The Stratagem and Other Stories

HIS SECRET SIN Inscribed admiringly to Alexander Coote. THEODORE BUGG had made England what she is. The last forty-two years had elevated him from errand-boy to biggest retail grocer in the Midlands. Twenty-eight years of wedded happiness had left him with a clear con- science, a five-year old grave to keep in order “To the memory of my beloved relict,” as he had written until the clerk suggested a trifling alteration, and a strapping daughter just turned twenty. I wish I could stop here. But there is a rough side to every canvas, and Theodore Bugg had forgotten all about England, and what she is, and how he had made her. Or if the good work was going on, it was subcon- scious. He was standing by the gilded statue of Jeanne d'Arc, his mouth wide open, his Baedeker limp in his perspiring hand. “She's riding astride!” The molten mad- ness throbbed in his brain. “She's got man's clothes on!” The shocking truth must out: Theodore Bugg had come to Paris for Pleasure! He had only been able to spare two days, the Sun- day and Monday of Whitsuntide. He had travelled by the night boat on Saturday, arriving in Paris on Sunday morning—the first step downward! The air of Paris in- toxicated him; the Grands Boulevards ate into his moral fibre like a dragon chewing butter; and though he had not actually ‘been in’ anywhere, he felt the atmosphere of the music-halls as Ulysses heard the Sirens. He was fortunately tied to the mast of his ignorance of French and his fear of asking anybody such a very peculiar question, or he would certainly have discovered and vis- ited the Moulin Rouge. As it was, Joan of Arc was very much more than was good for him. He stared, fascinated as by a basilisk, his eyes starting further and further from his head as his moral sense dragged his body backwards along the Rue