Peer review In An Era Of Evaluation:

Understanding The Practice Of

Gatekeeping In Academia 1st Edition
Eva Forsberg
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/peer-review-in-an-era-of-evaluation-understanding-th
e-practice-of-gatekeeping-in-academia-1st-edition-eva-forsberg/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Handbook Of Peer Production 1st Edition Edition

Mathieu O’Neil

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-handbook-of-peer-
production-1st-edition-edition-mathieu-oneil/

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of

Mental Illness in an Era of Silence 1st Edition Meg
Kissinger

https://ebookmass.com/product/while-you-were-out-an-intimate-
family-portrait-of-mental-illness-in-an-era-of-silence-1st-
edition-meg-kissinger/

Intellectuals in Politics and Academia: Culture in the

Age of Hype Russell Jacoby

https://ebookmass.com/product/intellectuals-in-politics-and-
academia-culture-in-the-age-of-hype-russell-jacoby/

The Representation of Workers in the Digital Era Raquel

Rego

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-representation-of-workers-in-
the-digital-era-raquel-rego/
The New Era of Real Estate: An Analysis of Business
Models in the Proptech Industry Gianluca Mattarocci

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-new-era-of-real-estate-an-
analysis-of-business-models-in-the-proptech-industry-gianluca-
mattarocci/

The Institutionalisation of Evaluation in the Americas

Reinhard Stockmann

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-institutionalisation-of-
evaluation-in-the-americas-reinhard-stockmann/

Extremism in the Digital Era: The Media Discourse of

Terrorist Groups in the Middle East 1st Edition Adib
Abdulmajid

https://ebookmass.com/product/extremism-in-the-digital-era-the-
media-discourse-of-terrorist-groups-in-the-middle-east-1st-
edition-adib-abdulmajid/

The Medical Model in Mental Health. An Explanation and

Evaluation 1st Edition Samei Huda

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-medical-model-in-mental-health-
an-explanation-and-evaluation-1st-edition-samei-huda/

The University of Waikato Islamic Studies Group aims to

publish a regular Review and invites academics and
postgraduates to submit articles of 2000-3000 words for
peer review and publication in the inaugural Waikato
Islamic Studies Review due in August/S Simon
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-university-of-waikato-islamic-
studies-group-aims-to-publish-a-regular-review-and-invites-
academics-and-postgraduates-to-submit-articles-
Peer review in an
Era of Evaluation
Understanding the Practice of
Gatekeeping in Academia

Edited by Eva Forsberg · Lars Geschwind

Sara Levander · Wieland Wermke
Peer review in an Era of Evaluation
 Eva Forsberg • Lars Geschwind
Sara Levander • Wieland Wermke
Editors

Peer review in an Era

of Evaluation
Understanding the Practice
of Gatekeeping in Academia
Editors
Eva Forsberg Lars Geschwind
Department of Education Department Learning in Engineering
Uppsala University Sciences
Uppsala, Sweden KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden
Sara Levander
Department of Education Wieland Wermke
Uppsala University Department of Special Education
Uppsala, Sweden Stockholm University
Stockholm, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-030-75262-0    ISBN 978-3-030-75263-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75263-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022. This book is an open access publication.
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adapta-
tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to
the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if
changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons
licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s
Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the
permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 We dedicate this book to our beloved colleague and friend, professor
Rita Foss Lindblad, who was involved in the project but passed away
in 2018.
 Contents

Part I Peer Review: Introduction and Its Context   1

1 Peer Review in Academia  3

Eva Forsberg, Lars Geschwind, Sara Levander, and
Wieland Wermke

2 Hierarchies and Universal Inclusion in Scientific

Communities 37
Rudolf Stichweh

3 “Disciplining” Educational Research in the Twentieth

Century 53
Raf Vanderstraeten

Part II Peer Review and the Higher Education Evaluation

Machinery  77

4 Gatekeepers on Campus: Peer Review in Quality

Assurance of Higher Education Institutions 79
Don F. Westerheijden

vii
viii Contents

5 The Many Faces of Peer Review107

Hanne Foss Hansen

6 Your Brother’s Gatekeeper: How Effects of Evaluation

Machineries in Research Are Sometimes Enhanced127
Peter Dahler-Larsen

7 Peer Review in Public Administration: The Case of the

Swedish Higher Education Authority147
Agnes Ers and Kristina Tegler Jerselius

8 Performance-Based Evaluation Metrics: Influence

at the Macro, Meso, and Micro Level173
Gustaf Nelhans

9 Peer Advocacy: Expressions of Loyalty in Peer Review203

Lars Geschwind and Kristina Edström

10 Is Peer Review Fit for Purpose?223

Malcolm Tight

Part III Specificities of Different Peer-­Review Practices 243

11 Peer Review in Academic Promotion of Excellent

Teachers245
Eva Forsberg, Sara Levander, and Maja Elmgren

12 Peers in Systematic Review: Gate Keeping

Understandings of Research in the Field275
Tine S. Prøitz

13 The Decision-Making Constraints and Processes

of Grant Peer Review, and Their Effects on the Review
Outcome297
Liv Langfeldt
 Contents ix

14 Typecasting in the Recruitment of Full Professors327

Sara Levander, Eva Forsberg, Sverker Lindblad, and Gustaf
J. Bjurhammer

15 Assessing Academic Careers: The Peer Review of

Professorial Candidates347
Björn Hammarfelt

16 Bureaucratic, Professional and Managerial Power in

University Tenure Track Recruitment371
Tea Vellamo, Jonna Kosonen, Taru Siekkinen,
and Elias Pekkola
 Notes on Contributors

Gustaf J. Bjurhammer is a PhD student in Education at Uppsala

University. He is a member of the research group Studies in Educational
Policy and Educational Philosophy (STEP). In his research he addresses
the issue of knowledge production and science policy within the field of
Educational Sciences.
Peter Dahler-Larsen is a professor at the Department of Political
Science, University of Copenhagen, where he is the leader of CREME,
Center for Research on Evaluation, Measurement and Effects. He is
author of The Evaluation Society (2013) and Quality: From Plato to
Performance (Palgrave 2019).
Kristina Edström is Associate Professor of Engineering Education
Development at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and Editor-in-­
Chief of the European Journal of Engineering Education. She is active in
educational development at KTH, in Sweden and internationally. Her
research takes a critical perspective on the why, what and how of engi-
neering education development.
Maja Elmgren is Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry and an aca-
demic developer at Uppsala University. Her research interests are leader-
ship in higher education, educational proficiency in academia, and
physics and chemistry education research. She is the director of the

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

Council for Educational Development at the Faculty of Science and

Technology, Uppsala University.
Agnes Ers holds a PhD in Ethnology from Stockholm University. She
has a long experience of working in the area of higher education and
research, as well as in the area of cultural policy, in public governmental
administration in Sweden. She is currently a strategist at the Director
General’s Office at the Swedish Higher Education Authority.
Eva Forsberg is Professor of Education, Uppsala University, and the sci-
entific leader of STEP. Her research focuses on the interface between edu-
cation governance, practice and research. Evaluation policy and assessment
cultures have been the object of several of her research projects and pub-
lications. Lately, her interest concerns higher education, academic work
and faculty evaluation specifically.
Lars Geschwind is Professor of Engineering Education Policy and
Management and a coordinator of the research group HEOS (Higher
Education Organization Studies) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm. His main research interests are higher education policy, insti-
tutional governance, academic leadership and academic work.
Björn Hammarfelt is an associate professor at the Swedish School of
Library and Information Science (SSLIS), University of Borås, Sweden.
His research is situated at the intersection of information studies and
sociology of science, with a focus on the organization, communication
and evaluation of research.
Hanne Foss Hansen is Professor of Public Administration and
Organization at the Department of Political Science, University of
Copenhagen. Her main interests are public organization and manage-
ment, evaluation, evidence-based policy and practice as well as higher
education and research policy. She is co-editor of Reforms, Organizational
Change and Performance in Higher Education (Palgrave 2019).
Kristina Tegler Jerselius holds a PhD in History from Uppsala
University. She has extensive experience in working with quality in higher
education and research, and is interested in governance and evaluative
 Notes on Contributors xiii

practices and autonomy in public administration. She works as a senior

analyst at the Swedish Higher Education Authority.
Jonna Kosonen is a lecturer at the Law School, University of Eastern
Finland (UEF). In addition, she works as a legal expert at UEF’s Office of
Legal Affairs. She is writing her doctoral thesis on university autonomy.
Her latest publication discusses equality in the student selection process
from a legal point of view.
Liv Langfeldt is a research professor at the Nordic Institute for Studies
in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU) in Oslo, and director of
the Centre for Research Quality and Policy Impact Studies (R-QUEST).
Her main research interests include research policy, peer review processes,
and research quality and evaluation.
Sara Levander is Senior Lecturer and researcher in Education, Uppsala
University. Her research interests are higher education, academic work
and faculty evaluation in academic recruitment and promotion. A focal
point for her research is the assessment of academic competences in aca-
demic recruitment.
Sverker Lindblad is Professor Emeritus of Education, University of
Gothenburg, and president of the Swedish Educational Research
Association. His ongoing research is in the fields of comparative educa-
tion and politics of knowledge. A recent book is Education by the Numbers
and the Making of Society: The Expertise of International Assessments
(Lindblad, Pettersson, & Popkewitz, 2018).
Gustaf Nelhans is a theorist of science and senior lecturer at the Swedish
School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS), University of Borås,
Sweden. His research focuses on the performativity of scientometric indi-
cators as well as on the theory, methodology and research policy aspects
of scholarly publications.
Elias Pekkola is a lecturer and Head of Unit at the Faculty of
Management and Business at Tampere University (TAU). His publica-
tions include several articles and books on academic work, academic pro-
fession, careers and HR policy. He has acted in various expert roles in
xiv Notes on Contributors

Finland and in international projects on academic work, careers and

higher education policy.
Tine S. Prøitz is a professor at the Department of Business, History and
Social Science, University of South-Eastern Norway. Her research inter-
ests lie within the fields of education policy and education reform, quality
work in higher education, and the practices and procedures of research
synthesis. She has recently co-edited the book Quality Work in Higher
Education (Elken, M., Maassen, P., Nerland, M., Prøitz, T.S., Stensaker,
B., Vabø, A. [Eds.]).
Taru Siekkinen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Finnish Institute for
Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä (JYU), Finland. Her
research interests are academic profession, work and careers, universities
and their management. Her latest publication “Change and Continuity
in the Academic Profession—Finnish Universities as Living Labs” (2019)
was published in Higher Education. She is chair of the Consortium of
Higher Education Researchers in Finland (CHERIF).
Rudolf Stichweh is Senior Professor of Sociology at the “Forum
Internationale Wissenschaft” and the Bonn Center for Dependency and
Slavery Studies, University of Bonn. His research fields include compara-
tive study of democratic and authoritarian political regimes; theory of
world society and functional differentiation; history and sociology of sci-
ence; sociology of universities; inequality and asymmetrical dependencies
in premodern and modern societies; sociocultural evolution and theory
of social systems. His last book publication was Democratic and
Authoritarian Political Systems in Twenty-First-Century World Society. Vol.
1, Differentiation, Inclusion, Responsiveness. Transcript: Bielefeld 2020.
Malcolm Tight is Professor of Higher Education at Lancaster University
(UK). His research interests cover higher education research and social
research methodology. His most recent books include Documentary
Research in the Social Sciences (2019), Higher Education Research: The
Developing Field (2019), Syntheses of Higher Education Research: What We
Know (2020) and Understanding Case Study Research: Small-Scale Research
with Meaning (2017).
 Notes on Contributors xv

Raf Vanderstraeten is director of the Center for Social Theory and a

member of the Sarton Center for History of Science, both at Ghent
University (Belgium). He is also a visiting professor at the London School
of Economics and Political Science (England). His research interests
include the sociology of science and the sociology of education.
Tea Vellamo is a PhD student at the Faculty of Management and
Business and Chief Specialist at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at
Tampere University (TAU). She is writing her doctoral dissertation on
technical identity. Recent publications include the chapter “Technical
Identity in a Merger Process—Between a Rock and a Hard Place.”
Wieland Wermke is Associate Professor in Special Education, Stockholm
University. His research interest is in comparative education methodol-
ogy and teacher/special educator practice at different levels of education.
His most recent book is Wermke, W. & Salokangas, M. “Autonomy
Paradox. Teachers’ Perception of Self Governance Across Europe.”
Springer 2021.
Don F. Westerheijden is a senior research associate at the Center for
Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS), University of Twente, the
Netherlands. He mostly studies quality assurance in higher education,
and its impacts. One of his publications include Jongbloed, B.W.A.,
Kaiser, F., & Westerheijden, D. (2020). “Improving Study Success and
Diversity in Dutch Higher Education Using Performance Agreements,”
Tertiary Education and Management, 26, pp. 329–343.
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Average number of authors per article for AERJ and RER 63
Fig. 3.2 Average number of references per article for AERJ and RER 69
Fig. 8.1 Yearly amount in NOK for each Norwegian point 187
Fig. 8.2 Cumulative renegotiated funding by HEI type according to
the state budget for the years 2010–2016 189
Fig. 11.1 The basic career structure in the Swedish higher education
system250
Fig. 11.2 A fourth career track in the case university 251
Fig. 11.3 The process of admitting excellent teachers at the university 252
Fig. 11.4 Requested information to be included in the application
dossier254
Fig. 14.1 The process of recruiting full professors in Sweden 334
Fig. 15.1 Schematic overview of temporal focus when evaluating
research quality 362
Fig. 16.1 Different powers and persons utilising power in university
recruitment382

xvii
 List of Tables

Table 5.1 Classical peer review 110

Table 5.2 Informed and standards-based peer review 112
Table 5.3 Modified peer review 114
Table 5.4 Extended peer review 117
Table 8.1 Three “regimes” of research policy after WWII 181
Table 8.2 Comparison between the Swedish and the Norwegian PRFS 185
Table 8.3 Combined ”new” funding and results of renegotiation for
the University of Kristianstad in the budget for 2012 189
Table 12.1 The status function of peers in academic publishing and in
systematic review 289
Table 13.1 Overview of Studied Proposals and Grants (RCN 1997/98) 304
Table 13.2 Review criteria 307
Table 13.3 The results of different methods for the ranking of
applications a-f, of which there is room for three within the
budget317
Table 13.4 Combination of elements of methods 2 and 3, and other
methods, in one of the Culture and Society Panels 317
Table 15.1 Characterisation of research fields using Whitley’s typology 354
Table 15.2 Judgement devices used to assess the recognition of
publications in the discipline (type of device according to
Karpiks typology)364

xix
 Part I
Peer Review: Introduction
and Its Context
 1
Peer Review in Academia
Eva Forsberg, Lars Geschwind, Sara Levander,
and Wieland Wermke

Introduction
Over the past few decades, peer review has become an object of great
professional and managerial interest (Oancea, 2019) and, increasingly,
academic scrutiny (Bornmann, 2011; Grimaldo et al., 2018). Nevertheless,
calls for further research are numerous (Tennant & Ross-Hellauer, 2020).
This volume is in answer to such interest and appeals. We aim to present
a variety of peer-review practices in contemporary academic life as well as

E. Forsberg (*) • S. Levander

Department of Education, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
L. Geschwind
Department of Learning in Engineering Sciences, KTH Royal Institute
of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
W. Wermke
Department of Special Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
© The Author(s) 2022 3
E. Forsberg et al. (eds.), Peer review in an Era of Evaluation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75263-7_1
4 E. Forsberg et al.

the principled foundation of peer review in scientific communication

and authorship. This volume is unique in that it covers many different
practices of peer review and their theoretical foundations, providing both
an introduction into the very complex field and new empirical and con-
ceptual accounts of peer review for the interested reader. The contribu-
tions are produced by internationally recognized scholars, almost all of
whom participated in the conference ‘Scientific Communication and
Gatekeeping in Academia in the 21st Century’, held in 2018 at Uppsala
University, Sweden.1 The overall objective of this volume is explorative;
framings relevant to the specific contexts, practices and discourses exam-
ined are set by the authors of each chapter. However, some common
conceptual points of departure may be laid down at the outset.
Peer review is a context-dependent, relational concept that is increas-
ingly used to denote a vast number of evaluative activities engaged in by
a wide variety of actors both inside and outside of academia. By peer
review, we refer to peers’ assessments and valuations of the merits and
performances of academics, higher education institutions, research orga-
nizations and higher education systems. Mostly, these activities are part
of more encompassing social evaluation practices, such as reviews of
manuscripts, grant proposals, tenure and promotion and quality evalua-
tions of institutions and their research and educational programmes.
Thus, scholarly peer review comprises evaluation practices within both
the wider international scientific community and higher education sys-
tems. Depending on differences related to scientific communities and
national cultures, these evaluations may include additional gatekeepers,
internal as well as external to academia, and thus the role of the peer
may vary.
The roots of peer review can be found in the assessment practices of
reviewers and editors of scholarly journals in deciding on the acceptance
of papers submitted for publishing. Traditionally, only peers (also known
as referees) with recognized scholarly standing in a relevant field of
research were acknowledged as experts (Merton, 1942/1973). Due to the
differentiation and increased use of peer review, the notion of a peer

1
Funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (F17-1350:1). The keynotes of the conference are acces-
sible on video at https://media.medfarm.uu.se/play/kanal/417. For more information on the con-
ference, see www.konferens.edu.uu.se/scga2018-en.
 1 Peer Review in Academia 5

employed in various evaluation practices may be extended. Who qualifies

as an expert in different peer-review practices and with what implications
are empirical issues.
Even though peer review is a familiar phenomenon in most scholarly
evaluations, there is a paucity of studies on peer review within the research
field of evaluation. Peer review has, however, been described as the most
familiar collegial evaluation model, with academic research and higher
education as its paradigm area of application and with an ability to cap-
ture and judge qualities as its main advantage (Vedung, 2002). Following
Scriven (2003), we define evaluation as a practice ‘determining the merit,
worth or significance of things’ (p. 15). Scriven (1980) identifies four
steps involved in evaluation practices, which are also frequently used in
peer review, either implicitly enacted and negotiated or explicitly stated
(Ozeki, 2016). These steps concern (1) the criteria of merit, that is, the
dimensions of an object being evaluated; (2) the standards of merit, that
is, the level of performance in a given dimension; (3) the measuring of
performance relative to standards; and (4) a value judgement of the over-
all worth.
Consequently, the notion of peer review refers to evaluative activities
in academia conducted by equals that distribute merit, value and worth.
In these processes of selection and legitimation, issues referring to crite-
ria, standards, rating and ranking are significant. Often, peer reviews are
embedded in wider evaluation practices of research, education and public
outreach. To capture contemporary evaluations of academic work, we
will include a number of different review practices, including some in
which the term peer is employed in a more extended sense.

The Many Face(t)s of Peer-Review Practices

Depending on the site in which peer review is used, the actors involved
differ, as do their roles. The same applies to potential guidelines, pur-
poses, discourses, use of professional judgement and metrics, processes
and outcome of the specific peer-review practice. These are all relative to
the site in which the review is used and will briefly be commented
upon below.
6 E. Forsberg et al.

The Interplay of Primary and Secondary Peer Review

It is possible to make a distinction between primary and secondary peer

reviews (British Academy, 2007). As stated, the primary role of peer
review is to assess manuscripts for publishing, followed by the examina-
tion and judgement of grant applications. Typically, many other peer-­
review practices, so-called secondary peer review, involve summaries of
outcomes of primary reviews. Thus, we might view primary and second-
ary reviews as folded into each other, where, for example, reviews of jour-
nal articles are prerequisite to later evaluation of the research quality of an
institution, in recruitment and promotion, and so forth (Helgesson,
2016). Hence, the consequences of primary reviews can hardly be
overstated.
Traditionally, both forms of primary peer review (assessment of manu-
scripts and grant applications) are ex ante evaluations; that is, they are
conducted prior to the activity (e.g. publishing and research). With open
science, open access journals and changes in the transparency of peer
review, open and public peer reviews have partly opened the black box of
reviews and the secrecy of the process and its actors (Sabaj Meruane et al.,
2016). Accordingly, publishing may include both ex ante and ex post
evaluations. These forms of evaluation can also be found among second-
ary reviews, with degree-awarding accreditation an example of the former
and reviews of disciplines an example of the latter.

Sites and Reviewer Tasks and Roles

Without being exhaustive, we can list a number of sites where peer review
is conducted as part of more comprehensive evaluations: international,
regional and national higher education agencies conduct accreditation,
quality audits and evaluations of higher education institutions; funding
agencies distribute grants for projects and fellowships; higher education
institutions evaluate their research, education and public outreach at dif-
ferent levels and assess applications for recruitment, tenure and promo-
tion; the scientific community assesses manuscripts for publication,
evaluates doctoral theses and conference papers and allocates awards. The
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Scheherazade: a
London night's entertainment
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Scheherazade: a London night's entertainment

Author: Florence Warden

Release date: December 18, 2023 [eBook #72450]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Ward And Downey, Publishers,

1889

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

SCHEHERAZADE: A LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT ***
 SCHEHERAZADE:
A
LONDON NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT.

BY
FLORENCE WARDEN,
Author of
“The House on the Marsh,” “A Woman’s Face,”
“A Prince of Darkness,” etc.

NEW EDITION.

WARD AND DOWNEY, Publishers,

12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON.
1889.
 [IMPRINT]
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.
 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
 SCHEHERAZADE:
A LONDON NIGHT’S ENTERTAINMENT.

CHAPTER I.
“Here, shall we go three in a hansom?”
“Hansom be hanged! It’s a lovely night. Let’s walk.”
“Massey is afraid the loved one will be there before him.”
“Never fear! A beautiful woman was never yet kept waiting by an
Irishman.”
“Right ye are! And yet there are no men about better worth waiting
for,” retorted Clarence Massey, amid the laughter of his companions.
The speakers were three young subalterns, who had been dining
in Fitzroy Square with an enthusiastic old soldier who had been a
major in their regiment fifteen years before. On learning, three weeks
ago, of the arrival of his old regiment at Hounslow, he had sent to all
the officers an invitation to dinner, which had been accepted by the
Colonel and by such of the rest as were disengaged on the evening
named. Clarence Massey, a pale-faced, bright-witted little Irishman;
“Dicky” Wood, a tall, thin, weedy-looking young fellow, renowned for
the sweetness of his disposition; and George Lauriston, the best-
looking man and most promising young soldier in the regiment, were
on their way to finish the evening at different entertainments.
Lauriston was rather too well-conducted a young fellow to be
altogether popular, having been brought up in Scotland, and being
too much occupied with his ambitions to shake off a certain amount
of reserve and rigidity left by his early training. But, on the other
hand, these qualities served to heighten the strong individuality of a
character uncommon both in its strength and in its weakness, and to
add to that subtle gift of prestige which is so capriciously bestowed
by nature. So that now, as in the old time at Sandhurst, his comrades
would rather be in his society than in that of companions with whom
they had greater sympathy.
They had not gone many steps down Fitzroy Street, when Massey
began to beguile the weary hours by singing snatches of the most
amorous of Moore’s melodies below his breath as he walked along.
On being asked to desist, he reviled his companions for their
insensibility to music and love, and there ensued a hot, if amicable,
dispute both as to the justice of the accusation and the competence
of the accuser. Dicky Wood took up the challenge on behalf of
music, and Lauriston on that of love, and Massey grew more and
more pert in his assertions that no Saxon could possibly do justice to
either the one or the other.
“There’s no warm blood in your veins,” he maintained
energetically. “Young or old, handsome or ugly, ye’re all tame—tame
as dormice, and ye haven’t a chance with the Irish boys. For your
passionate lover, your devoted husband, the ladies must come to
us.”
“How about the Colonel?” asked Dicky, in a voice louder than he
intended; for, as he spoke, a figure some little distance ahead of
them, on the other side of the street, stopped and turned.
“Talk of the d——!” said Lauriston, in a low voice.
Massey, much dismayed, looked ready to take refuge in flight.
“Let’s go back and turn down the first street,” he murmured, his
brogue coming out strongly in his excitement. “There’s a kind of
court-martial look about his left eye that makes him a worse person
to face than one’s tailor at Christmas-time.”
“Nonsense!” said Lauriston. “Don’t be a fool, Massey. He’s in an
angelic temper this evening; and he’s not half a bad fellow at any
time.”
“Not to you—you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, and
if you were to blow up an arsenal you would get off with a ‘severe
censure.’ But I’m not so lucky.”
However, he was persuaded to walk on; and in the meantime the
dreaded Colonel was crossing the street to meet the young men. He
was a small spare man, who from the other side of the road looked
insignificant, but who seemed to grow in height and importance as
he came closer, until, when face to face with you, he had the dignity
and imposing appearance of six feet two. A sabre-cut over his left
eye had drawn up the eyebrow in a manner which gave an odd
expression to his weather-beaten and prematurely old features, and
imparted additional intensity to the gaze of a pair of piercing blue-
gray eyes, which looked out from his thin, rugged face like the guns
from a concealed battery. His expression, however, as he drew near
the young men, was one of such mitigated ferocity as passed in him
for amiability, and the grating tones of his voice were charged with as
little harshness as the unmusical nature of the organ permitted.
“Who is that calling on the Colonel?” he asked, turning to keep
pace with them in an unexpected and unwelcome access of
sociability.
Colonel Lord Florencecourt was an Irishman, and his countryman,
finding him in a softer mood than usual, plucked up his native
audacity.
“They were running down love and the ladies, Colonel, and I was
calling upon all true Irishmen to help me to support their cause.”
The young lieutenant had recovered sufficiently from his fright to
wing this speech with a little mischievous barb, for Lady
Florencecourt was a notoriously undesirable helpmeet.
The Colonel laughed harshly.
“Support the cause of the ladies? Very like supporting the cause of
the cannon-balls that come whizzing about your ears from the
enemy’s camp! While you are praising their velocity, and the
directness of their flight, whir-r-r comes one through the air and stops
your fool’s tongue for ever.”
The dry grimness with which he spoke set the young men
laughing. But Massey, encouraged by perceiving that his chief was in
good humour, began again softly to sing:

“Oh, say, wilt thou weep when they darken the fame
Of a life that for thee was resigned?”

“Not at all, my boy,” broke in the Colonel, in his file-like voice; “she
will say: ‘What a fool that boy was, and how tiresome he got at the
last!’ Nothing, believe me, wearies a woman so much as a grande
passion. Trust me; I once watched a friend through all the phases of
one.”
“Did he die, Colonel?” asked Massey, in a small voice.
“No, but he had to take a very strong remedy. Well, now, lads, I
don’t want to impose a misogynist’s society on you any longer,
especially as I have small hopes of making any converts under five-
and-twenty. Only take an old fellow’s advice: Singe your wings at as
many candles as possible, and you will run the less risk of being
burnt to a cinder by any one of them. Good-night.”
They raised their hats to him, and he hailed a passing hansom and
drove off, just as they turned westward into one of the streets leading
into Portland Place.
“He himself was the friend, I suppose,” said Dicky, when they had
commented on the Colonel’s unusual sociability.
“The grande passion was certainly not for Lady F.,” said Massey.
“By Jove, if she was the remedy, it was a strong one!” added
Lauriston.
“I shall take his advice, and distribute my attentions more,”
remarked Massey, who was never in the society of any woman
under fifty, of high or low degree, without devoting all his energies to
ingratiating himself with her.
“Old buffers like that always talk in that strained fashion about the
dangers of women, but as a matter of fact it isn’t till you’re over fifty
yourself that they become dangerous at all.”
“No,” said Lauriston, with a blasé air pardonable at three-and-
twenty. “Hang it all, the difficulty is, not to avoid their charms, but to
find a girl decent-looking enough to dance with twice and take down
to supper without being bored to death!”
“You don’t find many grandes passions knockin’ about nowadays,”
observed Dicky sagely.
“At least not in our set,” amended Massey; “nor in this country.”
“Oh! I suppose they’re common enough over the Channel!”
“I won’t say that, but there’s something in the eye of an Irish girl
that sets your heart beating nineteen to the dozen——”
“Provided it’s an Irish heart.”
“Provided it’s nothing of the sort!” cried Massey hotly. “Provided it’s
any heart with warm red blood in it, and not brimstone and treacle!”
 “Gentlemen, a little calmness, please,” suggested Lauriston, who
was being hustled off the pavement by the uneven walk and excited
gesticulations of the disputants, “or it will come to vivisection in a
minute to prove the correctness of your studies in anatomy.”
However, the argument still went on, growing every moment more
lively, until, both disputants turning to Lauriston as referee at the
same time, they found that he had disappeared. The common wrong
made them friends again at once.
“He’s given us the slip,” said Dicky.
“We’ll pay him out for it,” added Massey.
They were standing on the pavement of one of those shabby, ill-
kept streets which intersect the busier, broader thoroughfares of this
part of London. The noisy children, who played in the gutters during
the day and turned their skipping-ropes across the flag-stones in the
evening, had now gone to bed, and the stream of poor, struggling,
obscure London life flowed by intermittently. A quiet, care-worn
woman passed quickly, with her basket on her arm, counting up the
pence she had left after her evening’s bargaining; a few paces
behind her came a couple of public-house loafers—pallid, vacuous,
with flabby hats, and the slimy black coats a great deal too long for
them, so much affected by this class; and then a line of loud-voiced,
shrill-laughing girls, with dirty faces and Gainsborough hats
o’ershadowed by a plentiful crop of bedraggled feathers.
Not a tempting neighbourhood this by any means, nor one in
which two dashing hussars of one or two and twenty could expect to
pick up desirable acquaintances, or to take a deep interest in their
unknown brethren; and yet the eyes of these two young soldiers had
fallen there upon a sight fascinating enough to make them forget the
mean flight of their companion, and to ignore the smell of fried fish,
the hoarse cry of the costermonger at the corner of the street, even
the occasional contact of a greasy elbow.
A low iron railing stood out from the wall of the house by which
they had stopped, fencing off a third of the pavement. It was a house
with a large, arched double-door, an imitation, on a modest scale, of
the more imposing entrances of the dwellings in adjacent Portland
Place; a house that had evidently seen better days, and still held its
head higher than most of its neighbours. To the left of the door were
three bells, placed the one above the other; over the lowest of these
was a small brass plate, with this inscription in red letters, “Rahas
and Fanah;” while between the two windows of the ground-floor
hung a board with the same names painted on it, and underneath
the words, “Oriental Merchants.” These lower windows were so
begrimed with dust and soot that they imparted a film of occidental
unloveliness to the oriental merchandise within. Rows of engraved
brass bowls and vases, of curious design, and without the rich
golden glow which, in the magnificent and expensive Eastern
bazaars of Regent Street, suggests the popularising touch of
Birmingham; hanging lamps of metal and glass, of strange and
clumsy shapes, lovely only to the initiated; a long, graceful, and
unserviceable-looking gun, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, inviting you to
believe it came fresh from the hands of an Arab sheikh—all these,
against a background of Turkish tables, Indian plaster figures,
hookahs, and strange weapons, formed an odd collection which,
veiled by the murky dimness of ostentatiously dirty window-panes,
and railed off three feet from the reckless errand-boy, had no
attraction whatever for the denizens of Mary Street.
Now Clarence Massey and Dicky Wood were not Oriental
enthusiasts. They had been educated up to toleration of Japanese
screens, and to a soulless and calm admiration of the colours of
Japanese plates. So much their girl cousins, their partners at balls
had done for them; but they had soared no higher, and hanging
lamps, unless of coloured glass profusely ornamented with beads,
had little meaning for them. Yet there they stood spellbound, staring
into the mysteriously obscure little Oriental warehouse, as if it had
been an Aladdin’s palace of quaint splendours. For the little picture
had human interest. A small lamp, not of ancient Asiatic, but of
modern European pattern, was set on the narrow mantelpiece in a
space cleared for it amid brass trays and Indian pottery, and by its
light the young men could see, seated at a table close under the
dismantled fireplace, a dark-faced man whose head was covered by
a scarlet fez. Behind him stood a girl attractive enough to rivet the
attention, not alone of a couple of susceptible young hussars, but of
an army of veterans. From her head hung veil-fashion over her
shoulders a long piece of thin, yellowish, undyed silk, kept in its
place by a fillet of gold, from which dangled a row of tiny sequins that
glittered and shone on the peeping fringe of black hair that
overshadowed the upper part of a little face that looked dusky
against the shining silk. A strip of gold-intersected gauze, worn as a
yashmak, covered, but scarcely concealed her breast and the lower
part of her young face, showing row upon row of many-coloured
beads around her neck, and gleaming, regular teeth between open
lips, that were, perhaps, somewhat too flexible and somewhat too
full. She stood there motionless for a few moments, evidently unseen
by the man at the table, and brimming over with hardly contained
girlish merriment. The young men watched, fascinated, unwilling to
acknowledge to themselves that this little scene, passing in what
was after all a public shop crammed with wares piled high to attract
all comers, was part of a strictly domestic drama into which it was
not their business to pry.
“Why doesn’t she look up? I can swear she has deuced fine eyes!”
murmured Massey, who was getting much excited.
Dicky nudged his friend impatiently into silence, feeling that
speech destroyed the spell, and awoke unwelcome recollections of
the ordinary rules of social life which they were bluntly ignoring. In
one moment they would walk on certainly. In the meantime, Dicky
thrust his arm through that of his friend, and turned slowly round as a
preliminary movement, keeping his eyes, however, still fixed upon
the veiled houri. She remained immovable for a moment, and then
from under the pale folds of rough silk appeared two slender arms of
an ivory tint, several shades lighter than that of her face. They were
bare to the shoulder, laden with massive bracelets, some silver,
some silver-gilt, that stood out like cables round the soft flesh, or
glittered with sparkling pendants of the precious metal: as, her face
alight with girlish gaiety, she slowly advanced her small, lithe, olive-
tinted hands, with the fingers curved ready to close upon the young
man’s eyes, a couple of bracelets slid down her left arm with a little
clash, which, though inaudible to the two spectators outside the
window, was evidently the means of announcing her presence to her
companion. He started up, and, turning round, seized her wrists as
she attempted to spring, laughing, away from him. She was now so
far back in the room that Massey and Dicky Wood caught only a
vague, indistinct glimpse of long folds of soft white stuff under the
silken veil, and of a crimson sash bound loosely round the hips of the
little figure that crouched, laughing, against the wall. But they saw
the eyes, such long, roguish, languishing eyes, that Massey felt that
what heart his small and early loves had left to him was gone again,
while even the more self-contained Dicky felt an odd and
unaccustomed sensation, which he was afterwards unromantic
enough to compare to a premonitory symptom of sea-sickness.
At that moment, however, the girl suddenly caught sight of the
faces outside, and directed her companion’s attention to the window.
As he turned abruptly, drew back into himself with a sudden
expression of reserved and haughty indignation, and approached the
window to draw down the blind, the girl, with a ringing laugh of
mischief, which even the lads outside could hear, took advantage of
his momentary retreat to escape.
The two young men, on finding they were discovered, walked on
at once with involuntary and guilty haste, without at first speaking.
Massey broke the silence with a deep sigh, and stepping into the
road, hunted out the name of the street and entered it in his pocket-
book.
“No. 36, Mary Street,” he murmured devoutly.
“You will dare to show your face here again then?”
“My face! I mean to show more than my face next time. I shall go
boldly in and buy up the shop.”
“Always supposing the fire-worshipping gentleman with the fez
does not recognise you and try some pretty little Eastern practical
joke upon you, such as inducing you to spend a couple of hours
head downwards in the water-butt, or nailing you up in one of his
own packing-cases. Oriental husbands have got a nasty name, you
know.”
“Husbands! That lovely girl is never the wife of a man with a face
like old brown Windsor! Or if she is, he has so many others that he
can’t have time to look after them all. If I only knew her number, that
when I call I might inquire for the right one!”
“You’d better give it up, Massey; Indian dishes are proverbially hot
ones,” said Dicky warningly.
 But the young Irishman was too much excited to listen to anything
but the suggestions of his own imagination concerning the lady.
“I don’t believe she’s Indian,” he rambled on; “I never saw a type
quite like it. The face is too delicate for a Creole; I wonder if she’s an
Arabian. She looks like a princess out of the Arabian Nights, now
doesn’t she?”
“Yes, perhaps she does. And you had better remember all that
means before you set about stealing a march on the genie. Little
cunning, sensual creatures with the mind and manners of cats—”
“I tell you who she is like,” pursued Massey, ignoring interruptions,
“she is Scheherazade. You remember, the sultan’s wife who tells the
stories, and fascinates him into sparing her life, after he’d sworn to
kill all his wives on discovering what a faithless lot they were.”
“And then the story breaks off without letting one know whether
she turned out any better than the rest. Wise chronicler, he knew
where to stop! And if you’re wise, you’ll follow his example, and
leave the tale where it is at present.”
But that was asking too much. The very next day, Massey rang
boldly at the bell of Rahas and Fanah, Oriental merchants, and spent
two or three pounds on trumpery brass pots and pans and on ill-
made plaster animals, purposely choosing small articles that he
might fritter away his time the more slowly, and in fact hang about on
the chance of another sight of the Eastern beauty. He was served by
the man he had seen the evening before, a genuine Oriental with
grave, composed, leisurely manners. Massey longed to put some
question to him which should lead to the discovery whether he was
married, but this was not easy, as the Oriental merchant’s black eyes
had an expression which suggested that he was not to be trifled with;
“a sort of creepy, crafty, stick-you-through-with-a-chopstick-and-
serve-you-up-with-chilis look,” as he afterwards described it to Dicky.
However, he elicited the information that the dark-visaged one came
from Smyrna, which did not help him much, as the only thing he
recollected to have heard about that place was that:

“There was a young person of Smyrna, whose grandmother

threatened to burn her.”
 He came out crestfallen after a stay of an hour and a quarter, but
had his drooping spirits raised by running against Dicky Wood as he
turned into Portland Place.
“Hallo, where are you going to?” “Hallo, where are you coming
from?” said they at the same moment.
They both had grown red, and presently began to laugh as the
truth came out. Scheherazade, whatever names you might call her,
had a captivating presence which absolutely demanded to be seen
again.
The ardour of those two young men for Indian art-products grew
hotter and hotter as the week wore on, and their alternate
pilgrimages to Mary Street resulted in nothing but the accumulation
of a vast hoard of lacquered and engraved articles which not even
the most indiscriminate present-giving could keep within due bounds.
The senior partner in the firm, a small gentleman, leather-coloured
and lean, with a grey beard and a white turban, had indeed turned
up and induced suggestions that the mysterious lady might be his
daughter, and glimpses had been caught of a lean, withered, white-
robed ayah, who could by no means be mistaken for the interesting
fair one; but it was not until the ninth day after their first visit that
Massey was able, with great excitement, to announce that, on
paying a late evening visit to Mary Street, he had seen the
mysterious fair one disappearing helter-skelter up the staircase, and
heard her close sharply, not to say bang, a door on the first floor.
“She had bare feet in loose sandals—feet you would have given
ten years of your life to be walked upon by,” continued Massey
rapidly, “with anklets that jingled as she went up. Old brown Windsor
hustled her off as I came in—I’m afraid he must be her husband; and
yet—I don’t know. Wonder if one could get lodgings in that house; it’s
let out in floors, I know.”
“Not to us; they’d know what we were up to,” said Dicky gloomily.
“I believe both of those beggars suspect us already. They’re only
waiting for us to have spent our last half-crown on narghilis that we
can’t smoke and cotton-wool beetles, and then they’ll politely bow us
out and snigger to themselves over our greenness. We’ve been
making fools of ourselves, Massey; I shouldn’t wonder if she was a
decoy, a made-up old thing, very likely, the mother of old brown
Windsor, henna’d and dyed and veiled till she looked beautiful at a
distance, but a regular mummy at less than twelve paces.”
“What, would ye slander beauty herself? Is nothing sacred to you?
Look here, I’ve got an idea. You know how jolly quick Mr. George
Lauriston shuts us both up if we venture to have an opinion of our
own about anything—female beauty for instance?”
“He has been putting on a little too much side lately, certainly.”
“I tell you that young man wants taking down. You know how he
sneered the other night at mess when we said we’d discovered a
new beauty?”
“Yes, he did. Well?”
“Well, we’ll make him see her and judge for himself and satisfy our
curiosity at the same time.”
“What are you up to now?”
“I tell Mr. George Lauriston my brother has taken rooms at 36,
Mary Street; I ask him to call. I tell him to go straight in, upstairs to
the first floor, and that the first door is my brother’s. He won’t find him
naturally, because he will not be there; so he’ll inevitably see the
lady, and we’ll pump him afterwards, as to what she looked like, what
she said, how she spoke.”
“Massey, you’re off your head. There’d be a deuce of a row.
Scheherazade would scream, brown Windsor would draw his
scimitar, there’d be a scrimmage on the stairs, and what would
happen to you and me when Lauriston got back would be better
imagined than described.”
“By Jove, if I could find out who she is I’d think it cheap at a black
eye.”
“I shouldn’t.”
Dicky being the weaker if the wiser, however, gave way in the end,
and George Lauriston duly received and accepted the invitation to
call at 36, Mary Street, on a certain evening to see Massey’s brother,
a clever and rising engineer, whom Lauriston had met and was
anxious to meet again.
As the day of the appointment drew near, both of the conspirators,
who had grown more lax in their attendance at the Oriental
warehouse as repeated disappointments told upon their energy, felt
qualms as to Lauriston’s action when he should have discovered the
trick played upon him; and at last Massey told Dicky that he had an
invitation up the river which would take him out of town on the
evening named, and Dicky confessed in reply that he had got leave
to go down to Brighton that afternoon.
“It will be just as much fun to hear what he says afterwards as it
would be to watch him go in from the little shop on the other side of
the way, as we proposed,” said Massey.
“And he’ll have cooled down a bit before he sees us, so that if
anything comes of it he won’t be able to rush off red-hot and do for
us,” added Dicky, more honestly. “I suppose old brown Windsor won’t
stick him with a yataghan, or anything of that sort if he really does
meet the lady,” he continued in a low and lugubrious voice. “You see,
I’m sure the black men guess what we’re after, spending all our time
and money over tea-trays and idols as we’ve done lately. And it
would be rather hard if they were to think poor Lauriston was in it,
only cheekier than the rest of us, and were to make him into a curry
for what we’ve done.”
“Pooh, nonsense, Lauriston can take care of himself as well as
anybody. He isn’t much of a soldier if he won’t think a back-hander
over the staircase a small enough price to pay for the sight of a houri
handsome enough for a Sultan’s harem.”
“But, Massey, he’s half a Scotchman. He wouldn’t look twice at a
woman who hadn’t raw bones and red hair, and not at her if she
wasn’t well provided with the bawbees,” suggested Dicky in the pride
of his knowledge of different phases of human nature.
“All the better for us then; he’ll think it’s a mistake and won’t guess
what we’ve been up to.”
So the guilty pair went their ways and left their consciences behind
them.