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Cognition and Communication in the Evolution
of Language
O X F O R D S T U D I E S I N B I O L I N G U I S T I CS
GENERAL EDITOR
Cedric Boeckx, ICREA and Universitat de Barcelona
ADVISORY EDITORS
Anna Maria Di Sciullo, Université du Québec à Montréal; Simon Fisher, Max
Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics: Tecumseh Fitch, Universität Wien; Angela
D. Friederici, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences; Andrea
Moro, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University; Kazuo Okanoya, Brain Science Institute,
Riken; Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, University of Arizona; David Poeppel,
New York University; Maggie Tallerman, Newcastle University
The Biolinguistic Enterprise: New Perspectives on
the Evolution and Nature of the Human Language Faculty
edited by Anna Maria Di Sciullo and Cedric Boeckx
Phonological Architecture: A Biolinguistic Perspective
by Bridget D. Samuels
Computational Phenotypes: Towards an Evolutionary
Developmental Biolinguistics
by Sergio Balari and Guillermo Lorenzo
Language Down the Garden Path: The Cognitive and
Biological Basis for Linguistic Structures
edited by Montserrat Sanz, Itziar Laka, and Michael K. Tanenhaus
Cognition and Communication in the Evolution of Language
by Anne Reboul
Recursion: A Computational Investigation into the
Representation and Processing of Language
by David J. Lobina
The series welcomes contributions from researchers in many fields, including
linguistic computation, language development, language evolution, cognitive neuro-
science, and genetics. It also considers proposals which address the philosophical
and conceptual foundations of the field, and is open to work informed by all
theoretical persuasions.
Cognition and
Communication in the
Evolution of Language
ANNE REBOUL
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Anne Reboul
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in
Impression:
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
Madison Avenue, New York, NY , United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number:
ISBN ––––
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
In memory of my brother, Dominique Reboul (–)
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 9/1/2017, SPi
Contents
General preface x
Acknowledgements xi
Abbreviations xiii
. Introduction
. The need for a dual account of language evolution
.. Introduction
.. What is a communication system?
.. The uniqueness of language among communication systems
... A first attempt: Hockett’s thirteen features
... A core combination of features
... In defence of language creativity
... Taking stock
.. Code models of communication
... Millikan’s account
... A criticism of Millikan’s theory
... Conclusion
.. Ostensive theories of language and language evolution
... Relevance Theory
... Scott-Phillips’s ostensive theory of language evolution
... Criticism of Scott-Phillips’s account
... Limits to contextualism
.. Animal communication and the externalization of language
... Animal communication: natural or non-natural meaning?
... The influence view of communication
.. Conclusion
. The specificity of the human conceptual apparatus
.. Introduction
.. Conceptual apparatuses
... Introduction
... Machery’s eliminativism
... What are concepts?
.... Prototypes
.... Exemplars
.... Theories
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 9/1/2017, SPi
viii Contents
.... The Neo-Empiricist Theory of Concept
.... Conclusion
... What concepts are
.... Taking stock
.... Conceptual atomism
... The epistemic story
.... Introduction
.... A potential objection
.... The limitations of animal conceptualization
.... The roots of conceptual hierarchies
.. Embodied semantics
.. Specificities of human cognition
.. Conclusion
. Merge and the lexicalization of concepts
.. Introduction
.. The syntax of thought
... Endo-skeletal versus exo-skeletal approaches
... Functional lexicon and functional concepts
... A minimal syntax
... Thought with a minimal syntax
.. The externalization of the Language of Thought for communication
... The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
... The predictions of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
.... Space
.... Colours
.... The demise of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
... What gets externalized at the level of concepts
.... Pointers to primitive concepts
.... Lexical pragmatics
.... The lexicalization of concepts
.. Neo-Constructionism versus Constructionism
.. Conclusion
. A mildly Machiavellian view of communication and
the Argumentative Theory of Reasoning
.. Introduction
.. What the existence of two communication systems in humans means
.. Humans as cooperators
... The vexed notion of cooperation
... Cooperation in linguistic communication
... Human altruism
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 9/1/2017, SPi
Contents ix
... Mildly Machiavellian humans
.... Implicit communication
.... Implicit communication is predicted neither by
UG nor by the general mechanisms of linguistic
communication
.... Criticisms of Minimax accounts
... Implicit communication is not an efficient means of
linguistic communication
... Social scenarios for the existence of implicit communication
.... Politeness Theory
.... Strategic Speaker Theory as a Machiavellian
mechanism for manipulative communication
.... Machiavellian cooperative communication
.. A change in social organization
.. Consensual democracy and the externalization of
the Language of Thought
.. Conclusion
. Conclusion
References
Index
General preface
This series aims to shed light on the biological foundations of human language.
Biolinguistics is an interdisciplinary field that sets out to explore the basic properties
of human language and to investigate how it matures in the individual, how it is put
to use in thought and communication, what brain circuits implement it, what
combination of genes supports it, and how it emerged in our species. In addressing
these questions the series aims to advance our understanding of the interactions of
mind and brain in the production and reception of language, to discover the
components of the brain that are unique to language (especially those that also
seem unique to humans), and to distinguish them from those that are shared with
other cognitive domains.
Advances in theoretical linguistics, genetics, developmental and comparative
psychology, the evo-devo programme in biology, and cognitive neuroscience have
made it possible to formulate novel, testable hypotheses concerning these basic
questions. Oxford Studies in Biolinguistics will contribute to the emerging synthesis
among these fields by encouraging and publishing books that show the value of
transdisciplinary dialogue, and that highlight the unique research opportunities such
a dialogue offers.
Contributions to the series are likely to come from researchers in many fields,
including linguistic computation, language development, language evolution, cogni-
tive neuroscience, and genetics. The series welcomes work that addresses the philo-
sophical and conceptual foundations of the field, and is open to work informed by all
theoretical persuasions. We expect authors to present their arguments and findings
in a manner that can be understood by scholars in every discipline on which their
work has a bearing.
In this book Reboul critically examines conceptions of language as a system for
thought and for communication. She defends the idea that human cognition is
significantly different from non-human animal cognition to take the ‘system for
thought’ position very seriously. The book should be of great interest to scholars in
many disciplines, as it bears on foundational issues at the intersection of linguistics,
philosophy, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology.
Cedric Boeckx
Barcelona
September
Acknowledgements
I have been working on language evolution on and off since . I was first brought
to the question by my then colleague at the Institute for Cognitive Sciences (CNRS,
Lyon), Peter Dominey. He co-opted me for an ESF project on ‘The cultural self-
organization of cognitive grammar: Neural network simulation’ in the Origin of Man,
Language and Languages (–). Basically, he needed a linguist to give some
background to the project, and, despite my scepticism about the whole subject of
language evolution, I accepted through a feeling that laboratory solidarity should
prevail. Collaborating (very modestly) on the project made me realize that the subject
could be approached in a scientifically valid way.
The main next step occurred in – when I spent six months in Japan at the
invitation of Professor Hideaki Nakatani at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
I was entirely free to pursue the subject without any administrative care, and many of
the ideas in the present book began to take shape during those six months. I am
deeply grateful both to Professor Nakatani for his generous invitation and to Jean-
Louis Dessalles for having suggested my name.
Among those who have inspired my thoughts about language evolution, I would
like to name Joël Fagot (who has deeply influenced my views about the link between
perception and conceptualization), Fritz Newmeyer (who stayed at the Institute for
Cognitive Sciences on two occasions and with whom I enjoyed scientific conversa-
tions, as well as a deep friendship, which includes his wonderful wife, Marilyn
Goebel), Steven Anderson (who has a long and deeply insightful relation to the
subject and has produced books, papers, and chapters on language evolution), Cédric
Boeckx (whose ideas on language evolution and syntax are central to the third
chapter), Tatjana Nazir, my cognitive scientist colleague and friend, with whom
I have had many enlightening conversations about concepts, and all my colleagues
at the Institute for Cognitive Sciences-Marc Jeannerod (UMR , CNRS, Lyons)
for the friendly, and intellectually rich environment in which I live my (very
rewarding) scientific life.
Longer intellectual influences are Deirdre Wilson, who supervised my postdoc-
toral studies in Language Sciences at University College London from to
and has remained a lifelong friend, and Kevin Mulligan, who supervised my (second)
Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Geneva (defended in ) and who has also
remained a very faithful and valued friend.
Audiences in Osaka at the fourteenth Annual Conference of the Pragmatic Society
of Japan (), Sienna at a departmental seminar (), Neuchâtel at the inaug-
uration conference for the Center for Cognitive Sciences (), the University of
xii Acknowledgements
Barcelona at a departmental seminar (), Paris at the Workshop on Cognition
and Language (ENS, ), Geneva at the International Congress of Linguists (),
London at a departmental seminar at University College London (), and Malta
at the sixth International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics in Malta ()
have commented on some of the material in the fourth chapter. Very special thanks
go to Cédric Boeckx, who encouraged me to submit a proposal to Oxford University
Press, and saw me through the submission process, helping me at every step, and,
most specifically to Denis Delfitto who has reread the whole of the typescript and
discussed parts of it with me always in a positive and highly acute way. Paola Paradisi
has been short changed in not having the time to do the same, but I am grateful to her
for volunteering and I can only say that I hope that she will enjoy the finished
product.
Needless to say, all remaining errors are mine.
Finally, thanks to my husband, Jacques Moeschler (who reread parts of the
manuscript), for his support, and to my four (by now grown-up) children, Alexandre,
Nathanael, Axel, and Abigael, for providing the necessary light relief and distraction.
Abbreviations
DNA deoxyribonucleic acid
EEG electroencephalography
E-language external language
fMRI Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
FOXP Forkhead-Box
I-language internal language
LAD Language Acquisition Device
LRC Language Research Center (Atlanta)
M Merge
MeaningNN non-natural meaning (Gricean)
MEG magnetoencephalography
ms millisecond
NP Noun Phrase
PHON phonological component
Q-Principle Quantity Principle
R-Principle Relation Principle
SEM semantic component
TMS Transcanial Magnetic Stimulation
UG Universal Grammar
1
Introduction
After a long eclipse that lasted for more than a century, the question of language
evolution has reappeared and enjoys a robust popularity, as evidenced by the
quantity of publications that have gone to press every year since it enjoyed its first
revival in Pinker and Bloom (). Though there are still sceptical voices (see, e.g.,
Hauser et al. —though, for a dissenting opinion, see Martins and Boeckx ),
there are quite a few reasons why the theme can now be profitably investigated, not
only and not so much because we know much more about human evolution than
when the theme was barred in ,1 as because we know much more about
language, about animal communication systems, about cognition, including animal
cognition, about biological and cultural evolution, about anthropology—all domains
that have to be taken into account when language evolution is the topic of investi-
gation. This necessary interdisciplinarity, where multiple disciplines converge on the
same question, is readily seen in collections issuing from conferences on the subject
(see, e.g., Hurford et al. ; Knight et al. ; Botha and Knight a,b; Botha
and Everaert ). The revival of language evolution as a scientifically respectable
topic has led to a whole host of different proposals and scenarios, which in itself
raises the question of how to choose among them. It has to be said that few authors
have concerned themselves with the necessity for criteria.
There may be several approaches to the question: for instance, Fitch () argues
that, language being a complex phenomenon, all theories have something to con-
tribute, and basically adopts a frankly ecumenical approach towards the variety of
scenarios and theories. He goes one step further, claiming that it does not make any
sense to pick out any core component of language relative to which different theories
could be assessed in terms of their explanatory adequacy. This, however, is hardly
satisfying: it may be indeed that each extant theory has something to contribute to a
1
By the Linguistic Society of Paris, soon to be followed by a similar prohibition from its British
counterpart. The edict from the Linguistic Society of Paris read: ‘The Society does not accept any
communication about either the origin of language, or the creation of a universal language’ (La Société
n’admet aucune communication concernant, soit l’origine du langage, soit la création d’une langue uni-
verselle (Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, vol. , p. iii (Paris, ) <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/
/bptkk> (accessed September )).
Cognition and Communication in the Evolution of Language. First edition. Anne Reboul
© Anne Reboul . First published by Oxford University Press.
Introduction
solution to the puzzle, but this does not mean that no criteria should be applied to the
final product. In other words, the question is not whether we need criteria—we do—
but rather what kind of criteria we need. Equally, the fact that language is a complex
phenomenon does not mean that there is no feature or combination of features that
are specific to it. Here, Fitch’s casual dismissal of any need to identify feature(s)
specific to language is particularly mystifying. Clearly such features would be explan-
anda that any theory of language evolution has to account for. In the absence of such
specific feature(s), it is not clear why we would even need a theory of language
evolution in the first place.
A first general constraint relative to criteria of adequacy for a theory of language is
that they should be neutral as to whether a theory sees language as the result of
biological evolution, cultural evolution, or both. Though, as we shall see, there are
good reasons to doubt that any viable theory of language evolution can be entirely
non-biological (that it can see language as, for example, purely the product of cultural
evolution), criteria should not prejudge the matter. So let us begin by looking at
criteria of adequacy at various levels of specificity.
A first approach to the problem of criteria of adequacy is to have a look at
Tinbergen’s famous four questions (). Tinbergen targeted the question of mech-
anism (or proximal cause), function (or ultimate cause), ontogeny (or development),
and phylogeny (or evolution). Reformulated relative to language, we get:
. What are the mechanisms of language?
. What are the functions of language?
. What is the ontogeny of language?
. What is the phylogeny of language?2
A theory of language evolution that would manage to answer all four questions
would indeed be highly desirable, but it is doubtful that any extant theory does this.
But another way of approaching the problem of criteria of adequacy is to look at the
questions as Tinbergen () himself did: that is, as corresponding to different levels
of investigation.
Relative to language, Chomsky () has argued for a distinction between
E-languages, the languages (such as English, French, Mandarin, Tagalog, and so
on) that we routinely use to communicate, and I-language, the inner knowledge that
each human acquires of her own language. Chomsky insists that the proper subject of
linguistics is I-language, not E-languages. This does not mean that linguistics should
entirely ignore E-languages, as they are one of the factors determining I-language.
2
Bateson and Laland (), reviewing the changes that have occurred since Tibergen’s paper was
published in , conclude that the questions still stand, but propose to update them somewhat. I will
come back to this in Chapter .
Introduction
However, they are not the only factor determining I-language. The other factor is the
genetically determined initial stage of the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that is
species-specific to humans. Chomsky () has argued—relative to language rather
than to language evolution—that there are three levels of (scientific) adequacy:
observational adequacy (relative to the range of data that must be taken into
account); descriptive adequacy (determining what adequately describes data at the
level of E-language); explanatory adequacy (providing an explanation of the data as
described at the level of I-language and LAD). Arguably, any theory of language
evolution (and, indeed, any scientific theory) has to satisfy criteria of adequacy at all
three levels. Chomsky (: , quoted by Boeckx : , n. ) has added a fourth
level, which is presumably the most relevant for the deep question of language
evolution, which he calls beyond explanatory adequacy, where we ask ‘not only
what the properties of language are but why they are that way’—that is, why the
LAD is the way it is.
None of Tinbergen’s questions belongs in the observational level, which is hardly
surprising, given that this is the level that basically identifies the collection of facts
that have to be described and explained. The question of mechanism (question )
belongs in the descriptive level, that of ontogeny (question ) straddles both the
descriptive and the explanatory levels, while the question of phylogeny (question
) belongs in the explanatory level; the question of function (question ) may be
said to belong in the further level of ‘beyond explanatory adequacy’. Thus, those
levels form a hierarchy, with observational adequacy at the bottom, and observa-
tional adequacy will in part determine the content of the three upper levels,
as its contents constrain what has to described, explained, and, ultimately,
accounted for. Additionally, it seems clear that it is difficult if not impossible to
list relevant questions for a theory of language evolution unless one has a theory
of language that satisfies at least the criterion of observational adequacy. This is
because explananda, which arguably constitute the basis for such questions, have
to be correctly identified.
Among those authors who seem convinced of the necessity for criteria are
Számadó and Szathmáry (: ), who argue that any theory of language evolu-
tion should answer the four following questions:
. Honesty: can the theory account for the honesty of early language—that is, is
there a shared interest between the proposed communicating parties?
. Groundedness: are the concepts proposed by the theory grounded in reality?
. Power of generalization: can the theory account for the power of generalization,
which is unique to human language?
. Uniqueness: can the theory account for the uniqueness of human language?
Számadó and Szathmáry conclude that none of the extant scenarios that they have
examined can satisfactorily answer all four questions.
Introduction
A look at Számadó and Szathmáry’s questions shows that questions , , and
have to do with explanatory adequacy,3 which is perfectly legitimate, but supposes
that the explananda (honesty, power of generalization, and uniqueness) have been
correctly identified (which brings us back to observational adequacy). As we will see,
there are good reasons to think that power of generalization and uniqueness
are indeed explananda central to any theory of language evolution. There may be
reasons, however, to doubt that this is the case for honesty. As I will argue now,
whether honesty is or is not an explanandum for a theory of language evolution
crucially depends on the status of language as a communication system.
That language is routinely used in human communication is not in doubt.
However, what may be and should be discussed (though usually it is not) is whether
language is a communication system in the strong sense (in which case it evolved for
communication) or whether it is a communication system in the weak sense (in
which case it evolved to fulfil another function, but was then exapted4 for commu-
nication). This makes a difference for honesty, because the question of honesty is
crucial only if language is a communication system in the strong sense. It becomes a
relatively marginal question if language is a communication system only in the weak
sense (as I shall discuss). While Számadó and Szathmáry follow an overwhelming
majority of authors5 in assuming that language is a communication system in the
strong sense, presumably on the basis of its routine use in human communication, it
is not clear that present use is a good guide to primordial evolutionary function. Let
me make an analogy. Nowadays, wings and feathers are routinely used in flight by
birds. The fact that they are so used suggests that they are a flight system in the strong
sense that they evolved for flight. This has led people to ask a commonsensical
question, given that natural selection is supposed to be progressive and slow: how
could wings ever have evolved? The problem is that, although wings, as they are
nowadays, are quite suitable for flight, they would not have been initially (notably
they would have been too small to allow flight). So how they could have been selected
for flight initially is a mystery.6 The solution is that wings and feathers initially
developed, not for flight, but as a cooling system (see, e.g., Longrich et al. ), and
3
Question has to do with descriptive adequacy and questions and also have to do with ‘beyond
explanatory adequacy’.
4
The notion of ‘exaptation’ was introduced by Gould and Vrba (). It refers to a feature that initially
evolved for a given function and is then reused for another, different, function.
5
In their paper, Számadó and Szathmáry () list eleven different scenarios (gossip, grooming, group
bonding/ritual, hunting, language as a mental tool, pair bonding, motherese, sexual selection, song, status
for information, and tool making), only one of which—language as a mental tool—clearly and unques-
tionably divorces language and communication.
6
Note that, while this question makes perfect sense for wings and feathers, given that flight is an all or
nothing feature, it does not make sense for other features of a more gradual nature. For instance, vision
being susceptible of degrees, mutatis mutandis, seeing a little is better than not seeing at all, and there is no
problem with the view that eyes evolved for vision (see, e.g., Dawkins on the evolution of eyes).
Introduction
were later exapted for flight. Thus, the routine use of a feature in the present time is
not always a fair guide as to whether it actually evolved for that specific function.
Hence it makes sense to refrain from begging the question of whether language is a
communication system in the strong or only in the weak sense. The pros and cons
have to be very carefully examined before any such conclusion is reached. This will be
done in Chapter , but I would like to make some preliminary remarks here.
Demonstrably (see Section ..), language is distinguished from all other animal
communication systems by a core combination of features—semanticity, discrete
infinity, and decoupling—that is not found in any other communication system to
our present knowledge. The immediate consequence of this is that language is
unlimited not only in the number of different sentences it can produce (through
discrete infinity); additionally, these sentences have different contents (through
semanticity); and these contents are largely independent of the situation the speaker
finds herself in (through decoupling).7 A second consequence is that, because of
decoupling, language is the answer to a cheater’s prayer: as decoupling allows
speakers to talk about absent entities, be they people, events, objects, and so on,
there is no easy way for the hearer to check the truth of what he is being told. This
makes language the perfect tool for deception. As Trivers (: loc. ) puts it:
Our most prized possession—language—not only strengthens our ability to lie but greatly
extends its range. We can lie about events distant in space and time, the details and meaning of
the behaviors of others, our innermost thoughts and desires, and so on.
The problem here is that there is a general consensus that, for a communication
system to evolve, it has to be profitable for both the sender and the receiver (see, e.g.,
Krebs and Dawkins ). Arguably, deception makes a signal detrimental to the
receiver. So, if deception was widespread, the receivers would be selected to ignore
the signals, thereby putting an end to the evolution of the corresponding communi-
cation system. This is an especially acute problem for language, given decoupling.
Thus, these two consequences of the core combination of features that is character-
istic of language raise two major questions for any account of language evolution:
. Why did humans (and only humans) need a communication system that allowed
them to produce an infinity of different sentences, with different contents?
. How did language evolve as a communication system, given that it incorporates
a tool for deceiving (decoupling)?8
These two questions are especially difficult to answer for any account that treats
language as a communication system in the strong sense. By contrast, if language is a
7
This core combination of features conjointly corresponds to what Számadó and Szathmáry () call
power of generalization.
8
This corresponds to question of Számadó and Szathmáry (), the question of honesty.
Introduction
communication system only in the weak sense, they can be more easily answered in
as much as the core combination of features could have been inherited by language as
a communication system from language as fulfilling another function for which
these three features would presumably be much better suited than they are for
communication.
Without anticipating on later chapters, in a nutshell, we may have been blinded by
the routine (and salient) use of language in communication to its no less routine (but
a lot less salient) use in thought. The core combination of semanticity, discrete
infinity and decoupling, while it is an embarrassment for any theory of language as
a communication system in the strong sense, makes perfect sense in a system of
thought. Thus, if language first evolved as a system of thought (constituting a
Language of Thought, à la Fodor; see Fodor , ; Fodor and Pylyshyn
), and was then exapted by externalization for use in communication, these
problematic features of language would not need any specific explanation at the
communication level: they would just be inherited by language as a communication
system in the weak sense from language as a system of thought. In addition, such a
theory would ipso facto solve what is a deep (though usually ignored) problem for any
theory of language as a communication system in the strong sense: where does the
infinity of different contents that language allows humans to communicate come
from in the first place?
Thus, the first constraints on any criteria for a theory of language evolution is that
it should not beg the question of whether language is a system of communication in
the strong sense or a system of communication in the weak sense. This is because the
answer to that crucial question has strong consequences for the criteria of adequacy,
which a theory of language evolution has to satisfy. It changes at least in part
the explananda, with major impacts on the explanatory and beyond explanatory
adequacy of theories.
I would like to outline what the burden of the respective alternatives outlined
above would be for both explanatory and beyond adequacy. On the face of it, it would
seem that theories that see language as a communication system in the strong sense
have a much lighter load than any theory that adopts the opposite position. This is
because the latter have to account both for the primordial evolution of language (for
example, as a system for thought) and for its subsequent exaptation for communi-
cation (its evolution for communication): in other words, they have to be dual
accounts. By contrast, the former have to account only for its evolution for commu-
nication. Thus, a theory such as the one I have outlined, according to which language
first evolved for thought and was then exapted for communication, has to do a double
job relative to what a theory according to which language evolved primordially for
communication has to do. While this is true, this apparently heavier burden is
counterbalanced by the fact that the central questions already outlined (questions
and ) seem to raise major difficulties for theories that see language as a system of
Introduction
communication in the strong sense, but lose much of their bite on the opposite view.
Hence, the explanatory and beyond burden is not enough to adjudicate between
the two views.
Thus it would seem to be a good idea to leave both options—language as a
communication system in the strong sense and language as a communication system
in the weak sense—open. However, whether this is possible is a moot point, as an
apparently insuperable principled objection has been made to the second option.
The argument goes as follows: any view that sees language as a communication
system in the weak sense makes it less likely that it evolved from a previous animal
communication system. If this is the case, then, on such a view, language would be
discontinuous with other animal communication systems. Any view that presup-
poses a discontinuity between language and other animal communication systems is
‘non-scientific’, because incompatible with natural selection. This comes from the
fact that gradual change, as opposed to saltation, is at the centre of the theory of
natural selection. The theory supposes that major innovations in biological design
have evolved small step by small step over eons of time, through the accumulation of
minute improvements (each of them selected),9 rather than catastrophically in a
single step, as is supposed by saltationism (see Gould ).10 As discontinuous
accounts of the evolution of an innovation are necessarily saltationist, any discon-
tinuous account is incompatible with the theory of natural selection, and, hence, non-
scientific. Given that accounts that see language as a communication system in the
weak sense are discontinuous, they are ipso facto non-scientific. Any view that follows
this path is a return to the Scala naturae, with man as the pinnacle of evolution, a way
of thought suspiciously near to Creationism.
It is important to be clear as to what it is exactly that the argument claims. It
cannot claim that it is the postulation of any kind of discontinuity that is prohibited.
This would make it more or less impossible to talk of innovation in biology, as it
seems that any reasonable definition of the term presupposes a discontinuity.11 So it
is only the postulation of a certain kind of discontinuity, not of any discontinuity,
that is targeted. Obviously, even though species are not defined by species–specific
features—they are identified through their reproductive options, fertile reproduction
being possible within a species, but not between species12—it seems nevertheless that
9
It is precisely for this reason that there is a problem for the theory according to which wings and
feathers evolved as a flight system in the strong sense in birds. They could not, initially, have been selected
for flight.
10
Note that cultural evolution is also supposed to proceed in such a cumulative way (see Tomasello
), though its time scale is historical (counted in decades or centuries) rather than geological (counted
in thousands or millions of years).
11
As noted by Kappeler et al. (: ), ‘Every species is not just connected to others, it is also unique,
or else it would not be a separate species’.
12
This is a simplification. How to define a species is far from a simple matter, though this will not detain
us here. The definition used here is the most current one (see, e.g., Cela-Conde and Ayala ).
Introduction
there are species-specific features. These species-specific features necessarily intro-
duce discontinuities between species. However, they are certainly compatible with
natural selection. For instance, though, presumably, nobody would deny that bats,
as a species, have the ability to echolocate,13 the discontinuity thereby introduced
between them and other species’ navigational abilities does not contradict natural
selection: if anything it is the main goal of natural selection to explain the evolution of
such discontinuities. In their absence, the theory of natural selection would have
precious little to do.
A more serious threat to natural selection seems to occur when such discontinu-
ities are seen as being of a qualitative rather than quantitative nature. One might
argue that, while quantitative differences can be accounted for through a gradual
process, only a saltationist view can account for qualitative differences. Thus qualitative
differences (let us call them qualitative discontinuities) would constitute absolute
discontinuities (both in end-result and in evolutionary process) in contradiction with
natural selection. From that perspective, whether language is qualitatively different or
only quantitatively different in nature from animal communication would make a big
difference. Or so the story goes.
It is not clear that the reasoning is faultless here, however. Basically, a theory that
sees language as a communication system in the weak sense does suppose a quali-
tative discontinuity with all other animal communication systems if only because
those other animal communication systems are communication systems in the
strong sense.14 But the fact that seeing language as a communication system in the
weak sense makes it qualitatively discontinuous with other animal communication
systems does not mean that it is also qualitatively discontinuous with the previous
(non-communicative) system(s) from which it primordially evolved. For instance,
if, as suggested by the alternative scenario presented above, language primordially
evolved for thought, it may have evolved gradually, in keeping with Darwinian tenets,
from a previous cognitive system. In other words, language might be qualitatively
discontinuous as far as communication is considered, but only quantitatively dis-
continuous as far as thought is concerned. Such a view would be perfectly compatible
with natural selection.
A central difficulty regarding the evolution of language is that, while communi-
cation is everywhere in nature, language is to be found only in humans. In this sense,
it is not only species-specific, it is unique (hence Számadó and Szathmáry’s fourth
question, uniqueness). The problem is compounded by the very short time (in
evolutionary terms) that has elapsed since the separation between the human and
13
It is actually also present in a few other terrestrial mammals, and, of course, in Cetaceans.
14
With a few notable exceptions, they are strongly dependent on phylogenetic inheritance, have very
little flexibility, and are not used for anything other than communication (see, e.g., Hauser ). This
makes it highly likely that they are communication systems in the strong sense.
Introduction
chimpanzee lineages: a mere six or seven million years. Additionally, as everyone
knows (it made headlines in the popular press), there are very few differences
between the human and the chimpanzee genomes. This raises two prima facie
major problems: the first one is how to account for the evolution of language in
humans in a gradualist way, given the short time in which it had to evolve (as it is
clearly not present in chimpanzees); the second one is to account for the fact that it is
not present in chimpanzees (or any other great ape species), given genomic proximity.
What is more, the fact that language is unique to humans raises additional
problems. Features that are common to several species may be either homologous
or analogous. Homologous features are inherited from the common ancestor to a
lineage—for example, limbs in mammals. Analogous features evolve separately in
different lineages owing to similar selection pressures in the different environments
in which the different lineages evolved—for example, wings in birds, bats, and
insects.15 Both homologous and analogous features bring precious information on
the selection processes involved (see Fitch ): while homologous features indicate
the continuing value (or the selective neutrality) of the feature in the lineage through
which it is shared by inheritance and allow scientists to follow its evolutionary
history, analogous features indicate which type of selection pressure was operative
in the separate evolutionary processes involved. Being unique, language can give
neither sort of information. But there is more to language uniqueness than this (dire)
epistemic consequence. Apart from language, unique features are more or less non-
existent in nature, and language is unique in being unique. So the question of
language uniqueness has to loom large in language evolution, which makes it an
explanandum for any theory (in keeping with Számadó and Szathmáry’s views ()).
To sum up, these difficulties seem to raise three problems for any theory of
language evolution:
• given the short time in which language had to evolve, it is difficult to imagine a
gradual and lengthy evolutionary process;
• given the genomic proximity between humans and chimpanzees, any massive
biological innovation seems impossible;
• given the uniqueness of language, any selection pressure giving rise to it has to
be unique too.
It should be noted that the first two difficulties seem to lead to opposite conclu-
sions. The shortness of evolutionary time seems to suggest, against Darwinian tenets,
that language is the result of a catastrophic biological innovation. But the genomic
proximity seems to preclude such a possibility. Finally, language uniqueness makes
the existence of a single selection pressure unlikely, as it would have to be unique to
15
Analogous features are the result of convergent evolution.
Introduction
the human lineage.16 Thus, we seem to have painted ourselves into a corner as far as
biological evolution is concerned. A biological evolution of language is unlikely to
have been gradual, it is unlikely to have been catastrophic (notwithstanding the fact
that its being catastrophic would contradict Darwinian tenets), and the existence of a
specific selection pressure is unlikely in the extreme.
There are, however, different solutions to the problems just described, the most
obvious being to abandon the idea that language is the product of biological evolution
and to resort to a cultural evolution process. This, as a matter of fact, is the path most
frequently chosen by scholars who see language as a communication system in the
strong sense. That solution comes with different scenarios (see n. for a list), but one
important thing to note is that, if language is the result of a cultural evolution, it has
to be acquired through general learning processes. This seems to be a fairly generally
adopted position, despite well-rehearsed objections to it (see, for the original argu-
ment given by Fodor, Piattelli-Palmarini , ). Whether its proponents are
right or not to bite this specific bullet is a matter I leave for later discussion. I would
like, however, to note that, even if language is the product of cultural evolution,
this does not solve the problem of why it should be needed in the first place (see
question ). Additionally, general learning processes being widespread among animals
(and notably among primates), this view makes language uniqueness rather a deeper
mystery.17 To answer the first question, and despite important differences (hence the
multiplicity of scenarios enumerated in n. ), people who harbour such views
see the discontinuity between humans and chimpanzees as the result of modifications
in the social organization of hominid groups (possibly as a result of biological
modifications—see, e.g., Power ; Falk ), resulting in greater cooperativeness
in humans.
An obvious advantage of such views is that cultural evolution is much faster than
biological evolution (see n. ), making the short evolutionary period in which
language had to evolve less of a problem. However, humans, though they are
hominid (great apes and their cousins in a more familiar terminology), are not
naked, linguistic chimpanzees. There are two major (and many minor) differences
16
Even though the idea that language is linked to the emergence of modern humans seems fairly
consensual, there is always the possibility that it evolved before Homo sapiens sapiens, either in an archaic
Homo sapiens ancestor, or even before. No one, however, has ever supposed that it evolved before Homo
erectus. So the unique selection pressure might have to be unique to the hominin rather than to the human
lineage. This does not change the basic line of the argument.
17
What is more, the inability of even chimpanzees to learn human languages in language research
programmes beyond a very limited vocabulary and an even more limited ‘syntax’ seems to contradict the
view that general learning processes are all that is needed for language acquisition (see Bloom , for a
similar argument). Even if chimpanzees did not develop language on their own (e.g., because of social and
cultural differences between chimpanzee and hominin or human groups), one would expect them on this
view to be able to learn it much better than they actually do. They are not (see Anderson for a review
of the evidence).
Introduction
between modern humans and chimpanzees, and these differences are indubitably
biological: the fairly massive increase in relative brain size, which began with Homo
erectus about two million years ago and culminated in archaic Homo sapiens (includ-
ing Neanderthalis) (see, e.g., Falk and Gibson ; Lewin and Foley ; Coolidge
and Wynn ; Hofman and Falk ), and the strong reorganization of the brain
in modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens (see Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco a,b;
Benítez-Burraco and Boeckx ). The major problem regarding these changes, and
notably the increase in relative brain size, is that brains are very costly in energetic
terms (see Aiello and Wheeler ).18 Thus brain size increase is not gratuitous, and
one would expect it to be selected against, unless very strong selection pressures arise.
Dunbar () has specifically addressed the question of enhanced brain size in
the Homo lineage. He has proposed that (relative) brain size in primates is directly
correlated with group size (and only indirectly correlated with ecological conditions,
such as, for example, size of foraging area). His view is in keeping with theories that
see cognitive evolution as due to social pressures (the Social Intelligence Hypothesis).
The idea is that group size depends on ecological conditions, a bigger group provid-
ing better protection against predators. However, any increase in group size will be
accompanied by a corresponding increase in the complexity of in-group social
relations. Here, there are actually two (compatible) versions of the Social Intelligence
Hypothesis. On the Machiavellian view (see Byrne and Whiten ; Whiten and
Byrne ), groups are vulnerable to cheaters (and augmenting group size increases
that vulnerability) and group members will evolve to be both better cheaters (better
able to avoid detection) and better detectors of cheating, in a classical evolutionary
arms race. On the cooperative hypothesis (see Tomasello ), cooperation involves
the development of empathy and mindreading, leading to a general increase in
intelligence. It is fair to say that Dunbar’s theory (see Dunbar , , ) is
a mixture of both. So, according to Dunbar, the increase of relative brain size in the
Homo lineage, which began about two million years ago with Homo erectus, is linked
to an increase in group size at that time, when hominin groups reached around
members. This increase in group size went on to reach around members per
group in modern humans and was accompanied by a corresponding increase in
relative brain size.
So far so good. There are, however, two major problems with that view. The first is
that a meta-analysis by Reader and Laland () showed that enhanced relative
brain size in primates is correlated not so much with group size as it is with social
learning,19 behavioural innovation, and frequency of tool use. Thus, while social
18
Dunbar (: ) notes that ‘the average human brain weighs about % of adult body weight, yet
consumes something approaching % of the body's total energy intake’.
19
Certainly in itself a social ability, but not directly linked to the management of in-group complex
social relationships.
Introduction
intelligence (understood as encompassing social learning) may have been an import-
ant element in enhanced brain size in primates, it is certainly not the only factor
responsible. In a comment on Reader and Laland’s paper, Seyfarth and Cheney
(: ; emphasis added) conclude: ‘Natural selection may, therefore, have
favoured an increase in brain size because of benefits derived from innovation or
social learning that are independent of a species' typical group size’.20 A second serious
problem for Dunbar’s theory of relative brain size increase in primates is that it
would predict that in modern humans the increase would be mainly due to a
disproportionate increase in the parts of the brain directly involved in social
cognition—that is, the frontal lobes. But, though the frontal lobes have increased in
modern humans, their increase is directly proportional to the increase in global brain
size and entirely predicted by it. If anything, what has increased disproportionately is
brain connectivity, which has accompanied a major reorganization of the parietal/
occipital (and not specifically the frontal) areas of the brain (see Boeckx and Benitez-
Burraco a,b). And this leads us to a third problem: while Dunbar’s theory may be
an explanation of brain size increase (notwithstanding the objections above), it has
nothing to say about this reorganization. To be fair to Dunbar, no one has proposed a
convincing story of why humans have gone to such an extravagant (in terms of
energetic cost) increase in brain size (though, as suggested by Reader and Laland
(), it is unsurprisingly linked to increases not only in social but in general
intelligence), nor has anyone explained why brain reorganization took place in
modern humans (compared to archaic ancestors).21
Setting these problems aside for the moment, let us go back to the propositions
according to which there was a cultural evolution of language triggered by social
selection pressures in human groups. I will take as an example here Dunbar’s
proposal, though the diagnosis I will give of the problems it meets with could be
applied to more or less any of them. Remember the explanandum already proposed:
the core combination of features—semanticity, discrete infinity, decoupling—unique
to language, but absent from all other animal communication systems. This led us to
two major questions for any account that sees language as a communication system
in the strong sense:
A. Why did humans (and only humans) need a communication system that
allowed them to produce an infinity of different sentences, with different
contents?
B. How did language evolve as a communication system, given that it incorporates
a tool for deceiving (decoupling)?
20
This is far from innocuous, as Dunbar’s theory of language evolution (see Aiello and Dunbar ;
Dunbar , ) is directly linked to group size.
21
Boeckx and Benitez-Burraco (a,b) have suggested that it is this reorganization that made the
emergence of language possible, in keeping with the notion of a language-ready brain.
Introduction
If we go back to Dunbar’s theory of language evolution, then, according to him,
language emerged as a solution to the problem of securing group cohesion when
group size increased over a certain limit. In most primate species, grooming is the
way to build coalitions and to secure group cohesion. The time spent grooming other
group members is directly correlated with group size: the more members there are in
a group, the more time the individuals in that group will have to spend grooming
their fellow group members. Obviously, there are limits to the time that an organism
can devote to such an activity, as it is time that will not be spent on evolutionarily
crucial activities, such as foraging and mating. Aiello and Dunbar () fix such a
limit at per cent of an organism’s time. They note that, with about members,
Homo erectus groups would be just inside that limit, but that modern human groups,
counting around members, go beyond it, making grooming an impractical
means to ensure group cohesion. They propose that language emerged as a solution,
supplying humans with an ersatz vocal grooming that allowed them to reach up to
three group members simultaneously, where physical grooming allowed only one-to-
one contact. There are two problems with that view (see Power , for an excellent
discussion): the first is that any form of communal humming or chanting would have
been quite enough for securing group cohesion;22 the second is that it would clearly
fail to secure group cohesion. Power’s argument here is as follows: the main reason
for grooming’s success in securing coalition is that it is costly, thus manifesting the
commitment of the groomer to the groomee; replacing costly physical grooming by a
cheap vocal ersatz would not manifest anything like that commitment.23
Dunbar has been sensitive to the first (and rather obvious) objection. He has
answered it by adding to his first (cooperative) hypothesis a second, Machiavellian,
hypothesis. As groups become bigger, offering more opportunity for cheating,
language evolved, from these humble beginnings as an ersatz vocal form of groom-
ing, to allow human group members to exchange information about third parties and
report their eventual cooperative failures (in other words, to gossip), protecting the
group from cheaters. Again, it is a moot point whether this additional hypothesis can
satisfactorily answer question B.24 Be that as it may, I am more interested here by the
way it answers question A, as the same basic problem arises for all theories that
propose that modern humans passed from a non-linguistic to a linguistic state by a
cultural evolution from animal communication systems.25 While all of them provide
some sort of answer to the why-question, they fail to answer the how-question.
22
In other words, this hypothesis entirely fails to answer question A.
23
Here, of course, it is question B that the hypothesis fails to answer.
24
Power () has again offered a decisive objection here: as gossip is by definition decoupled, and
decoupling facilitates deception, there is no reason why gossip should not be, more often than not, deceptive. If
this is the case, then gossip, far from being an insurance against cheating, is an additional opportunity for cheating.
25
Note that Power’s own proposal () (which corresponds to group bonding/ritual in Számadó and
Szathmáry’s list, see n. ) falls foul of the same problem.
Introduction
Here it has to be said that taking this step for granted (as all such theories do)
basically amounts to begging the question of language evolution and leaving a gaping
hole where an explanation is needed. One is strongly reminded of a cartoon from
by Sidney Harris, in which a young and an older scientist stand in front of a
blackboard. On the top left-hand corner of the blackboard there is a mathematical
formula; on the bottom right-hand corner of the blackboard there is another
mathematical formula; in the middle of the blackboard a sentence, saying ‘Then a
miracle occurs’, is written. The older scientist points at the sentence and says ‘I think
you should be more explicit here in step two’.26 In the same way, there is a strong
(and fairly unsavoury) whiff of the miraculous in those cultural (and highly inexplicit)
views of language evolution.
Here, one should, in all fairness, give homage to the few scholars who have at least
tried to bridge the gap. One such account is that of Worden (), who proposed
that discrete infinity could be inherited by language from social intelligence (more
precisely mind reading), which, being necessarily meta-representational, must
involve some form of recursion. I will not discuss this proposal here, though it
should clearly be ranged with theories that see language as a communication system
in the weak sense. I would rather like to say a few words on proposals that at least try
to make inroads into the question by looking for signs of communicative flexibility in
present days’ animal communication systems (see, e.g., the papers in Oller and
Griebel ). The general idea is that communicative flexibility should lead to
greater communicative complexity, getting some of the way towards language. The
investigations have mainly centred on variability in the signal and on voluntary
control. The hypothesis seems to be that voluntary control implies a modicum of
decoupling and that acoustic variability in signals might lead to vocal learning,
which, it is assumed, is the root of language acquisition in humans. Without going
into details, there are many problems with both these notions. First, it is doubtful that
vocal learning is sufficient for language acquisition27 (see Chapters and ). And
second, being under voluntary control in such cases entails the ability to refrain from
producing the signal in the presence of its target, a far cry from the ability to produce
the signal in the absence of its target (for a discussion, see Section .). Finally, such
investigations seem to have nothing to contribute about discrete infinity.
Thus, it seems unlikely that cultural accounts of language evolution are the
solution to the three problems enumerated above (roughly, shortness of evolutionary
time, genomic proximity between chimpanzees and humans, and language uniqueness).
I should note here that, although the first two are, on the face of it, obstacles to a
26
The cartoon can be seen at <http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php> (accessed
September ).
27
In fact, given sign language, it is also doubtful that it is necessary.
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CHAPTER II.
If there were in the wide world a good-looking, stalwart young
man of twenty-three for whom an unexpected meeting in romantic
and picturesque circumstances with a beautiful woman could be
expected to be without danger, George Lauriston might well have
been the man.
Not that he was a prig; not that the highly inflammable substance,
a soldier’s heart, was in his case consuming for some other lady. But
he was not quite in the position, and not at all in the mind of the
majority of his comrades of his own age. He was the poor son of a
brilliant but unlucky soldier who had died bravely in his first
campaign; and he was so eaten up with the ambition to distinguish
himself, and to render famous the name which his father had already
made honourable, that all other passions merely simmered in him
while that one boiled and seethed on the fires of an intense and
ardent nature that as yet had shown but little of its powers. That he
had a keen intellect was well known; it shone out of his brown eyes,
and gave interest to a face, the chief characteristic of which was a
certain, frank, boyish brightness. A good face, an honest face; none
but the better qualities of the nature it illustrated showing through it
yet, no sensual curves to spoil the firm lines of the mouth, which, for
the rest, was more than half hidden by a moustache some shades
lighter than the brown hair, which had a very pretty hero-like curl
about the temples. To the rare eyes which read more than superficial
signs in a man’s countenance, there might perhaps have been
something suggestive in the fact, unnoticeable to any but the very
keenest observer, and therefore unknown even by most of his
intimate friends, that the two sides of his face did not exactly
correspond in a single feature. One nostril was somewhat larger and
higher than the other; the left corner of the mouth scarcely level with
the right; and the same with the eyes and eyebrows, the difference
being in all cases very slight but none the less real. It might have
been argued with some point that a man whose face showed these
irregularities was just as likely to be guilty of startling inconsistencies
as a man with a heavy jaw is to turn out a brute, or one with a
receding chin to prove a soft and yielding fool. So far, however,
George Lauriston could boast a fair record, having earned his
universally high character as much by the heartiness and spirit with
which he threw himself into all games and sports, as by the energy
and devotion he showed in the discharge of the various duties of his
career.
Like most men of strong natures, he enjoyed more prestige than
popularity among his equals in age and rank, being looked upon by
the weaklings with secret contempt for his temperate and orderly life,
and by the superior sort with a little unacknowledged fear. For these
latter had an inkling that there was something under the crest,
whether boiling lava or a mere bed of harmless, quiescent pebbles
who should say? It was only the old officers in the regiment, as it had
been only the more experienced masters at college, who could
discern of what stuff this bright-eyed young soldier was made, and
knew that the fire within him, which could never find enough food for
its devouring energy, was a spark of the flame that, fanned by the
breeze of blessed opportunity, makes men heroes. Love, except in
its most fleeting forms, he had not yet felt, and did not, for the
present at least, mean to feel: it would come to him at the proper
time, like other good things, in some glorified form, and not, as it had
come to his father, in the shape of a romantic devotion to a pretty but
foolish woman who had been a clog and a burden as long as her
short life lasted. With a well-defined ideal in his mind, and with all
thoughts of pleasure in the present swallowed up by dreams of
distinction in the future, he found all women charming, but none
irresistible. Many of the girls he knew were handsome enough to
please a fastidious taste, some had an amusing vivacity, some a
fascinating innocence, here and there was one with the rarer
attraction of sweet and gentle manners; but the beauties were vain
and spoilt, the simple ones inane or ill-dressed, and one had doubts
about the heart of the wits, and the head of the soft and silent ones.
So that George Lauriston had never yet been brought face to face
with the alternative of vain longing for a woman he could not get, or
marriage on £200 a year. In such a situation, he had often avowed
what course he would take: “Marry her and have done with it,” was
his brief formula. He was of a nature too independent and self-
sufficing to be very strongly influenced by the varying outside
circumstances of his life or by the more lax and easy-going principles
of his common-place companions; therefore the views inculcated by
his old Scotch aunt of a woman as a sacred thing, and of love and
marriage as concerns in which a Divine providence took an extra
and special interest, still remained in his mind, though of course
somewhat clouded by the haze of experience. It follows that his
opinions on conjugal loyalty were even aggressively strong.
On one occasion, when a young married officer of the regiment—a
harmless creature enough, but with a youthful ambition to be thought
“fast”—was vapouring away at mess about his achievements with
the girls, Lauriston broke in, in a deep voice:
“Nonsense, laddie, everybody knows you can’t tear yourself away
from your little wife. And do you think we should think better of you if
you could?”
With these well-known principles and opinions, his more
susceptible young comrades, Massey and Dicky Wood, were
justified in not considering that they were exposing Lauriston to any
danger of the heart, in plotting his encounter with the dusky little wife
of a foreign shopkeeper.
It was nine o’clock on the evening appointed by the conspirators
when Lauriston, after dining at the “Criterion” with a friend, drove up
in a hansom to number 36, Mary Street.
It was dull, wet, and rather cold—the fag end of one of those
dismal days that so often mar the brightness of the season in an
English May. Seen through the damp drizzle in the darkness which
was already closing in, as if night were jealous of the gloom of day,
and were hurrying to push her out of the field, the street looked
dirtier and shabbier than ever, and Lauriston wondered to himself
how Frank Massey could have taken rooms in such a wretched
neighbourhood. He did not recognise it as the street in which he had
slipped away from his friends on the night of the dinner-party in
Fitzroy Square; but seeing the number 36 on the door, and observing
that a light was burning in two of the three windows on the first floor,
he paid the cabman, and, according to his instructions, turned the
handle of the door, and walked in. There was a modest and
economical light over the door, which threw small and weak rays
over a bare, wide, and dingy hall, papered with a greasy and smoke-
dyed imitation of a marble, which exists only in the imagination of the
more old-fashioned order of wall-paper designers. The ceiling was
blackened and smoke-hung, the deep wainscoting and the wood of
the once handsome banisters were worn and worm-eaten, the wide
stairs had only a narrow strip of cheap oilcloth up the middle,
scarcely reaching to the now ill-polished space on either side. On the
left hand were two doors, framed in oak with a little carving at the
top; between the panels of both these doors a small white card was
nailed, with the words “Rahas and Fanah, Oriental Merchants.” Only
one chair—a substantial, elaborately carved old hall chair, which
looked like a relic of some sale at a nobleman’s house, but on which
errand boys’ pocket-knives had now for some years exercised their
uninspired art carvings—broke up the monotony of the bare walls;
and a well-used doormat lay at the foot of the stairs. There was no
other attempt at furnishing, but against a door at the end of the
passage by the staircase a huge stack of packing-cases marked with
foreign characters were piled almost to the ceiling, and gave forth a
scent of mouldy straw to complete the attractions of the entrance-
hall.
“Rum place to hang out in!” he murmured, as he put his first foot
on the creaking stairs. “Number 36, Mary Street—yes, that was
certainly the address.”
On the first landing things looked a little more promising. There
was a carpet, and outside each of the three doors a small, black skin
rug, while against the wall, on a bracket of dark wood, with a looking-
glass let in the back, there burned a lamp with a pink glass shade.
Lauriston knocked at the door which he judged to be that of the
room in the windows of which he had seen a light.
There was no answer, and there was no sound.
He waited a few moments, and then knocked again—a sounding
rat-tat-tat with the handle of his umbrella, such as none but a deaf
person or a person fast asleep could fail to hear. Again no answer;
again no sound. He tried the other two doors with the same result;
then, much puzzled by this reception, he went back to the first door,
and after a third fruitless knock, turned the handle and peeped in.
Nothing but black darkness in the two inches he allowed himself to
see. He opened the next door. Although the blind was down and
there was no light inside, he could see quite clearly that it was a
small room with nobody in it. Now, as this apartment looked on to the
street, it was evident that the lights he had seen in the windows must
be those of the room into which he had first peeped, as the two
doors were on a line with each other.
“There must be a double door,” he said to himself, and going back
again, he opened the first door wide and found, not indeed the
obstacle he had expected, but a heavy curtain, thick as a carpet,
which might well be supposed to deaden all outer sounds.
He drew this back, and in a moment became conscious of an
intoxicating change from the gloom and the drizzle outside. A faint,
sweet perfume, like the smell of a burning fir-forest, a soft, many-
tinted subdued light, the gentle plash-plash of falling water all
became manifest to his senses at the same moment, and filled him
with bewilderment and surprise. In front of him, at the distance of
three or four feet, was a high screen of fine sandal-wood lattice work,
over which was flung a dark curtain, embroidered thickly with golden
lilies. Through the interstices of the aromatic wood were seen the
glimmer of quaint brass lamps, the flashing of gold and silver
embroideries, the soft green of large-leaved plants.
Lauriston knew he must have made some awful mistake; no young
English engineer would go in for this sort of thing. But his curiosity
was so great concerning the inhabitants of this Eastern palace on a
first floor in Mary Street, that he was unable to resist the temptation
of a further peep into the interior. He stepped forward and looked
behind the screen.
It was a large room. No inch of the flooring was to be seen, for it
was covered with thick carpets and the unlined skins of beasts. The
fireplace and the entire walls were hidden by shining silks and soft
muslins, draped so loosely that they shimmered in the draught of the
open door. At the four corners of the room stood clusters of broad-
leaved tropical plants, round the bases of which were piled small
metal shields, glittering yataghans, long yellowish elephant-tusks,
and quaintly-shaped vessels of many-hued pottery; above the dark
foliage spears and lances were piled against the wall, pressing back
the graceful draperies into their places, and shooting up, straight and
glistening, like clumps of tall reeds. The ceiling was painted like a
night sky—deep dark blue, with fleecy grayish clouds; from it hung,
at irregular intervals, innumerable tiny opalescent lamps, in each of
which glowed a little spark of light. Besides this, a large lamp of
brass and tinted glass hung suspended from two crossed silken
cords nearly in the middle of the room, and immediately under it a
small fountain played in a bronze basin.
Round three sides of the room was a low divan, covered with
loosely thrown rugs and cushions, some of sombre-hued tapestry,
some resplendent with gorgeous embroidery.
The whole of this most unexpected scene formed only a hazy and
harmonious background in George Lauriston’s eyes; for in front of
him on the divan, between the two trellised windows, lay a creature
so bewitchingly unlike anything of flesh and blood he had ever seen
or dreamed of, that the young Englishman felt his brain swim, and
held his breath with a great fear lest the dazzling vision before him
should melt away, with the scents and the soft lights and the rustle of
the night air in the hanging draperies, into the drizzling rain and the
damp and the darkness of the street outside.
It was a woman he saw, a small and slender woman, lying almost
at full length, supported by a sliding pile of cushions, the one on
which her head rested being a huge square of gold-tinted satin, with
peacocks’ feathers stitched down in all directions upon the smooth
silk. Below her on the ground was a little inlaid Turkish table, on
which burnt, in rather dangerous proximity to the lady’s light
draperies, an open lamp. A loose but clinging garment of soft white
stuff hid her figure and yet disclosed its outlines, the graceful curves
from shoulder to hip, and from hip to heel, while the tip of an
embroidered velvet slipper peeped out beneath its folds, and a
slender rounded arm, laden from shoulder to wrist with armlets and
bracelets, gold, silver and enamelled, escaping from its loose open
sleeve, hung down straight over the side of the divan, and looked in
the soft light which fell on it from the lamp, like purest ivory seen in
the last rays of a sunset. Long gold and silver chains which, had she
been erect, would have reached below her waist, hung round her
neck and jingled together over the side of the couch. A great soft
scarf of many skilfully blended colours was bound about her waist
and fastened by a large Indian ornament of roughly hewn precious
stones. The robe she wore had become disarranged by her reclining
posture, so that great folds of the soft white muslin had gathered
about her neck, forming a white nest-like frame for her small head,
which was covered by a tiny scarlet velvet cap, from under which her
short and curly black hair escaped in a tangled bush that cast a
shade over a little white face. Her eyes were closed and a most
ghastly livid pallor was spread over her features from forehead to
chin; so that Lauriston, with a great shock, was awakened out of the
state of moonstruck bewilderment and admiration into which the
strange sight had thrown him, by a horrible belief that he was
standing in the presence of a dead woman.
“Great Heaven!” broke from his stammering lips as he made one
quick step forward.
But at the sound of his voice the sleeping girl awoke; and her
opening eyes falling at once upon a stranger, she sprang into a
sitting position with a startled cry. In a moment he saw what had
caused his mistake. A blue glass in one side of the octagonal lantern
above had thrown a livid light on the young girl’s face, which he now
saw to be healthily flushed with sleep, and animated with the most
vivid alarm.
He was retreating hastily with a confused murmur of apologies for
his intrusion, when a bright glare of flame flashed up blindingly in a
pointed tongue of light and smoke towards the ceiling, and with a
shriek the girl started to her feet. The hanging open sleeve of her
white gown had caught fire as, waking like a child and not yet quite
mistress of all her faculties, she had, in her change of position,
allowed the flimsy light material to swing over the little lamp.
Lauriston’s light overcoat hung on his arm. He wrapped it round the
panting, struggling, moaning girl, swept up with his left hand a
leopard skin that was uppermost amongst the rugs at his feet, and
binding that also tightly about her, succeeded in very few moments in
stifling the flame. He had said nothing all the while, there being no
time for discussion; the girl, after the first cry, had submitted, with
only low murmurs of fright and pain, to his quick and vigorous
treatment. He looked down, when she at last fell merely to sighing
and trembling and gasping for breath, at the curly head from which
the little scarlet cap had fallen in his rough embrace. The thick tousle
of hair, soft, not as silk, but as finest wool, was entirely innocent of
curling tongs, and hung in disorder about a face which had
something more of passion, something more of a most innocent
voluptuousness in every curve and in every glance than are ever to
be found in the countenance of an English girl.
Lauriston still held the little creature tightly in his arms, and as he
did so the feelings of pity and anxiety, which had been the first to stir
in his heart when his prompt measures choked down the rising
flame, gave place to an impulse of tenderness as she looked up with
long, soft, shining, black eyes full of wondering inquiry. This small
helpless thing, quivering and sighing in his arms and gazing with the
velvet, innocent eyes of a fawn into his face, made his heart leap;
with an agitation new and strange, he pressed her close to him, and
clasped her head against his breast.
If it had been indeed a fawn that he had been caressing, he could
not have been more amazed and confused when the girl slipped
lithely through his arms, and shaking off the impromptu bandages in
which he had swathed her, tossed the ends of her long scarf over
her burnt and blistered left arm and the blackened rags of her sleeve
and bodice, and said haughtily, in English as good as his own, and
moreover with the accent of perfect refinement:
“I am much obliged to you, sir, for your kind help; but as you are a
complete stranger to me, I shall be glad if you will either give an
explanation of your visit, or bring it to a close!”
The unexpected dignity and self-possession of this young
creature, who could not be more than sixteen, together with the
shock of discovering that the fantastic and dreamy-eyed being whom
he had been treating somewhat in the free-and-easy fashion of the
Arabian Nights was a mere nineteenth century young English lady,
reduced poor Lauriston to a level of abject consternation. And yet,
against her will, there was something in her indignation more alluring
than repellent; even as he stammered out the first words of a humble
apology, the transient gleam of anger faded out of her long eyes, and
he saw only before him a graceful tiny creature, calling forth his pity
by the pain in her arm which made her wince and bite her under lip,
and passionate yearning admiration by the seductive charm of every
attitude and every movement.
“I beg you to forgive my intrusion, madam. This address was given
to me, by mistake, as that of one of my friends. I can’t describe to
you the distress I feel at my share in your accident. Tell me how to
summon your friends; I will go at once, and send a doctor. Please
forgive me; for heaven’s sake, forgive me.”
White wet beads stood on his forehead; he was in an agony as,
the danger past, she evidently felt more and more acutely the
smarting pain of her injured arm and shoulder. She gave way, as her
plaintive eyes met those of the young soldier, and burst into tears.
“There’s no one here. Mrs. Ellis has gone out; Sundran, my
servant, is in bed, and I won’t—won’t let Rahas come. I’m afraid of
him; I hate him, I hate him.” And she stamped her little velvet-shod
foot, that came softly enough down on the pile of disordered rugs.
“Oh, send some one to me—it does hurt so.”
“I will! I will!” he said hastily. And afraid of the emotion which was
choking his voice and causing his own eyes to overflow, he dashed
out of the room and down the stairs.
At the foot of them he came suddenly, with a great start, face to
face with a tall, gaunt, dark-visaged man, who seemed to spring up
like a magician from out of the gloom without sound or warning. He
wore an Oriental dress of loose trousers, jacket and sash of a deep
crimson, and a fez on his black hair; but there was no trace of
likeness, no trace of a similarity of race, between the ivory skin and
long liquid eyes of the girl Lauriston had just left, and the swarthy
complexion and fierce, lowering expression of this man.
“What are you doing here?” he said fluently enough, but with a
strong foreign accent, clutching at the young man’s coat with long
lean fingers.
Lauriston, without replying, flung him aside so deftly as well as
forcibly that the other staggered and reeled back against the wall,
and the young soldier dashed open the door and was out of the
house in a moment. Addressing the first respectable-looking man he
met in the street as he hastened in the direction of Fitzroy Square,
he asked the address of the nearest doctor’s, and a few moments
later was at the door of the house indicated. He hurried the doctor up
as if it had been a case of life or death, and burned with impatience
because that gentleman’s footsteps were more deliberate than his
own. For there was more in his heart than anxiety that the tender
little arm should be quickly eased of its pain. The forbidding face of
the man he had met on his way out haunted him, and filled him with
a sullen rage, the origin of which he did not clearly understand. He
was the “Rahas” the girl had wished to avoid; Lauriston felt sure of
that: and he was alone, excited with indignation against the strange
intruder, in the house with the injured girl. He would go up stairs to
her, furious, full of savage inquiries. What claim had he upon her?
What would he do to her?
Lauriston was in a fever of doubts and questions and tempestuous
impulses utterly foreign to him. An odd fancy would recur again and
again to his mind in this new tumult of thoughts and feelings.
She—the lovely, lissom creature whom he had held in his arms,
whose heart he had felt for a short moment beating against his own,
was the fascinating if somewhat soulless lady of the Eastern tales;
he—the dark-faced, evil-looking being whose eyes and teeth had
gleamed out upon him menacingly in the darkness, was the wicked
genie who held her in his power.
Well, and if so, what part in the tale was he, George Lauriston, to
play?
Within one short hour, the self-contained, ambitious young man
seemed to have changed his nature. The absurd, frivolous, or
perhaps dangerous question had become one of momentous
importance to him.
CHAPTER III.
When George Lauriston arrived with the doctor at the door of 36,
Mary Street, the lights in the windows on the first floor had grown
dimmer, and George, who would have opened the door as he had
done before, and gone up stairs with the doctor without ceremony,
found that the key had been turned and the bolts drawn. He rang the
bell, and made the knocker sound with a loud rata-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-
ta-tat that echoed through the now quiet street. No notice whatever
was taken of this, except by a gentleman who lodged on the third-
floor front opposite, who threw open his window and wanted to know
in a husky voice what the things unutterable they meant by kicking
up such an adjective-left-to-the-imagination row in a respectable
neighbourhood.
But No. 36, Mary Street remained as silent and unresponsive as
ever.
After a pause Lauriston knocked again, regardless of the growing
strength of the maledictions of the gentleman opposite. Then a
shadow was seen against the curtains of one of the first-floor
windows, and over the carved lattice-work a head looked out.
George moved closer to the door, and left the doctor to speak.
“Who is it knocking?”
“It is I, Dr. Bannerman. I have been sent for to attend a young lady
who has been severely burned, and if the door is not opened
immediately I shall return to my house.”
“Are you alone?”
“Say yes. I’ll go,” said Lauriston in a low tone.
“Alone? Yes.”
The head disappeared, and Lauriston went a little distance down
the street and crossed to the other side. He saw the door of No. 36
cautiously opened upon the chain, and then, after a few impatient
words from the doctor, it was thrown wide by the man in the fez, and
shut as the other entered. The young man walked up and down
impatiently, never letting the house go out of sight until, after about
half an hour, the doctor re-appeared, and the clank of the chain was
heard as the door was bolted again behind him.
“Well!” said Lauriston eagerly.
“Well!” said the doctor easily.
A doctor is the last sort of man to be readily astonished; but it was
hardly possible that the oldest priest of the body should find himself
in attendance on the entrancing mistress of an Eastern palace on the
first floor of a lodging-house in Mary Street without a mild sense of
passing through an unusual experience.
“You—you saw her?” continued the young man, breathlessly.
“Yes, and dressed the arm. Nothing at all serious; nothing to alarm
anybody. She won’t be able to wear short sleeves for some time, and
that’s about the worst of it.”
“Unimpressive logs these doctors are,” thought Lauriston,
perceiving that his marvellous Eastern lady, with all her romance-
stirring surroundings, had awakened in the man of science
absolutely no more interest than he would have felt in a butcher who
had broken his leg. The only thing to be noted in his quiet, intelligent
countenance was a deep and curious scrutiny of the face of his
young companion.
“You are not a friend of long standing of this lady’s, I understand?”
he said, after an unobtrusive but careful examination.
“Oh, no; it was by the merest accident I was in the house at all. I
was given that address by mistake as that of one of my friends. Why
do you ask?”
“It is nothing, nothing. Your manner when you came to me was so
strangely excited—in fact, it is so still—that I could not help thinking
what a difference thirty years make in a man’s view of things.”
“I was thinking something of the same sort. You seem to see
nothing new, interesting or strange in a patient who appears to me to
be the mysterious Rosamond in a labyrinth of extraordinary
circumstances.”
“I admit I cannot see anything extraordinary in the circumstances;
moreover, I marvel at the strength of an imagination which is able to
do so.”
“Will you tell me just what you did inside that house, and just what
you saw?”
“Certainly. I was admitted, as you know, by a tall dark man who, by
his dress and complexion, I should judge to be either an Arab or a
North African.”
“Don’t you think it strange that no attention was paid to my first
knock, and that you were admitted with as many precautions as a
policeman in a thieves’ kitchen?”
“That was all explained to me by the young man himself, who
seemed to be a very intelligent fellow.”
“How? What did he say?”
“He said that a lady who lodged in the house with her governess
and chaperon, and who, he gave me to understand, was shortly to
become his wife——”
“His wife!” interrupted Lauriston, with a rush of blood to his head.
“—had been frightened by an utter stranger who had by some
means got into the house, and forcing himself into the presence of
the young lady, who was asleep during the temporary absence of her
companion, had woke her and caused her, in her alarmed attempt to
escape, to set on fire the thin muslin wrapper she was wearing. Is
not this substantially correct?” asked the doctor calmly.
“Yes; but——”
“It seemed to me quite natural that our Arabian or African friend
should look upon the unexpected visit as something like an intrusion,
especially as the stranger, on leaving the house, flung the aggrieved
fiancé headlong over the staircase of his own dwelling.”
“Fiancé! How do you know he is her fiancé? You have only his
word for it.”
“It did not occur to me to ask for the lady’s,” said the doctor drily.
“Well, but the room, the lamps and the spears and the tapestries!
Her dress too! Do you have many patients dressed like that?”
Dr. Bannerman looked at him again. If he had seen nothing to
surprise him in his patient, he saw much in his questioner.
“Her dress? Let me see; she had on a white muslin wrapper with
one sleeve burnt off. No, I saw nothing astonishing in that. Her
governess, a rigidly dignified Englishwoman, was with her.”
“And the furniture of the room——”
“Was the usual furniture of a back bedroom in the better class of
London apartments.”
“Oh.” A pause. Lauriston looked half relieved, half puzzled.
He did not want to think that the little section of an enchanted
palace, in which he had passed through such a brief but exciting
experience of something altogether new and intoxicating in life, was
the mere vision that his calmer reason began already to tell him it
must be.
“You didn’t go into the front room then?”
“No.”
Lauriston felt better.
“But I could see into it, and there was nothing extraordinary in it.”
“It was the other room,” murmured Lauriston.
“Well, we are at the corner of my street, and I will wish you good-
night. We professional men have to keep early hours when we can.”
“Shall you call there again?”
“Possibly. But, if you will take an old man’s advice, you will not.”
“You will tell me why?”
“I will. I saw nothing of the marvellous sights you appear to have
witnessed, but I saw something which you did not, or at least not in
the same way. That little black-haired girl’s eyes are the eyes of a
woman who is born to be a coquette—perhaps something more; and
who can no more help looking up into the eyes of every man she
meets with a look that draws out his soul and his senses and leaves
him a mere automaton to be moved by her as she pleases than fire
can help burning, or the spider help spinning his thread.”
“I will never believe it. You may have had thirty years’ more
experience than I; but, by Jove, where a woman is concerned, one
man’s guess is as good as another’s. And I am quite as firmly
convinced that the child is an innocent and good little girl as you are
that she is the contrary. I know it, I am sure of it; as I held her in my
arms——”
“Ah!” interrupted the doctor.
“Wrapping my coat about her to put out the flames,” continued
Lauriston hastily, “I looked at her face, and was quite touched by its
helpless, childlike expression of innocence.”
“And will it take my thirty years of extra experience to teach you
that to hold a woman in your arms is not a judicial attitude?”
Lauriston was silent. Emboldened by the knowledge that the
doctor did not even know his name, and was by no means likely to
meet him again, he had allowed himself to talk more freely than he
would otherwise have done to a stranger. In the ferment of emotions
he was in, however, the older man’s drily cynical tone seemed to him
satanic. He was by this time, therefore, quite as anxious to leave the
doctor, as the latter could possibly be to get rid of him. He was
raising his hat for a rather reserved and abrupt leave-taking, when
Dr. Bannerman stopped him with a good-humoured touch on his
arm.
“Now what have I done that you should give me my dismissal like
that? Merely told you what your own good sense—for you’re a
Scotchman I know by your accent, though it’s far enough from a
canny Scot you’ve been to-night—will tell you in the morning. Set
your affections on a blue-eyed lassie among the hills, or on a prim
little English miss; she may not be quite so warm to you as a little
southern baggage would be, but then she’ll be colder to other
people, and that restores the balance to your advantage. Now, I shall
probably never see you again, so we may as well part good friends;
and for goodness’ ” (the doctor said something stronger than this)
“for goodness’ sake think over my advice. It’s ten times better than
any physic I ever prescribed.”
He held out his hand, which Lauriston shook warmly.
“Thank you, doctor. I’m not a Scotchman, though I was brought up
among the heather. You’re right. Your prescription is a very good
one, and I’ll take as much of the dose as—as I can swallow.”
And in a moment he was striding down the street.
When he woke up the next morning, George Lauriston felt like a
small boy who has been well thrashed the night before and who,
sleeping soundly after an exhausting burst of grief, can’t for the life of
him remember, for the first moment, the nature of the load of
affliction which still burdens his little soul. Had he had more
champagne the night before than was strictly necessary to support
existence? Or had he been plucked in an exam.?
The sight of his over-coat lying on a chair, with the lining
blackened and burnt, recalled the adventures of the preceding
evening. But they came back to his mind in a hazy sort of way,
nothing very clear but that odd little figure in white, with the slender
arms, and the long black eyes, and the chains and bracelets that
jingled and glittered as she moved. It was an odd incident certainly,
and not the least odd part of it was the seriousness with which the
old doctor had warned him to have nothing more to do with the
mysterious lady of the sandal-wood screens and skin-covered
couch. Nothing was less likely than that he should: in cold blood and
in the healthy and prosaic atmosphere of morning, Lauriston felt not
the slightest wish to run possible melodramatic dangers in the
endeavour to see again the beautiful little girl whose romantic
surroundings had afforded him an hour’s excitement the night
before. The burn she had so unluckily sustained through no fault of
his, had been pronounced not serious; if he were to attempt even a
civil call for inquiries, he would probably be ill received in the house
as a person whose presence had already brought more harm than
good.
Therefore George Lauriston, who was deeply interested in a war-
game which was being played that day, treated the subject as
dismissed, not without some shame at the absurd pitch of
excitement to which this meeting with a presumably low-bred woman
had for a short time raised him. He retained nevertheless just
sufficient interest in the little episode, or perhaps just enough
shyness about his own share in it, to say nothing whatever upon the
subject to Massey or Dicky Wood, neither of whom had the courage
to question him. The blunder—for he never suspected a plot—might
remain unexplained. And the conspirators, not guessing what a
brilliant success they had had, decided that the train had been laid in
vain.
But accident—Lauriston was the last person in the world to call it
fate—threw him within a fortnight again in the way of the mysterious
lady. He was returning one afternoon from Fitzroy Square, after a
call at the house of the old officer whose dinner-party had indirectly
led to the adventure, when by pure accident he found himself in
Mary Street, opposite to the very house where his mysterious
introduction had taken place. He retained a vivid enough recollection
of all the circumstances to feel a strange shock, half pleasure, half a
vague terror, when the red-lettered inscription “Rahas and Fanah,
Oriental Merchants,” with the star and crescent underneath, caught
his eye. He stopped involuntarily, and glanced up at the windows.
Nothing in the daylight appearance of the house gave any indication
of the luxurious glories within. The blinds of the two windows in
which the lights had shone on the evening of his startling visit were
half drawn down, and there was no sign of the carved lattice-work
which he remembered so clearly. The third window on the first-floor
was open, and while he looked the curtain—not a gorgeous hanging
of bullion-embroidered tapestry, but the common white lace curtain
of commerce—moved, and the black curly head of a young girl
appeared at the window. It was the mysterious lady of the lamps.
Although seen thus in the strong afternoon sunlight, apparently
dressed like an ordinary English girl in a silk dress that was a sort of
green shot with pale grey, she produced an entirely different
impression on him from that of his first sight of her, the charm of the
warm-tinted skin and the glowing eyes was as great for him as ever.
He raised his hat, and she beckoned to him with a coquettish and
mischievous little curve of her tiny fore-finger under her chin. He felt
his heart leap up, and though, when she whirled round and
disappeared from the window, he tried to walk on, telling himself
vehemently that he should be worse than a fool to yield to the
magnetic attraction this dark-skinned elf seemed to exercise upon
him, he relaxed his speed, trying to assure himself that it was too hot
to race along like a postman. But at the creaking of a door in the
street behind him he was obliged to look back, and there, peeping
out like a tiny enchantress in this dingy London wilderness of dirty,
screaming children, costers with their barrows, the public-house
loafer and the catsmeat man, stood the girl, laughing at him, and
inviting him with bewitching eyes and dazzling teeth, her head bent
downwards to avoid the blaze of the sun, which shone full on her
head and on the little ivory hand which she held up against her
dusky soft black hair as a most inadequate screen.
George Lauriston hesitated. If he had foreseen in continuing this
acquaintance merely a flirtation with a pretty and somewhat forward
girl, all his ascetic principles and resolutions would have had to give
way under the strong admiration she had excited in him. But the
strange circumstances of his first meeting with her which, though
they had been thrust into the background of his mind by the
absorbing interest of his deep-seated ambition, now again appealed
to his imagination with great force; the advice of the old doctor, and
perhaps a suggestion of that sacred instinct which the lower animals
listen to and live by, all tended to warn him from a danger more than
ephemeral, and at the same time to throw over the acquaintance an
extraordinary glamour of romantic attraction.
The girl apparently guessed his reluctance, which she was not
without means to overcome. Advancing a step further in the
doorway, and leaning forward so that her slight grey-and-green-clad
figure was visible almost to the waist, she pointed to her left arm,
which hung in a picturesque sling of soft orange Indian silk. This
gesture was irresistible. He felt that it justified his immediate and
hasty return. How could he excuse his boorish conduct in not calling
before to ask after the little arm that had been injured through him?
The lady, however, was in forgiving mood. She drew back into the
doorway as soon as she saw that her end was gained, and when he
reached it she was leaning against the old carved oak banisters,
waiting for him, all smiles and laughter.
“Yes, come in,” she whispered, putting her finger to her lips and
glancing at the inner door on her right hand.
Again Lauriston thought reluctantly of the Arabian Nights, and the
lady kept in a cage by the tyrannical genie, but it was too late to
retreat now, even if he could have found strength to resist the spell of
the dancing eyes, or the dumb eloquence of the wounded arm. She
sprang forward as soon as he had entered and shut the door softly. It
was cool in the bare hall after the heat of the streets. The girl’s dress
was a simple robe of silk, with lights and shades of grey changing
into green, made something after the fashion of the so-called
æsthetic gowns he had aforetime abhorred, but falling in straight
crisp folds instead of clinging to her like damp rags, as did the
garments of crumpled South Kensington devotees a few years ago.
She mounted two steps and turned, holding the banister-rail and
leaning on it.
“I thought you would have come before,” she said with a first touch
of shyness, looking down upon her hand with a most coquettish air
of being quite ready to look up again if she were invited to do so.
“I didn’t dare,” said Lauriston at the foot of the stairs, “I was so
ashamed of the mischief I had done.”
“You might have called to ask if I had got better.”
“What would Mr. Rahas have said?”
“Rahas!” A great flood of crimson blood mounted to her face,
glowed in her cheeks, and heightened the brilliancy of her eyes,
which flashed a liquid light of haughty indignation from china-blue
white and velvet-brown iris. “Rahas! What right has he to speak? He
has no claim in the world upon me!”
Evidently the impetuous little lady and the despised Rahas,
whatever their relation to each other might be, had been expressing
a mutual difference of opinion. The Englishman watched with equal
measure of admiration and astonishment the rise of the sudden
wave of passion which seemed almost incredibly strong for such a
small creature to sustain. She was struck in the midst of her anger
by the expression of his face.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I did not mean to laugh. I was wondering to see you so angry.”
The girl smiled, quite restored to good humour.
“Ah, yes, they used to say that when I was at school. English
girls”—with a flash of contempt—“can’t be angry or sorry or happy or
anything; they can only eat and drink and sleep and wrangle and
giggle.”
“You are not English then?”
“I English! You did not think I was English the other night?”
“No.”
“What did you think I was?”
“A little fairy princess.”
“But when my sleeve caught fire, and you took me in your arms
and put it out; you did not think I was a fairy then?”
“No,” said Lauriston, stupefied by the daring of her childish
coquetry.
“Well, what did you think I was then?”
“A poor little creature in danger through my blundering.”
“And what did you think of me when I said: ‘Away; leave my
presence?’ ” asked she, imitating the stately tone and attitude she
had used.
“I thought you a very dignified young lady.”
“You did not think me unkind?” with anxiety.
“Certainly not.”
“Oh!” A pause. “I am very glad you did not think me unkind.”
She looked down for a few moments, and played with the tiny bow
at the top of her injured arm’s silken sling. “You see,” she went on
earnestly, “when Rahas came up stairs he said you had flung him on
one side, and I said you were perfectly right, and he was then very
disagreeable. And Mrs. Ellis, my governess, came in, and they both
said they did not believe what you said, and you would never dare to
show your face here again. And I said”—the girl drew herself up like
a queen as she repeated her own words—“ ‘Do you think that I, the
daughter of an English gentleman, do not know the signs by which to
tell an English gentleman?’ He will come back to ask my pardon for
the accident, to learn if it was serious. That is what I said,” she
continued, dropping her majestic manner, “and so I have watched for
you; oh, how I have watched for you! You see, I was anxious, for my
credit’s sake, that you should not long delay.” The last words were
uttered in a demure tone, an afterthought evidently.
“I have been very busy,” murmured Lauriston, trying guiltily to look
like a Cabinet minister on the eve of a dissolution. “I really couldn’t
get away before.”
“Of course not, or you would have come,” said she simply. “And I
suppose you did not like to come in because you did not know my
people. But you will come up stairs now and know my governess,
and she will see that all I have said about you is true. Please follow
me. I forgot that it was discourteous to keep you waiting here.”
She was like a child playing a dozen different parts in half an hour.
Now, with the manner of a chamberlain, she led the way up stairs
and ushered Lauriston into the smaller sitting-room into which on the
night of his unexpected visit he had only peeped.
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