‘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 ofClinical 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 awoman’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 youpromise? 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 werefound, 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.
‘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 itoughtto 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 wasteIcall 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; ‘hedoes 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 awaythatway, 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 knowa 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 Megæra,’ said Merton, admitting to himself that the word was not, though mythological, what he could wish.
‘Of a Megæra as you know that creature, sir, and impetuous! If everything is not handy, if thatpoor 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’sRangoon, 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 thefelidae, 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, forhehas 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. Itwas 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, mediæval, ancient, and savage cookery at Earl’s Court, the Cookeries,’ said Logan. ‘Couldn’t we seduce an artist like Miss Blowser there, I meanthitherof 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 whenthe 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 Œnone, 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 murdererà la Montépin!
‘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 asthe 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.Youcan’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. Lastyear 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 knownWest 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 tobe 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 alamp-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 tothat. 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 inthishouse. Out she packs—pack her things, Mary; no, don’t—do what you can in the kitchen. Imustfind 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 wherea cook might be recruitedimpromptu. ‘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 matronof 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 malechef.
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,’ hesaid, ‘the Habeas Corpus Act has no clause about cats, and in Scottish law, which is good enough forme, there is no property in cats. You can’t, legally,stealthem.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Merton.
‘I took the opinion of an eminent sheriff substitute.’
‘What is that?’
‘Oh, a fearfully swagger legal official:youhave nothing like it.’
‘Rum country, Scotland,’ said Merton.
‘Rum country, England,’ said Logan, indignantly. ‘Youhave 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 cæca!
* * * * *
Miss Blowser is now Mrs. Potter. She married her aged wooer, and Rangoon still wins prizes at the Crystal Palace.
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 philtresworked. 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. Hewillmarry 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 hewill, 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 suitablechaperon), 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’sconfidante, 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 isThe 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 toCorrespondents,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 Juliaisengaged, 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.Thisclient 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, ‘toa 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 offour—’
‘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 Juliais—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 whatIsay,’ 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?’
‘Threeof them have made the most solemn promises.’
‘And the fourth?’
‘Heis 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. Shecan’twrite tothem, or communicate tothemin 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 Iknow, 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 Juliaistheir 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 herbeaux yeux.
‘She is a true philanthropist. Why, she rescuedmefrom the snares and temptations of the stage,’ said Miss Crofton.
‘Oh,nowI understand,’ said Merton; ‘I knew that your face and voice were familiar to me. Did you not act in a revival ofThe 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 morecertain that shehadmisread her heart. But on each occasion shehasfelt 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 shedarenot 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. Theymightforget 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 mightnot. 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 failedto 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 haveforcedEngland 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,hewas to go out to China, and denounce the gods of the heathen Chinese in the public streets. Butheinsisted 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 knowthat?’
‘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 wereyours, 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 wealllaughed, 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 sayIought to be the man, because I am not out.’
‘I would not build much onthat,’ 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 wassomething—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 asyouthat I pointed to the crown of martyrdom? Was it foryourshattered 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 offera 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.