breathing very slowly. He glanced at Von Holzen for a moment,
and then returned to the dull contemplation of the opposite wall. Quite
suddenly his breath caught. There were long pauses during which he
seemed to cease to breathe. Then at length followed a pause which
merged itself gently into eternity.
Von Holzen waited a few minutes, and then bent over the bed and
softly unclasped the dead man's hand, taking from it the crumpled notes.
Mechanically he counted them, twelve hundred gulden in all, and

restored them to the pocket from which he had taken them half an hour
earlier.
He walked to the window and waited. When at length the district
doctor arrived, Von Holzen turned to greet him with a stiff bow.
"I am afraid, Herr Doctor," he said, in German, "You are too late."
CHAPTER II
WORK OR PLAY?
"Get work, get work; Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get."
Two men were driving in a hansom cab westward through Cockspur
Street. One, a large individual of a bovine placidity, wore the Queen's
uniform, and carried himself with a solid dignity faintly suggestive of a
lighthouse. The other, a narrower man, with a keen, fair face and eyes
that had an habitual smile, wore another uniform--that of society. He
was well dressed, and, what is rarer carried his fine clothes with such
assurance that their fineness seemed not only natural but indispensable.
"Sic transit the glory of this world," he was saying. At this moment
three men on the pavement--the usual men on the pavement at such
times--turned and looked into the cab.
"'Ere's White!" cried one of them. "White--dash his eyes! Brayvo!
brayvo, White!"
And all three raised a shout which seemed to be taken up vaguely in
various parts of Trafalgar Square, and finally died away in the distance.
"That is it," said the young man in the frock-coat; "that is the glory of
this world. Listen to it passing away. There is a policeman touching his
helmet. Ah, what a thing it is to be Major White--to-day! To
morrow--bonjour la gloire"
Major White, who had dropped his single eye-glass a minute earlier, sat

squarely looking out upon the world with a mild surprise. The eye from
which the glass had fallen was even more surprised than the other. But
this, it seemed, was a man upon whom the passing world made, as a
rule, but a passing impression. His attitude towards it was one of dense
tolerance. He was, in fact, one of those men who usually allow their
neighbours to live in a fool's-paradise, based upon the assumption of a
blindness or a stupidity or an indifference, which may