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TITLE: THE LION AND THE UNICORN
AUTHOR: RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
EBOOK: E02908 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

THE LION AND THE UNICORN

by RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

IN MEMORY OF MANY HOT DAYS AND SOME HOT CORNERS
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
LT.-COL. ARTHUR H. LEE, R.A.
British Military Attache with the United States Army

Contents

THE LION AND THE UNICORN

ON THE FEVER SHIP

THE MAN WITH ONE TALENT

THE VAGRANT

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

THE LION AND THE UNICORN

Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in
Jermyn Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course,
turned into lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss
was a Florist to the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his
flowershop, just in front of the middle window on the first
floor.  By stretching a little, each of them could see into the
window just beyond him, and could hear all that was said inside;
and such things as they saw and heard during the reign of Captain
Carrington, who moved in at the same time they did!  By day the
table in the centre of the room was covered with maps, and the
Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags
wrapped around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the
maps and measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to
himself.  It was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the
Captain's only intellectual pursuit, for at night, the maps were
rolled up, and a green cloth was spread across the table, and
there was much company and popping of soda-bottles, and little
heaps of gold and silver were moved this way and that across the
cloth.  The smoke drifted out of the open windows, and the
laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly in the empty
street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath
them and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the
Captain's guests to depart.  The Lion and the Unicorn were rather
ashamed of the scandal of it, and they were glad when, one day,
the Captain went away with his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high
on a four-wheeler.

Prentiss stood on the sidewalk and said:  "I wish you good luck,
sir."  And the Captain said:  "I'm coming back a Major,
Prentiss."  But he never came back.  And one day--the Lion
remembered the day very well, for on that same day the
newsboys ran up and down Jermyn Street shouting out the news of
"a 'orrible disaster" to the British arms.  It was then that a
young lady came to the door in a hansom, and Prentiss went out to
meet her and led her upstairs.  They heard him unlock the
Captain's door and say, "This is his room, miss," and after he
had gone they watched her standing quite still by the centre
table.  She stood there for a very long time looking slowly about
her, and then she took a photograph of the Captain from the frame
on the mantel and slipped it into her pocket, and when she went
out again her veil was down, and she was crying.  She must have
given Prentiss as much as a sovereign, for he called her "Your
ladyship," which he never did under a sovereign.

And she drove off, and they never saw her again either, nor could
they hear the address she gave the cabman.  But it was somewhere
up St. John's Wood way.

After that the rooms were empty for some months, and the Lion and
the Unicorn were forced to amuse themselves with the beautiful
ladies and smart-looking men who came to Prentiss to buy
flowers and "buttonholes," and the little round baskets of
strawberries, and even the peaches at three shillings each, which
looked so tempting as they lay in the window, wrapped up in
cotton-wool, like jewels of great price.

Then Philip Carroll, the American gentleman, came, and they heard
Prentiss telling him that those rooms had always let for five
guineas a week, which they knew was not true; but they also knew
that in the economy of nations there must always be a higher
price for the rich American, or else why was he given that
strange accent, except to betray him into the hands of the London
shopkeeper, and the London cabby?

The American walked to the window toward the west, which was the
window nearest the Lion, and looked out into the graveyard of St.
James's Church, that stretched between their street and
Piccadilly.

"You're lucky in having a bit of green to look out on," he said
to Prentiss.  "I'll take these rooms--at five guineas.  That's
more than they're worth, you know, but as I know it, too, your
conscience needn't trouble you."

Then his eyes fell on the Lion, and he nodded to him gravely. 
"How do you do?" he said.  "I'm coming to live with you for a
little time.  I have read about you and your friends over there. 
It is a hazard of new fortunes with me, your Majesty, so be kind
to me, and if I win, I will put a new coat of paint on your
shield and gild you all over again."

Prentiss smiled obsequiously at the American's pleasantry, but
the new lodger only stared at him.

"He seemed a social gentleman," said the Unicorn, that night,
when the Lion and he were talking it over.  "Now the Captain, the
whole time he was here, never gave us so much as a look.  This
one says he has read of us."

"And why not?" growled the Lion.  "I hope Prentiss heard what he
said of our needing a new layer of gilt.  It's disgraceful.  You
can see that Lion over Scarlett's, the butcher, as far as Regent
Street, and Scarlett is only one of Salisbury's creations.  He
received his Letters-Patent only two years back.  We date from
Palmerston."

The lodger came up the street just at that moment, and stopped
and looked up at the Lion and the Unicorn from the sidewalk,
before he opened the door with his night-key.  They heard him
enter the room and feel on the mantel for his pipe, and a moment
later he appeared at the Lion's window and leaned on the sill,
looking down into the street below and blowing whiffs of smoke up
into the warm night-air.

It was a night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and
the streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from
the play, and with groups of men in black and white, making their
way to supper at the clubs.  Hansoms of inky-black, with shining
lamps inside and out, dashed noiselessly past on mysterious
errands, chasing close on each other's heels on a mad race, each
to its separate goal.  From the cross streets rose the noises of
early night, the rumble of the 'buses, the creaking of their
brakes, as they unlocked, the cries of the "extras," and the
merging of thousands of human voices in a dull murmur.  The great
world of London was closing its shutters for the night, and
putting out the lights; and the new lodger from across the sea
listened to it with his heart beating quickly, and laughed to
stifle the touch of fear and homesickness that rose in him.

"I have seen a great play to-night," he said to the Lion, "nobly
played by great players.  What will they care for my poor wares? 
I see that I have been over-bold.  But we cannot go back now--not
yet."

He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and nodded "good-night" to
the great world beyond his window.  "What fortunes lie with ye,
ye lights of London town?" he quoted, smiling.  And they heard
him close the door of his bedroom, and lock it for the night.

The next morning he bought many geraniums from Prentiss and
placed them along the broad cornice that stretched across the
front of the house over the shop window.  The flowers made a band
of scarlet on either side of the Lion as brilliant as a Tommy's
jacket.

"I am trying to propitiate the British Lion by placing flowers
before his altar," the American said that morning to a
visitor.

"The British public you mean," said the visitor; "they are each
likely to tear you to pieces."

"Yes, I have heard that the pit on the first night of a bad play
is something awful," hazarded the American.

"Wait and see," said the visitor.

"Thank you," said the American, meekly.

Every one who came to the first floor front talked about a play. 
It seemed to be something of great moment to the American.  It
was only a bundle of leaves printed in red and black inks and
bound in brown paper covers.  There were two of them, and the
American called them by different names: one was his comedy and
one was his tragedy.

"They are both likely to be tragedies," the Lion heard one of the
visitors say to another, as they drove away together.  "Our young
friend takes it too seriously."

The American spent most of his time by his desk at the window
writing on little blue pads and tearing up what he wrote, or in
reading over one of the plays to himself in a loud voice.  In
time the number of his visitors increased, and to some of these
he would read his play; and after they had left him he was
either depressed and silent or excited and jubilant.  The Lion
could always tell when he was happy because then he would go to
the side table and pour himself out a drink and say, "Here's to
me," but when he was depressed he would stand holding the glass
in his hand, and finally pour the liquor back into the bottle
again and say, "What's the use of that?"

After he had been in London a month he wrote less and was more

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