The Disentanglers
by Andrew Lang · English · Gutenberg #17031 · 616,712 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Disentanglers
Author: Andrew Lang
Release date: November 8, 2005 [eBook #17031]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17031
Credits: Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISENTANGLERS ***
Transcribed from the 1903 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE DISENTANGLERS
by Andrew Lang
with illustrations by H. J. Ford
_Second Impression_
Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
New York and Bombay
1903
TO HERBERT HILLS, ESQ.
These Studies
OF LIFE AND CHARACTER
_ARE DEDICATED_
PREFACE
It has been suggested to the Author that the incident of the Berbalangs,
in The Adventure of the Fair American, is rather improbable. He can only
refer the sceptical to the perfectly genuine authorities cited in his
footnotes.
I. THE GREAT IDEA
The scene was a dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street. To such caves
many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the
clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The
furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a
certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now
seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of
books to which the amateur would at once have flown. They were in
'boards' of faded blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: they
were all First Editions of the most desirable kind. The bottles in the
liqueur case were antique; a coat of arms, not undistinguished, was in
relief on the silver stoppers. But the liquors in the flasks were humble
and conventional. Merton, the tenant of the rooms, was in a Zingari
cricketing coat; he occupied the arm-chair, while Logan, in evening
dress, maintained a difficult equilibrium on the slippery sofa. Both men
were of an age between twenty-five and twenty-nine, both were pleasant to
the eye. Merton was, if anything, under the middle height: fair, slim,
and active. As a freshman he had coxed his College Eight, later he rowed
Bow in that vessel. He had won the Hurdles, but been beaten by his
Cambridge opponent; he had taken a fair second in Greats, was believed to
have been 'runner up' for the Newdigate prize poem, and might have won
other laurels, but that he was found to do the female parts very fairly
in the dramatic performances of the University, a thing irreconcilable
with study. His father was a rural dean. Merton's most obvious vice was
a thirst for general information. 'I know it is awfully bad form to know
anything,' he had been heard to say, 'but everyone has his failings, and
mine is occasionally useful.'
Logan was tall, dark, athletic and indolent. He was, in a way, the last
of an historic Scottish family, and rather fond of discoursing on the
ancestral traditions. But any satisfaction that he derived from them
was, so far, all that his birth had won for him. His little patrimony
had taken to itself wings. Merton was in no better case. Both, as they
sat together, were gloomily discussing their prospects.
In the penumbra of smoke, and the malignant light of an ill trimmed lamp,
the Great Idea was to be evolved. What consequences hung on the Great
Idea! The peace of families insured, at a trifling premium. Innocence
rescued. The defeat of the subtlest criminal designers: undreamed of
benefits to natural science! But I anticipate. We return to the
conversation in the Ryder Street den.
'It is a case of emigration or the workhouse,' said Logan.
'Emigration! What can you or I do in the Colonies? They provide even
their own ushers. My only available assets, a little Greek and less
Latin, are drugs in the Melbourne market,' answered Merton; 'they breed
their own dominies. Protection!'
'In America they might pay for lessons in the English accent . . . ' said
Logan.
'But not,' said Merton, 'in the Scotch, which is yours; oh distant cousin
of a marquis! Consequently by rich American lady pupils "you are not one
to be desired."'
'Tommy, you are impertinent,' said Logan. 'Oh, hang it, where is there
an opening, a demand, for the broken, the stoney broke? A man cannot
live by casual paragraphs alone.'
'And these generally reckoned "too high-toned for our readers,"' said
Merton.
'If I could get the secretaryship of a golf club!' Logan sighed.
'If you could get the Chancellorship of the Exchequer! I reckon that
there are two million applicants for secretaryships of golf clubs.'
'Or a land agency,' Logan murmured.
'Oh, be practical!' cried Merton. 'Be inventive! Be modern! Be up to
date! Think of something _new_! Think of a felt want, as the
Covenanting divine calls it: a real public need, hitherto but dimly
present, and quite a demand without a supply.'
'But that means thousands in advertisements,' said Logan, 'even if we ran
a hair-restorer. The ground bait is too expensive. I say, I once knew a
fellow who ground-baited for salmon with potted shrimps.'
'Make a paragraph on him then,' said Merton.
'But results proved that there was no felt want of potted shrimps--or not
of a fly to follow.'
'Your collaboration in the search, the hunt for money, the quest,
consists merely in irrelevancies and objections,' growled Merton,
lighting a cigarette.
'Lucky devil, Peter Nevison. Meets an heiress on a Channel boat, with
4,000_l_. a year; and there he is.' Logan basked in the reflected
sunshine.
'Cut by her people, though--and other people. I could not have faced the
row with her people,' said Merton musingly.
'I don't wonder they moved heaven and earth, and her uncle, the bishop,
to stop it. Not eligible, Peter was not, however you took him,' Logan
reflected. 'Took too much of this,' he pointed to the heraldic flask.
'Well, _she_ took him. It is not much that parents, still less
guardians, can do now, when a girl's mind is made up.'
'The emancipation of woman is the opportunity of the indigent male
struggler. Women have their way,' Logan reflected.
'And the youth of the modern aged is the opportunity of our sisters, the
girls "on the make,"' said Merton. 'What a lot of old men of title are
marrying young women as hard up as we are!'
'And then,' said Logan, 'the offspring of the deceased marchionesses make
a fuss. In fact marriage is always the signal for a family row.'
'It is the infernal family row that I never could face. I had a chance--'
Merton seemed likely to drop into autobiography.
'I know,' said Logan admonishingly.
'Well, hanged if I could take it, and she--she could not stand it either,
and both of us--'
'Do not be elegiac,' interrupted Logan. 'I know. Still, I am rather
sorry for people's people. The unruly affections simply poison the lives
of parents and guardians, aye, and of the children too. The aged are now
so hasty and imprudent. What would not Tala have given to prevent his
Grace from marrying Mrs. Tankerville?'
Merton leapt to his feet and smote his brow.
'Wait, don't speak to me--a great thought flushes all my brain. Hush! I
have it,' and he sat down again, pouring seltzer water into a half empty
glass.
'Have what?' asked Logan.
'The Felt Want. But the accomplices?'
'But the advertisements!' suggested Logan.
'A few pounds will cover _them_. I can sell my books,' Merton sighed.
'A lot of advertising your first editions will pay for. Why, even to
launch a hair-restorer takes--'
'Oh, but,' Merton broke in, '_this_ want is so widely felt, acutely felt
too: hair is not in it. But where are the accomplices?'
'If it is gentleman burglars I am not concerned. No Raffles for me! If
it is venal physicians to kill off rich relations, the lives of the
Logans are sacred to me.'
'Bosh!' said Merton, 'I want "lady friends," as Tennyson says: nice
girls, well born, well bred, trying to support themselves.'
'What do you want _them_ for? To support them?'
'I want them as accomplices,' said Merton. 'As collaborators.'
'Blackmail?' asked Logan. 'Has it come to this? I draw the line at
blackmail. Besides, they would starve first, good girls would; or marry
Lord Methusalem, or a beastly South African _richard_.'
'Robert Logan of Restalrig, that should be'--Merton spoke
impressively--'you know me to be incapable of practices, however
lucrative, which involve taint of crime. I do not prey upon the society
which I propose to benefit. But where are the girls?'
'Where are they not?' Logan asked. 'Dawdling, as jesters, from country
house to country house. In the British Museum, verifying references for
literary gents, if they can get references to verify. Asking leave to
describe their friends' parties in _The Leidy's News_. Trying for places
as golfing governesses, or bridge governesses, or gymnastic mistresses at
girls' schools, or lady laundresses, or typewriters, or lady teachers of
cookery, or pegs to hang costumes on at dress-makers'. The most
beautiful girl I ever saw was doing that once; I met her when I was
shopping with my aunt who left her money to the Armenians.'
'You kept up her acquaintance? The girl's, I mean,' Merton asked.
'We have occasionally met. In fact--'
'Yes, I know, as you said lately,' Merton remarked. 'That's one, anyhow,
and there is Mary Willoughby, who got a second in history when I was up.
_She_ would do. Better business for her than the British Museum. I know
three or four.'
'I know five or six. But what for?' Logan insisted.
'To help us in supplying the widely felt want, which is my discovery,'
said Merton.
'And that is?'
'Disentanglers--of both sexes. A large and varied staff, calculated to
meet every requirement and cope with every circumstance.' Merton quoted
an unwritten prospectus.
'I don't follow. What the deuce is your felt want?'
'What we were talking about.'
'Ground bait for salmon?' Logan reverted to his idea.
'No. Family rows about marriages. Nasty letters. Refusals to recognise
the choice of a son, a daughter, or a widowed but youthful old parent,
among the upper classes. Harsh words. Refusals to allow meetings or
correspondence. Broken hearts. Improvident marriages. Preaching down a
daughter's heart, or an aged parent's heart, or a nephew's, or a niece's,
or a ward's, or anybody's heart. Peace restored to the household.
Intended marriage off, and nobody a penny the worse, unless--'
'Unless what?' said Logan.
'Practical difficulties,' said Merton, 'will occur in every enterprise.
But they won't be to our disadvantage, the reverse--if they don't happen
too often. And we can guard against _that_ by a scientific process.'
'Now will you explain,' Logan asked, 'or shall I pour this whisky and
water down the back of your neck?'
He rose to his feet, menace in his eye.
'Bear fighting barred! We are no longer boys. We are men--broken men.
Sit down, don't play the bear,' said Merton.
'Well, explain, or I fire!'
'Don't you see? The problem for the family, for hundreds of families, is
to get the undesirable marriage off without the usual row. Very few
people really like a row. Daughter becomes anaemic; foreign cures are
expensive and no good. Son goes to the Devil or the Cape. Aged and
opulent, but amorous, parent leaves everything he can scrape together to
disapproved of new wife. Relations cut each other all round. Not many
people really enjoy that kind of thing. They want a pacific
solution--marriage off, no remonstrances.'
'And how are you going to do it?'
'Why,' said Merton, 'by a scientific and thoroughly organised system of
disengaging or disentangling. We enlist a lot of girls and fellows like
ourselves, beautiful, attractive, young, or not so young, well connected,
intellectual, athletic, and of all sorts of types, but all _broke_, all
without visible means of subsistence. They are people welcome in country
houses, but travelling third class, and devilishly perplexed about how to
tip the servants, how to pay if they lose at bridge, and so forth. We
enlist them, we send them out on demand, carefully selecting our agents
to meet the circumstances in each case. They go down and disentangle the
amorous by--well, by entangling them. The lovers are off with the old
love, the love which causes all the worry, without being on with the new
love--our agent. The thing quietly fizzles out.'
'Quietly!' Logan snorted. 'I like "quietly." They would be on with the
new love. Don't you see, you born gomeral, that the person, man or
woman, who deserts the inconvenient A.--I put an A. B. case--falls in
love with your agent B., and your B. is, by the nature of the thing, more
ineligible than A.--too poor. A babe could see that. You disappoint me,
Merton.'
'You state,' said Merton, 'one of the practical difficulties which I
foresaw. Not that it does not suit _us_ very well. Our comrade and
friend, man or woman, gets a chance of a good marriage, and, Logan, there
is no better thing. But parents and guardians would not stand much of
that: of people marrying our agents.'
'Of course they wouldn't. Your idea is crazy.'
'Wait a moment,' said Merton. 'The resources of science are not yet
exhausted. You have heard of the epoch-making discovery of Jenner, and
its beneficent results in checking the ravages of smallpox, that scourge
of the human race?'
'Oh don't talk like a printed book,' Logan remonstrated. 'Everybody has
heard of vaccination.'
'And you are aware that similar prophylactic measures have been adopted,
with more or less of success, in the case of other diseases?'
'I am aware,' said Logan, 'that you are in danger of personal suffering
at my hands, as I already warned you.'
'What is love but a disease?' Merton asked dreamily. 'A French _savant_,
Monsieur Janet, says that nobody ever falls in love except when he is a
little bit off colour: I forget the French equivalent.'
'I am coming for you,' Logan arose in wrath.
'Sit down. Well, your objection (which it did not need the eyes of an
Argus to discover) is that the patients, the lovers young, whose loves
are disapproved of by the family, will fall in love with our agents,
insist on marrying _them_, and so the last state of these afflicted
parents--or children--will be worse than the first. Is that your
objection?'
'Of course it is; and crushing at that,' Logan replied.
'Then science suggests prophylactic measures: something akin to
vaccination,' Merton explained. 'The agents must be warranted "immune."
Nice new word!'
'How?'
'The object,' Merton answered, 'is to make it impossible, or highly
improbable, that our agents, after disentangling the affections of the
patients, curing them of one attack, will accept their addresses, offered
in a second fit of the fever. In brief, the agents must not marry the
patients, or not often.'
'But how can you prevent them if they want to do it?'
'By a process akin, in the emotional region of our strangely blended
nature, to inoculation.'
'Hanged if I understand you. You keep on repeating yourself. You
dodder!'
'Our agents must have got the disease already, the pretty fever; and be
safe against infection. There must be on the side of the agent a prior
attachment. Now, don't interrupt, there always _is_ a prior attachment.
You are in love, I am in love, he, she, and they, all of the broken
brigade, are in love; all the more because they have not a chance.
"Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth." So,
you see, our agents will be quite safe not to crown the flame of the
patients, not to accept them, if they do propose, or expect a proposal.
"Every security from infection guaranteed." There is the felt want. Here
is the remedy; not warranted absolutely painless, but salutary, and
tending to the amelioration of the species. So we have only to enlist
the agents, and send a few advertisements to the papers. My first
editions must go. Farewell Shelley, Tennyson, Keats, uncut Waverleys,
Byron, _The Waltz_, early Kiplings (at a vast reduction on account of the
overflooded state of the market). Farewell Kilmarnock edition of Burns,
and Colonel Lovelace, his _Lucasta_, and _Tamerlane_ by Mr. Poe, and the
rest. The money must be raised.' Merton looked resigned.
'I have nothing to sell,' said Logan, 'but an entire set of clubs by
Philp. Guaranteed unique, and in exquisite condition.'
'You must part with them,' said Merton. 'We are like Palissy the potter,
feeding his furnace with the drawing-room furniture.'
'But how about the recruiting?' Logan asked. 'It's like one of these
novels where you begin by collecting desperados from all quarters, and
then the shooting commences.'
'Well, we need not ransack the Colonies,' Merton replied. 'Patronise
British industries. We know some fellows already and some young women.'
'I say,' Logan interrupted, 'what a dab at disentangling Lumley would
have been if he had not got that Professorship of Toxicology at
Edinburgh, and been able to marry Miss Wingan at last!'
'Yes, and Miss Wingan would have been useful. What a lively girl, ready
for everything,' Merton replied.
'But these we can still get at,' Logan asked: 'how are you to be sure
that they are--vaccinated?'
'The inquiry is delicate,' Merton admitted, 'but the fact may be almost
taken for granted. We must give a dinner (a preliminary expense) to
promising collaborators, and champagne is a great promoter of success in
delicate inquiries. _In vino veritas_.'
'I don't know if there is money in it, but there is a kind of larkiness,'
Logan admitted.
'Yes, I think there will be larks.'
'About the dinner? We are not to have Johnnies disguised as hansom
cabbies driving about, and picking up men and women that look the right
sort, in the streets, and compelling them to come in?'
'Oh no, _that_ expense we can cut. It would not do with the women,
obviously: heavens, what queer fishes that net would catch! The flag of
the Disentanglers shall never be stained by--anything. You know some
likely agents: I know some likely agents. They will suggest others, as
our field of usefulness widens. Of course there is the oath of secrecy:
we shall administer that after dinner to each guest apart.'
'Jolly difficult for those that are mixed up with the press to keep an
oath of secrecy!' Logan spoke as a press man.
'We shall only have to do with gentlemen and ladies. The oath is not
going to sanction itself with religious terrors. Good form--we shall
appeal to a "sense of form"--now so widely diffused by University
Extension Lectures on the Beautiful, the Fitting, the--'
'Oh shut up!' cried Logan. 'You always haver after midnight. For, look
here, here is an objection; this precious plan of yours, parents and
others could work it for themselves. I dare say they do. When they see
the affections of a son, or a daughter, or a bereaved father beginning to
stray towards A., they probably invite B. to come and stay and act as a
lightning conductor. They don't need us.'
'Oh, don't they? They seldom have an eligible and satisfactory lightning
conductor at hand, somebody to whom they can trust their dear one. Or,
if they have, the dear one has already been bored with the intended
lightning conductor (who is old, or plain, or stupid, or familiar, at
best), and they won't look at him or her. Now our Disentanglers are not
going to be plain, or dull, or old, or stale, or commonplace--we'll take
care of that. My dear fellow, don't you know how dismal the _parti_
selected for a man or girl invariably is? Now _we_ provide a different
and superior article, a _fresh_ article too, not a familiar bore or a
neighbour.'
'Well, there is a good deal in that, as you say,' Logan admitted. 'But
decent people will think the whole speculation shady. How are you to get
round that? There is something you have forgotten.'
'What?' Merton asked.
'Why it stares you in the face. References. Unexceptionable references;
people will expect them all round.'
'Please don't say "unexceptionable"; say "references beyond the reach of
cavil."' Merton was a purist. 'It costs more in advertisements, but my
phrase at once enlists the sympathy of every liberal and elegant mind.
But as to references (and I am glad that you have some common sense,
Logan), there is, let me see, there is the Dowager.'
'The divine Althaea--Marchioness of Bowton?'
'The same,' said Merton. 'The oldest woman, and the most recklessly up-
to-date in London. She has seen _bien d'autres_, and wants to see more.'
'She will do; and my aunt,' Logan said.
'Not, oh, of course not, the one who left her money to the Armenians?'
Merton asked.
'No, another. And there's old Lochmaben's young wife, my cousin, widely
removed, by marriage. She is American, you know, and perhaps you know
her book, _Social Experiments_?'
'Yes, it is not half bad,' Merton conceded, 'and her heart will be in
what I fear she will call "the new departure." And she is pretty, and
highly respected in the parish.'
'And there's my aunt I spoke of, or great aunt, Miss Nicky Maxwell. The
best old thing: a beautiful monument of old gentility, and she would give
her left hand to help any one of the clan.'
'She will do. And there's Mrs. Brown-Smith, Lord Yarrow's daughter, who
married the patent soap man. _Elle est capable de tout_. A real good
woman, but full of her fun.'
'That will do for the lady patronesses. We must secure them at once.'
'But won't the clients blab?' Logan suggested.
'They can't,' Merton said. 'They would be laughed at consumedly. It
will be their interest to hold their tongues.'
'Well, let us hope that they will see it in that light.' Logan was not
too sanguine.
Merton had a better opinion of his enterprise.
'People, if they come to us at all for assistance in these very delicate
and intimate affairs, will have too much to lose by talking about them.
They may not come, we can only try, but if they come they will be silent
as the grave usually is.'
'Well, it is late, and the whisky is low,' said Logan in mournful tones.
'May the morrow's reflections justify the inspiration of--the whisky.
Good night!'
'Good night,' said Merton absently.
He sat down when Logan had gone, and wrote a few notes on large sheets of
paper. He was elaborating the scheme. 'If collaboration consists in
making objections, as the French novelist said, Logan is a rare
collaborator,' Merton muttered as he turned out the pallid lamp and went
to bed.
Next morning, before dressing, he revolved the scheme. It bore the
change of light and survived the inspiration of alcohol. Logan looked in
after breakfast. He had no new objections. They proceeded to action.
II. FROM THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES
The first step towards Merton's scheme was taken at once. The lady
patronesses were approached. The divine Althaea instantly came in. She
had enjoyed few things more since the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the
eve of Waterloo. Miss Nicky Maxwell at first professed a desire to open
her coffers, 'only anticipating,' she said, 'an event'--which Logan
declined in any sense to anticipate. Lady Lochmaben said that they would
have a lovely time as experimental students of society. Mrs. Brown-Smith
instantly offered her own services as a Disentangler, her lord being then
absent in America studying the negro market for detergents.
'I think,' she said, 'he expects Brown-Smith's brand to make an Ethiopian
change his skin, and then means to exhibit him as an advertisement.'
'And settle the negro question by making them all white men,' said Logan,
as he gracefully declined the generous but compromising proposal of the
lady. 'Yet, after all,' thought he, 'is she not right? The prophylactic
precautions would certainly be increased, morally speaking, if the
Disentanglers were married.' But while he pigeon-holed this idea for
future reference, at the moment he could not see his way to accepting
Mrs. Brown-Smith's spirited idea. She reluctantly acquiesced in his view
of the case, but, like the other dames, promised to guarantee, if applied
to, the absolute respectability of the enterprise. The usual vows of
secrecy were made, and (what borders on the supernatural) they were kept.
Merton's first editions went to Sotheby's, 'Property of a gentleman who
is changing his objects of collection.' A Russian archduke bought
Logan's unique set of golf clubs by Philp. Funds accrued from other
sources. Logan had a friend, dearer friend had no man, one Trevor, a
pleasant bachelor whose sister kept house for him. His purse, or rather
his cheque book, gaped with desire to be at Logan's service, but had
gaped in vain. Finding Logan grinning one day over the advertisement
columns of a paper at the club, his prophetic soul discerned a good
thing, and he wormed it out 'in dern privacy.' He slapped his manly
thigh and insisted on being in it--as a capitalist. The other stoutly
resisted, but was overcome.
'You need an office, you need retaining fees, you need outfits for the
accomplices, and it is a legitimate investment. I'll take interest and
risks,' said Trevor.
So the money was found.
The inaugural dinner, for the engaging of accomplices, was given in a
private room of a restaurant in Pall Mall.
The dinner was gay, but a little pathetic. Neatness, rather than the
gloss of novelty (though other gloss there was), characterised the
garments of the men. The toilettes of the women were modest; that amount
of praise (and it is a good deal) they deserved. A young lady, Miss
Maskelyne, an amber-hued beauty, who practically lived as a female jester
at the houses of the great, shone resplendent, indeed, but magnificence
of apparel was demanded by her profession.
'I am _so_ tired of it,' she said to Merton. 'Fancy being more and more
anxious for country house invitations. Fancy an artist's feelings, when
she knows she has not been a success. And then when the woman of the
house detests you! She often does. And when they ask you to give your
imitation of So-and-so, and forget that his niece is in the room! Do you
know what they would have called people like me a hundred years ago? Toad-
eaters! There is one of us in an old novel I read a bit of once. She
goes about, an old maid, to houses. Once she arrived in a snow storm and
a hearse. Am I to come to that? I keep learning new drawing-room
tricks. And when you fall ill, as I did at Eckford, and you can't leave,
and you think they are tired to death of you! Oh, it is I who am tired,
and time passes, and one grows old. I am a hag!'
Merton said 'what he ought to have said,' and what, indeed, was true. He
was afraid she would tell him what she owed her dress-makers. Therefore
he steered the talk round to sport, then to the Highlands, then to
Knoydart, then to Alastair Macdonald of Craigiecorrichan, and then Merton
knew, by a tone in the voice, a drop of the eyelashes, that Miss
Maskelyne was--vaccinated. Prophylactic measures had been taken: this
agent ran no risk of infection. There was Alastair.
Merton turned to Miss Willoughby, on his left. She was tall, dark,
handsome, but a little faded, and not plump: few of the faces round the
table were plump and well liking. Miss Willoughby, in fact, dwelt in one
room, in Bloomsbury, and dined on cocoa and bread and butter. These were
for her the rewards of the Higher Education. She lived by copying
crabbed manuscripts.
'Do you ever go up to Oxford now?' said Merton.
'Not often. Sometimes a St. Ursula girl gets a room in the town for me.
I have coached two or three of them at little reading parties. It gets
one out of town in autumn: Bloomsbury in August is not very fresh. And
at Oxford one can "tout," or "cadge," for a little work. But there are
so many of us.'
'What are you busy with just now?'
'Vatican transcripts at the Record Office.'
'Any exciting secrets?'
'Oh no, only how much the priests here paid to Rome for their promotions.
Secrets then perhaps: not thrilling now.'
'No schemes to poison people?'
'Not yet: no plots for novels, and oh, such long-winded pontifical Latin,
and such awful crabbed hands.'
'It does not seem to lead to much?'
'To nothing, in no way. But one is glad to get anything.'
'Jephson, of Lincoln, whom I used to know, is doing a book on the Knights
of St. John in their Relations to the Empire,' said Merton.
'Is he?' said Miss Willoughby, after a scarcely distinguishable but
embarrassed pause, and she turned from Merton to exhibit an interest in
the very original scheme of mural decoration behind her.
'It is quite a new subject to most people,' said Merton, and he mentally
ticked off Miss Willoughby as safe, for Jephson, whom he had heard that
she liked, was a very poor man, living on his fellowship and coaching. He
was sorry: he had never liked or trusted Jephson.
'It is a subject sure to create a sensation, isn't it?' asked Miss
Willoughby, a little paler than before.
'It might get a man a professorship,' said Merton.
'There are so many of us, of them, I mean,' said Miss Willoughby, and
Merton gave a small sigh. 'Not much larkiness here,' he thought, and
asked a transient waiter for champagne.
Miss Willoughby drank a little of the wine: the colour came into her
face.
'By Jove, she's awfully handsome,' thought Merton.
'It was very kind of you to ask me to this festival,' said the girl. 'Why
have you asked us, me at least?'
'Perhaps for many besides the obvious reason,' said Merton. 'You may be
told later.'
'Then there is a reason in addition to that which most people don't find
obvious? Have you come into a fortune?'
'No, but I am coming. My ship is on the sea and my boat is on the
shore.'
'I see faces that I know. There is that tall handsome girl, Miss
Markham, with real gold hair, next Mr. Logan. We used to call her the
Venus of Milo, or Milo for short, at St. Ursula's. She has mantles and
things tried on her at Madame Claudine's, and stumpy purchasers argue
from the effect (neglecting the cause) that the things will suit _them_.
Her people were ruined by Australian gold mines. And there is Miss
Martin, who does stories for the penny story papers at a shilling the
thousand words. The fathers have backed horses, and the children's teeth
are set on edge. Is it a Neo-Christian dinner? We are all so poor. You
have sought us in the highways and hedges.'
'Where the wild roses grow,' said Merton.
'I don't know many of the men, though I see faces that one used to see in
the High. There is Mr. Yorker, the athletic man. What is he doing now?'
'He is sub-vice-secretary of a cricket club. His income depends on his
bat and his curl from leg. But he has a rich aunt.'
'Cricket does not lead to much, any more than my ability to read the
worst handwritings of the darkest ages. Who is the man that the
beautiful lady opposite is making laugh so?' asked Miss Willoughby,
without moving her lips.
Merton wrote 'Bulstrode of Trinity' on the back of the menu.
'What does _he_ do?'
'Nothing,' said Merton in a low voice. 'Been alligator farming, or
ostrich farming, or ranching, and come back shorn; they all come back. He
wants to be an ecclesiastical "chucker out," and cope with Mr. Kensitt
and Co. New profession.'
'He ought not to be here. He can ride and shoot.'
'He is the only son of his mother and she is a widow.'
'He ought to go out. My only brother is out. I wish I were a man. I
hate dawdlers.' She looked at him: her eyes were large and grey under
black lashes, they were dark and louring.
'Have you, by any chance, a spark of the devil in you?' asked Merton,
taking a social header.
'I have been told so, and sometimes thought so,' said Miss Willoughby.
'Perhaps this one will go out by fasting if not by prayer. Yes, I _have_
a spark of the Accuser of the Brethren.'
'_Tant mieux_,' thought Merton.
All the people were talking and laughing now. Miss Maskelyne told a
story to the table. She did a trick with a wine glass, forks, and a
cork. Logan interviewed Miss Martin, who wrote tales for the penny
fiction people, on her methods. Had she a moral aim, a purpose? Did she
create her characters first, and let them evolve their fortunes, or did
she invent a plot, and make her characters fit in?
Miss Martin said she began with a situation: 'I wish I could get one
somewhere as secretary to a man of letters.'
'They can't afford secretaries,' said Logan. 'Besides they are family
men, married men, and so--'
'And so what?'
'Go look in any glass, and say,' said Logan, laughing. 'But how do you
begin with a situation?'
'Oh, anyhow. A lot of men in a darkened room. Pitch dark.'
'A seance?'
'No, a conspiracy. They are in the dark that when arrested they may
swear they never saw each other.'
'They could swear that anyhow.'
'Conspirators have consciences. Then there comes a red light shining
between the door and the floor. Then the door breaks down under a
hammer, the light floods the room. There is a man in it whom the others
never saw enter.'
'How did he get in?'
'He was there before they came. Then the fighting begins. At the end of
it where is the man?'
'Well, where is he? What was he up to?'
'I don't know yet,' said Miss Martin, 'it just comes as I go on. It has
just got to come. It is a fourteen hours a day business. All writing. I
crib things from the French. Not whole stories. I take the opening
situation; say the two men in a boat on the river who hook up a sack. I
don't read the rest of the Frenchman, I work on from the sack, and guess
what was in it.'
'What was in the sack?'
'_In the Sack_! A name for a story! Anything, from the corpse of a
freak (good idea, corpse of a freak with no arms and legs, or with too
many) to a model of a submarine ship, or political papers. But I am
tired of corpses. They pervade my works. They give "a _bouquet_, a
fragrance," as Mr. Talbot Twysden said about his cheap claret.'
'You read the old Masters?'
'The obsolete Thackeray? Yes, I know him pretty well.'
'What are you publishing just now?'
'This to an author? Don't you know?'
'I blush,' said Logan.
'Unseen,' said Miss Martin, scrutinising him closely.
'Well, you do not read the serials to which I contribute,' she went on.
'I have two or three things running. There is _The Judge's Secret_.'
'What was that?'
'He did it himself.'
'Did what?'
'Killed the bishop. He is not a very plausible judge in English: in
French he would be all right, a _juge d'instruction_, the man who cross-
examines the prisoners in private, you know.'
'Judges don't do that in England,' said Logan.
'No, but this case is an exception. The judge was such a very old
friend, a college friend, of the murdered bishop. So he takes advantage
of his official position, and steals into the cell of the accused. My
public does not know any better, and, of course, I have no reviewers. I
never come out in a book.'
'And why did the judge assassinate the prelate?'
'The prelate knew too much about the judge, who sat in the Court of
Probate and Divorce.'
'Satan reproving sin?' asked Logan.
'Yes, exactly; and the bishop being interested in the case--'
'No scandal about Mrs. Proudie?'
'No, not that exactly, still, you see the motive?'
'I do,' said Logan. 'And the conclusion?'
'The bishop was not really dead at all. It takes some time to explain.
The _corpus delicti_--you see I know my subject--was somebody else. And
the bishop was alive, and secretly watching the judge, disguised as Mr.
Sherlock Holmes. Oh, I know it is too much in Dickens's manner. But my
public has not read Dickens.'
'You interest me keenly' said Logan.
'I am glad to hear it. And the penny public take freely. Our
circulation goes up. I asked for a rise of three pence on the thousand
words.'
'Now this _is_ what I call literary conversation,' said Logan. 'It is
like reading _The British Weekly Bookman_. Did you get the threepence?
if the inquiry is not indelicate.'
'I got twopence. But, you see, there are so many of us.'
'Tell me more. Are you serialising anything else?'
'Serialising is the right word. I see you know a great deal about
literature. Yes, I am serialising a featured tale.'
'A featured tale?'
'You don't know what that is? You do not know everything yet! It is
called _Myself_.'
'Why _Myself_?'
'Oh, because the narrator did it--the murder. A stranger is found in a
wood, hung to a tree. Nobody knows who he is. But he and the narrator
had met in Paraguay. He, the murdered man, came home, visited the
narrator, and fell in love with the beautiful being to whom the narrator
was engaged. So the narrator lassoed him in a wood.'
'Why?'
'Oh, the old stock reason. He knew too much.'
'What did he know?'
'Why, that the narrator was living on a treasure originally robbed from a
church in South America.'
'But, if it _was_ a treasure, who would care?'
'The girl was a Catholic. And the murdered man knew more.'
'How much more?'
'This: to find out about the treasure, the narrator had taken priest's
orders, and, of course, could not marry. And the other man, being in
love with the girl, threatened to tell, and so the lasso came in handy.
It is a Protestant story and instructive.'
'Jolly instructive! But, Miss Martin, you are the Guy Boothby of your
sex!'
At this supreme tribute the girl blushed like dawn upon the hills.
'My word, she is pretty!' thought Logan; but what he said was, 'You know
Mr. Tierney, your neighbour? Out of a job as a composition master.
Almost reduced to University Extension Lectures on the didactic Drama.'
Tierney was talking eagerly to his neighbour, a fascinating lady
laundress, _la belle blanchisseuse_, about starch.
Further off a lady instructress in cookery, Miss Frere, was conversing
with a tutor of bridge.
'Tierney,' said Logan, in a pause, 'may I present you to Miss Martin?'
Then he turned to Miss Markham, formerly known at St. Ursula's as Milo.
She had been a teacher of golf, hockey, cricket, fencing, and gymnastics,
at a very large school for girls, in a very small town. Here she became
society to such an alarming extent (no party being complete without her,
while the colonels and majors never left her in peace), that her
connection with education was abruptly terminated. At present raiment
was draped on her magnificent shoulders at Madame Claudine's. Logan, as
he had told Merton, 'occasionally met her,' and Logan had the strongest
reasons for personal conviction that she was absolutely proof against
infection, in the trying circumstances to which a Disentangler is
professionally exposed. Indeed she alone of the women present knew from
Logan the purpose of the gathering.
Cigarettes had replaced the desire of eating and drinking. Merton had
engaged a withdrawing room, where he meant to be closeted with his
guests, one by one, administer the oath, and prosecute delicate inquiries
on the important question of immunity from infection. But, after a
private word or two with Logan, he deemed these conspicuous formalities
needless. 'We have material enough to begin with,' said Logan. 'We knew
beforehand that some of the men were safe, and certain of the women.'
There was a balcony. The providence of nature had provided a full moon,
and a night of balm. The imaginative maintained that the scent of hay
was breathed, among other odours, over Pall Mall the Blest. Merton kept
straying with one guest or another into a corner of the balcony. He
hinted that there was a thing in prospect. Would the guest hold himself,
or herself, ready at need? Next morning, if the promise was given, the
guest might awake to peace of conscience. The scheme was beneficent,
and, incidentally, cheerful.
To some he mentioned retainers; money down, to speak grossly. Most
accepted on the strength of Merton's assurances that their services must
always be ready. There were difficulties with Miss Willoughby and Miss
Markham. The former lady (who needed it most) flatly refused the
arrangement. Merton pleaded in vain. Miss Markham, the girl known to
her contemporaries as Milo, could not hazard her present engagement at
Madame Claudine's. If she was needed by the scheme in the dead season
she thought that she could be ready for whatever it was.
Nobody was told exactly what the scheme was. It was only made clear that
nobody was to be employed without the full and exhaustive knowledge of
the employers, for whom Merton and Logan were merely agents. If in
doubt, the agents might apply for counsel to the lady patronesses, whose
very names tranquilised the most anxious inquirers. The oath was
commuted for a promise, on honour, of secrecy. And, indeed, little if
anything was told that could be revealed. The thing was not political:
spies on Russia or France were not being recruited. That was made
perfectly clear. Anybody might withdraw, if the prospect, when beheld
nearer, seemed undesirable. A mystified but rather merry gathering
walked away to remote lodgings, Miss Maskelyne alone patronising a
hansom.
On the day after the dinner Logan and Merton reviewed the event and its
promise, taking Trevor into their counsels. They were not ill satisfied
with the potential recruits.
'There was one jolly little thing in white,' said Trevor. 'So pretty and
flowering! "Cherries ripe themselves do cry," a line in an old song,
that's what her face reminded me of. Who was she?'
'She came with Miss Martin, the penny novelist,' said Logan. 'She is
stopping with her. A country parson's daughter, come up to town to try
to live by typewriting.'
'She will be of no use to us,' said Merton. 'If ever a young woman
looked fancy-free it is that girl. What did you say her name is, Logan?'
'I did not say, but, though you won't believe it, her name is Miss
Blossom, Miss Florry Blossom. Her godfathers and godmothers must bear
the burden of her appropriate Christian name; the other, the surname, is
a coincidence--designed or not.'
'Well, she is not suitable,' said Merton sternly. 'Misplaced affections
she might distract, but then, after she had distracted them, she might
reciprocate them. As a conscientious manager I cannot recommend her to
clients.'
'But,' said Trevor, 'she may be useful for all that, as well as decidedly
ornamental. Merton, you'll want a typewriter for your business
correspondence, and Miss Blossom typewrites: it is her profession.'
'Well,' said Merton, 'I am not afraid. I do not care too much for "that
garden in her face," for your cherry-ripe sort of young person. If a
typewriter is necessary I can bear with her as well as another.'
'I admire your courage and resignation,' said Trevor, 'so now let us go
and take rooms for the Society.'
They found rooms, lordly rooms, which Trevor furnished in a stately
manner, hanging a selection of his mezzotints on the walls--ladies of old
years, after Romney, Reynolds, Hoppner, and the rest. A sober opulence
and comfort characterised the chambers; a well-selected set of books in a
Sheraton bookcase was intended to beguile the tedium of waiting clients.
The typewriter (Miss Blossom accepted the situation) occupied an inner
chamber, opening out of that which was to be sacred to consultations.
The firm traded under the title of Messrs. Gray and Graham. Their
advertisement--in all the newspapers--addressed itself 'To Parents,
Guardians, Children and others.' It set forth the sorrows and anxieties
which beset families in the matter of undesirable matrimonial engagements
and entanglements. The advertisers proposed, by a new method, to restore
domestic peace and confidence. 'No private inquiries will, in any case,
be made into the past of the parties concerned. The highest references
will in every instance be given and demanded. Intending clients must in
the first instance apply by letter to Messrs. Gray and Graham. No charge
will be made for a first interview, which can only be granted after
satisfactory references have been exchanged by letter.'
'If _that_ does not inspire confidence,' said Merton, 'I don't know what
will.'
'Nothing short of it will do,' said Logan.
'But the mezzotints will carry weight,' said Trevor, 'and a few good
cloisonnes and enamelled snuff-boxes and bronzes will do no harm.'
So he sent in some weedings of his famous collection.
III. ADVENTURE OF THE FIRST CLIENTS
Merton was reading the newspaper in the office, expecting a client. Miss
Blossom was typewriting in the inner chamber; the door between was open.
The office boy knocked at Merton's outer door, and the sound of that
boy's strangled chuckling was distinctly audible to his employer. There
is something irritating in the foolish merriment of a youthful menial. No
conduct could be more likely than that of the office boy to irritate the
first client, arriving on business of which it were hard to exaggerate
the delicate and anxious nature.
These reflections flitted through Merton's mind as he exclaimed 'Come
in,' with a tone of admonishing austerity.
The office boy entered. His face was scarlet, his eyes goggled and ran
water. Hastily and loudly exclaiming 'Mr. and Miss Apsley' (which ended
with a crow) he stuffed his red pocket handkerchief into his mouth and
escaped. At the sound of the names, Merton had turned towards the inner
door, open behind him, whence came a clear and piercing trill of feminine
laughter from Miss Blossom. Merton angrily marched to the inner door,
and shut his typewriter in with a bang. His heart burned within him.
Nothing could be so insulting to clients; nothing so ruinous to a nascent
business. He wheeled round to greet his visitors with a face of apology;
his eyes on the average level of the human countenance divine. There was
no human countenance divine. There was no human countenance at that
altitude. His eyes encountered the opposite wall, and a print of 'Mrs.
Pelham Feeding Chickens.'
In a moment his eyes adjusted themselves to a lower elevation. In front
of him were standing, hand in hand, a pair of small children, a boy of
nine in sailor costume, but with bare knees not usually affected by naval
officers, and a girl of seven with her finger in her mouth.
The boy bowed gravely. He was a pretty little fellow with a pale oval
face, arched eyebrows, promise of an aquiline nose, and two large black
eyes. 'I think, sir,' said the child, 'I have the pleasure of redressing
myself to Mr. Gray or Mr. Graham?'
'Graham, at your service,' said Merton, gravely; 'may I ask you and Miss
Apsley to be seated?'
There was a large and imposing arm-chair in green leather; the client's
chair. Mr. Apsley lifted his little sister into it, and sat down beside
her himself. She threw her arms round his neck, and laid her flaxen
curls on his shoulder. Her blue eyes looked shyly at Merton out of her
fleece of gold. The four shoes of the clients dangled at some distance
above the carpet.
'You are the author of this article, I think, Mr. Graham?' said Mr.
Apsley, showing his hand, which was warm, and holding out a little
crumpled ball of paper, not precisely fresh.
Merton solemnly unrolled it; it contained the advertisement of his firm.
'Yes,' he said, 'I wrote that.'
'You got our letters, for you answered them,' said Mr. Apsley, with equal
solemnity. 'Why do you want Bats and me?'
'The lady's name is Bats?' said Merton, wondering why he was supposed to
'want' either of the pair.
'My name is Batsy. I like you: you are pretty,' said Miss Apsley.
Merton positively blushed: he was unaccustomed to compliments so frank
from a member of the sex at an early stage of a business interview. He
therefore kissed his fair client, who put up a pair of innocent damp
lips, and then allowed her attention to be engrossed by a coin on his
watch-chain.
'I don't quite remember your case, sir, or what you mean by saying I
wanted you, though I am delighted to see you,' he said to Mr. Apsley. 'We
have so many letters! With your permission I shall consult the letter
book.'
'The article says "To Parents, Guardians, Children, and others." It was
in print,' remarked Mr. Apsley, with a heavy stress on "children," 'and
she said you wanted _us_.'
The mystified Merton, wondering who 'she' was, turned the pages of the
letter book, mumbling, 'Abernethy, Applecombe, Ap. Davis, Apsley. Here
we are,' he began to read the letter aloud. It was typewritten, which,
when he saw his clients, not a little surprised him.
'Gentlemen,' the letter ran, 'having seen your advertisement in the
_Daily Diatribe_ of to-day, May 17, I desire to express my wish to enter
into communication with you on a matter of pressing importance.--I am, in
the name of my sister, Miss Josephine Apsley, and myself,
'Faithfully yours,
'THOMAS LLOYD APSLEY.'
'That's the letter,' said Mr. Apsley, 'and you wrote to us.'
'And what did I say?' asked Merton.
'Something about preferences, which we did not understand.'
'References, perhaps,' said Merton. 'Mr. Apsley, may I ask whether you
wrote this letter yourself?'
'No; None-so-pretty printed it on a kind of sewing machine. _She_ told
us to come and see you, so we came. I called her None-so-pretty, out of
a fairy story. She does not mind. Gran says she thinks she rather likes
it.'
'I shouldn't wonder if she did,' said Merton. 'But what is her real
name?'
'She made me promise not to tell. She was staying at the Home Farm when
we were staying at Gran's.'
'Is Gran your grandmother?'
'Yes,' replied Mr. Apsley.
Hereon Bats remarked that she was 'velly hungalee.'
'To be sure,' said Merton. 'Luncheon shall be brought at once.' He rang
the bell, and, going out, interpellated the office boy.
'Why did you laugh when my friends came to luncheon? You must learn
manners.'
'Please, sir, the kid, the young gentleman I mean, said he came on
business,' answered the boy, showing apoplectic symptoms.
'So he did; luncheon is his business. Go and bring luncheon for--five,
and see that there are chicken, cutlets, tartlets, apricots, and ginger-
beer.'
The boy departed and Merton reflected. 'A hoax, somebody's practical
joke,' he said to himself. 'I wonder who Miss None-so-pretty is.' Then
he returned, assured Batsy that luncheon was even at the doors, and
leaving her to look at _Punch_, led Mr. Apsley aside. 'Tommy,' he said
(having seen his signature), 'where do you live?'
The boy named a street on the frontiers of St. John's Wood.
'And who is your father?'
'Major Apsley, D.S.O.'
'And how did you come here?'
'In a hansom. I told the man to wait.'
'How did you get away?'
'Father took us to Lord's, with Miss Limmer, and there was a crowd, and
Bats and I slipped out; for None-so-pretty said we ought to call on you.'
'Who is Miss Limmer?'
'Our governess.'
'Have you a mother?'
The child's brown eyes filled with tears, and his cheeks flushed. 'It
was in India that she--'
'Yes, be a man, Tommy. I am looking the other way,' which Merton did for
some seconds. 'Now, Tommy, is Miss Limmer kind to you?'
The child's face became strangely set and blank; his eyes looking vacant.
'Miss Limmer is very kind to us. She loves us and we love her dearly.
Ask Batsy,' he said in a monotonous voice, as if he were repeating a
lesson. 'Batsy, come here,' he said in the same voice. 'Is Miss Limmer
kind to us?'
Batsy threw up her eyes--it was like a stage effect, 'We love Miss Limmer
dearly, and she loves us. She is very, very kind to us, like our dear
mamma.' Her voice was monotonous too. 'I never can say the last part,'
said Tommy. 'Batsy knows it; about dear mamma.'
'Indeed!' said Merton. 'Tommy, _why_ did you come here?'
'I don't know. I told you that None-so-pretty told us to. She did it
after she saw _that_ when we were bathing.' Tommy raised one of his
little loose breeks that did not cover the knee.
_That_ was not pleasant to look on: it was on the inside of the right
thigh.
'How did you get hurt _there_?' asked Merton.
The boy's monotonous chant began again: his eyes were fixed and blank as
before. 'I fell off a tree, and my leg hit a branch on the way down.'
'Curious accident,' said Merton; 'and None-so-pretty saw the mark?'
'Yes.'
'And asked you how you got it?'
'Yes, and she saw blue marks on Batsy, all over her arms.'
'And you told None-so-pretty that you fell off a tree?'
'Yes.'
'And she told you to come here?'
'Yes, she had read your printed article.'
'Well, here is luncheon,' said Merton, and bade the office boy call Miss
Blossom from the inner chamber to share the meal. Batsy had as low a
chair as possible, and was disposing her napkin to do the duty of a
pinafore.
Miss Blossom entered from within with downcast eyes.
'None-so-pretty!'
'None-so-pretty!' shouted the children, while Tommy rushed to throw his
arms round her neck, to meet which she stooped down, concealing a face of
blushes. Batsy descended from her chair, waddled up, climbed another
chair, and attacked the girl from the rear. The office boy was arranging
luncheon. Merton called him to the writing-table, scribbled a note, and
said, 'Take that to Dr. Maitland, with my compliments.'
Maitland had been one of the guests at the inaugural dinner. He was
entirely devoid of patients, and was living on the anticipated gains of a
great work on Clinical Psychology.
'Tell Dr. Maitland he will find me at luncheon if he comes instantly,'
said Merton as the boy fled on his errand. 'I see that I need not
introduce you to my young friends, Miss Blossom,' said Merton. 'May I
beg you to help Miss Apsley to arrange her tucker?'
Miss Blossom, almost unbecomingly brilliant in her complexion, did as she
was asked. Batsy had cold chicken, new potatoes, green peas, and two
helpings of apricot tart. Tommy devoted himself to cutlets. A very mild
shandygaff was compounded for him in an old Oriel pewter. Both children
made love to Miss Blossom with their eyes. It was not at all what Merton
felt inclined to do; the lady had entangled him in a labyrinth of
puzzledom.
'None-so-pretty,' exclaimed Tommy, 'I am glad you told us to come here.
Your friends are nice.'
Merton bowed to Tommy, 'I am glad too,' he said. 'Miss Blossom knew that
we were kindred souls, same kind of chaps, I mean, you and me, you know,
Tommy!'
Miss Blossom became more and more like the fabled peony, the crimson
variety. Luckily the office boy ushered in Dr. Maitland, who, exchanging
glances of surprise with Merton, over the children's heads, began to make
himself agreeable. He had nearly as many tricks as Miss Maskelyne. He
was doing the short-sighted man eating celery, and unable to find the
salt because he is unable to find his eyeglass.
Merton, seeing his clients absorbed in mirth, murmured something vague
about 'business,' and spirited Miss Blossom away to the inner chamber.
'Sit down, pray, Miss Blossom. There is no time to waste. What do you
know about these children? Why did you send them here?'
The girl, who was pale enough now, said, 'I never thought they would
come.'
'They are here, however. What do you know about them?'
'I went to stay, lately, at the Home Farm on their grandmother's place.
We became great friends. I found out that they were motherless, and that
they were being cruelly ill-treated by their governess.'
'Miss Limmer?'
'Yes. But they both said they loved her dearly. They always said that
when asked. I gathered from their grandmother, old Mrs. Apsley, that
their father would listen to nothing against the governess. The old lady
cried in a helpless way, and said he was capable of marrying the woman,
out of obstinacy, if anybody interfered. I had your advertisement, and I
thought you might disentangle him. It was a kind of joke. I only told
them that you were a kind gentleman. I never dreamed of their really
coming.'
'Well, you must take them back again presently, there is the address. You
must see their father; you must wait till you see him. And how are you
to explain this escapade? I can't have the children taught to lie.'
'They have been taught _that_ lesson already.'
'I don't think they are aware of it,' said Merton.
Miss Blossom stared.
'I can't explain, but you must find a way of keeping them out of a
scrape.'
'I think I can manage it,' said Miss Blossom demurely.
'I hope so. And manage, if you please, to see this Miss Limmer and
observe what kind of person she is,' said Merton, with his hand on the
door handle, adding, 'Please ask Dr. Maitland to come here, and do you
keep the children amused for a moment.'
Miss Blossom nodded and left the room; there was laughter in the other
chamber. Presently Maitland joined Merton.
'Look here,' said Merton, 'we must be rapid. These children are being
cruelly ill-treated and deny it. Will you get into talk with the boy,
and ask him if he is fond of his governess, say "Miss Limmer," and notice
what he says and how he says it? Then we must pack them away.'
'All right,' said Maitland.
They returned to the children. Miss Blossom retreated to the inner room.
Bats simplified matters by falling asleep in the client's chair. Maitland
began by talking about schools. Was Tommy going to Eton?
Tommy did not know. He had a governess at home.
'Not at a preparatory school yet? A big fellow like you?'
Tommy said that he would like to go to school, but they would not send
him.
'Why not?'
Tommy hesitated, blushed, and ended by saying that they didn't think it
safe, as he walked in his sleep.
'You will soon grow out of that,' said Maitland, 'but it is not very safe
at school. A boy I knew was found sound asleep on the roof at school.'
'He might have fallen off,' said Tommy.
'Yes. That's why your people keep you at home. But in a year or two you
will be all right. Know any Latin yet?'
Tommy said that Miss Limmer taught him Latin.
'Are you and she great friends?'
Tommy's face and voice altered as before, while he mechanically repeated
the tale of the mutual affection which linked him with Miss Limmer.
'_That's_ all very jolly,' said Maitland.
'Now, Tommy,' said Merton, 'we must waken Batsy, and Miss Blossom is
going to take you both home. Hope we shall often meet.'
He called Miss Blossom; Batsy kissed both of her new friends. Merton
conducted the party to the cab, and settled, in spite of Tommy's
remonstrances, with the cabman, who made a good thing of it, and nodded
when told to drive away as soon as he had deposited his charges at their
door. Then Merton led Maitland upstairs and offered him a cigar.
'What do you think of it?' he asked.
'Common post-hypnotic suggestion by the governess,' said Maitland.
'I guessed as much, but can it really be worked like that? You are not
chaffing?'
'Simplest thing to work in the world,' said Maitland. 'A lot of
nonsense, however, that the public believes in can't be done. The woman
could not sit down in St. John's Wood, and "will" Tommy to come to her if
he was in the next room. At least she might "will" till she was black in
the face, and he would know nothing about it. But she can put him to
sleep, and make him say what he does not want to say, in answer to
questions, afterwards, when he is awake.'
'You're sure of it?'
'It is as certain as anything in the world up to a certain point.'
'The girl said something that the boy did not say, more gushing, about
his dead mother.'
'The hypnotised subject often draws a line somewhere.'
'The woman must be a fiend,' said Merton.
'Some of them are, now and then,' said the author of _Clinical
Psychology_.
* * * * *
Miss Blossom's cab, the driver much encouraged by Tommy, who conversed
with him through the trap in the roof, dashed up to the door of a house
close to Lord's. The horse was going fast, and nearly cannoned into
another cab-horse, also going fast, which was almost thrown on its
haunches by the driver. Inside the other hansom was a tall man with a
pale face under the tan, who was nervously gnawing his moustache. Miss
Blossom saw him, Tommy saw him, and cried 'Father!' Half-hidden behind a
blind of the house Miss Blossom beheld a woman's face, expectant. Clearly
she was Miss Limmer. All the while that they were driving Miss Blossom's
wits had been at work to construct a story to account for the absence and
return of the children. Now, by a flash of invention, she called to her
cabman, 'Drive on--fast!' Major Apsley saw his lost children with their
arms round the neck of a wonderfully pretty girl; the pretty girl waved
her parasol to him with a smile, beckoning forwards; the children waved
their arms, calling out 'A race! a race!'
What could a puzzled parent do but bid his cabman follow like the wind?
Miss Blossom's cab flew past Lord's, dived into Regent's Park, leading by
two lengths; reached the Zoological Gardens, and there its crew alighted,
demurely waiting for the Major. He leaped from his hansom, and taking
off his hat, strode up to Miss Blossom, as if he were leading a charge.
The children captured him by the legs. 'What does this mean, Madam? What
are you doing with my children? Who are you?'
'She's None-so-pretty,' said Tommy, by way of introduction.
Miss Blossom bowed with grace, and raising her head, shot two violet rays
into the eyes of the Major, which were of a bistre hue. But they
accepted the message, like a receiver in wireless telegraphy. No man,
let be a Major, could have resisted None-so-pretty at that moment. 'Come
into the gardens,' she said, and led the way. 'You would like a ride on
the elephant, Tommy?' she asked Master Apsley. 'And you, Batsy?'
The children shouted assent.
'How in the world does she know them?' thought the bewildered officer.
The children mounted the elephant.
'Now, Major Apsley,' said Miss Blossom, 'I have found your children.'
'I owe you thanks, Madam; I have been very anxious, but--'
'It is more than your thanks I want. I want you to do something for me,
a very little thing,' said Miss Blossom, with the air of a supplicating
angel, the violet eyes dewy with tears.
'I am sure I shall be delighted to do anything you ask, but--'
'Will you _promise_? It is a very little thing indeed!' and her hands
were clasped in entreaty. 'Please promise!'
'Well, I promise.'
'Then keep your word: it is a little thing! Take Tommy home this
instant, let nobody speak to him or touch him--and--make him take a bath,
and see him take it.'
'Take a bath!'
'Yes, at once, in your presence. Then ask him . . . any questions you
please, but pay extreme attention to his answers and his face, and the
sound of his voice. If that is not enough do the same with Batsy. And
after that I think you had better not let the children out of your sight
for a short time.'
'These are very strange requests.'
'And it was by a strange piece of luck that I met you driving home to see
if the lost children were found, and secured your attention before it
could be pre-engaged.'
'But where did you find them and why?'
Miss Blossom interrupted him, 'Here is the address of Dr. Maitland, I
have written it on my own card; he can answer some questions you may want
to ask. Later I will answer anything. And now in the name of God,' said
the girl reverently, with sudden emotion, 'you will keep your promise to
the letter?'
'I will,' said the Major, and Miss Blossom waved her parasol to the
children. 'You must give the poor elephant a rest, he is tired,' she
cried, and the tender-hearted Batsy needed no more to make her descend
from the great earth-shaking beast. The children attacked her with
kisses, and then walked off, looking back, each holding one of the
paternal hands, and treading, after the manner of childhood, on the
paternal toes.
Miss Blossom walked till she met an opportune omnibus.
About an hour later a four-wheeler bore a woman with blazing eyes, and a
pile of trunks gaping untidily, from the Major's house in St. John's Wood
Road.
The Honourable Company had won its first victory: Major Apsley, having
fulfilled Miss Blossom's commands, had seen what she expected him to see,
and was disentangled from Miss Limmer.
The children still call their new stepmother None-so-pretty.
IV. ADVENTURE OF THE RICH UNCLE
'His God is his belly, Mr. Graham,' said the client, 'and if the text
strikes you as disagreeably unrefined, think how it must pain me to speak
thus of an uncle, if only by marriage.'
The client was a meagre matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark
scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in
every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not
rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore
thread gloves, and she carried a battered reticule of early Victorian
days, in which Merton suspected that tracts were lurking. She had an
anxious peevish mouth; in truth she was not the kind of client in whom
Merton's heart delighted.
And yet he was sorry for her, especially as her rich uncle's cook was the
goddess of the gentleman whose god had just been denounced in scriptural
terms by the client, a Mrs. Gisborne. She was sad, as well she might be,
for she was a struggler, with a large family, and great expectations from
the polytheistic uncle who adored his cook and one of his nobler organs.
'What has his history been, this gentleman's--Mr. Fulton, I think you
called him?'
'He was a drysalter in the City, sir,' and across Merton's mind flitted a
vision of a dark shop with Finnan haddocks, bacon, and tongues in the
window, and smelling terribly of cheese.
'Oh, a drysalter?' he said, not daring to display ignorance by asking
questions to corroborate his theory of the drysalting business.
'A drysalter, sir, and isinglass importer.'
Merton was conscious of vagueness as to isinglass, and was distantly
reminded of a celebrated racehorse. However, it was clear that Mr.
Fulton was a retired tradesman of some kind. 'He went out of
isinglass--before the cheap scientific substitute was invented (it is
made out of old quill pens)--with seventy-five thousand pounds. And it
_ought_ to come to my children. He has not another relation living but
ourselves; he married my aunt. But we never see him: he said that he
could not stand our Sunday dinners at Hampstead.'
A feeling not remote from sympathy with Mr. Fulton stole over Merton's
mind as he pictured these festivals. 'Is his god very--voluminous?'
Mrs. Gisborne stared.
'Is he a very portly gentleman?'
'No, Mr. Graham, he is next door to a skeleton, though you would not
expect it, considering.'
'Considering his devotion to the pleasures of the table?'
'Gluttony, shameful waste _I_ call it. And he is a stumbling block and a
cause of offence to others. He is a patron of the City and Suburban
College of Cookery, and founded two scholarships there, for scholars
learning how to pamper the--'
'The epicure,' said Merton. He knew the City and Suburban College of
Cookery. One of his band, a Miss Frere, was a Fellow and Tutor of that
academy.
'And about what age is your uncle?' he asked.
'About sixty, and not a white hair on his head.'
'Then he may marry his cook?'
'He will, sir.'
'And is very likely to have a family.'
Mrs. Gisborne sniffed, and produced a pocket handkerchief from the early
Victorian reticule. She applied the handkerchief to her eyes in silence.
Merton observed her with pity. 'We need the money so; there are so many
of us,' said the lady.
'Do you think that Mr. Fulton is--passionately in love, with his
domestic?'
'He only loves his meals,' said Mrs. Gisborne; '_he_ does not want to
marry her, but she has a hold over him through--his--'
'Passions, not of the heart,' said Merton hastily. He dreaded an
anatomical reference.
'He is afraid of losing her. He and his cronies give each other dinners,
jealous of each other they are; and he actually pays the woman two
hundred a year.'
'And beer money?' said Merton. He had somewhere read or heard of beer
money as an item in domestic finance.
'I don't know about that. The cruel thing is that she is a woman of
strict temperance principles. So am I. I am sure it is an awful thing
to say, Mr. Graham, but Satan has sometimes put it into my heart to wish
that the woman, like too, too many of her sort, was the victim of
alcoholic temptations. He has a fearful temper, and if once she was not
fit for duty at one of his dinners, this awful gnawing anxiety would
cease to ride my bosom. He would pack her off.'
'Very natural. She is free from the besetting sin of the artistic
temperament?'
'If you mean drink, she is; and that is one reason why he values her. His
last cook, and his last but one--' Here Mrs. Gisborne narrated at some
length the tragic histories of these artists.
'Providential, I thought it, but now,' she said despairingly.
'She certainly seems a difficult woman to dislodge,' said Merton. 'A
dangerous entanglement. Any followers allowed? Could anything be done
through the softer emotions? Would a guardsman, for instance--?'
'She hates the men. Never one of them darkens her kitchen fire. Offers
she has had by the score, but they come by post, and she laughs and burns
them. Old Mr. Potter, one of his cronies, tried to get her away _that_
way, but he is over seventy, and old at that, and she thought she had
another chance to better herself. And she'll take it, Mr. Graham, if you
can't do something: she'll take it.'
'Will you permit me to say that you seem to know a good deal about her!
Perhaps you have some sort of means of intelligence in the enemy's camp?'
'The kitchen maid,' said Mrs. Gisborne, purpling a little, 'is the sister
of our servant, and tells her things.'
'I see,' said Merton. 'Now can you remember any little weakness of this,
I must frankly admit, admirable artist and exemplary woman?'
'You are not going to take her side, a scheming red-faced hussy, Mr.
Graham?'
'I never betrayed a client, Madam, and if you mean that I am likely to
help this person into your uncle's arms, you greatly misconceive me, and
the nature of my profession.'
'I beg your pardon, sir, but I will say that your heart does not seem to
be in the case.'
'It is not quite the kind of case with which we are accustomed to deal,'
said Merton. 'But you have not answered my question. Are there any weak
points in the defence? To Venus she is cold, of Bacchus she is
disdainful.'
'I never heard of the gentlemen I am sure, sir, but as to her weaknesses,
she has the temper of a--' Here Mrs. Gisborne paused for a comparison.
Her knowledge of natural history and of mythology, the usual sources of
parallels, failed to provide a satisfactory resemblance to the cook's
temper.
'The temper of a Megaera,' said Merton, admitting to himself that the
word was not, though mythological, what he could wish.
'Of a Megaera as you know that creature, sir, and impetuous! If
everything is not handy, if that poor girl is not like clockwork with the
sauces, and herbs, and things, if a saucepan boils over, or a ham falls
into the fire, if the girl treads on the tail of one of the cats--and the
woman keeps a dozen--then she flies at her with anything that comes
handy.'
'She is fond of cats?' said Merton; 'really this lady has sympathetic
points:' and he patted the grey Russian puss, Kutuzoff, which was a
witness to these interviews.
'She dotes on the nasty things: and you may well say "lady!" Her Siamese
cat, a wild beast he is, took the first prize at the Crystal Palace Show.
The papers said "Miss Blowser's _Rangoon_, bred by the exhibitor." Miss
Blowser! I don't know what the world is coming to. He stands on the
doorsteps, the cat, like a lynx, and as fierce as a lion. Why he got her
into the police-court: flew at a dog, and nearly tore his owner, a
clergyman, to pieces. There were articles about it in the papers.'
'I seem to remember it,' said Merton. '_Christianos ad Leones_'. In
fact he had written this humorous article himself. 'But is there nothing
else?' he asked. 'Only a temper, so natural to genius disturbed or
diverted in the process of composition, and a passion for the _felidae_,
such as has often been remarked in the great. There was Charles
Baudelaire, Mahomet--'
'I don't know what you mean, sir, and,' said Mrs. Gisborne, rising, and
snapping her reticule, 'I think I was a fool for answering your
advertisement. I did not come here to be laughed at, and I think common
politeness--'
'I beg a thousand pardons,' said Merton. 'I am most distressed at my
apparent discourtesy. My mind was preoccupied by the circumstances of
this very difficult case, and involuntarily glided into literary anecdote
on the subject of cats and their owners. They are my passion--cats--and
I regret that they inspire you with antipathy.' Here he picked up
Kutuzoff and carried him into the inner room.
'It is not that I object to any of Heaven's creatures kept in their
place,' said Mrs. Gisborne somewhat mollified, 'but you must make
allowances, sir, for my anxiety. It sours a mother of nine. Friday is
one of his gorging dinner-parties, and who knows what may happen if she
pleases him? The kitchen maid says, I mean I hear, that she wears an
engaged ring already.'
'That is very bad,' said Merton, with sympathy. 'The dinner is on
Friday, you say?' and he made a note of the date.
'Yes, 15 Albany Grove, on the Regent's Canal.'
'You can think of nothing else--no weakness to work on?'
'No, sir, just her awful temper; I would save him from it, for _he_ has
another as bad. And besides hopes from him have kept me up so long, his
only relation, and times are so hard, and schooling and boots, and
everything so dear, and we so many in family.' Tears came into the poor
lady's eyes.
'I'll give the case my very best attention,' he said, shaking hands with
the client. To Merton's horror she tried, Heaven help her, to pass a
circular packet, wrapped in paper, into his hand. He evaded it. It was
a first interview, for which no charge was made. 'What can be done shall
be done, though I confess that I do not see my way,' and he accompanied
her downstairs to the street.
'I behaved like a cad with my chaff,' he said to himself, 'but hang me if
I see how to help her. And I rather admire that cook.'
He went into the inner room, wakened the sleeping partner, Logan, on the
sofa, and unfolded the case with every detail. 'What can we do, _que
faire_!'
'There's an exhibition of modern, mediaeval, ancient, and savage cookery
at Earl's Court, the Cookeries,' said Logan. 'Couldn't we seduce an
artist like Miss Blowser there, I mean _thither_ of course, the night
before the dinner, and get her up into the Great Wheel and somehow stop
the Wheel--and make her too late for her duties?'
'And how are you going to stop the Wheel?'
'Speak to the Man at the Wheel. Bribe the beggar.'
'Dangerous, and awfully expensive. Then think of all the other people on
the Wheel! Logan, _vous chassez de race_. The old Restalrig blood is in
your veins.'
'My ancestors nearly nipped off with a king, and why can't I carry off a
cook? Hustle her into a hansom--'
'Oh, bah! these are not modern methods.'
'_Il n'y a rien tel que d'enlever_,' said Logan.
'I never shall stain the cause with police-courts,' said Merton. 'It
would be fatal.'
'I've heard of a cook who fell on his sword when the fish did not come up
to time. Now a raid on the fish? She might fall on her carving knife
when they did not arrive, or leap into the flames of the kitchen fire,
like OEnone, don't you know.'
'Bosh. Vatel was far from the sea, and he had not a fish-monger's shop
round the corner. Be modern.'
Logan rumpled his hair, 'Can't I get her to lunch at a restaurant and ply
her with the wines of Eastern France? No, she is Temperance personified.
Can't we send her a forged telegram to say that her mother is dying?
Servants seem to have such lots of mothers, always inconveniently, or
conveniently, moribund.'
'I won't have forgery. Great heavens, how obsolete you are! Besides,
that would not put her employer in a rage.'
'Could I go and consult ---?' he mentioned a specialist. 'He is a man of
ideas.'
'He is a man of the purest principles--and an uncommonly hard hitter.'
'It is his purity I want. My own mind is hereditarily lawless. I want
something not immoral, yet efficacious. There was that parson, whom you
say the woman's cat nearly devoured. Like Paul with beasts he fought the
cat. Now, I wonder if that injured man is not meditating some priestly
revenge that would do our turn and get rid of Miss Blowser?'
Merton shook his head impatiently. His own invention was busy, but to no
avail. Miss Blowser seemed impregnable. Kutuzoff Hedzoff, the puss,
stalked up to Logan and leaped on his knees. Logan stroked him, Kutuzoff
purred and blinked, Logan sought inspiration in his topaz eyes. At last
he spoke: 'Will you leave this affair to me, Merton? I think I have
found out a way.'
'What way?'
'That's my secret. You are so beastly moral, you might object. One
thing I may tell you--it does not compromise the Honourable Company of
Disentanglers.'
'You are not going to try any detective work; to find out if she is a
woman with a past, with a husband living? You are not going to put a
live adder among the eels? I daresay drysalters eat eels. It is the
reading of sensational novels that ruins our youth.'
'What a suspicious beggar you are. Certainly I am neither a detective
nor a murderer _a la Montepin_!
'No practical jokes with the victuals?'
'Of course not.'
'No kidnapping Miss Blowser?'
'Certainly no kidnapping--Miss Blowser.'
'Now, honour bright, is your plan within the law? No police-court
publicity?'
'No, the police will have no say or show in the matter; at least,' said
Logan, 'as far as my legal studies inform me, they won't. But I can take
counsel's opinion if you insist on it.'
'Then you are sailing near the wind?'
'Really I don't think so: not really what you call near.'
'I am sorry for that unlucky Mrs. Gisborne,' said Merton, musingly. 'And
with two such tempers as the cook's and Mr. Fulton's the match could not
be a happy one. Well, Logan, I suppose you won't tell me what your game
is?'
'Better not, I think, but, I assure you, honour is safe. I am certain
that nobody can say anything. I rather expect to earn public gratitude,
on the whole. _You_ can't appear in any way, nor the rest of us. By-the-
bye do you remember the address of the parson whose dog was hurt?'
'I think I kept a cutting of the police case; it was amusing,' said
Merton, looking through a kind of album, and finding presently the record
of the incident.
'It may come in handy, or it may not,' said Logan. He then went off, and
had Merton followed him he might not have been reassured. For Logan
first walked to a chemist's shop, where he purchased a quantity of a
certain drug. Next he went to the fencing rooms which he frequented,
took his fencing mask and glove, borrowed a fencing glove from a left-
handed swordsman whom he knew, and drove to his rooms with this odd
assortment of articles. Having deposited them, he paid a call at the
dwelling of a fair member of the Disentanglers, Miss Frere, the lady
instructress in the culinary art, at the City and Suburban College of
Cookery, whereof, as we have heard, Mr. Fulton, the eminent drysalter,
was a patron and visitor. Logan unfolded the case and his plan of
campaign to Miss Frere, who listened with intelligent sympathy.
'Do you know the man by sight?' he asked.
'Oh yes, and he knows me perfectly well. Last year he distributed the
prizes at the City and Suburban School of Cookery, and paid me the most
extraordinary compliments.'
'Well deserved, I am confident,' said Logan; 'and now you are sure that
you know exactly what you have to do, as I have explained?'
'Yes, I am to be walking through Albany Grove at a quarter to four on
Friday.'
'Be punctual.'
'You may rely on me,' said Miss Frere.
Logan next day went to Trevor's rooms in the Albany; he was the
capitalist who had insisted on helping to finance the Disentanglers. To
Trevor he explained the situation, unfolded his plan, and asked leave to
borrow his private hansom.
'Delighted,' said Trevor. 'I'll put on an old suit of tweeds, and a
seedy bowler, and drive you myself. It will be fun. Or should we take
my motor car?'
'No, it attracts too much attention.'
'Suppose we put a number on my cab, and paint the wheels yellow, like
pirates, you know, when they are disguising a captured ship. It won't do
to look like a private cab.'
'These strike me as judicious precautions, Trevor, and worthy of your
genius. That is, if we are not caught.'
'Oh, we won't be caught,' said Trevor. 'But, in the meantime, let us
find that place you mean to go to on a map of London, and I'll drive you
there now in a dog-cart. It is better to know the lie of the land.'
Logan agreed and they drove to his objective in the afternoon; it was
beyond the border of known West Hammersmith. Trevor reconnoitred and
made judicious notes of short cuts.
On the following day, which was Thursday, Logan had a difficult piece of
diplomacy to execute. He called at the rooms of the clergyman, a
bachelor and a curate, whose dog and person had suffered from the
assaults of Miss Blowser's Siamese favourite. He expected difficulties,
for a good deal of ridicule, including Merton's article, _Christianos ad
Leones_, had been heaped on this martyr. Logan looked forward to finding
him crusty, but, after seeming a little puzzled, the holy man exclaimed,
'Why, you must be Logan of Trinity?'
'The same,' said Logan, who did not remember the face or name (which was
Wilkinson) of his host.
'Why, I shall never forget your running catch under the scoring-box at
Lord's,' exclaimed Mr. Wilkinson, 'I can see it now. It saved the match.
I owe you more than I can say,' he added with deep emotion.
'Then be grateful, and do me a little favour. I want--just for an hour
or two--to borrow your dog,' and he stooped to pat the animal, a
fox-terrier bearing recent and glorious scars.
'Borrow Scout! Why, what can you want with him?'
'I have suffered myself through an infernal wild beast of a cat in Albany
Grove,' said Logan, 'and I have a scheme--it is unchristian I own--of
revenge.'
The curate's eyes glittered vindictively: 'Scout is no match for the
brute,' he said in a tone of manly regret.
'Oh, Scout will be all right. There is not going to be a fight. He is
only needed to--give tone to the affair. You will be able to walk him
safely through Albany Grove after to-morrow.'
'Won't there be a row if you kill the cat? He is what they think a
valuable animal. I never could stand cats myself.'
'The higher vermin,' said Logan. 'But not a hair of his whiskers shall
be hurt. He will seek other haunts, that's all.'
'But you don't mean to steal him?' asked the curate anxiously. 'You see,
suspicion might fall on me, as I am known to bear a grudge to the brute.'
'I steal him! Not I,' said Logan. 'He shall sleep in his owner's arms,
if she likes. But Albany Grove shall know him no more.'
'Then you may take Scout,' said Mr. Wilkinson. 'You have a cab there,
shall I drive to your rooms with you and him?'
'Do,' said Logan, 'and then dine at the club.' Which they did, and
talked much cricket, Mr. Wilkinson being an enthusiast.
* * * * *
Next day, about 3.40 P.M., a hansom drew up at the corner of Albany
Grove. The fare alighted, and sauntered past Mr. Fulton's house.
Rangoon, the Siamese puss, was sitting in a scornful and leonine
attitude, in a tree of the garden above the railings, outside the open
kitchen windows, whence came penetrating and hospitable smells of good
fare. The stranger passed, and as he returned, dropped something here
and there on the pavement. It was valerian, which no cat can resist.
Miss Blowser was in a culinary crisis, and could not leave the kitchen
range. Her face was of a fiery complexion; her locks were in a fine
disorder. 'Is Rangoon in his place, Mary?' she inquired of the kitchen
maid.
'Yes, ma'am, in his tree,' said the maid.
In this tree Rangoon used to sit like a Thug, dropping down on dogs who
passed by.
Presently the maid said, 'Ma'am, Rangoon has jumped down, and is walking
off to the right, after a gentleman.'
'After a sparrow, I dare say, bless him,' said Miss Blowser. Two minutes
later she asked, 'Has Rangy come back?'
'No, ma'am.'
'Just look out and see what he is doing, the dear.'
'He's walking along the pavement, ma'am, sniffing at something. And oh!
there's that curate's dog.'
'Yelping little brute! I hope Rangy will give him snuff,' said Miss
Blowser.
'He's flown at him,' cried the maid ambiguously, in much excitement. 'Oh,
ma'am, the gentleman has caught hold of Rangoon. He's got a wire mask on
his face, and great thick gloves, not to be scratched. He's got Rangoon:
he's putting him in a bag,' but by this time Miss Blowser, brandishing a
saucepan with a long handle, had rushed out of the kitchen, through the
little garden, cannoned against Mr. Fulton, who happened to be coming in
with flowers to decorate his table, knocked him against a lamp-post,
opened the garden gate, and, armed and bareheaded as she was, had rushed
forth. You might have deemed that you beheld Bellona speeding to the
fray.
What Miss Blowser saw was a man disappearing into a hansom, whence came
the yapping of a dog. Another cab was loitering by, empty; and this
cabman had his orders. Logan had seen to _that_. To hail that cab, to
leap in, to cry, 'Follow the scoundrel in front: a sovereign if you catch
him,' was to the active Miss Blowser the work of a moment. The man
whipped up his horse, the pursuit began, 'there was racing and chasing on
Cannobie Lee,' Marylebone rang with the screams of female rage and
distress. Mr. Fulton, he also, leaped up and rushed in pursuit, wringing
his hands. He had no turn of speed, and stopped panting. He only saw
Miss Blowser whisk into her cab, he only heard her yells that died in the
distance. Mr. Fulton sped back into his house. He shouted for Mary:
'What's the matter with your mistress, with my cook?' he raved.
'Somebody's taken her cat, sir, and is off, in a cab, and her after him.'
'After her cat! D--- her cat,' cried Mr. Fulton. 'My dinner will be
ruined! It is the last she shall touch in _this_ house. Out she
packs--pack her things, Mary; no, don't--do what you can in the kitchen.
I _must_ find a cook. Her cat!' and with language unworthy of a
drysalter Mr. Fulton clapped on his hat, and sped into the street, with a
vague idea of hurrying to Fortnum and Mason's, or some restaurant, or a
friend's house, indeed to any conceivable place where a cook might be
recruited _impromptu_. 'She leaves this very day,' he said aloud, as he
all but collided with a lady, a quiet, cool-looking lady, who stopped and
stared at him.
'Oh, Miss Frere!' said Mr. Fulton, raising his hat, with a wild gleam of
hope in the trouble of his eyes, 'I have had such a misfortune!'
'What has happened, Mr. Fulton?'
'Oh, ma'am, I've lost my cook, and me with a dinner-party on to-day.'
'Lost your cook? Not by death, I hope?'
'No, ma'am, she has run away, in the very crisis, as I may call it.'
'With whom?'
'With nobody. After her cat. In a cab. I am undone. Where can I find
a cook? You may know of some one disengaged, though it is late in the
day, and dinner at seven. Can't you help me?'
'Can you trust me, Mr. Fulton?'
'Trust you; how, ma'am?'
'Let me cook your dinner, at least till your cook catches her cat,' said
Miss Frere, smiling.
'You, don't mean it, a lady!'
'But a professed cook, Mr. Fulton, and anxious to help so nobly generous
a patron of the art . . . if you can trust me.'
'Trust you, ma'am!' said Mr. Fulton, raising to heaven his obsecrating
hands. 'Why, you're a genius. It is a miracle, a mere miracle of good
luck.'
By this time, of course, a small crowd of little boys and girls, amateurs
of dramatic scenes, was gathering.
'We have no time to waste, Mr. Fulton. Let us go in, and let me get to
work. I dare say the cook will be back before I have taken off my
gloves.'
'Not her, nor does she cook again in my house. The shock might have
killed a man of my age,' said Mr. Fulton, breathing heavily, and leading
the way up the steps to his own door. 'Her cat, the hussy!' he grumbled.
Mr. Fulton kept his word. When Miss Blowser returned, with her saucepan
and Rangoon, she found her trunks in the passage, corded by Mr. Fulton's
own trembling hands, and she departed for ever.
Her chase had been a stern chase, a long chase, the cab driven by Trevor
had never been out of sight. It led her, in the western wilds, to a Home
for Decayed and Destitute Cats, and it had driven away before she entered
the lane leading to the Home. But there she found Rangoon. He had just
been deposited there, in a seedy old traveller's fur-lined sleeping bag,
the matron of the Home averred, by a very pleasant gentleman, who said he
had found the cat astray, lost, and thinking him a rare and valuable
animal had deemed it best to deposit him at the Home. He had left money
to pay for advertisements. He had even left the advertisement,
typewritten (by Miss Blossom).
'FOUND. A magnificent Siamese Cat. Apply to the Home for Destitute and
Decayed Cats, Water Lane, West Hammersmith.'
'Very thoughtful of the gentleman,' said the matron of the Home. 'No; he
did not leave any address. Said something about doing good by stealth.'
'Stealth, why he stole my cat!' exclaimed Miss Blowser. 'He must have
had the advertisement printed like that ready beforehand. It's a
conspiracy,' and she brandished her saucepan.
The matron, who was prejudiced in favour of Logan, and his two
sovereigns, which now need not be expended in advertisements, was alarmed
by the hostile attitude of Miss Blowser. 'There's your cat,' she said
drily; 'it ain't stealing a cat to leave it, with money for its board,
and to pay for advertisements, in a well-conducted charitable
institution, with a duchess for president. And he even left five
shillings to pay for the cab of anybody as might call for the cat. There
is your money.'
Miss Blowser threw the silver away.
'Take your old cat in the bag,' said the matron, slamming the door in the
face of Miss Blowser.
* * * * *
After the trial for breach of promise of marriage, and after paying the
very considerable damages which Miss Blowser demanded and received, old
Mr. Fulton hardened his heart, and engaged a male _chef_.
The gratitude of Mrs. Gisborne, now free from all anxiety, was touching.
But Merton assured her that he knew nothing whatever of the stratagem,
scarcely a worthy one, he thought, as she reported it, by which her uncle
was disentangled.
It was Logan's opinion, and it is mine, that he had not been guilty of
theft, but perhaps of the wrongous detention or imprisonment of Rangoon.
'But,' he said, 'the Habeas Corpus Act has no clause about cats, and in
Scottish law, which is good enough for _me_, there is no property in
cats. You can't, legally, _steal_ them.'
'How do you know?' asked Merton.
'I took the opinion of an eminent sheriff substitute.'
'What is that?'
'Oh, a fearfully swagger legal official: _you_ have nothing like it.'
'Rum country, Scotland,' said Merton.
'Rum country, England,' said Logan, indignantly. '_You_ have no property
in corpses.'
Merton was silenced.
Neither could foresee how momentous, to each of them, the question of
property in corpses was to prove. _O pectora caeca_!
* * * * *
Miss Blowser is now Mrs. Potter. She married her aged wooer, and Rangoon
still wins prizes at the Crystal Palace.
V. THE ADVENTURE OF THE OFFICE SCREEN
It is not to be supposed that all the enterprises of the Company of
Disentanglers were fortunate. Nobody can command success, though, on the
other hand, a number of persons, civil and military, are able to keep her
at a distance with surprising uniformity. There was one class of
business which Merton soon learned to renounce in despair, just as some
sorts of maladies defy our medical science.
'It is curious, and not very creditable to our chemists,' Merton said,
'that love philtres were once as common as seidlitz powders, while now we
have lost that secret. The wrong persons might drink love philtres, as
in the case of Tristram and Iseult. Or an unskilled rural practitioner
might send out the wrong drug, as in the instance of Lucretius, who went
mad in consequence.'
'Perhaps,' remarked Logan, 'the chemist was voting at the Comitia, and it
was his boy who made a mistake about the mixture.'
'Very probably, but as a rule, the love philtres _worked_. Now, with all
our boasted progress, the secret is totally lost. Nothing but a love
philtre would be of any use in some cases. There is Lord Methusalem,
eighty if he is a day.'
'Methusalem has been unco "wastefu' in wives"!' said Logan.
'His family have been consulting me--the women in tears. He _will_ marry
his grandchildren's German governess, and there is nothing to be done. In
such cases nothing is ever to be done. You can easily distract an aged
man's volatile affections, and attach them to a new charmer. But she is
just as ineligible as the first; marry he _will_, always a young woman.
Now if a respectable virgin or widow of, say, fifty, could hand him a
love philtre, and gain his heart, appearances would, more or less, be
saved. But, short of philtres, there is nothing to be done. We turn
away a great deal of business of that sort.'
The Society of Disentanglers, then, reluctantly abandoned dealings in
this class of affairs.
In another distressing business, Merton, as a patriot, was obliged to
abandon an attractive enterprise. The Marquis of Seakail was serving his
country as a volunteer, and had been mentioned in despatches. But, to
the misery of his family, he had entangled himself, before his departure,
with a young lady who taught in a high school for girls. Her character
was unimpeachable, her person graceful; still, as her father was a
butcher, the duke and duchess were reluctant to assent to the union. They
consulted Merton, and assured him that they would not flinch from
expense. A great idea flashed across Merton's mind. He might send out a
stalwart band of Disentanglers, who, disguised as the enemy, might
capture Seakail, and carry him off prisoner to some retreat where the
fairest of his female staff (of course with a suitable chaperon), would
await him in the character of a daughter of the hostile race. The result
would probably be to detach Seakail's heart from his love in England. But
on reflection, Merton felt that the scheme was unworthy of a patriot.
Other painful cases occurred. One lady, a mother, of resolute character,
consulted Merton on the case of her son. He was betrothed to an
excitable girl, a neighbour in the country, who wrote long literary
letters about Mr. George Meredith's novels, and (when abroad) was a
perfect Baedeker, or Murray, or Mr. Augustus Hare: instructing through
correspondence. So the matron complained, but this was not the worst of
it. There was an unhappy family history, of a kind infinitely more
common in fiction than in real life. To be explicit, even according to
the ideas of the most abject barbarians, the young people, unwittingly,
were too near akin for matrimony.
'There is nothing for it but to tell both of them the truth,' said
Merton. 'This is not a case in which we can be concerned.'
The resolute matron did not take his counsel. The man was told, not the
girl, who died in painful circumstances, still writing. Her letters were
later given to the world, though obviously not intended for publication,
and only calculated to waken unavailing grief among the sentimental, and
to make the judicious tired. There was, however, a case in which Merton
may be said to have succeeded by a happy accident. Two visitors, ladies,
were ushered into his consulting room; they were announced as Miss
Baddeley and Miss Crofton.
Miss Baddeley was attired in black, wore a thick veil, and trembled a
good deal. Miss Crofton, whose dress was a combination of untoward but
decisive hues, and whose hat was enormous and flamboyant, appeared to be
the other young lady's _confidante_, and conducted the business of the
interview.
'My dear friend, Miss Baddeley,' she began, when Miss Baddeley took her
hand, and held it, as if for protection and sympathy. 'My dear friend,'
repeated Miss Crofton, 'has asked me to accompany her, and state her
case. She is too highly strung to speak for herself.'
Miss Baddeley wrung Miss Crofton's hand, and visibly quivered.
Merton assumed an air of sympathy. 'The situation is grave?' he asked.
'My friend,' said Miss Crofton, thoroughly enjoying herself, 'is the
victim of passionate and unavailing remorse, are you not, Julia?' Julia
nodded.
'Deeply as I sympathise,' said Merton, 'it appears to me that I am
scarcely the person to consult. A mother now--'
'Julia has none.'
'Or a father or sister?'
'But for me, Julia is alone in the world.'
'Then,' said Merton, 'there are many periodicals especially intended for
ladies. There is _The Woman of the World_, _The Girl's Guardian Angel_,
_Fashion and Passion_, and so on. The Editors, in their columns, reply
to questions in cases of conscience. I have myself read the replies to
_Correspondents_, and would especially recommend those published in a
serial conducted by Miss Annie Swan.'
Miss Crofton shook her head.
'Miss Baddeley's social position is not that of the people who are
answered in periodicals.'
'Then why does she not consult some discreet and learned person, her
spiritual director? Remorse (entirely due, no doubt, to a conscience too
delicately sensitive) is not in our line of affairs. We only advise in
cases of undesirable matrimonial engagements.'
'So we are aware,' said Miss Crofton. 'Dear Julia _is_ engaged, or
rather entangled, in--how many cases, dear?'
Julia shook her head and sobbed behind her veil.
'Is it one, Julia--nod when I come to the exact number--two? three?
four?'
At the word 'four' Julia nodded assent.
Merton very much wished that Julia would raise her veil. Her figure was
excellent, and with so many sins of this kind on her remorseful head, her
face, Merton thought, must be worth seeing. The case was new. As a
rule, clients wanted to disentangle their friends and relations. _This_
client wanted to disentangle herself.
'This case,' said Merton, 'will be difficult to conduct, and the expenses
would be considerable. I can hardly advise you to incur them. Our
ordinary method is to throw in the way of one or other of the engaged, or
entangled persons, some one who is likely to distract their affections;
of course,' he added, 'to a more eligible object. How can I hope to find
an object more eligible, Miss Crofton, than I must conceive your
interesting friend to be?'
Miss Crofton caressingly raised Julia's veil. Before the victim of
remorse could bury her face in her hands, Merton had time to see that it
was a very pretty one. Julia was dark, pale, with 'eyes like billiard
balls' (as a celebrated amateur once remarked), with a beautiful mouth,
but with a somewhat wildly enthusiastic expression.
'How can I hope?' Merton went on, 'to find a worthier and more attractive
object? Nay, how can I expect to secure the services not of one, but of
_four_--'
'Three would do, Mr. Merton,' explained Miss Crofton. 'Is it not so,
Julia dearest?'
Julia again nodded assent, and a sob came from behind the veil, which she
had resumed.
'Even three,' said Merton, gallantly struggling with a strong inclination
to laugh, 'present difficulties. I do not speak the idle language of
compliment, Miss Crofton, when I say that our staff would be overtaxed by
the exigencies of this case. The expense also, even of three--'
'Expense is no object,' said Miss Crofton.
'But would it not, though I seem to speak against my own interests, be
the wisest, most honourable, and infinitely the least costly course, for
Miss Baddeley openly to inform her suitors, three out of the four at
least, of the actual posture of affairs? I have already suggested that,
as the lady takes the matter so seriously to heart, she should consult
her director, or, if of the Anglican or other Protestant denomination,
her clergyman, who I am sure will agree with me.'
Miss Crofton shook her head. 'Julia is unattached,' she said.
'I had gathered that to one of the four Miss Baddeley was--not
indifferent,' said Merton.
'I meant,' said Miss Crofton severely, 'that Miss Baddeley is a Christian
unattached. My friend is sensitive, passionate, and deeply religious,
but not a member of any recognised denomination. The clergy--'
'They never leave one alone,' said Julia in a musical voice. It was the
first time that she had spoken. 'Besides--' she added, and paused.
'Besides, dear Julia _is_--entangled with a young clergyman whom, almost
in despair, she consulted on her case--at a picnic,' said Miss Crofton,
adding, 'he is prepared to seek a martyr's fate, but he insists that she
must accompany him.'
'How unreasonable!' murmured Merton, who felt that this recalcitrant
clergyman was probably not the favourite out of the field of four.
'That is what _I_ say,' remarked Miss Crofton. 'It is unreasonable to
expect Julia to accompany him when she has so much work to overtake in
the home field. But that is the way with all of them.'
'All of them!' exclaimed Merton. 'Are all the devoted young men under
vows to seek the crown of martyrdom? Does your friend act as recruiting
sergeant, if you will pardon the phrase, for the noble army of martyrs?'
'_Three_ of them have made the most solemn promises.'
'And the fourth?'
'_He_ is not in holy orders.'
'Am I to understand that all the three admirers about whom Miss Baddeley
suffers remorse are clerics?'
'Yes. Julia has a wonderful attraction for the Church,' said Miss
Crofton, 'and that is what causes her difficulties. She _can't_ write to
_them_, or communicate to _them_ in personal interviews (as you advised),
that her heart is no longer--'
'Theirs,' said Merton. 'But why are the clergy more privileged than the
laity? I have heard of such things being broken to laymen. Indeed it
has occurred to many of us, and we yet live.'
'I have urged the same facts on Julia myself,' said Miss Crofton. 'Indeed
I _know_, by personal experience, that what you say of the laity is true.
They do not break their hearts when disappointed. But Julia replies that
for her to act as you and I would advise might be to shatter the young
clergymen's ideals.'
'To shatter the ideals of three young men in holy orders!' said Merton.
'Yes, for Julia _is_ their ideal--Julia and Duty,' said Miss Crofton, as
if she were naming a firm. 'She lives only,' here Julia twisted the hand
of Miss Crofton, 'she lives only to do good. Her fortune, entirely under
her own control, enables her to do a great deal of good.'
Merton began to understand that the charms of Julia were not entirely
confined to her _beaux yeux_.
'She is a true philanthropist. Why, she rescued _me_ from the snares and
temptations of the stage,' said Miss Crofton.
'Oh, _now_ I understand,' said Merton; 'I knew that your face and voice
were familiar to me. Did you not act in a revival of _The Country
Wife_?'
'Hush,' said Miss Crofton.
'And Lady Teazle at an amateur performance in the Canterbury week?'
'These are days of which I do not desire to be reminded,' said Miss
Crofton. 'I was trying to explain to you that Julia lives to do good,
and has a heart of gold. No, my dear, Mr. Merton will much misconceive
you unless you let me explain everything.' This remark was in reply to
the agitated gestures of Julia. 'Thrown much among the younger clergy in
the exercise of her benevolence, Julia naturally awakens in them emotions
not wholly brotherly. Her sympathetic nature carries her off her feet,
and she sometimes says "Yes," out of mere goodness of heart, when it
would be wiser for her to say "No"; don't you, Julia?'
Merton was reminded of one of M. Paul Bourget's amiable married heroines,
who erred out of sheer goodness of heart, but he only signified his
intelligence and sympathy.
'Then poor Julia,' Miss Crofton went on hurriedly, 'finds that she has
misunderstood her heart. Recently, ever since she met Captain
Lestrange--of the Guards--'
'The fourth?' asked Merton.
Miss Crofton nodded. 'She has felt more and more certain that she _had_
misread her heart. But on each occasion she _has_ felt this--after
meeting the--well, the next one.'
'I see the awkwardness,' murmured Merton.
'And then Remorse has set in, with all her horrors. Julia has wept, oh!
for nights, on my shoulder.'
'Happy shoulder,' murmured Merton.
'And so, as she _dare_ not shatter their ideals, and perhaps cause them
to plunge into excesses, moral or doctrinal, this is what she has done.
She has said to each, that what the Church, any Church, needs is martyrs,
and that if they will go to benighted lands, where the crown of martyrdom
may still be won, _then_, if they return safe in five years, then
she--will think of naming a day. You will easily see the attractions of
this plan for Julia, Mr. Merton. No ideals were shattered, the young men
being unaware of the circumstances. They _might_ forget her--'
'Impossible,' cried Merton.
'They might forget her, or, perhaps they--'
Miss Crofton hesitated.
'Perhaps they might never--?' asked Merton.
'Yes,' said Miss Crofton; 'perhaps they might _not_. That would be all
to the good for the Church; no ideals would be shattered--the reverse--and
dear Julia would--'
'Cherish their pious memories,' said Merton.
'I see that you understand me,' said Miss Crofton.
Merton did understand, and he was reminded of the wicked lady, who, when
tired of her lovers, had them put into a sack, and dropped into the
Seine.
'But,' he asked, 'has this ingenious system failed to work? I should
suppose that each young man, on distant and on deadly shores, was far
from causing inconvenience.'
'The defect of the system,' said Miss Crofton, 'is that none of them has
gone, or seems in a hurry to go. The first--that was Mr. Bathe, Julia?'
Julia nodded.
'Mr. Bathe was to have gone to Turkey during the Armenian atrocities, and
to have _forced_ England to intervene by taking the Armenian side and
getting massacred. Julia was intensely interested in the Armenians. But
Mr. Bathe first said that he must lead Julia to the altar before he went;
and then the massacres fell off, and he remains at Cheltenham, and is
very tiresome. And then there is Mr. Clancy, _he_ was to go out to
China, and denounce the gods of the heathen Chinese in the public
streets. But _he_ insisted that Julia should first be his, and he is at
Leamington, and not a step has he taken to convert the Boxers.'
Merton knew the name of Clancy. Clancy had been his fag at school, and
Merton thought it extremely improbable that the Martyr's crown would ever
adorn his brow.
'Then--and this is the last of them, of the clergy, at least--Mr. Brooke:
he was to visit the New Hebrides, where the natives are cannibals, and
utterly unawakened. He is as bad as the others. He won't go alone. Now,
Julia is obliged to correspond with all of them in affectionate terms
(she keeps well out of their way), and this course of what she feels to
be duplicity is preying terribly on her conscience.'
Here Julia sobbed hysterically.
'She is afraid, too, that by some accident, though none of them know each
other, they may become aware of the state of affairs, or Captain
Lestrange, to whom she is passionately attached, may find it out, and
then, not only may their ideals be wrecked, but--'
'Yes, I see,' said Merton; 'it is awkward, very.'
The interview, an early one, had lasted for some time. Merton felt that
the hour of luncheon had arrived, and, after luncheon, it had been his
intention to go up to the University match. He also knew, from various
sounds, that clients were waiting in the ante-chamber. At this moment
the door opened, and the office boy, entering, laid three cards before
him.
'The gentlemen asked when you could see them, sir. They have been
waiting some time. They say that their appointment was at one o'clock,
and they wish to go back to Lord's.'
'So do I,' thought Merton sadly. He looked at the cards, repressed a
whistle, and handed them silently to Miss Crofton, bidding the boy go,
and return in three minutes.
Miss Crofton uttered a little shriek, and pressed the cards on Julia's
attention. Raising her veil, Julia scanned them, wrung her hands, and
displayed symptoms of a tendency to faint. The cards bore the names of
the Rev. Mr. Bathe, the Rev. Mr. Brooke, and the Rev. Mr. Clancy.
'What is to be done?' asked Miss Crofton in a whisper. 'Can't you send
them away?'
'Impossible,' said Merton firmly.
'If we go out they will know me, and suspect Julia.'
Miss Crofton looked round the room with eyes of desperate scrutiny. They
at once fell on a large old-fashioned screen, covered with engravings,
which Merton had picked up for the sake of two or three old mezzotints,
barbarously pasted on to this article of furniture by some ignorant
owner.
'Saved! we are saved! Hist, Julia, hither!' said Miss Crofton in a stage
whisper. And while Merton murmured 'Highly unprofessional,' the skirts
of the two ladies vanished behind the screen.
Miss Crofton had not played Lady Teazle for nothing.
'Ask the gentlemen to come in,' said Merton, when the boy returned.
They entered: three fair young curates, nervous and inclined to giggle.
Shades of difference of ecclesiastical opinion declared themselves in
their hats, costume, and jewellery.
'Be seated, gentlemen,' said Merton, and they sat down on three chairs,
in identical attitudes.
'We hope,' said the man on the left, 'that we are not here
inconveniently. We would have waited, but, you see, we have all come up
for the match.'
'How is it going?' asked Merton anxiously.
'Cambridge four wickets down for 115, but--' and the young man stared,
'it must be, it is Pussy Merton!'
'And you, Clancy Minor, why are you not converting the Heathen Chinee?
You deserve a death of torture.'
'Goodness! How do you know that?' asked Clancy.
'I know many things,' answered Merton. 'I am not sure which of you is
Mr. Bathe.'
Clancy presented Mr. Bathe, a florid young evangelist, who blushed.
'Armenia is still suffering, Mr. Bathe; and Mr. Brooke,' said Merton,
detecting him by the Method of Residues, 'the oven is still hot in the
New Hebrides. What have you got to say for yourselves?'
The curates shifted nervously on their chairs.
'We see, Merton,' said Clancy, 'that you know a good deal which we did
not know ourselves till lately. In fact, we did not know each other till
the Church Congress at Leamington. Then the other men came to tea at my
rooms, and saw--'
'A portrait of a lady; each of you possessed a similar portrait,' said
Merton.
'How the dev--I mean, how do you know _that_?'
'By a simple deductive process,' said Merton. 'There were also letters,'
he said. Here a gurgle from behind the screen was audible to Merton.
'We did not read each others' letters,' said Clancy, blushing.
'Of course not,' said Merton.
'But the handwriting on the envelopes was identical,' Clancy went on.
'Well, and what can our Society do for you?'
'Why, we saw your advertisements, never guessed they were _yours_, of
course, Pussy, and--none of us is a man of the world--'
'I congratulate you,' said Merton.
'So we thought we had better take advice: it seemed rather a lark, too,
don't you know? The fact is--you appear to have divined it somehow--we
find that we are all engaged to the same lady. We can't fight, and we
can't all marry her.'
'In Thibet it might be practicable: martyrdom might also be secured
there,' said Merton.
'Martyrdom is not good enough,' said Clancy.
'Not half,' said Bathe.
'A man has his duties in his own country,' said Brooke.
'May I ask whether in fact your sorrows at this discovery have been
intense?' asked Merton.
'I was a good deal cut up at first,' said Clancy, 'I being the latest
recruit. Bathe had practically given up hope, and had seen some one
else.' Mr. Bathe drooped his head, and blushed. 'Brooke laughed. Indeed
we _all_ laughed, though we felt rather foolish. But what are we to do?
Should we write her a Round Robin? Bathe says he ought to be the man,
because he was first man in, and I say _I_ ought to be the man, because I
am not out.'
'I would not build much on _that_,' said Merton, and he was sure that he
heard a rustle behind the screen, and a slight struggle. Julia was
trying to emerge, restrained by Miss Crofton.
'I knew,' said Clancy, 'that there was _something_--that there were other
fellows. But that I learned, more or less, under the seal of confession,
so to speak.'
'At a picnic,' said Merton.
At this moment the screen fell with a crash, and Julia emerged, her eyes
blazing, while Miss Crofton followed, her hat somewhat crushed by the
falling screen. The three young men in Holy Orders, all of them
desirable young men, arose to their feet, trembling visibly.
'Apostates!' cried Julia, who had by far the best of the dramatic
situation and pressed her advantage. 'Recreants! was it for such as
_you_ that I pointed to the crown of martyrdom? Was it for _your_
shattered ideals that I have wept many a night on Serena's faithful
breast?' She pointed to Miss Crofton, who enfolded her in an embrace.
'You!' Julia went on, aiming at them the finger of conviction. 'I am but
a woman, weak I may have been, wavering I may have been, but I took you
for men! I chose you to dare, perhaps to perish, for a Cause. But now,
triflers that you are, boys, mere boys, back with you to your silly
games, back to the thoughtless throng. I have done.'
Julia, attended by Miss Crofton, swept from the chamber, under her
indignation (which was quite as real as any of her other emotions) the
happiest woman in London. She had no more occasion for remorse, no
ideals had she sensibly injured. Her entanglements were disentangled.
She inhaled the fragrance of orange blossoms from afar, and heard the
marriage music in the chapel of the Guards. Meanwhile the three curates
and Merton felt as if they had been whipped.
'Trust a woman to have the best of it,' muttered Merton admiringly. 'And
now, Clancy, may I offer a hasty luncheon to you and your friends before
we go to Lord's? Your business has been rather rapidly despatched.'
The conversation at luncheon turned exclusively on cricket.
VI. A LOVER IN COCKY
It cannot be said that the bearers of the noblest names in the land
flocked at first to the offices of Messrs. Gray and Graham. In fact the
reverse, in the beginning, was the case. Members even of the more
learned professions held aloof: indeed barristers and physicians never
became eager clients. On the other hand, Messrs. Gray and Graham
received many letters in such handwritings, such grammar, and such
orthography, that they burned them without replying. A common sort of
case was that of the young farmer whose widowed mother had set her heart
on marriage with 'a bonny labouring boy,' a ploughman.
'We can do nothing with these people,' Merton remarked. 'We can't send
down a young and elegant friend of ours to distract the affections of an
elderly female agriculturist. The bonny labouring boy would punch the
fashionable head; or, at all events, would prove much more attractive to
the widow than our agent.
'Then there are the members of the Hebrew community. They hate mixed
marriages, and quite right too. I deeply sympathise. But if Leah has
let her affections loose on young Timmins, an Anglo-Saxon and a
Christian, what can we do? How stop the mesalliance? We have not, in
our little regiment, one fair Hebrew boy to smile away her maiden blame
among the Hebrew mothers of Maida Vale, and to cut out Timmins. And of
course it is as bad with the men. If young Isaacs wants to marry Miss
Julia Timmins, I have no Rebecca to slip at him. The Semitic demand,
though large and perhaps lucrative, cannot be met out of a purely Aryan
supply.'
Business was pretty slack, and so Merton rather rejoiced over the
application of a Mrs. Nicholson, from The Laburnums, Walton-on-Dove,
Derbyshire. Mrs. Nicholson's name was not in Burke's 'Landed Gentry,'
and The Laburnums could hardly be estimated as one of the stately homes
of England. Still, the lady was granted an interview. She was what the
Scots call 'a buddy;' that is, she was large, round, attired in black,
between two ages, and not easily to be distinguished, by an unobservant
eye, from buddies as a class. After greetings, and when enthroned in the
client's chair, Mrs. Nicholson stated her case with simplicity and
directness.
'It is my ward,' she said, 'Barbara Monypenny. I must tell you that she
was left in my charge till she is twenty-six. I and her lawyers make her
an allowance out of her property, which she is to get when she marries
with my consent, at whatever age.'
'May I ask how old the lady is at present?' said Merton.
'She is twenty-two.'
'Your kindness in taking charge of her is not not wholly uncompensated?'
'No, an allowance is made to me out of the estate.'
'An allowance which ends on her marriage, if she marries with your
consent?'
'Yes, it ends then. Her uncle trusted me a deal more than he trusted
Barbara. She was strange from a child. Fond of the men,' as if that
were an unusual and unbecoming form of philanthropy.
'I see, and she being an heiress, the testator was anxious to protect her
youth and innocence?'
Mrs. Nicholson merely sniffed, but the sniff was affirmative, though
sarcastic.
'Her property, I suppose, is considerable? I do not ask from impertinent
curiosity, nor for exact figures. But, as a question of business, may we
call the fortune considerable?'
'Most people do. It runs into six figures.'
Merton, who had no mathematical head, scribbled on a piece of paper. The
result of his calculations (which I, not without some fever of the brow,
have personally verified) proved that 'six figures' might be anything
between 100,000_l_. and 999,000_l_. 19_s_. 11.75_d_.
'Certainly it is very considerable,' Merton said, after a few minutes
passed in arithmetical calculation. 'Am I too curious if I ask what is
the source of this opulence?'
'"Wilton's Panmedicon, or Heal All," a patent medicine. He sold the
patent and retired.'
Merton shuddered.
'It would be Pammedicum if it could be anything,' he thought, 'but it
can't, linguistically speaking.'
'Invaluable as a subterfuge,' said Mrs. Nicholson, obviously with an
indistinct recollection of the advertisement and of the properties of the
drug.
Merton construed the word as 'febrifuge,' silently, and asked: 'Have you
taken the young lady much into society: has she had many opportunities of
making a choice? You are dissatisfied with the choice, I understand,
which she has made?'
'I don't let her see anybody if I can help it. Fire and powder are
better kept apart, and she is powder, a minx! Only a fisher or two comes
to the Perch, that's the inn at Walton-on-Dove, and _they_ are mostly old
gentlemen, pottering with their rods and things. If a young man comes to
the inn, I take care to trapes after her through the nasty damp meadows.'
'Is the young lady an angler?'
'She is--most unwomanly I call it.'
Merton's idea of the young lady rose many degrees. 'You said the young
lady was "strange from a child, very strange. Fond of the men." Happily
for our sex, and for the world, it is not so very strange or unusual to
take pity on us.'
'She has always been queer.'
'You do not hint at any cerebral disequilibrium?' asked Merton.
'Would you mind saying that again?' asked Mrs. Nicholson.
'I meant nothing wrong _here_?' Merton said, laying his finger on his
brow.
'No, not so bad as that,' said Mrs. Nicholson; 'but just queer. Uncommon.
Tells odd stories about--nonsense. She is wearing with her dreams. She
reads books on, I don't know how to call it--Tipsy-cake, Tipsicakical
Search. Histories, _I_ call it.'
'Yes, I understand,' said Merton; 'Psychical Research.'
'That's it, and Hyptonism,' said Mrs. Nicholson, as many ladies do.
'Ah, Hyptonism, so called from its founder, Hypton, the eminent Anglo-
French chemist; he was burned at Rome, one of the latest victims of the
Inquisition,' said Merton.
'I don't hold with Popery, sir, but it served _him_ right.'
'That is all the queerness then!'
'That and general discontentedness.'
'Girls will be girls,' said Merton; 'she wants society.'
'Want must be her master then,' said Mrs. Nicholson stolidly.
'But about the man of her choice, have you anything against him?'
'No, but nothing _for_ him: I never even saw him.'
'Then where did Miss Monypenny make his acquaintance?'
'Well, like a fool, I let her go to pass Christmas with some distant
cousins of my own, who should have known better. They stupidly took her
to a dance, at Tutbury, and there she met him: just that once.'
'And they became engaged on so short an acquaintance?'
'Not exactly that. She was not engaged when she came home, and did not
seem to mean to be. She did talk of him a lot. He had got round her
finely: told her that he was going out to the war, and that they were
sister spirits. He had dreamed of meeting her, he said, and that was why
he came to the ball, for he did not dance. He said he believed they had
met in a state of pre--something; meaning, if you understand me, before
they were born, which could not be the case: she not being a twin, still
less _his_ twin.'
'That would be the only way of accounting for it, certainly,' said
Merton. 'But what followed? Did they correspond?'
'He wrote to her, but she showed me the letter, and put it in the fire
unopened. He had written his name, Marmaduke Ingles, on a corner of the
envelope.'
'So far her conduct seems correct, even austere,' said Merton.
'It was at first, but then he wrote from South Africa, where he
volunteered as a doctor. He was a doctor at Tutbury.'
'She opened that letter?'
'Yes, and showed it to me. He kept on with his nonsense, asking her
never to forget him, and sending his photograph in cocky.'
'Pardon!' said Merton.
'In uniform. And if he fell, she would see his ghost, in cocky, crossing
her room, he said. In fact he knew how to get round the foolish girl. I
believe he went out there just to make himself interesting.'
'Did you try to find out what sort of character he had at home?'
'Yes, there was no harm in it, only he had no business to speak of,
everybody goes to Dr. Younghusband.'
'Then, really, if he is an honest young man, as he seems to be a
patriotic fellow, are you certain that you are wise in objecting?'
'I _do_ object,' said Mrs. Nicholson, and indeed her motives for refusing
her consent were only too obvious.
'Are they quite definitely engaged?' asked Merton.
'Yes they are now, by letter, and she says she will wait for him till I
die, or she is twenty-six, if I don't give my consent. He writes every
mail, from places with outlandish names, in Africa. And she keeps
looking in a glass ball, like the labourers' women, some of them; she's
sunk as low as _that_; so superstitious; and sometimes she tells me that
she sees what he is doing, and where he is; and now and then, when his
letters come, she shows me bits of them, to prove she was right. But
just as often she's wrong; only she won't listen to _me_. She says it's
Telly, Tellyopathy. I say it's flat nonsense.'
'I quite agree with you,' said Merton, with conviction. 'After all,
though, honest, as far as you hear. . . .'
'Oh yes, honest enough, but that's all,' interrupted Mrs. Nicholson, with
a hearty sneer.
'Though he bears a good character, from what you tell me he seems to be a
very silly young man.'
'Silly Johnny to silly Jenny,' put in Mrs. Nicholson.
'A pair with ideas so absurd could not possibly be happy.' Merton
reasoned. 'Why don't you take her into the world, and show her life?
With her fortune and with _you_ to take her about, she would soon forget
this egregiously foolish romance.'
'And me to have her snapped up by some whipper-snapper that calls himself
a lord? Not me, Mr. Graham,' said Mrs. Nicholson. 'The money that her
uncle made by the Panmedicon is not going to be spent on horses, and
worse, if I can help it.'
'Then,' said Merton, 'all I can do for you is by our ordinary method--to
throw some young man of worth and education in the way of your ward, and
attempt to--divert her affections.'
'And have _him_ carry her off under my very nose? Not much, Mr. Graham.
Why where do _I_ come in, in this pretty plan?'
'Do not suppose me to suggest anything so--detrimental to your interests,
Mrs. Nicholson. Is your ward beautiful?'
'A toad!' said Mrs. Nicholson with emphasis.
'Very well. There is no danger. The gentleman of whom I speak is
betrothed to one of the most beautiful girls in England. They are deeply
attached, and their marriage is only deferred for prudential reasons.'
'I don't trust one of them,' said Mrs. Nicholson.
'Very well, madam,' answered Merton severely; 'I have done all that
experience can suggest. The gentleman of whom I speak has paid especial
attention to the mental delusions under which your ward is labouring, and
has been successful in removing them in some cases. But as you reject my
suggestion'--he rose, so did Mrs. Nicholson--'I have the honour of
wishing you a pleasant journey back to Derbyshire.'
'A bullet may hit him,' said Mrs. Nicholson with much acerbity. 'That's
my best hope.'
Then Merton bowed her out.
'The old woman will never let the girl marry anybody, except some
adventurer, who squares her by giving her the full value of her allowance
out of the estate,' thought Merton, adding 'I wonder how much it is! Six
figures is anything between a hundred thousand and a million!'
The man he had thought of sending down to divert Miss Monypenny's
affections from the young doctor was Jephson, the History coach, at that
hour waiting for a professorship to enable him to marry Miss Willoughby.
However, he dismissed Mrs. Nicholson and her ward from his mind. About a
fortnight later Merton received a letter directed in an uneducated hand.
'Another of the agricultural classes,' he thought, but, looking at the
close of the epistle, he saw the name of Eliza Nicholson. She wrote:
'Sir,--Barbara has been at her glass ball, and seen him being carried
on board a ship. If she is right, and she is not always wrong, he is
on his way home. Though I will never give my consent, this spells
botheration for me. You can send down your young man that cures by
teleopathy, a thing that has come up since my time. He can stay at
the Perch, and take a fishing rod, then they are safe to meet. I
trust him no more than the rest, but she may fall between two stools,
if the doctor does come home.
'Your obedient servant,
'Eliza Nicholson.'
'Merely to keep one's hand in,' thought Merton, 'in the present
disappointing slackness of business, I'll try to see Jephson. I don't
like or trust him. I don't think he is the man for Miss Willoughby. So,
if he ousts the doctor, and catches the heiress, why "there was more lost
at Shirramuir," as Logan says.'
Merton managed to go up to Oxford, and called on Jephson. He found him
anxious about a good, quiet, cheap place for study.
'Do you fish?' asked Merton.
'When I get the chance,' said Jephson.
He was a dark, rather clumsy, but not unprepossessing young don, with a
very slight squint.
'If you fish did you ever try the Perch--I mean an inn, not the fish of
the same name--at Walton-on-Dove? A pretty quiet place, two miles of
water, local history perhaps interesting. It is not very far from
Tutbury, where Queen Mary was kept, I think.'
'It sounds well,' said Jephson; 'I'll write to the landlord and ask about
terms.'
'You could not do better,' said Merton, and he took his leave.
'Now, am I,' thought Merton as he walked down the Broad, 'to put Jephson
up to it? If I don't, of course I can't "reap the benefit of one single
pin" for the Society: Jephson not being a member. But the money, anyhow,
would come from that old harpy out of the girl's estate. _Olet_! I
don't like the fragrance of that kind of cash. But if the girl really is
plain, "a toad," nothing may happen. On the other hand, Jephson is sure
to hear about her position from local gossip--that she is rich, and so
on. Perhaps she is not so very plain. They are sure to meet, or Mrs.
Nicholson will bring them together in her tactful way. She has not much
time to lose if the girl's glass ball yarn is true, and it _may_ be true
by a fluke. Jephson is rather bitten by a taste for all that
"teleopathy" business, as the old Malaprop calls it. On the whole, I
shall say no more to him, but let him play the game, if he goes to
Walton, off his own bat.'
Presently Merton received a note from Jephson dated 'The Perch, Walton-on-
Dove.' Jephson expressed his gratitude; the place suited his purpose
very well. He had taken a brace and a half of trout, 'bordering on two
pounds' ('one and a quarter,' thought Merton). 'And, what won't interest
_you_,' his letter said, 'I have run across a curiously interesting
subject, what _you_ would call _hysterical_. But what, after all, is
hysteria?' &c., &c.
'_L'affaire est dans le sac_!' said Merton to himself. 'Jephson and Miss
Monypenny have met!'
Weeks passed, and one day, on arriving at the office, Merton found Miss
Willoughby there awaiting his arrival. She was the handsome Miss
Willoughby, Jephson's betrothed, a learned young lady who lived but
poorly by verifying references and making researches at the Record
Office.
Merton at once had a surmise, nor was it mistaken. The usual greetings
had scarcely passed, when the girl, with cheeks on fire and eyes aflame,
said:
'Mr. Merton, do you remember a question, rather unconventional, which you
put to me at the dinner party you and Mr. Logan gave at the restaurant?'
'I ought not to have said it,' said Merton, 'but then it was an
unconventional gathering. I asked if you--'
'Your words were "Had I a spark of the devil in me?" Well, I have! Can
I--'
'Turn it to any purpose? You can, Miss Willoughby, and I shall have the
honour to lay the method before you, of course only for your
consideration, and under seal of secrecy. Indeed I was just about to
write to you asking for an interview.'
Merton then laid the circumstances in which he wanted Miss Willoughby's
aid before her, but these must be reserved for the present. She
listened, was surprised, was clearly ready for more desperate adventures;
she came into his views, and departed.
'Jephson _has_ played the game off his own bat--and won it,' thought
Merton to himself. 'What a very abject the fellow is! But, after all, I
have disentangled Miss Willoughby; she was infinitely too good for the
man, with his squint.'
As Merton indulged in these rather Pharisaical reflections, Mrs.
Nicholson was announced. Merton greeted her, and gave orders that no
other client was to be admitted. He was himself rather nervous. Was
Mrs. Nicholson in a rage? No, her eyes beamed friendly; geniality
clothed her brow.
'He has squared her,' thought Merton.
Indeed, the lady had warmly grasped his hand with both of her own, which
were imprisoned in tight new gloves, while her bonnet spoke of
regardlessness of expense and recent prodigality. She fell back into the
client's chair.
'Oh, sir,' she said, 'when first we met we did not part, or _I_ did
not--_you_ were quite the gentleman--on the best of terms. But now, how
can I speak of your wise advice, and how much don't I owe you?'
Merton answered very gravely: 'You do not owe me anything, Madam. Please
understand that I took absolutely no professional steps in your affair.'
'What?' cried Mrs. Nicholson. 'You did not send down that blessed young
man to the Perch?'
'I merely suggested that the inn might suit a person whom I knew, who was
looking for country quarters. Your name never crossed my lips, nor a
word about the business on which you did me the honour to consult me.'
'Then I owe you nothing?'
'Nothing at all.'
'Well, I do call this providential,' said Mrs. Nicholson, with devout
enthusiasm.
'You are not in my debt to the extent of a farthing, but if you think I
have accidentally been--'
'An instrument?' said Mrs. Nicholson.
'Well, an unconscious instrument, perhaps you can at least tell me why
you think so. What has happened?'
'You really don't know?'
'I only know that you are pleased, and that your anxieties seem to be
relieved.'
'Why, he saved her from being burned, and the brave,' said Mrs.
Nicholson, 'deserve the fair, not that _she_ is a beauty.'
'Do tell me all that happened.'
'And tell you I can, for that precious young man took me into his
confidence. First, when I heard that he had come to the Perch, I
trampled about the damp riverside with Barbara, and sure enough they met,
he being on the Perch's side of the fence, and Barbara's line being
caught high up in a tree on ours, as often happens. Well, I asked him to
come over the fence and help her to get her line clear, which he did very
civilly, and then he showed her how to fish, and then I asked him to tea
and left them alone a bit, and when I came back they were talking about
teleopathy, and her glass ball, and all that nonsense. And he seemed
interested, but not to believe in it quite. I could not understand half
their tipsycakical lingo. So of course they often met again at the
river, and he often came to tea, and she seemed to take to him--she was
always one for the men. And at last a very queer thing happened, and
gave him his chance.
'It was a very hot day in July, and she fell asleep on a seat under a
tree with her glass ball in her lap; she had been staring at it, I
suppose. Any way she slept on, till the sun went round and shone full on
the ball; and just as he, Mr. Jephson, that is, came into the gate, the
glass ball began to act like a burning glass and her skirt began to
smoke. Well, he waited a bit, I think, till the skirt blazed a little,
and then he rushed up and threw his coat over her skirt, and put the fire
out. And so he saved her from being a Molochaust, like you read about in
the bible.'
Merton mentally disengaged the word 'Molochaust' into 'Moloch' and
'holocaust.'
'And there she was, when I happened to come by, a-crying and carrying on,
with her head on his shoulder.'
'A pleasing group, and so they were engaged on the spot?' asked Merton.
'Not she! She held off, and thanked her preserver; but she would be
true, she said, to her lover in cocky. But before that Mr. Jephson had
taken me into his confidence.'
'And you made no objection to his winning your ward, if he could?'
'No, sir, I could trust that young man: I could trust him with Barbara.'
'His arguments,' said Merton, 'must have been very cogent?'
'He understood my situation if she married, and what I deserved,' said
Mrs. Nicholson, growing rather uncomfortable, and fidgeting in the
client's chair.
Merton, too, understood, and knew what the sympathetic arguments of
Jephson must have been.
'And, after all,' Merton asked, 'the lover has prospered in his suit?'
'This is how he got round her. He said to me that night, in private:
"Mrs. Nicholson," said he, "your niece is a very interesting historical
subject. I am deeply anxious, apart from my own passion for her, to
relieve her from a singular but not very uncommon delusion."
'"Meaning her lover in cocky," I said.
'"There is no lover in cocky," says he.
'"No Dr. Ingles!" said I.
'"Yes, there _is_ a Dr. Ingles, but he is not her lover, and your niece
never met him. I bicycled to Tutbury lately, and, after examining the
scene of Queen Mary's captivity, I made a few inquiries. What I had
always suspected proved to be true. Dr. Ingles was not present at that
ball at the Bear at Tutbury."
'Well,' Mrs. Nicholson went on, 'you might have knocked me down with a
feather! I had never asked my second cousins the question, not wanting
them to guess about my affairs. But down I sat, and wrote to Maria, and
got her answer. Barbara never saw Dr. Ingles! only heard the girls
mention him, and his going to the war. And then, after that, by Mr.
Jephson's advice, I went and gave Barbara my mind. She should marry Mr.
Jephson, who saved her life, or be the laughing stock of the country. I
showed her up to herself, with her glass ball, and her teleopathy, and
her sham love-letters, that she wrote herself, and all her humbug. She
cried, and she fainted, and she carried on, but I went at her whenever
she could listen to reason. So she said "Yes," and I am the happy
woman.'
'And Mr. Jephson is to be congratulated on so sensible and veracious a
bride,' said Merton.
'Oh, he says it is by no means an uncommon case, and that he has effected
a complete cure, and they will be as happy as idiots,' said Mrs.
Nicholson, as she rose to depart.
She left Merton pensive, and not disposed to overrate human nature. 'But
there can't be many fellows like Jephson,' he said. 'I wonder how much
the six figures run to?' But that question was never answered to his
satisfaction.
VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE EXEMPLARY EARL
I. The Earl's Long-Lost Cousin
'A jilt in time saves nine,' says the proverbial wisdom of our
forefathers, adding, 'One jilt makes many.' In the last chapter of the
book of this chronicle, we told how the mercenary Mr. Jephson proved
false to the beautiful Miss Willoughby, who supported existence by her
skill in deciphering and transcribing the manuscript records of the past.
We described the consequent visit of Miss Willoughby to the office of the
Disentanglers, and how she reminded Merton that he had asked her once 'if
she had a spark of the devil in her.' She had that morning received, in
fact, a letter, crawling but explicit, from the unworthy Jephson, her
lover. Retired, he said, to the rural loneliness of Derbyshire, he had
read in his own heart, and what he there deciphered convinced him that,
as a man of honour, he had but one course before him: he must free Miss
Willoughby from her engagement. The lady was one of those who suffer in
silence. She made no moan, and no reply to Jephson's letter; but she did
visit Merton, and, practically, gave him to understand that she was ready
to start as a Corsair on the seas of amorous adventure. She had nailed
the black flag to the mast: unhappy herself, she was apt to have no mercy
on the sentiments and affections of others.
Merton, as it chanced, had occasion for the services of a lady in this
mood; a lady at once attractive, and steely-hearted; resolute to revenge,
on the whole of the opposite sex, the baseness of a Fellow of his
College. Such is the frenzy of an injured love--illogical indeed (for we
are not responsible for the errors of isolated members of our sex), but
primitive, natural to women, and even to some men, in Miss Willoughby's
position.
The occasion for such services as she would perform was provided by a
noble client who, on visiting the office, had found Merton out and Logan
in attendance. The visitor was the Earl of Embleton, of the North.
Entering the rooms, he fumbled with the string of his eyeglass, and,
after capturing it, looked at Logan with an air of some bewilderment. He
was a tall, erect, slim, and well-preserved patrician, with a manner
really shy, though hasty critics interpreted it as arrogant. He was
'between two ages,' a very susceptible period in the history of the
individual.
'I think we have met before,' said the Earl to Logan. 'Your face is not
unfamiliar to me.'
'Yes,' said Logan, 'I have seen you at several places;' and he mumbled a
number of names.
'Ah, I remember now--at Lady Lochmaben's,' said Lord Embleton. 'You are,
I think, a relation of hers. . . .'
'A distant relation: my name is Logan.'
'What, of the Restalrig family?' said the Earl, with excitement.
'A far-off kinsman of the Marquis,' said Logan, adding, 'May I ask you to
be seated?'
'This is really very interesting to me--surprisingly interesting,' said
the Earl. 'What a strange coincidence! How small the world is, how
brief are the ages! Our ancestors, Mr. Logan, were very intimate long
ago.'
'Indeed?' said Logan.
'Yes. I would not speak of it to everybody; in fact, I have spoken of it
to no one; but recently, examining some documents in my muniment-room, I
made a discovery as interesting to me as it must be to you. Our
ancestors three hundred years ago--in 1600, to be exact--were fellow
conspirators.'
'Ah, the old Gowrie game, to capture the King?' asked Logan, who had once
kidnapped a cat.
His knowledge of history was mainly confined to that obscure and
unexplained affair, in which his wicked old ancestor is thought to have
had a hand.
'That is it,' said the visitor--'the Gowrie mystery! You may remember
that an unknown person, a friend of your ancestor, was engaged?'
'Yes,' said Logan; 'he was never identified. Was his name Harris?'
The peer half rose to his feet, flushed a fine purple, twiddled the
obsolete little grey tuft on his chin, and sat down again.
'I think I said, Mr. Logan, that the hitherto unidentified associate of
your ancestor was _a member of my own family_. Our name is _not_
Harris--a name very honourably borne--our family name is Guevara. My
ancestor was a cousin of the brave Lord Willoughby.'
'Most interesting! You must pardon me, but as nobody ever knew what you
have just found out, you will excuse my ignorance,' said Logan, who, to
be sure, had never heard of the brave Lord Willoughby.
'It is I who ought to apologise,' said the visitor. 'Your mention of the
name of Harris appeared to me to indicate a frivolity as to matters of
the past which, I must confess, is apt to make me occasionally forget
myself. _Noblesse oblige_, you know: we respect ourselves--in our
progenitors.'
'Unless he wants to prevent someone from marrying his great-grandmother,
I wonder what he is doing with his Tales of a Grandfather _here_,'
thought Logan, but he only smiled, and said, 'Assuredly--my own opinion.
I wish I could respect _my_ ancestor!'
'The gentleman of whom I speak, the associate of your own distant
progenitor, was the founder of our house, as far as mere titles are
concerned. We were but squires of Northumbria, of ancient Celtic
descent, before the time of Queen Elizabeth. My ancestor at that time--'
'Oh bother his pedigree!' thought Logan.
'--was a young officer in the English garrison of Berwick, and _he_, I
find, was _your_ ancestor's unknown correspondent. I am not skilled in
reading old hands, and I am anxious to secure a trustworthy person--really
trustworthy--to transcribe the manuscripts which contain these exciting
details.'
Logan thought that the office of the Disentanglers was hardly the place
to come to in search of an historical copyist. However, he remembered
Miss Willoughby, and said that he knew a lady of great skill and
industry, of good family too, upon whom his client might entirely depend.
'She is a Miss Willoughby,' he added.
'Not one of the Willoughbys of the Wicket, a most worthy, though
unfortunate house, nearly allied, as I told you, to my own, about three
hundred years ago?' said the Earl.
'Yes, she is a daughter of the last squire.'
'Ruined in the modern race for wealth, like so many!' exclaimed the peer,
and he sat in silence, deeply moved; his lips formed a name familiar to
Law Courts.
'Excuse my emotion, Mr. Logan,' he went on. 'I shall be happy to see and
arrange with this lady, who, I trust will, as my cousin, accept my
hospitality at Rookchester. I shall be deeply interested, as you, no
doubt, will also be, in the result of her researches into an affair which
so closely concerns both you and me.'
He was silent again, musing deeply, while Logan marvelled more and more
what his real original business might be. All this affair of the
documents and the muniment-room had arisen by the merest accident, and
would not have arisen if the Earl had found Merton at home. The Earl
obviously had a difficulty in coming to the point: many clients had. To
approach a total stranger on the most intimate domestic affairs (even if
his ancestor and yours were in a big thing together three hundred years
ago) is, to a sensitive patrician, no easy task. In fact, even members
of the middle class were, as clients, occasionally affected by shyness.
'Mr. Logan,' said the Earl, 'I am not a man of to-day. The cupidity of
our age, the eagerness with which wealthy aliens are welcomed into our
best houses and families, is to me, I may say, distasteful. Better that
our coronets were dimmed than that they should be gilded with the gold
eagles of Chicago or blazing with the diamonds of Kimberley. My feelings
on this point are unusually--I do not think that they are unduly--acute.'
Logan murmured assent.
'I am poor,' said the Earl, with all the expansiveness of the shy; 'but I
never held what is called a share in my life.'
'It is long,' said Logan, with perfect truth, 'since anything of that
sort was in my own possession. In that respect my 'scutcheon, so to
speak, is without a stain.'
'How fortunate I am to have fallen in with one of sentiments akin to my
own, unusual as they are!' said the Earl. 'I am a widower,' he went on,
'and have but one son and one daughter.'
'He is coming to business _now_,' thought Logan.
'The former, I fear, is as good almost as affianced--is certainly in
peril of betrothal--to a lady against whom I have not a word to say,
except that she is inordinately wealthy, the sole heiress of--' Here the
Earl gasped, and was visibly affected. 'You may have heard, sir,' the
patrician went on, 'of a commercial transaction of nature unfathomable to
myself--I have not sought for information,' he waved his hand
impatiently, 'a transaction called a Straddle?'
Logan murmured that he was aware of the existence of the phrase, though
unconscious of its precise meaning.
'The lady's wealth is based on a successful Straddle, operated by her
only known male ancestor, in--Bristles--Hogs' Bristles and Lard,' said
the Earl.
'Miss Bangs!' exclaimed Logan, knowing the name, wealth, and the source
of the wealth of the ruling Chicago heiress of the day.
'I am to be understood to speak of Miss Bangs--as her name has been
pronounced between us--with all the respect due to youth, beauty, and an
amiable disposition,' said the peer; 'but Bristles, Mr. Logan, Hogs'
Bristles and Lard. And a Straddle!'
'Lucky devil, Scremerston,' thought Logan, for Scremerston was the only
son of Lord Embleton, and he, as it seemed, had secured that coveted
prize of the youth of England, the heart of the opulent Miss Bangs. But
Logan only sighed and stared at the wall as one who hears of an
irremediable disaster.
'If they really were betrothed,' said Lord Embleton, 'I would have
nothing to say or do in the way of terminating the connection, however
unwelcome. A man's word is his word. It is in these circumstances of
doubt (when the fortunes of a house ancient, though titularly of mere
Tudor _noblesse_, hang in the balance) that, despairing of other help, I
have come to you.'
'But,' asked Logan, 'have things gone so very far? Is the disaster
irremediable? I am acquainted with your son, Lord Scremerston; in fact,
he was my fag at school. May I speak quite freely?'
'Certainly; you will oblige me.'
'Well, by the candour of early friendship, Scremerston was called the
Arcadian, an allusion to a certain tenderness of heart allied with--h'm--a
rather confident and sanguine disposition. I think it may console you to
reflect that perhaps he rather overestimates his success with the
admirable young lady of whom we spoke. You are not certain that she has
accepted him?'
'No,' said the Earl, obviously relieved. 'I am sure that he has not
positively proposed to her. He knows my opinion: he is a dutiful son,
but he did seem very confident--seemed to think that his honour was
engaged.'
'I think we may discount that a little,' said Logan, 'and hope for the
best.'
'I shall try to take that view,' said the Earl. 'You console me
infinitely, Mr. Logan.'
Logan was about to speak again, when his client held up a gently
deprecating hand.
'That is not all, Mr. Logan. I have a daughter--'
Logan chanced to be slightly acquainted with the daughter, Lady Alice
Guevara, a very nice girl.
'Is she attached to a South African Jew?' Logan thought.
'In this case,' said the client, 'there is no want of blood; Royal in
origin, if it comes to that. To the House of Bourbon I have no
objection, in itself, that would be idle affectation.'
Logan gasped.
Was this extraordinary man anxious to reject a lady 'multimillionaire'
for his son, and a crown of some sort or other for his daughter?
'But the stain of ill-gotten gold--silver too--is ineffaceable.'
'It really cannot be Bristles this time,' thought Logan.
'And a dynasty based on the roulette-table, . . . '
'Oh, the Prince of Scalastro!' cried Logan.
'I see that you know the worst,' said the Earl.
Logan knew the worst fairly well. The Prince of Scalastro owned a
percentage of two or three thousand which Logan had dropped at the tables
licensed in his principality.
'To the Prince, personally, I bear no ill-will,' said the Earl. 'He is
young, brave, scientific, accomplished, and this unfortunate attachment
began before he inherited his--h'm--dominions. I fear it is, on both
sides, a deep and passionate sentiment. And now, Mr. Logan, you know the
full extent of my misfortunes: what course does your experience
recommend? I am not a harsh father. Could I disinherit Scremerston,
which I cannot, the loss would not be felt by him in the circumstances.
As to my daughter--'
The peer rose and walked to the window. When he came back and resumed
his seat, Logan turned on him a countenance of mournful sympathy. The
Earl silently extended his hand, which Logan took. On few occasions had
a strain more severe been placed on his gravity, but, unlike a celebrated
diplomatist, he 'could command his smile.'
'Your case,' he said, 'is one of the most singular, delicate, and
distressing which I have met in the course of my experience. There is no
objection to character, and poverty is not the impediment: the reverse.
You will permit me, no doubt, to consult my partner, Mr. Merton; we have
naturally no secrets between us, and he possesses a delicacy of touch and
a power of insight which I can only regard with admiring envy. It was he
who carried to a successful issue that difficult case in the family of
the Sultan of Mingrelia (you will observe that I use a fictitious name).
I can assure you, Lord Embleton, that polygamy presents problems almost
insoluble; problems of extreme delicacy--or indelicacy.'
'I had not heard of that affair,' said the Earl. 'Like Eumaeus in Homer
and in Mr. Stephen Phillips, I dwell among the swine, and come rarely to
the city.'
'The matter never went beyond the inmost diplomatic circles,' said Logan.
'The Sultan's favourite son, the Jam, or Crown Prince, of Mingrelia
(_Jamreal_, they called him), loved four beautiful Bollachians,
sisters--again I disguise the nationality.'
'Sisters!' exclaimed the peer; 'I have always given my vote against the
Deceased Wife's Sister Bill; but _four_, and all alive!'
'The law of the Prophet, as you are aware, is not monogamous,' said
Logan; 'and the Eastern races are not averse to connections which are
reprobated by our Western ideas. The real difficulty was that of
religion.
'Oh, why from the heretic girl of my soul
Should I fly, to seek elsewhere an orthodox kiss?'
hummed Logan, rather to the surprise of Lord Embleton. He went on: 'It
is not so much that the Mingrelians object to mixed marriages in the
matter of religion, but the Bollachians, being Christians, do object, and
have a horror of polygamy. It was a cruel affair. All four girls, and
the Jamreal himself, were passionately attached to each other. It was
known, too, that, for political reasons, the maidens had received a
dispensation from the leading Archimandrite, their metropolitan, to marry
the proud Paynim. The Mingrelian Sultan is suzerain of Bollachia; his
native subjects are addicted to massacring the Bollachians from religious
motives, and the Bollachian Church (Nestorians, as you know) hoped that
the four brides would convert the Jamreal to their creed, and so solve
the Bollachian question. The end, they said, justified the means.'
'Jesuitical,' said the Earl, shaking his head sadly.
'That is what my friend and partner, Mr. Merton, thought,' said Logan,
'when we were applied to by the Sultan. Merton displayed extraordinary
tact and address. All was happily settled, the Sultan and the Jamreal
were reconciled, the young ladies met other admirers, and learned that
what they had taken for love was but a momentary infatuation.'
The Earl sighed, '_Renovare dolorem_! My family,' said he, 'is, and has
long been--ever since the Gunpowder Plot--firmly, if not passionately,
attached to the Church of England. The Prince of Scalastro is a
Catholic.'
'Had we a closer acquaintance with the parties concerned!' murmured
Logan.
'You must come and visit us at Rookchester,' said the Earl. 'In any case
I am most anxious to know better one whose ancestor was so closely
connected with my own. We shall examine my documents under the tuition
of the lady you mentioned, Miss Willoughby, if she will accept the
hospitality of a kinsman.'
Logan murmured acquiescence, and again asked permission to consult
Merton, which was granted. The Earl then shook hands and departed,
obviously somewhat easier in his mind.
This remarkable conversation was duly reported by Logan to Merton.
'What are we to do next?' asked Logan.
'Why you can do nothing but reconnoitre. Go down to Rookchester. It is
in Northumberland, on the Coquet--a pretty place, but there is no fishing
just now. Then we must ask Lord Embleton to meet Miss Willoughby. The
interview can be here: Miss Willoughby will arrive, chaperoned by Miss
Blossom, after the Earl makes his appearance.'
'That will do, as far as his bothering old manuscripts are concerned; but
how about the real business--the two undesirable marriages?'
'We must first see how the land lies. I do not know any of the lovers.
What sort of fellow is Scremerston?'
'Nothing remarkable about him--good, plucky, vain little fellow. I
suppose he wants money, like the rest of the world: but his father won't
let him be a director of anything, though he is in the House and his name
would look well on a list.'
'So he wants to marry dollars?'
'I suppose he has no objection to them; but have you seen Miss Bangs?'
'I don't remember her,' said Merton.
'Then you have not seen her. She is beautiful, by Jove; and, I fancy,
clever and nice, and gives herself no airs.'
'And she has all that money, and yet the old gentleman objects!'
'He can not stand the bristles and lard,' said Logan.
'Then the Prince of Scalastro--him I have come across. You would never
take him for a foreigner,' said Merton, bestowing on the Royal youth the
highest compliment which an Englishman can pay, but adding, 'only he is
too intelligent and knows too much.'
'No; there is nothing the matter with _him_,' Logan admitted--'nothing
but happening to inherit a gambling establishment and the garden it
stands in. He is a scientific character--a scientific soldier. I wish
we had a few like him.'
'Well, it is a hard case,' said Merton. 'They all seem to be very good
sort of people. And Lady Alice Guevara? I hardly know her at all; but
she is pretty enough--tall, yellow hair, brown eyes.'
'And as good a girl as lives,' added Logan. 'Very religious, too.'
'She won't change her creed?' asked Merton.
'She would go to the stake for it,' said Logan. 'She is more likely to
convert the Prince.'
'That would be one difficulty out of the way,' said Merton. 'But the
gambling establishment? There is the rub! And the usual plan won't
work. You are a captivating person, Logan, but I do not think that you
could attract Lady Alice's affections and disentangle her in that way.
Besides, the Prince would have you out. Then Miss Bangs' dollars, not to
mention herself, must have too strong a hold on Scremerston. It really
looks too hard a case for us on paper. You must go down and
reconnoitre.'
Logan agreed, and wrote asking Lord Embleton to come to the office, where
he could see Miss Willoughby and arrange about her visit to him and his
manuscripts. The young lady was invited to arrive rather later, bringing
Miss Blossom as her companion.
On the appointed day Logan and Merton awaited Lord Embleton. He entered
with an air unwontedly buoyant, and was introduced to Merton. The first
result was an access of shyness. The Earl hummed, began sentences,
dropped them, and looked pathetically at Logan. Merton understood. The
Earl had taken to Logan (on account of their hereditary partnership in an
ancient iniquity), and it was obvious that he would say to him what he
would not say to his partner. Merton therefore withdrew to the outer
room (they had met in the inner), and the Earl delivered himself to Logan
in a little speech.
'Since we met, Mr. Logan,' said he, 'a very fortunate event has occurred.
The Prince of Scalastro, in a private interview, has done me the honour
to take me into his confidence. He asked my permission to pay his
addresses to my daughter, and informed me that, finding his ownership of
the gambling establishment distasteful to her, he had determined not to
renew the lease to the company. He added that since his boyhood, having
been educated in Germany, he had entertained scruples about the position
which he would one day occupy, that he had never entered the rooms (that
haunt of vice), and that his acquaintance with my daughter had greatly
increased his objections to gambling, though his scruples were not
approved of by his confessor, a very learned priest.'
'That is curious,' said Logan.
'Very,' said the Earl. 'But as I expect the Prince and his confessor at
Rookchester, where I hope you will join us, we may perhaps find out the
reasons which actuate that no doubt respectable person. In the meantime,
as I would constrain nobody in matters of religion, I informed the Prince
that he had my permission to--well, to plead his cause for himself with
Lady Alice.'
Logan warmly congratulated the Earl on the gratifying resolve of the
Prince, and privately wondered how the young people would support life,
when deprived of the profits from the tables.
It was manifest, however, from the buoyant air of the Earl, that this
important question had never crossed his mind. He looked quite young in
the gladness of his heart, 'he smelled April and May,' he was clad
becomingly in summer raiment, and to Logan it was quite a pleasure to see
such a happy man. Some fifteen years seemed to have been taken from the
age of this buxom and simple-hearted patrician.
He began to discuss with Logan all conceivable reasons why the Prince's
director had rather discouraged his idea of closing the gambling-rooms
for ever.
'The Father, Father Riccoboni, is a Jesuit, Mr. Logan,' said the Earl
gravely. 'I would not be uncharitable, I hope I am not prejudiced, but
members of that community, I fear, often prefer what they think the
interests of their Church to those of our common Christianity. A portion
of the great wealth of the Scalastros was annually devoted to masses for
the souls of the players--about fifteen per cent. I believe--who yearly
shoot themselves in the gardens of the establishment.'
'No more suicides, no more subscriptions, I suppose,' said Logan; 'but
the practice proved that the reigning Princes of Scalastro had feeling
hearts.'
While the Earl developed this theme, Miss Willoughby, accompanied by Miss
Blossom, had joined Merton in the outer room. Miss Blossom, being clad
in white, with her blue eyes and apple-blossom complexion, looked like
the month of May. But Merton could not but be struck by Miss Willoughby.
She was tall and dark, with large grey eyes, a Greek profile, and a brow
which could, on occasion, be thunderous and lowering, so that Miss
Willoughby seemed to all a remarkably fine young woman; while the
educated spectator was involuntarily reminded of the beautiful sister of
the beautiful Helen, the celebrated Clytemnestra. The young lady was
clad in very dark blue, with orange points, so to speak, and compared
with her transcendent beauty, Miss Blossom, as Logan afterwards remarked,
seemed a
'Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,'
he intending to quote the poet Burns.
After salutations, Merton remarked to Miss Blossom that her well-known
discretion might prompt her to take a seat near the window while he
discussed private business with Miss Willoughby. The good-humoured girl
retired to contemplate life from the casement, while Merton rapidly laid
the nature of Lord Embleton's affairs before the other lady.
'You go down to Rookchester as a kinswoman and a guest, you understand,
and to do the business of the manuscripts.'
'Oh, I shall rather like that than otherwise,' said Miss Willoughby,
smiling.
'Then, as to the regular business of the Society, there is a Prince who
seems to be thought unworthy of the daughter of the house; and the son of
the house needs disentangling from an American heiress of great charm and
wealth.'
'The tasks might satisfy any ambition,' said Miss Willoughby. 'Is the
idea that the Prince and the Viscount should _both_ neglect their former
flames?'
'And burn incense at the altar of Venus Verticordia,' said Merton, with a
bow.
'It is a large order,' replied Miss Willoughby, in the simple phrase of a
commercial age: but as Merton looked at her, and remembered the
vindictive feeling with which she now regarded his sex, he thought that
she, if anyone, was capable of executing the commission. He was not, of
course, as yet aware of the moral resolution lately arrived at by the
young potentate of Scalastro.
'The manuscripts are the first thing, of course,' he said, and, as he
spoke, Logan and Lord Embleton re-entered the room.
Merton presented the Earl to the ladies, and Miss Blossom soon retired to
her own apartment, and wrestled with the correspondence of the Society
and with her typewriting-machine.
The Earl proved not to be nearly so shy where ladies were concerned. He
had not expected to find in his remote and long-lost cousin, Miss
Willoughby, a magnificent being like Persephone on a coin of Syracuse,
but it was plain that he was prepossessed in her favour, and there was a
touch of the affectionate in his courtesy. After congratulating himself
on recovering a kinswoman of a long-separated branch of his family, and
after a good deal of genealogical disquisition, he explained the nature
of the lady's historical tasks, and engaged her to visit him in the
country at an early date. Miss Willoughby then said farewell, having an
engagement at the Record Office, where, as the Earl gallantly observed,
she would 'make a sunshine in a shady place.'
When she had gone, the Earl observed, '_Bon sang ne peut pas mentir_! To
think of that beautiful creature condemned to waste her lovely eyes on
faded ink and yellow papers! Why, she is, as the modern poet says, "a
sight to make an old man young."'
He then asked Logan to acquaint Merton with the new and favourable aspect
of his affairs, and, after fixing Logan's visit to Rookchester for the
same date as Miss Willoughby's, he went off with a juvenile alertness.
'I say,' said Logan, 'I don't know what will come of this, but
_something_ will come of it. I had no idea that girl was such a
paragon.'
'Take care, Logan,' said Merton. 'You ought only to have eyes for Miss
Markham.'
Miss Markham, the precise student may remember, was the lady once known
as the Venus of Milo to her young companions at St. Ursula's. Now
mantles were draped on her stately shoulders at Madame Claudine's, and
Logan and she were somewhat hopelessly attached to each other.
'Take care of yourself at Rookchester,' Merton went on, 'or the
Disentangler may be entangled.'
'I am not a viscount and I am not an earl,' said Logan, with a
reminiscence of an old popular song, 'nor I am not a prince, but a shade
or two _wuss_; and I think that Miss Willoughby will find other marks for
the artillery of her eyes.'
'We shall have news of it,' said Merton.
II. The Affair of the Jesuit
Trains do not stop at the little Rookchester station except when the high
and puissant prince the Earl of Embleton or his visitors, or his
ministers, servants, solicitors, and agents of all kinds, are bound for
that haven. When Logan arrived at the station, a bowery, flowery,
amateur-looking depot, like one of the 'model villages' that we sometimes
see off the stage, he was met by the Earl, his son Lord Scremerston, and
Miss Willoughby. Logan's baggage was spirited away by menials, who
doubtless bore it to the house in some ordinary conveyance, and by the
vulgar road. But Lord Embleton explained that as the evening was warm,
and the woodland path by the river was cool, they had walked down to
welcome the coming guest.
The walk was beautiful indeed along the top of the precipitous red
sandstone cliffs, with the deep, dark pools of the Coquet sleeping far
below. Now and then a heron poised, or a rock pigeon flew by, between
the river and the cliff-top. The opposite bank was embowered in deep
green wood, and the place was very refreshing after the torrid bricks and
distressing odours of the July streets of London.
The path was narrow: there was room for only two abreast. Miss
Willoughby and Scremerston led the way, and were soon lost to sight by a
turn in the path. As for Lord Embleton, he certainly seemed to have
drunk of that fountain of youth about which the old French poet Pontus de
Tyard reports to us, and to be going back, not forward, in age. He
looked very neat, slim, and cool, but that could not be the only cause of
the miracle of rejuvenescence. Closely regarding his host in profile,
Logan remarked that he had shaved off his moustache and the little,
obsolete, iron-grey chin-tuft which, in moments of perplexity, he had
been wont to twiddle. Its loss was certainly a very great improvement to
the clean-cut features of this patrician.
'We are a very small party,' said Lord Embleton, 'only the Prince, my
daughter, Father Riccoboni, Miss Willoughby, my sister, Scremerston, and
you and I. Miss Willoughby came last week. In the mornings she and I
are busy with the manuscripts. We have found most interesting things.
When their plot failed, your ancestor and mine prepared a ship to start
for the Western seas and attack the treasure-ships of Spain. But peace
broke out, and they never achieved that adventure. Miss Willoughby is a
cousin well worth discovering, so intelligent, and so wonderfully
attractive.'
'So Scremerston seems to think,' was Logan's idea, for the further he and
the Earl advanced, the less, if possible, they saw of the pair in front
of them; indeed, neither was visible again till the party met before
dinner.
However, Logan only said that he had a great esteem for Miss Willoughby's
courage and industry through the trying years of poverty since she left
St. Ursula's.
'The Prince we have not seen very much of,' said the Earl, 'as is
natural; for you will be glad to know that everything seems most happily
arranged, except so far as the religious difficulty goes. As for Father
Riccoboni, he is a quiet intelligent man, who passes most of his time in
the library, but makes himself very agreeable at meals. And now here we
are arrived.'
They had reached the south side of the house--an eighteenth-century
building in the red sandstone of the district, giving on a grassy
terrace. There the host's maiden sister, Lady Mary Guevara, was seated
by a tea-table, surrounded by dogs--two collies and an Aberdeenshire
terrier. Beside her were Father Riccoboni, with a newspaper in his hand,
Lady Alice, with whom Logan had already some acquaintance, and the Prince
of Scalastro. Logan was presented, and took quiet notes of the assembly,
while the usual chatter about the weather and his journey got itself
transacted, and the view of the valley of the Coquet had justice done to
its charms.
Lady Mary was very like a feminine edition of the Earl, refined, shy, and
with silvery hair. Lady Alice was a pretty, quiet type of the English
girl who is not up to date, with a particularly happy and winning
expression. The Prince was of a Teutonic fairness; for the Royal caste,
whatever the nationality, is to a great extent made in Germany, and
retains the physical characteristics of that ancient forest people whom
the Roman historian (never having met them) so lovingly idealised. The
Prince was tall, well-proportioned, and looked 'every inch a soldier.'
There were a great many inches.
As for Father Riccoboni, the learned have remarked that there are two
chief clerical types: the dark, ascetic type, to be found equally among
Unitarians, Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Catholics, and the
burly, well-fed, genial type, which 'cometh eating and drinking.' The
Father was of this second kind; a lusty man--not that you could call him
a sensual-looking man, still less was he a noisy humourist; but he had a
considerable jowl, a strong jaw, a wide, firm mouth, and large teeth,
very white and square. Logan thought that he, too, had the makings of a
soldier, and also felt almost certain that he had seen him before. But
where?--for Logan's acquaintance with the clergy, especially the foreign
clergy, was not extensive. The Father spoke English very well, with a
slight German accent and a little hoarseness; his voice, too, did not
sound unfamiliar to Logan. But he delved in his subconscious memory in
vain; there was the Father, a man with whom he certainly had some
associations, yet he could not place the man.
A bell jangled somewhere without as they took tea and tattled; and,
looking towards the place whence the sound came, Logan saw a little group
of Italian musicians walking down the avenue which led through the park
to the east side of the house and the main entrance. They entered, with
many obeisances, through the old gate of floreated wrought iron, and
stopping there, about forty yards away, they piped, while a girl, in the
usual _contadina_ dress, clashed her cymbals and danced not ungracefully.
The Father, who either did not like music or did not like it of that
sort, sighed, rose from his seat, and went into the house by an open
French window. The Prince also rose, but he went forward to the group of
Italians, and spoke to them for a few minutes. If he did not like that
sort of music, he took the more excellent way, for the action of his
elbow indicated a movement of his hand towards his waistcoat-pocket. He
returned to the party on the terrace, and the itinerant artists, after
more obeisances, walked slowly back by the way they had come.
'They are Genoese,' said the Prince, 'tramping north to Scotland for the
holiday season.'
'They will meet strong competition from the pipers,' said Logan, while
the Earl rose, and walked rapidly after the musicians.
'I do not like the pipes myself,' Logan went on, 'but when I hear them in
a London street my heart does warm to the skirl and the shabby tartans.'
'I feel with you,' said the Prince, 'when I see the smiling faces of
these poor sons of the South among--well, your English faces are not
usually joyous--if one may venture to be critical.'
He looked up, and, his eyes meeting those of Lady Alice, he had occasion
to learn that every rule has its exceptions. The young people rose and
wandered off on the lawn, while the Earl came back and said that he had
invited the foreigners to refresh themselves.
'I saw Father Riccoboni in the hall, and asked him to speak to them a
little in their own lingo,' he added, 'though he does not appear to be
partial to the music of his native land.'
'He seems to be of the Romansch districts,' Logan said; 'his accent is
almost German.'
'I daresay he will make himself understood,' said the Earl. 'Do you
understand this house, Mr. Logan? It looks very modern, does it not?'
'Early Georgian, surely?' said Logan.
'The shell, at least on this side, is early Georgian--I rather regret it;
but the interior, northward, except for the rooms in front here, is of
the good old times. We have secret stairs--not that there is any secret
about them--and odd cubicles, in the old Border keep, which was re-faced
about 1750; and we have a priest's hole or two, in which Father Riccoboni
might have been safe, but would have been very uncomfortable, three
hundred years ago. I can show you the places to-morrow; indeed, we have
very little in the way of amusement to offer you. Do you fish?'
'I always take a trout rod about with me, in case of the best,' said
Logan, 'but this is "soolky July," you know, and the trout usually seem
sound asleep.'
'Their habits are dissipated here,' said Lord Embleton. 'They begin to
feed about ten o'clock at night. Did you ever try night fishing with the
bustard?'
'The bustard?' asked Logan.
'It is a big fluffy fly, like a draggled mayfly, fished wet, in the dark.
I used to be fond of it, but age,' sighed the Earl, 'and fear of
rheumatism have separated the bustard and me.'
'I should like to try it very much,' said Logan. 'I often fished Tweed
and Whitadder, at night, when I was a boy, but we used a small dark fly.'
'You must be very careful if you fish at night here,' said Lady Mary. 'It
is so dark in the valley under the woods, and the Coquet is so dangerous.
The flat sandstone ledges are like the floor of a room, and then a step
may land you in water ten feet deep, flowing in a narrow channel. I am
always anxious when anyone fishes here at night. You can swim?'
Logan confessed that he was not destitute of that accomplishment, and
that he liked, of all things, to be by a darkling river, where you came
across the night side of nature in the way of birds, beasts, and fishes.
'Mr. Logan can take very good care of himself, I am sure,' said Lord
Embleton, 'and Fenwick knows every inch of the water, and will go with
him. Fenwick is the water-keeper, Mr. Logan, and represents man in the
fishing and shooting stage. His one thought is the destruction of animal
life. He is a very happy man.'
'I never knew but one keeper who was not,' said Logan. 'That was in
Galloway. He hated shooting, he hated fishing. My impression is that he
was what we call a "Stickit Minister."'
'Nothing of that about Fenwick,' said the Earl. 'I daresay you would
like to see your room?'
Thither Logan was conducted, through a hall hung with pikes, and guns,
and bows, and clubs from the South Seas, and Zulu shields and assegais,
while a few empty figures in tilting armour, lance in hand, stood on
pedestals. Thence up a broad staircase, along a little gallery, up a few
steps of an old 'turnpike' staircase, Logan reached his room, which
looked down through the trees of the cliff to the Coquet.
Dinner passed in the silver light of the long northern day, that threw
strange blue reflections, softer than sapphire, on the ancient plate--the
ambassadorial plate of a Jacobean ancestor.
'It should all have gone to the melting-pot for King Charles's service,'
said the Earl, with a sigh, 'but my ancestor of that day stood for the
Parliament.'
Logan's position at dinner was better for observation than for
entertainment. He sat on the right hand of Lady Mary, where the Prince
ought to have been seated, but Lady Alice sat on her father's left, and
next her, of course, the Prince. 'Love rules the camp, the court, the
grove,' and Love deranged the accustomed order, for the Prince sat
between Lady Alice and Logan. Opposite Logan, and at Lady Mary's left,
was the Jesuit, and next him, Scremerston, beside whom was Miss
Willoughby, on the Earl's right. Inevitably the conversation of the
Prince and Lady Alice was mainly directed to each other--so much so that
Logan did not once perceive the princely eyes attracted to Miss
Willoughby opposite to him, though it was not easy for another to look at
anyone else. Logan, in the pauses of his rather conventional
entertainment by Lady Mary, _did_ look, and he was amazed no less by the
beauty than by the spirits and gaiety of the young lady so recently left
forlorn by the recreant Jephson. This flower of the Record Office and of
the British Museum was obviously not destined to blush unseen any longer.
She manifestly dazzled Scremerston, who seemed to remember Miss Bangs,
her charms, and her dollars no more than Miss Willoughby appeared to
remember the treacherous Don.
Scremerston was very unlike his father: he was a small, rather fair man,
with a slight moustache, a close-clipped beard, and little grey eyes with
pink lids. His health was not good: he had been invalided home from the
Imperial Yeomanry, after a slight wound and a dangerous attack of enteric
fever, and he had secured a pair for the rest of the Session. He was not
very clever, but he certainly laughed sufficiently at what Miss
Willoughby said, who also managed to entertain the Earl with great
dexterity and _aplomb_. Meanwhile Logan and the Jesuit amused the
excellent Lady Mary as best they might, which was not saying much. Lady
Mary, though extremely amiable, was far from brilliant, and never having
met a Jesuit before, she regarded Father Riccoboni with a certain
hereditary horror, as an animal of a rare species, and, of habits perhaps
startling and certainly perfidious. However, the lady was philanthropic
in a rural way, and Father Riccoboni enlightened her as to the reasons
why his enterprising countrymen leave their smiling land, and open small
ice-shops in little English towns, or, less ambitious, invest their
slender capital in a monkey and a barrel-organ.
'I don't so very much mind barrel-organs myself,' said Logan; 'I don't
know anything prettier than to see the little girls dancing to the music
in a London side street.'
'But do not the musicians all belong to that dreadful Camorra?' asked the
lady.
'Not if they come from the North, madam,' said the Jesuit. 'And do not
all your Irish reapers belong to that dreadful Land League, or whatever
it is called?'
'They are all Pap---' said Lady Mary, who then stopped, blushed, and
said, with some presence of mind, 'paupers, I fear, but they are quite
safe and well-behaved on this side of the Irish Channel.'
'And so are our poor people,' said the Jesuit. 'If they occasionally use
the knife a little--_naturam expellas furca_, Mr. Logan, but the knife is
a different thing--it is only in a homely war among themselves that they
handle it in the East-end of London.'
'_Coelum non animum_,' said Logan, determined not to be outdone in
classical felicities; and, indeed, he thought his own quotation the more
appropriate.
At this moment a great silvery-grey Persian cat, which had sat hitherto
in a stereotyped Egyptian attitude on the arm of the Earl's chair, leaped
down and sprang affectionately on the shoulder of the Jesuit. He
shuddered strongly and obviously repressed an exclamation with
difficulty, as he gently removed the cat.
'Fie, Meriamoun!' said the Earl, as the puss resumed her Egyptian pose
beside him. 'Shall I send the animal out of the room? I know some
people cannot endure a cat,' and he mentioned the gallant Field Marshal
who is commonly supposed to share this infirmity.
'By no means, my lord,' said the Jesuit, who looked strangely pale. 'Cats
have an extraordinary instinct for caressing people who happen to be born
with exactly the opposite instinct. I am like the man in Aristotle who
was afraid of the cat.'
'I wish we knew more about that man,' said Miss Willoughby, who was
stroking Meriamoun. 'Are _you_ afraid of cats, Lord Scremerston?--but
you, I suppose, are afraid of nothing.'
'I am terribly afraid of all manner of flying things that buzz and bite,'
said Scremerston.
'Except bullets,' said Miss Willoughby--Beauty rewarding Valour with a
smile and a glance so dazzling that the good little Yeoman blushed with
pleasure.
'It is a shame!' thought Logan. 'I don't like it now I see it.'
'As to horror of cats,' said the Earl, 'I suppose evolution can explain
it. I wonder how they would work it out in _Science Jottings_. There is
a great deal of electricity in a cat.'
'Evolution can explain everything,' said the Jesuit demurely, 'but who
can explain evolution?'
'As to electricity in the cat,' said Logan, 'I daresay there is as much
in the dog, only everybody has tried stroking a cat in the dark to see
the sparks fly, and who ever tried stroking a dog in the dark, for
experimental purposes?--did you, Lady Mary?'
Lady Mary never had tried, but the idea was new to her, and she would
make the experiment in winter.
'Deer skins, stroked, do sparkle,' said Logan, 'I read that in a book. I
daresay horses do, only nobody tries. I don't think electricity is the
explanation of why some people can't bear cats.'
'Electricity is the modern explanation of everything--love, faith,
everything,' remarked the Jesuit; 'but, as I said, who shall explain
electricity?'
Lady Mary, recognising the orthodoxy of these sentiments, felt more
friendly towards Father Riccoboni. He might be a Jesuit, but he was
_bien pensant_.
'What I am afraid of is not a cat, but a mouse,' said Miss Willoughby,
and the two other ladies admitted that their own terrors were of the same
kind.
'What I am afraid of,' said the Prince, 'is a banging door, by day or
night. I am not, otherwise, of a nervous constitution, but if I hear a
door bang, I _must_ go and hunt for it, and stop the noise, either by
shutting the door, or leaving it wide open. I am a sound sleeper, but,
if a door bangs, it wakens me at once. I try not to notice it. I hope
it will leave off. Then it does leave off--that is the artfulness of
it--and, just as you are falling asleep, _knock_ it goes! A double
knock, sometimes. Then I simply _must_ get up, and hunt for that door,
upstairs or downstairs--'
'Or in my--' interrupted Miss Willoughby, and stopped, thinking better of
it, and not finishing the quotation, which passed unheard.
'That research has taken me into some odd places,' the Prince ended; and
Logan reminded the Society of the Bravest of the Brave. What _he_ was
afraid of was a pair of tight boots.
These innocent conversations ended, and, after dinner, the company walked
about or sat beneath the stars in the fragrant evening air, the Earl
seated by Miss Willoughby, Scremerston smoking with Logan; while the
white dress of Lady Alice flitted ghost-like on the lawn, and the tip of
the Prince's cigar burned red in the neighbourhood. In the drawing-room
Lady Mary was tentatively conversing with the Jesuit, that mild but
probably dangerous animal. She had the curiosity which pious maiden
ladies feel about the member of a community which they only know through
novels. Certainly this Jesuit was very unlike Aramis.
'And who _is_ he like?' Logan happened to be asking Scremerston at that
moment. 'I know the face--I know the voice; hang it!--where have I seen
the man?'
'Now you mention it,' said Scremerston, '_I_ seem to remember him too.
But I can't place him. What do you think of a game of billiards,
father?' he asked, rising and addressing Lord Embleton. 'Rosamond--Miss
Willoughby, I mean--'
'Oh, we are cousins, Lord Embleton says, and you may call me Rosamond. I
have never had any cousins before,' interrupted the young lady.
'Rosamond,' said Scremerston, with a gulp, 'is getting on wonderfully
well for a beginner.'
'Then let us proceed with her education: it is growing chilly, too,' said
the Earl; and they all went to billiards, the Jesuit marking with much
attention and precision. Later he took a cue, and was easily the master
of every man there, though better acquainted, he said, with the foreign
game. The late Pope used to play, he said, nearly as well as Mr. Herbert
Spencer. Even for a beginner, Miss Willoughby was not a brilliant
player; but she did not cut the cloth, and her arms were remarkably
beautiful--an excellent but an extremely rare thing in woman. She was
rewarded, finally, by a choice between bedroom candles lit and offered by
her younger and her elder cousins, and, after a momentary hesitation,
accepted that of the Earl.
'How is this going to end?' thought Logan, when he was alone. 'Miss
Bangs is out of the running, that is certain: millions of dollars cannot
bring her near Miss Willoughby with Scremerston. The old gentleman ought
to like that--it relieves him from the bacon and lard, and the dollars,
and the associations with a Straddle; and then Miss Willoughby's family
is all right, but the girl is reckless. A demon has entered into her:
she used to be so quiet. I'd rather marry Miss Bangs without the
dollars. Then it is all very well for Scremerston to yield to Venus
Verticordia, and transfer his heart to this new enchantress. But, if I
am not mistaken, the Earl himself is much more kind than kin. The heart
has no age, and he is a very well-preserved peer. You might take him for
little more than forty, though he quite looked his years when I saw him
first. Well, _I_ am safe enough, in spite of Merton's warning: this new
Helen has no eyes for me, and the Prince has no eyes for her, I think.
But who is the Jesuit?'
Logan fought with his memory till he fell asleep, but he recovered no
gleam of recollection about the holy man.
It did not seem to Logan, next day, that he was in for a very lively
holiday. His host carried off Miss Willoughby to the muniment-room after
breakfast; that was an advantage he had over Scremerston, who was
decidedly restless and ill at ease. He took Logan to see the keeper, and
they talked about fish and examined local flies, and Logan arranged to go
and try the trout with the bustard some night; and then they pottered
about, and ate cherries in the garden, and finally the Earl found them
half asleep in the smoking-room. He routed the Jesuit out of the
library, where he was absorbed in a folio containing the works of the
sainted Father Parsons, and then the Earl showed Logan and Father
Riccoboni over the house. From a window of the gallery Scremerston could
be descried playing croquet with Miss Willoughby, an apparition radiant
in white.
The house was chiefly remarkable for queer passages, which, beginning
from the roof of the old tower, above the Father's chamber, radiated
about, emerging in unexpected places. The priests' holes had offered to
the persecuted clergy of old times the choice between being grilled erect
behind a chimney, or of lying flat in a chamber about the size of a
coffin near the roof, where the martyr Jesuits lived on suction, like the
snipe, absorbing soup from a long straw passed through a wall into a
neighbouring garret.
'Those were cruel times,' said Father Riccoboni, who presently, at
luncheon, showed that he could thoroughly appreciate the tender mercies
of the present or Christian era. Logan watched him, and once when,
something that interested him being said, the Father swept the table with
his glance without raising his head, a memory for a fraction of a moment
seemed to float towards the surface of Logan's consciousness. Even as
when an angler, having hooked a salmon, a monster of the stream, long the
fish bores down impetuous, seeking the sunken rocks, disdainful of the
steel, and the dark wave conceals him; then anon is beheld a gleam of
silver, and again is lost to view, and the heart of the man rejoices--even
so fugitive a glimpse had Logan of what he sought in the depths of
memory. But it fled, and still he was puzzled.
Logan loafed out after luncheon to a seat on the lawn in the shade of a
tree. They were all to be driven over to an Abbey not very far away,
for, indeed, in July, there is little for a man to do in the country.
Logan sat and mused. Looking up he saw Miss Willoughby approaching,
twirling an open parasol on her shoulder. Her face was radiant; of old
it had often looked as if it might be stormy, as if there were thunder
behind those dark eyebrows. Logan rose, but the lady sat down on the
garden seat, and he followed her example.
'This is better than Bloomsbury, Mr. Logan, and cocoa _pour tout potage_:
singed cocoa usually.'
'The _potage_ here is certainly all that heart can wish,' said Logan.
'The chrysalis,' said Miss Willoughby, 'in its wildest moments never
dreamed of being a butterfly, as the man said in the sermon; and I feel
like a butterfly that remembers being a chrysalis. Look at me now!'
'I could look for ever,' said Logan, 'like the sportsman in Keats's
_Grecian Urn_: "For ever let me look, and thou be fair!"'
'I am so sorry for people in town,' said Miss Willoughby. 'Don't you
wish dear old Milo was here?'
Milo was the affectionate nickname--a tribute to her charms--borne by
Miss Markham at St. Ursula's.
'How can I wish that anyone was here but you?' asked Logan. 'But,
indeed, as to her being here, I should like to know in what capacity she
was a guest.'
The Clytemnestra glance came into Miss Willoughby's grey eyes for a
moment, but she was not to be put out of humour.
'To be here as a kinswoman, and an historian, with a maid--fancy me with
a maid!--and everything handsome about me, is sufficiently excellent for
me, Mr. Logan; and if it were otherwise, do you disapprove of the
proceedings of your own Society? But there is Lord Scremerston calling
to us, and a four-in-hand waiting at the door. And I am to sit on the
box-seat. Oh, this is better than the dingy old Record Office all day.'
With these words Miss Willoughby tripped over the sod as lightly as the
Fairy Queen, and Logan slowly followed. No; he did _not_ approve of the
proceedings of his Society as exemplified by Miss Willoughby, and he was
nearly guilty of falling asleep during the drive to Winderby Abbey.
Scremerston was not much more genial, for his father was driving and
conversing very gaily with his fair kinswoman.
'Talk about a distant cousin!' thought Logan, who in fact felt
ill-treated. However deep in love a man may be, he does not like to see
a fair lady conspicuously much more interested in other members of his
sex than in himself.
The Abbey was a beautiful ruin, and Father Riccoboni did not conceal from
Lady Mary the melancholy emotions with which it inspired him.
'When shall our prayers be heard?' he murmured. 'When shall England
return to her Mother's bosom?'
Lady Mary said nothing, but privately trusted that the winds would
disperse the orisons of which the Father spoke. Perhaps nuns had been
bricked up in these innocent-looking mossy walls, thought Lady Mary,
whose ideas on this matter were derived from a scene in the poem of
_Marmion_. And deep in Lady Mary's heart was a half-formed wish that, if
there was to be any bricking up, Miss Willoughby might be the interesting
victim. Unlike her brother the Earl, she was all for the Bangs alliance.
Scremerston took the reins on the homeward way, the Earl being rather
fatigued; and, after dinner, _two_ white robes flitted ghost-like on the
lawn, and the light which burned red beside one of them was the cigar-tip
of Scremerston. The Earl had fallen asleep in the drawing-room, and
Logan took a lonely stroll, much regretting that he had come to a house
where he felt decidedly 'out of it.' He wandered down to the river, and
stood watching. He was beside the dark-brown water in the latest
twilight, beside a long pool with a boat moored on the near bank. He sat
down in the boat pensively, and then--what was that? It was the sound of
a heavy trout rising. '_Plop_, _plop_!' They were feeding all round
him.
'By Jove! I'll try the bustard to-morrow night, and then I'll go back to
town next day,' thought Logan. 'I am doing no good here, and I don't
like it. I shall tell Merton that I have moral objections to the whole
affair. Miserable, mercenary fraud!' Thus, feeling very moral and
discontented, Logan walked back to the house, carefully avoiding the
ghostly robes that still glimmered on the lawn, and did not re-enter the
house till bedtime.
The following day began as the last had done; Lord Embleton and Miss
Willoughby retiring to the muniment-room, the lovers vanishing among the
walks. Scremerston later took Logan to consult Fenwick, who visibly
brightened at the idea of night-fishing.
'You must take one of those long landing-nets, Logan,' said Scremerston.
'They are about as tall as yourself, and as stout as lance-shafts. They
are for steadying you when you wade, and feeling the depth of the water
in front of you.'
Scremerston seemed very pensive. The day was hot; they wandered to the
smoking-room. Scremerston took up a novel, which he did not read; Logan
began a letter to Merton--a gloomy epistle.
'I say, Logan,' suddenly said Scremerston, 'if your letter is not very
important, I wish you would listen to me for a moment.'
Logan turned round. 'Fire away,' he said; 'my letter can wait.'
Scremerston was in an attitude of deep dejection. Logan lit a cigarette
and waited.
'Logan, I am the most miserable beggar alive.'
'What is the matter? You seem rather in-and-out in your moods,' said
Logan.
'Why, you know, I am in a regular tight place. I don't know how to put
it. You see, I can't help thinking that--that--I have rather committed
myself--it seems a beastly conceited thing to say--that there's a girl
who likes me, I'm afraid.'
'I don't want to be inquisitive, but is she in this country?' asked
Logan.
'No; she's at Homburg.'
'Has it gone very far? Have you _said_ anything?' asked Logan.
'No; my father did not like it. I hoped to bring him round.'
'Have you _written_ anything? Do you correspond?'
'No, but I'm afraid I have _looked_ a lot.'
As the Viscount Scremerston's eyes were by no means fitted to express
with magnetic force the language of the affections, Logan had to command
his smile.
'But why have you changed your mind, if you liked her?' he asked.
'Oh, _you_ know very well! Can anybody see her and not love her?' said
Scremerston, with a vagueness in his pronouns, but referring to Miss
Willoughby.
Logan was inclined to reply that he could furnish, at first hand, an
exception to the rule, but this appeared tactless.
'No one, I daresay, whose affections were not already engaged, could see
her without loving her; but I thought yours had been engaged to a lady
now at Homburg?'
'So did I,' said the wretched Scremerston, 'but I was mistaken. Oh,
Logan, you don't know the difference! _This_ is genuine biz,' remarked
the afflicted nobleman with much simplicity. He went on: 'Then there's
my father--you know him. He was against the other affair, but, if he
thinks I have committed myself and then want to back out, why, with his
ideas, he'd rather see me dead. But I can't go on with the other thing
now: I simply can _not_. I've a good mind to go out after rabbits, and
pot myself crawling through a hedge.'
'Oh, nonsense!' said Logan; 'that is stale and superfluous. For all that
I can see, there is no harm done. The young lady, depend upon it, won't
break her heart. As a matter of fact, they don't--_we_ do. You have
only to sit tight. You are no more committed than I am. You would only
make both of you wretched if you went and committed yourself now, when
you don't want to do it. In your position I would certainly sit tight:
don't commit yourself--either here or there, so to speak; or, if you
can't sit tight, make a bolt for it. Go to Norway. I am very strongly
of opinion that the second plan is the best. But, anyhow, keep up your
pecker. You are all right--I give you my word that I think you are all
right.'
'Thanks, old cock,' said Scremerston. 'Sorry to have bored you, but I
_had_ to speak to somebody.'
* * * * * *
'Best thing you could do,' said Logan. 'You'll feel ever so much better.
That kind of worry comes of keeping things to oneself, till molehills
look mountains. If you like I'll go with you to Norway myself.'
'Thanks, awfully,' said Scremerston, but he did not seem very keen. Poor
little Scremerston!
Logan 'breasted the brae' from the riverside to the house. His wading-
boots were heavy, for he had twice got in over the tops thereof; heavy
was his basket that Fenwick carried behind him, but light was Logan's
heart, for the bustard had slain its dozens of good trout. He and the
keeper emerged from the wood on the level of the lawn. All the great
mass of the house lay dark before them. Logan was to let himself in by
the locked French window; for it was very late--about two in the morning.
He had the key of the window-door in his pocket. A light moved through
the long gallery: he saw it pass each window and vanish. There was dead
silence: not a leaf stirred. Then there rang out a pistol-shot, or was
it two pistol-shots? Logan ran for the window, his rod, which he had
taken down after fishing, in his hand.
'Hurry to the back door, Fenwick!' he said; and Fenwick, throwing down
the creel, but grasping the long landing-net, flew to the back way. Logan
opened the drawing-room window, took out his matchbox, with trembling
ringers lit a candle, and, with the candle in one hand, the rod in the
other, sped through the hall, and along a back passage leading to the
gunroom. He had caught a glimpse of the Earl running down the main
staircase, and had guessed that the trouble was on the ground floor. As
he reached the end of the long dark passage, Fenwick leaped in by the
back entrance, of which the door was open. What Logan saw was a writhing
group--the Prince of Scalastro struggling in the arms of three men: a
long white heap lay crumpled in a corner. Fenwick, at this moment, threw
the landing-net over the head of one of the Prince's assailants, and with
a twist, held the man half choked and powerless. Fenwick went on
twisting, and, with the leverage of the long shaft of the net, dragged
the wretch off the Prince, and threw him down. Another of the men turned
on Logan with a loud guttural oath, and was raising a pistol. Logan knew
the voice at last--knew the Jesuit now. '_Rien ne va plus_!' he cried,
and lunged, with all the force and speed of an expert fencer, at the
fellow's face with the point of the rod. The metal joints clicked and
crashed through the man's mouth, his pistol dropped, and he staggered,
cursing through his blood, against the wall. Logan picked up the
revolver as the Prince, whose hands were now free, floored the third of
his assailants with an upper cut. Logan thrust the revolver into the
Prince
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