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 themésalliance? 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 100,000l. and 999,000l. 19s. 11¾d.
‘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, andtheyare 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 wronghere?’ 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,Icall 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 servedhimright.’
‘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 nothingforhim: 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 tothe 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 lesshistwin.’
‘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 heseems to be a patriotic fellow, are you certain that you are wise in objecting?’
‘Idoobject,’ 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 asthat; 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 tome. 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 withyouto 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 havehimcarry her off under my very nose? Not much, Mr. Graham. Why where doIcome 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.’
‘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 theother 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 itmaybe 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 interestyou,’ his letter said, ‘I have run across a curiously interesting subject, whatyouwould callhysterical. 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, ratherunconventional, 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.
‘Jephsonhasplayed 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 newgloves, 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, orIdid not—youwere 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 thatsheis 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 putthe 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, thereisa 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.
‘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 themast: 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 wasa member of my own family. Our name isnotHarris—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 Grandfatherhere,’ thought Logan, but he only smiled, and said, ‘Assuredly—my own opinion. I wish I could respectmyancestor!’
‘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, andhe, I find, wasyourancestor’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 anhistorical 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 businessnow,’ 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 existenceof 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 Tudornoblesse, 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 objectionto 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 Eumæus 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; butfour, 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 soulShould I fly, to seek elsewhere an orthodox kiss?’
‘Oh, why from the heretic girl of my soulShould 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 thatthe 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,’ saidthe 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 withhim,’ 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? Thereis 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 establishmentdistasteful 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 transcendentbeauty, Miss Blossom, as Logan afterwards remarked, seemed a
‘Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,’
‘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 shouldbothneglect 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 executingthe 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 withthe 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, butsomethingwill 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 twowuss; and I think that Miss Willoughby will find other marks for the artillery of her eyes.’
‘We shall have news of it,’ said Merton.
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 thehost’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 andsquare. 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 usualcontadinadress, 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 oldBorder 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 thenight 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 handof 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,didlook, 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.