Lang Andrew
The Disentanglers
‘But that would be an untruth,’ said Mrs. Malory.
‘And what have I been acting for the last ten days?’ asked Mrs. Brown-Smith, rather tartly. ‘You must settle your excuse with your conscience.’
‘The cook’s mother really is ill,’ said Mrs. Malory, ‘and she wants dreadfully to go and see her. That would do.’
‘All things work together for good. The cook must have a telegram also,’ said Mrs. Brown-Smith.
The day, which had been extremely hot, clouded over. By five it was raining: by six there was a deluge. At seven, Matilda and the Vidame were evicted from their dusky window seat by the butler with a damp telegraph envelope. The Vidame opened it, and handed it to Matilda. His presence at Paris was instantly demanded. The Vidame was desolated, but his absence could not be for more than five days. Bradshaw was hunted for, and found: the 9.50 train was opportune. The Vidame’s man packed his clothes. Mrs. Brown-Smith was apprised of these occurrences in the drawing-room before dinner.
‘I am very sorry for dear Matilda,’ she cried. ‘But it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. I will drive over with the Vidame and astonish my Johnnie by greeting him at the station. I must run and change my dress.’
She ran, she returned in morning costume, she heard from Mrs. Malory of the summons by telegram calling the cook to her moribund mother. ‘I must send her over to the station in a dog-cart,’ said Mrs. Malory.
‘Oh no,’ cried Mrs. Brown-Smith, with impetuous kindness, ‘not on a night like this; it is a cataclysm. There will be plenty of room for the cook as well as for Methven and me, and the Vidame, in the brougham. Or he can sit on the box.’
The Vidame really behaved very well. The introduction of the cook, to quote an old novelist, ‘had formed no part of his profligate scheme of pleasure.’ To elope from a hospitable roof, with a married lady, accompanied by her maid, might be an act not without precedent. But that a cook should come to form une partie carrée, on such an occasion, that a lover should be squeezed with three women in a brougham, was a trying novelty.
The Vidame smiled, ‘An artist so excellent,’ he said, ‘deserves a far greater sacrifice.’
So it was arranged. After a tender and solitary five minutes with Matilda, the Vidame stepped, last, into the brougham. The coachman whipped up the horses, Matilda waved her kerchief from the porch, the guilty lovers drove away. Presently Mrs. Malory received, from her daughter’s maid, the letter destined by the Vidame for Matilda. Mrs. Malory locked it up in her despatch box.
The runaways, after a warm and uncomfortable drive of three-quarters of an hour, during which the cook wept bitterly and was very unwell, reached the station. Contrary to the Vidame’s wish, Mrs. Brown-Smith, in an ulster and a veil, insisted on perambulating the platform, buying the whole of Mr. Hall Caine’s works as far as they exist in sixpenny editions. Bells rang, porters stationed themselves in a line, like fielders, a train arrived, the 9.17 from Liverpool, twenty minutes late. A short stout gentleman emerged from a smoking carriage, Mrs. Brown-Smith, starting from the Vidame’s side, raised her veil, and threw her arms round the neck of the traveller.
‘You didn’t expect me to meet you on such a night, did you, Johnnie?’ she cried with a break in her voice.
‘Awfully glad to see you, Tiny,’ said the short gentleman. ‘On such a night!’
After thus unconsciously quoting the Merchant of Venice, Mr. Brown-Smith turned to his valet. ‘Don’t forget the fishing-rods,’ he said.
‘I took the opportunity of driving over with a gentleman from Upwold,’ said Mrs. Brown-Smith. ‘Let me introduce him. Methven,’ to her maid, ‘where is the Vidame de la Lain?’
‘I heard him say that he must help Mrs. Andrews, the cook, to find a seat, Ma’am,’ said the maid.
‘He really is kind,’ said Mrs. Brown-Smith, ‘but I fear we can’t wait to say good-bye to him.’
Three-quarters of an hour later, Mr. Brown-Smith and his wife were at supper at Upwold.
Next day, as the cook’s departure had postponed the shooting party, they took leave of their hostess, and returned to their moors in Perthshire.
Weeks passed, with no message from the Vidame. He did not answer a letter which Mrs. Malory allowed Matilda to write. The mother never showed to the girl the note which he had left with her maid. The absence and the silence of the lover were enough. Matilda never knew that among the four packed in the brougham on that night of rain, one had been eloping with a married lady – who returned to supper.
The papers were ‘requested to state that the marriage announced between the Vidame de la Lain and Miss Malory will not take place.’ Why it did not take place was known only to Mrs. Malory, Mrs. Brown-Smith, and Merton.
Matilda thought that her lover had been kidnapped and arrested, by the Secret Police of France, for his part in a scheme to restore the Royal House, the White Flag, the Lilies, the children of St. Louis. At Mrs. Brown-Smith’s place in Perthshire, in the following autumn, Matilda met Sir Aylmer Jardine. Then she knew that what she had taken for love (in the previous year) had been,
‘Not love, but love’s first flush in youth.’
They always do make that discovery, bless them! Lady Jardine is now wrapped up in her baby boy. The mother of the cook recovered her health.
IX. ADVENTURE OF THE LADY NOVELIST AND THE VACCINATIONIST
‘Mr. Frederick Warren’ – so Merton read the card presented to him on a salver of Limoges enamel by the office-boy.
‘Show the gentleman in.’
Mr. Warren entered. He was a tall and portly person, with a red face, red whiskers, and a tightly buttoned frock-coat, which more expressed than hid his goodly and prominent proportions. He bowed, and Merton invited him to be seated. It struck Merton as a singular circumstance that his visitor wore on each arm the crimson badge of the newly vaccinated.
Mr. Warren sat down, and, taking a red silk handkerchief out of the crown of his hat, he wiped his countenance. The day was torrid, and Mr. Merton hospitably offered an effervescent draught.
‘Without the whisky, if you please, sir,’ said Mr. Warren, in a provincial accent. He pointed to a blue ribbon in the buttonhole of his coat, indicating that he was conscientiously opposed to the use of alcoholic refreshment in all its forms.
‘Two glasses of Apollinaris water,’ said Merton to the office-boy; and the innocent fluid was brought, while Merton silently admired his client’s arrangement in blue and crimson. When the thirst of that gentleman had been assuaged, he entered upon business thus:
‘Sir, I am a man of principle!’
Merton congratulated him; the age was lax, he said, and principle was needed. He wondered internally what he was going to be asked to subscribe to, or whether his vote only was required.
‘Sir, have you been vaccinated?’ asked the client earnestly.
‘Really,’ said Merton, ‘I do not quite understand your interest in a matter so purely personal.’
‘Personal, sir? Not at all. It is the first of public duties – the debt that every man, woman, and child owes to his or her country. Have you been vaccinated, sir?’
‘Why, if you insist on knowing,’ said Merton, ‘I have, though I do not see – ’
‘Recently?’ asked the visitor.
‘Yes, last month; but I cannot conjecture why – ’
‘Enough, sir,’ said Mr. Warren. ‘I am a man of principle. Had you not done your duty in this matter by your country, I should have been compelled to seek some other practitioner in your line.’
‘I was not aware that my firm had any competitors in our line of business,’ said Merton. ‘But perhaps you have come here under some misapprehension. There is a firm of family solicitors on the floor above, and next them are the offices of a company interested in a patent explosive. If your affairs, or your political ideas, demand a legal opinion, or an outlet in an explosive which is widely recommended by the Continental Press – ’
‘For what do you take me, sir?’ asked Mr. Warren.
‘For a Temperance Anarchist,’ Merton would have liked to reply, ‘judging by your colours’; but he repressed this retort, and mildly answered, ‘Perhaps it would be as much to the purpose to ask, for what do you take me?’
‘For the representative of Messrs. Gray & Graham, the specialists in matrimonial affairs,’ answered the client; and Merton said that he would be happy if Mr. Warren would enter into the details of his business.
‘I am the ex-Mayor of Bulcester,’ said Mr. Warren, ‘and, as I told you, a man of principle. My attachment to the Temperance cause’ – and he fingered his blue ribbon – ‘procured for me the honour of a defeat at the last general election, but endeared me to the consciences of the Nonconformist element in the constituency. Yet, sir, I am at this moment the most unpopular man in Bulcester; but I shall fight it out – I shall fight it to my latest breath.’
‘Is Bulcester, then, such an intemperate constituency? I had understood that the Nonconformist interest was strong there,’ said Merton.
‘So it is, sir, so it is; but the interest is now bound to the chariot wheels of the truckling Toryism of our time – to the sycophants who basely made vaccination permissive, and paltered with the Conscientious Objector. These badges, sir’ – the client pointed to his own crimson decorations – ‘proclaim that I have been vaccinated on both arms, as a testimony to the immortal though, in Bulcester, maligned discovery of the great Jenner. Sir, I am hooted in the public streets of my native town, where Anti-vaccinationism is a frenzy. Mr. Rider Haggard, the author of Dr. Therne, has been burned in effigy for his thrilling and manly protest to which I owe my own conversion.’
‘Then the conversion is relatively recent?’ asked Merton.
‘It dates since my reading of that powerful argument, sir; that appeal to reason which overcame my prejudice, for I was a prominent A. V.’
‘Ave?’ asked Merton.
‘A. V., sir – Anti-Vaccinationist. A. C. D. A. too, and always,’ he added proudly; but Merton did not think it prudent to ask for further explanations.
‘An A. V. I was, an A. V. I am no longer; and I defy popular clamour, accompanied by brickbats, to shake my principles.’
‘Justum et tinacem propositi virum,’ murmured Merton, adding, ‘All that is very interesting, but, my dear sir, while I admire the tenacity of your principles, will you permit me to ask, what has vaccination to do with the special business of our firm?’
‘Why, sir, I have a family, and my eldest son – ’
‘Does he decline to be vaccinated?’ asked Merton, in a sympathetic voice.
‘No, sir, or he would never darken my doorway,’ exclaimed this more than Roman father. ‘But he is engaged, and I can never give my consent; and if he marries that girl, the firm ceases to be “Warren & Son, wax-cloth manufacturers.” That’s all, sir – that’s all.’
Mr. Warren again applied his red handkerchief to his glowing features.
‘And what, may I ask, are the grounds of your objection to this engagement? Social inequality?’ asked Merton.
‘No, the young lady is the daughter of one of our leading ministers, Mr. Truman – author of The Bishops to the Block– but principles are concerned.’
‘You cannot mean that the young lady is excessively addicted to the – wine cup?’ asked Merton gravely. ‘In melancholy cases of that kind Mr. Hall Caine, in a romance, has recommended hypnotic treatment, but we do not venture to interfere.’
‘You misunderstand me, sir,’ replied Mr. Warren, frowning. ‘The young woman, on principle, as they call it, has never been vaccinated. Like most of our prominent citizens, her father (otherwise an excellent man) objects to what he calls “The Worship of the Calf” on grounds of conscience.’
‘Conscience! It is a hard thing to constrain the conscience,’ murmured Merton, quoting a remark of Queen Mary to John Knox.
‘What is conscience without knowledge, sir?’ asked the client, using – without knowing it – the very argument of Mr. Knox to the Queen.
‘You have no other objections to the alliance?’ asked Merton.
‘None whatever, sir. She is a good and good-looking girl. On most important points we are thoroughly agreed. She won a prize essay on Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. Of course Shakespeare could not have written them – a thoroughly uneducated man, who never could have passed the fourth standard. But look at the plays! There are things in them that, with all our modern advantages, are beyond me. I admit they are beyond me. “To be, and to do, and to suffer,”’ declaimed Mr. Warren, apparently under the impression that this is part of Hamlet’s soliloquy – ‘Shakespeare could never have written that. Where did he learn grammar?’
‘Where, indeed?’ replied Merton. ‘But as the lady is in all other respects so suitable a match, cannot this one difficulty be got over?’
‘Impossible, sir; my son could not slice the sleeve in her dress and inflict this priceless boon on her with affectionate violence. Even the hero of Dr. Therne failed there – ’
‘And rather irritated his pretty Jane,’ added Merton, who remembered this heroic adventure. ‘It is a very hard case,’ he went on, ‘but I fear that our methods are powerless. The only chance would be to divert young Mr. Warren’s affections into some other more enlightened channel. That expedient has often been found efficacious. Is he very deeply enamoured? Would not the society of another pretty and intelligent girl perhaps work wonders?’
‘Perhaps it might, sir, but I don’t know where to find any one that would attract my James. Except for political meetings, and a literary lecture or two, with a magic-lantern and a piano, we have not much social relaxation at Bulcester. We object to promiscuous dancing, on grounds of conscience. Also, of course, to the stage.’
‘Ah, so you do allow for the claims of conscience, do you?’
‘For what do you take me, sir? Only, of course the conscience must be enlightened,’ said Mr. Warren, as other earnest people usually do.
‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Merton; ‘nothing so dangerous as the unenlightened conscience. Why, in this very matter of marriage the conscience of the Mormons leads them to singular aberrations, while that of the Arunta tribe – but I should only pain you if I pursued the subject. You said that your Society indulged in literary lectures: is your programme for the season filled up?’
‘I am President of the Bulcester Literary Society,’ said Mr. Warren, ‘and I ought to know. We have a vacancy for Friday week; but why do you inquire? In fact I want a lecturer on “The Use and Abuse of Novels,” now you ask. Our people, somehow, always want their literary lectures to be about novels. I try to make the lecturers take a lofty moral tone, and usually entertain them at my house, where I probe their ideas, and warn them that we must have nothing loose. Once, sir, we had a lecturer on “The Oldest Novel in the World.” He gave us a terrible shock, sir! I never saw so many red cheeks in a Bulcester audience. And the man seemed quite unaware of the effect he was producing.’
‘Short-sighted, perhaps?’ said Merton.
‘Ever since we have been very careful. But, sir, we seem to have got away from the subject.’
‘It is only seeming,’ said Merton. ‘I have an idea which may be of service to you.’
‘Thank you, most kindly,’ said Mr. Warren. ‘But as how?’
‘Does your Society ever employ lady lecturers?’
‘We prefer them; we are all for enlarging the sphere of woman’s activity – virtuous activity, I mean.’
‘That is fortunate,’ remarked Merton. ‘You said just now that to try the plan of a counter-attraction was difficult, because there was little of social relaxation in your Society, and you knew no lady who had the opportunities necessary for presenting an agreeable alternative to the charms of Miss Truman. A young man’s fancy is often caught merely by the juxtaposition of a single member of the opposite sex, with whom he contracts a custom of walking home from chapel.’
‘That’s mostly the way at Bulcester,’ said Mr. Warren.
‘Well,’ Merton went on, ‘you are in the habit of entertaining the lecturers at your house. Now, I know a young lady – one of our staff, in fact – who is very well qualified to lecture on “The Use and Abuse of Novels.” She is a novelist herself; one of the most serious and improving of our younger writers. In her works virtue (after struggles) is always rewarded, and vice (especially if gilded) is held up to execration, though never allowed to display itself in colours which would bring a blush to the cheek of – a white rabbit. Here is her portrait,’ said Merton, taking up a family periodical, The Young Girl. This blameless journal was publishing a serial story by Miss Martin, one of the ladies who had been enlisted at the dinner given by Logan and Merton when they founded their Society. A photograph of Miss Martin, in white and in a large shadowy hat, was published in The Young Girl, and certainly no one could have recognised in this conscientiously innocent and domestic portrait the fair author of romances of social adventure and unimagined crime. ‘There you see our young friend,’ said Merton; ‘and the magazine, to which she is a regular contributor, is a voucher for her character as an author.’
Mr. Warren closely scrutinised the portrait, which displayed loveliness and candour in a very agreeable way, and arranged in the extreme of modest simplicity.
‘That is a young woman who bears her testimonials in her face,’ said Mr. Warren. ‘She is one whom a father can trust – but has she been vaccinated?’
‘Early and often,’ answered Merton reassuringly. ‘Girls with faces like hers do not care to run any risks.’
‘Jane Truman does, though my son has put it to her, I know, on the ground of her looks. “Nothing,” she said, “will ever induce me to submit to that filthy, that revolting operation.”’
‘“Conscience doth make cowards of us all,” as Bacon says,’ replied Merton, ‘or at least of such of us as are unenlightened. But to come to business. What do you think of asking our young friend down to lecture – on Friday week, I think you said – on the Use and Abuse of Novels? You could easily persuade her, I dare say, to stay over Sunday – longer if necessary – and then young Mr. Warren would at least find out that there is more than one young woman in the world.’
‘I shall be delighted to see your friend,’ answered Mr. Warren. ‘At Bulcester we welcome intellect, and a real novelist of moral tendencies would make quite a sensation in our midst.’
‘They are but too scarce at present,’ Merton answered – ‘novelists of high moral tone.’
‘She is not a Christian Scientist?’ asked Mr. Warren anxiously. ‘They reject vaccination, like all other means appointed, and rely on miracles, which ceased with the Apostolic age, being no longer necessary.’
‘The lady, I can assure you, is not a Christian Scientist,’ said Merton ‘but comes of an Evangelical family. Shall I give you her address? In my opinion it would be best to write to her from Bulcester, on the official paper of the Literary Society.’ For Merton wished to acquaint Miss Martin with the nature of her mission, lecturing being an art which she had never cultivated.
‘There is just one thing,’ remarked Mr. Warren hesitatingly. ‘This young lady, if our James lets his affections loose on her – how would that be, sir?’
Merton smiled.
‘Why, no great harm would be done, Mr. Warren. You need not fear any complication: any new matrimonial difficulty. The affection would be all on one side, and that side would not be the lady lecturer’s. I happen to know that she has a prior attachment.’
‘Vaccinated!’ cried Mr. Warren, letting a laugh out of him.
‘Exactly,’ said Merton.
Mr. Warren now gladly concurred in the plan of his adviser, after which the interview was concerned with financial details. Merton usually left these vague, but in Mr. Warren he saw a client who would feel more confidence if everything was put on a strictly business footing. The client retired in a hopeful frame of mind, and Merton went to look for Miss Martin at her club, where she was usually to be found at the hour of tea.
He was fortunate enough to find her, dressed by no means after the style of her portrait in The Young Girl, but still very well dressed. She offered him the refreshment of tea and toast – very good toast, Merton thought – and he asked how her craft as a novelist was prospering. Friends of Miss Martin were obliged to ask, for they did not read The Young Girl, or the other and less domestic serials in which her works appeared.
‘I am doing very well, thank you,’ said Miss Martin. ‘My tale The Curate’s Family has raised the circulation of The Young Girl; and, mind you, it is no easy thing for a novelist to raise the circulation of any periodical. For example, if The Quarterly Review published a new romance, even by Mr. Thomas Hardy, I doubt if the end would justify the proceedings.’
‘It would take about four years to get finished in a quarterly,’ said Merton.
‘And the nonagenarians who read quarterlies,’ said Miss Martin, with the flippancy of youth, ‘would go to their graves without knowing whether the heroine found a lenient jury or not. I have six heroines in The Curate’s Family, and I own their love affairs tend to get a little mixed. I have rigged up a small stage, with puppets in costume to represent the characters, and keep them straight in my mind; but Ethelinda, who is engaged to the photographer, as nearly as possible eloped with the baronet last week.’
‘Anything else on?’ asked Merton.
‘An up-to-date story, all heredity and evolution,’ said Miss Martin. ‘The father has his legs bitten off by a shark, and it gets on the nerves of his wife, the Marchioness, and two of the girls are born like mermaids. They have immense popularity at bathing-places on the French coast, but it is not easy for them to go into general society.’
‘What nonsense!’ exclaimed Merton.
‘Not worse than other stuff that is highly recommended by eminent reviewers,’ said Miss Martin.
‘Anything else?’
‘Oh, yes; there is “The Pope’s Poisoner, a Tale of the Borgias.” That is a historical romance, I got it up out of Histories of the Renaissance. The hero (Lionardo da Vinci) is the Pope’s bravo, and in love with Lucrezia Borgia.’
‘Are the dates all right?’ asked Merton.
‘Oh, bother the dates! Of course he is a bravo pour le bon motif, and frustrates the pontifical designs.’
‘I want you,’ said Merton, ‘you have such a fertile imagination, to take part in a little plot of our own. Beneficent, of course, but I admit that my fancy is baffled. Could we find a room less crowded? This is rather private business.’
‘There is never anybody in the smoking-room at the top of the house,’ said Miss Martin, ‘because – to let out a secret – none of us ever smoke, except at public dinners to give tone. But you may.’
She led Merton to a sepulchral little chamber upstairs, and he told her all the story of Mr. Warren, his son, and the daughter of the minister.
‘Why don’t they elope?’ asked Miss Martin.
‘The Nonconformist conscience is unfriendly to elopements, and the young man has no accomplishment by which he could support his bride except the art of making oilcloth.’
‘Well, what do you want me to do?’
Merton unfolded the scheme of the lady lecturer, and prepared Miss Martin to receive an invitation from Mr. Warren.
‘Can you write a lecture on “The Use and Abuse of Novels” before Friday week?’ he asked.
‘Say seven thousand words? I could do it by to-morrow morning,’ said Miss Martin.
‘You know you must be very careful?’
‘Style of answers to correspondents in The Young Girl,’ said Miss Martin. ‘I know my way about.’
‘Then you really will essay the adventure?’
‘Like a bird,’ answered the lady. ‘It will be great fun. I shall pick up copy about the habits of the middle classes in the Midlands.’
‘They won’t recognise you as the author of your more criminal romances?’
‘How can they? I sign them “Passion Flower” and “Nightshade,” and “La Tofana,” and so on.’
‘You will dress as in your photograph in The Young Girl?’
‘I will, and take a fichu to wear in the evening. They always wear fichus in evening dress. But, look here, do you want a happy ending to this romance?’
‘How can it be happy if you are to be successful? Miss Jane Truman will be miserable, and Mr. James Warren will die of remorse and a broken heart, when you – ’
‘Fail to crown his flame, and Jane has too much pride to welcome back the wanderer?’
‘I’m afraid that, or something like that, will be the end of it,’ said Merton, ‘and, perhaps, on reflection, we had better drop the affair.’
‘But suppose I could manage a happy ending? Suppose I reconcile Mr. Warren to the union? I am all for happy endings myself. I drink to King Charles II., who declared that while he was king all tragedies should end happily.’
‘You don’t mean that you can persuade Jane to be vaccinated?’
‘One never knows till one tries. You’ll find that I shall make a happy conclusion to my Borgia novel, and that is not so easy. You see Lionardo goes to the Pope’s jeweller and exchanges the – ’
Miss Martin paused and remained absorbed in thought.
Suddenly she danced round the room with much grace and abandon, while Merton, smoking in an arm-chair that had lost a castor, gently applauded the performance.
‘You have your idea?’ he asked.
‘I have it. Happy ending! Hurrah!’
Miss Martin spun round like a dancing Dervish, and finally fell into another arm-chair, overcome by the heat and the intoxication of genius.
‘We owe a candle to Saint Alexander Borgia!’ she said, when she recovered her breath.
‘Miss Martin,’ said Merton gravely, ‘this is a serious matter. You are not going, I trust, to poison the lemons for the elder Mr. Warren’s lemon squash? He is strictly Temperance, you know.’
‘Poison the lemons? With a hypodermic syringe?’ asked Miss Martin. ‘No; that is good business. I have made one of my villains do that, but that is not my idea. Perfectly harmless, my idea.’
‘But sensational, I fear?’ asked Merton.
‘Some very cultured critics might think so,’ the lady admitted. ‘But I am sure to succeed, and I hear the merry, merry wedding bells of the Bulcester tabernacle ringing a peal for the happy pair.’
‘Well, what is the plan?’
‘That is my secret.’
‘But I must know. I am responsible. Tell me, or I telegraph to Mr. Warren: “Lecturer never vaccinated; sorry for my mistake.”’
‘That would not be true,’ said Miss Martin.
‘A noble falsehood,’ said Merton.
‘But I assure you that if my plan fails no harm can possibly be caused or suspected. And if it succeeds then the thing is done: either Mr. Warren is reconciled to the marriage, or – the marriage is broken off, as he desires.’
‘By whom?’
‘By the Conscientious Objectrix, if that is the feminine of Objector – by Miss Jane Truman.’
‘Why should Jane break it off if the old gentleman agrees?’
‘Because Jane would be a silly girl. Mr. Merton, I will promise you one thing. The plan shall not be tried without the approval of the lover himself. None but he shall be concerned in the affair.’
‘You won’t hypnotise the girl and let him vaccinate her when she is in the hypnotic sleep?’
‘No, nor even will I give her a post-hypnotic suggestion to vaccinate herself, or go to the doctor’s and have it done when she is awake; though,’ said Miss Martin, ‘that is not bad business either. I must make a note of that. But I can’t hypnotise anybody. I tried lots of girls when I was at St. Ursula’s and nothing ever came of it. Thank you for the idea all the same. By the way, I first must sterilise the pontifical – ’ She paused.
‘The what?’
‘That is my secret! Don’t you see how safe it is? None but the lover shall have his and her fate in his hands. C’est à prendre ou à laisser.’
Merton was young and adventurous.
‘You give me your word that your idea is absolutely safe and harmless? It involves no crime?’
‘None; and if you like,’ said Miss Martin, ‘I will bring you the highest professional opinion,’ and she mentioned an eminent name in the craft of healing. ‘He was our doctor when we were children,’ said the lady, ‘and we have always been friends.’
‘Well,’ Merton said, ‘what is good enough for Sir Josiah Wilkinson is good enough for me. But you will bring me the document?’
‘The day after to-morrow,’ said Miss Martin, and with that assurance Merton had to be content.
Sir Josiah was almost equally famous in the world as a physician and, in a smaller but equally refined circle, as a virtuoso and collector of objects of art. His opinions about the beneficent effects of vaccination were known to be at the opposite pole from those of the intelligent population of Bulcester.
On the next day but one Miss Martin again entertained Merton at her club, and demurely presented him with three documents. These were Mr. Warren’s invitation, her reply in acceptance, and a formal signed statement by Sir Josiah that her scheme was perfectly harmless, and commanded his admiring approval.
‘Now!’ said Miss Martin.
‘I own that I don’t like it,’ said Merton. ‘Logan thinks that it is all right, but Logan is a born conspirator. However, as you are set on it, and as Sir Josiah’s opinion carries great weight, you may go. But be very careful. Have you written your lecture?’
‘Here is the scenario,’ said Miss Martin, handing a typewritten synopsis to Merton.
‘USE AND ABUSE OF NOVELS.
‘All good things capable of being abused. Alcohol not one of these; alcohol always pernicious. Fiction, on the other hand, a good thing. Antiquity of fiction. In early days couched in verse. Civilisation prefers prose. Fiction, from the earlier ages, intended to convey Moral Instruction. Opinion of Aristotle defended against that of Plato. Morality in mediæval Romance. Criticism of Mr. Frederic Harrison. Opinion of Molière. Yet French novels usually immoral, and why. Remarks on Popery. To be avoided. Morality of Richardson and of Sir Walter Scott. Impropriety re-introduced by Charlotte Brontë. Unwillingness of Lecturer to dwell on this Topic. The Novel is now the whole of Literature. The people have no time to read anything else. Responsibilities of the Novelist as a Teacher. The Novel the proper vehicle of Theological, Scientific, Social, and Political Instruction. Mr. Hall Caine, Miss Corelli. Fallacy of thinking that the Novel should Amuse. Abuse of the Novel as a source of mischievous and false Opinions. Case of The Woman Who Did. Sacredness of Marriage. Study of the Novel becomes an abuse if it leads to the Neglect of the Morning and Evening Newspapers. Sir Walter Besant on the Novel. None but the newest Novels ought to be read. Mr. W. D. Howells on this subject. Experience of the Lecturer as a Novelist. Gratifying letters from persons happily influenced by the Lecturer. Anecdotes. Case of Miss A- C-. Case of Mr. J- R-. Unhappy Endings demoralising. Marriage the true End of the Novel, but the beginning of the happy life. Lecturer wishes her audience happy Endings and true Beginnings. Conclusion.’
‘Will that do?’ asked Miss Martin anxiously.
