‘We prefer them; we are all for enlarging the sphere of woman’s activity—virtuous activity, I mean.’
‘That is fortunate,’ remarked Merton. ‘You said just now that to try the plan of a counter-attraction was difficult, because there was little of social relaxation in your Society, and you knew no lady who had the opportunities necessary for presenting an agreeable alternative to the charms of Miss Truman. A young man’s fancy is often caught merely by the juxtaposition of a single member of the opposite sex, with whom he contracts a custom of walking home from chapel.’
‘That’s mostly the way at Bulcester,’ said Mr. Warren.
‘Well,’ Merton went on, ‘you are in the habit of entertaining the lecturers at your house. Now, I know a young lady—one of our staff, in fact—who is very well qualified to lecture on “The Use and Abuse of Novels.” She is a novelist herself; one of the most serious and improving of our younger writers. In her works virtue (after struggles) is always rewarded, and vice (especially if gilded) is held up to execration, though never allowed to display itself in colours which would bring a blush to the cheek of—a white rabbit. Here is her portrait,’ said Merton, taking up a family periodical,The Young Girl. This blameless journal was publishing a serial story by Miss Martin, one of the ladies who had been enlisted at the dinner given by Logan and Merton when they founded their Society. A photograph of MissMartin, in white and in a large shadowy hat, was published inThe Young Girl, and certainly no one could have recognised in this conscientiously innocent and domestic portrait the fair author of romances of social adventure and unimagined crime. ‘There you see our young friend,’ said Merton; ‘and the magazine, to which she is a regular contributor, is a voucher for her character as an author.’
Mr. Warren closely scrutinised the portrait, which displayed loveliness and candour in a very agreeable way, and arranged in the extreme of modest simplicity.
‘That is a young woman who bears her testimonials in her face,’ said Mr. Warren. ‘She is one whom a father can trust—but has she been vaccinated?’
‘Early and often,’ answered Merton reassuringly. ‘Girls with faces like hers do not care to run any risks.’
‘Jane Truman does, though my son has put it to her, I know, on the ground of her looks. “Nothing,” she said, “will ever induce me to submit to that filthy, that revolting operation.”’
‘“Conscience doth make cowards of us all,” as Bacon says,’ replied Merton, ‘or at least of such of us as are unenlightened. But to come to business. What do you think of asking our young friend down to lecture—on Friday week, I think you said—on the Use and Abuse of Novels? You could easily persuade her, I dare say, to stay over Sunday—longer if necessary—and then young Mr. Warren would at least find out that there is more than one young woman in the world.’
‘I shall be delighted to see your friend,’ answered Mr. Warren. ‘At Bulcester we welcome intellect, and a real novelist of moral tendencies would make quite a sensation in our midst.’
‘They are but too scarce at present,’ Merton answered—‘novelists of high moral tone.’
‘She is not a Christian Scientist?’ asked Mr. Warren anxiously. ‘They reject vaccination, like all other means appointed, and rely on miracles, which ceased with the Apostolic age, being no longer necessary.’
‘The lady, I can assure you, is not a Christian Scientist,’ said Merton ‘but comes of an Evangelical family. Shall I give you her address? In my opinion it would be best to write to her from Bulcester, on the official paper of the Literary Society.’ For Merton wished to acquaint Miss Martin with the nature of her mission, lecturing being an art which she had never cultivated.
‘There is just one thing,’ remarked Mr. Warren hesitatingly. ‘This young lady, if our James lets his affections loose on her—how wouldthatbe, sir?’
Merton smiled.
‘Why, no great harm would be done, Mr. Warren. You need not fear any complication: any new matrimonial difficulty. The affection would be all on one side, and that side would not be the lady lecturer’s. I happen to know that she has a prior attachment.’
‘Vaccinated!’ cried Mr. Warren, letting a laugh out of him.
‘Exactly,’ said Merton.
Mr. Warren now gladly concurred in the plan of his adviser, after which the interview was concernedwith financial details. Merton usually left these vague, but in Mr. Warren he saw a client who would feel more confidence if everything was put on a strictly business footing. The client retired in a hopeful frame of mind, and Merton went to look for Miss Martin at her club, where she was usually to be found at the hour of tea.
He was fortunate enough to find her, dressed by no means after the style of her portrait inThe Young Girl, but still very well dressed. She offered him the refreshment of tea and toast—very good toast, Merton thought—and he asked how her craft as a novelist was prospering. Friends of Miss Martin were obliged to ask, for they did not readThe Young Girl, or the other and less domestic serials in which her works appeared.
‘I am doing very well, thank you,’ said Miss Martin. ‘My taleThe Curate’s Familyhas raised the circulation ofThe Young Girl; and, mind you, it is no easy thing for a novelist to raise the circulation of any periodical. For example, ifThe Quarterly Reviewpublished a new romance, even by Mr. Thomas Hardy, I doubt if the end would justify the proceedings.’
‘It would take about four years to get finished in a quarterly,’ said Merton.
‘And the nonagenarians who read quarterlies,’ said Miss Martin, with the flippancy of youth, ‘would go to their graves without knowing whether the heroine found a lenient jury or not. I have six heroines inThe Curate’s Family, and I own their love affairs tend to get a little mixed. I have rigged up a small stage, with puppets in costume to represent the characters,and keep them straight in my mind; but Ethelinda, who is engaged to the photographer, as nearly as possible eloped with the baronet last week.’
‘Anything else on?’ asked Merton.
‘An up-to-date story, all heredity and evolution,’ said Miss Martin. ‘The father has his legs bitten off by a shark, and it gets on the nerves of his wife, the Marchioness, and two of the girls are born like mermaids. They have immense popularity at bathing-places on the French coast, but it is not easy for them to go into general society.’
‘What nonsense!’ exclaimed Merton.
‘Not worse than other stuff that is highly recommended by eminent reviewers,’ said Miss Martin.
‘Anything else?’
‘Oh, yes; there is “The Pope’s Poisoner, a Tale of the Borgias.” That is a historical romance, I got it up out of Histories of the Renaissance. The hero (Lionardo da Vinci) is the Pope’s bravo, and in love with Lucrezia Borgia.’
‘Are the dates all right?’ asked Merton.
‘Oh, bother the dates! Of course he is a bravopour le bon motif, and frustrates the pontifical designs.’
‘I want you,’ said Merton, ‘you have such a fertile imagination, to take part in a little plot of our own. Beneficent, of course, but I admit that my fancy is baffled. Could we find a room less crowded? This is rather private business.’
‘There is never anybody in the smoking-room at the top of the house,’ said Miss Martin, ‘because—to let out a secret—none of us ever smoke, except at public dinners to give tone. Butyoumay.’
She led Merton to a sepulchral little chamber upstairs, and he told her all the story of Mr. Warren, his son, and the daughter of the minister.
‘Why don’t they elope?’ asked Miss Martin.
‘The Nonconformist conscience is unfriendly to elopements, and the young man has no accomplishment by which he could support his bride except the art of making oilcloth.’
‘Well, what do you want me to do?’
Merton unfolded the scheme of the lady lecturer, and prepared Miss Martin to receive an invitation from Mr. Warren.
‘Can you write a lecture on “The Use and Abuse of Novels” before Friday week?’ he asked.
‘Say seven thousand words? I could do it by to-morrow morning,’ said Miss Martin.
‘You know you must be very careful?’
‘Style of answers to correspondents inThe Young Girl,’ said Miss Martin. ‘I know my way about.’
‘Then you really will essay the adventure?’
‘Like a bird,’ answered the lady. ‘It will be great fun. I shall pick up copy about the habits of the middle classes in the Midlands.’
‘They won’t recognise you as the author of your more criminal romances?’
‘How can they? I sign them “Passion Flower” and “Nightshade,” and “La Tofana,” and so on.’
‘You will dress as in your photograph inThe Young Girl?’
‘I will, and take afichuto wear in the evening. They always wearfichusin evening dress. But, look here, do you want a happy ending to this romance?’
‘How can it be happy if you are to be successful? Miss Jane Truman will be miserable, and Mr. James Warren will die of remorse and a broken heart, when you—’
‘Fail to crown his flame, and Jane has too much pride to welcome back the wanderer?’
‘I’m afraid that, or something like that, will be the end of it,’ said Merton, ‘and, perhaps, on reflection, we had better drop the affair.’
‘But suppose I could manage a happy ending? Suppose I reconcile Mr. Warren to the union? I am all for happy endings myself. I drink to King Charles II., who declared that whilehewas king all tragedies should end happily.’
‘You don’t mean that you can persuade Jane to be vaccinated?’
‘One never knows till one tries. You’ll find that I shall make a happy conclusion to my Borgia novel, andthatis not so easy. You see Lionardo goes to the Pope’s jeweller and exchanges the—’
Miss Martin paused and remained absorbed in thought.
Suddenly she danced round the room with much grace andabandon, while Merton, smoking in an arm-chair that had lost a castor, gently applauded the performance.
‘You have your idea?’ he asked.
‘I have it. Happy ending! Hurrah!’
Miss Martin spun round like a dancing Dervish, and finally fell into another arm-chair, overcome by the heat and the intoxication of genius.
‘We owe a candle to Saint Alexander Borgia!’ she said, when she recovered her breath.
‘Miss Martin,’ said Merton gravely, ‘this is a serious matter. You are not going, I trust, to poison the lemons for the elder Mr. Warren’s lemon squash? He is strictly Temperance, you know.’
‘Poison the lemons? With a hypodermic syringe?’ asked Miss Martin. ‘No; that is good business. I have made one of my villains dothat, but that is not my idea. Perfectly harmless, my idea.’
‘But sensational, I fear?’ asked Merton.
‘Some very cultured critics might think so,’ the lady admitted. ‘But I am sure to succeed, and I hear the merry, merry wedding bells of the Bulcester tabernacle ringing a peal for the happy pair.’
‘Well, what is the plan?’
‘That is my secret.’
‘But Imustknow. I am responsible. Tell me, or I telegraph to Mr. Warren: “Lecturer never vaccinated; sorry for my mistake.”’
‘That would not be true,’ said Miss Martin.
‘A noble falsehood,’ said Merton.
‘But I assure you that if my plan fails no harm can possibly be caused or suspected. And if it succeeds then the thing is done: either Mr. Warren is reconciled to the marriage, or—the marriage is broken off, as he desires.’
‘By whom?’
‘By the Conscientious Objectrix, if that is the feminine of Objector—by Miss Jane Truman.’
‘Why should Jane break it off if the old gentleman agrees?’
‘Because Jane would be a silly girl. Mr. Merton, I will promise you one thing. The plan shall not betried without the approval of the lover himself. None but he shall be concerned in the affair.’
‘You won’t hypnotise the girl and let him vaccinate her when she is in the hypnotic sleep?’
‘No, nor even will I give her a post-hypnotic suggestion to vaccinate herself, or go to the doctor’s and have it done when she is awake; though,’ said Miss Martin, ‘that is not bad business either. I must make a note of that. But I can’t hypnotise anybody. I tried lots of girls when I was at St. Ursula’s and nothing ever came of it. Thank you for the idea all the same. By the way, I first must sterilise the pontifical—’ She paused.
‘The what?’
‘That is my secret! Don’t you see how safe it is? None but the lover shall have his and her fate in his hands.C’est à prendre ou à laisser.’
Merton was young and adventurous.
‘You give me your word that your idea is absolutely safe and harmless? It involves no crime?’
‘None; and if you like,’ said Miss Martin, ‘I will bring you the highest professional opinion,’ and she mentioned an eminent name in the craft of healing. ‘He was our doctor when we were children,’ said the lady, ‘and we have always been friends.’
‘Well,’ Merton said, ‘what is good enough for Sir Josiah Wilkinson is good enough for me. But you will bring me the document?’
‘The day after to-morrow,’ said Miss Martin, and with that assurance Merton had to be content.
Sir Josiah was almost equally famous in the world as a physician and, in a smaller but equally refinedcircle, as a virtuoso and collector of objects of art. His opinions about the beneficent effects of vaccination were known to be at the opposite pole from those of the intelligent population of Bulcester.
On the next day but one Miss Martin again entertained Merton at her club, and demurely presented him with three documents. These were Mr. Warren’s invitation, her reply in acceptance, and a formal signed statement by Sir Josiah that her scheme was perfectly harmless, and commanded his admiring approval.
‘Now!’ said Miss Martin.
‘I own that I don’t like it,’ said Merton. ‘Logan thinks that it is all right, but Logan is a born conspirator. However, as you are set on it, and as Sir Josiah’s opinion carries great weight, you may go. But be very careful. Have you written your lecture?’
‘Here is the scenario,’ said Miss Martin, handing a typewritten synopsis to Merton.
‘USE AND ABUSE OF NOVELS.‘All good things capable of being abused. Alcohol not one of these; alcoholalwayspernicious. Fiction, on the other hand, a good thing. Antiquity of fiction. In early days couched in verse. Civilisation prefers prose. Fiction, from the earlier ages, intended to convey Moral Instruction. Opinion of Aristotle defended against that of Plato. Morality in mediæval Romance. Criticism of Mr. Frederic Harrison. Opinion of Molière. Yet French novels usually immoral,and why. Remarks on Popery. To be avoided. Morality of Richardson and of Sir Walter Scott. Impropriety re-introduced by Charlotte Brontë. Unwillingness of Lecturer to dwell on this Topic. The Novel is now the whole of Literature. The people have no time to read anything else. Responsibilities of the Novelist as a Teacher. The Novel the proper vehicle of Theological, Scientific, Social, and Political Instruction. Mr. Hall Caine, Miss Corelli. Fallacy of thinking that the Novel should Amuse. Abuse of the Novel as a source of mischievous and false Opinions. Case ofThe Woman Who Did. Sacredness of Marriage. Study of the Novel becomes an abuse if it leads to the Neglect of the Morning and Evening Newspapers. Sir Walter Besant on the Novel. None but the newest Novels ought to be read. Mr. W. D. Howells on this subject. Experience of the Lecturer as a Novelist. Gratifying letters from persons happily influenced by the Lecturer. Anecdotes. Case of Miss A--- C---. Case of Mr. J--- R---. Unhappy Endings demoralising. Marriage the true End of the Novel, but the beginning of the happy life. Lecturer wishes her audience happy Endings and true Beginnings. Conclusion.’
‘USE AND ABUSE OF NOVELS.
‘All good things capable of being abused. Alcohol not one of these; alcoholalwayspernicious. Fiction, on the other hand, a good thing. Antiquity of fiction. In early days couched in verse. Civilisation prefers prose. Fiction, from the earlier ages, intended to convey Moral Instruction. Opinion of Aristotle defended against that of Plato. Morality in mediæval Romance. Criticism of Mr. Frederic Harrison. Opinion of Molière. Yet French novels usually immoral,and why. Remarks on Popery. To be avoided. Morality of Richardson and of Sir Walter Scott. Impropriety re-introduced by Charlotte Brontë. Unwillingness of Lecturer to dwell on this Topic. The Novel is now the whole of Literature. The people have no time to read anything else. Responsibilities of the Novelist as a Teacher. The Novel the proper vehicle of Theological, Scientific, Social, and Political Instruction. Mr. Hall Caine, Miss Corelli. Fallacy of thinking that the Novel should Amuse. Abuse of the Novel as a source of mischievous and false Opinions. Case ofThe Woman Who Did. Sacredness of Marriage. Study of the Novel becomes an abuse if it leads to the Neglect of the Morning and Evening Newspapers. Sir Walter Besant on the Novel. None but the newest Novels ought to be read. Mr. W. D. Howells on this subject. Experience of the Lecturer as a Novelist. Gratifying letters from persons happily influenced by the Lecturer. Anecdotes. Case of Miss A--- C---. Case of Mr. J--- R---. Unhappy Endings demoralising. Marriage the true End of the Novel, but the beginning of the happy life. Lecturer wishes her audience happy Endings and true Beginnings. Conclusion.’
‘Willthatdo?’ asked Miss Martin anxiously.
‘Yes, if you don’t exceed your plan, or run into chaff.’
‘I won’t,’ said Miss Martin. ‘It is all chaff, but they won’t see it.’
‘I think I would drop that about Popery,’ said Merton—‘it may lead to letters in the newspapers;anddobe awfully careful about impropriety in novels.’
‘I’ll put in “Vice to be Condemned, not Described,”’ said Miss Martin, pencilling a note on the margin of her paper.
‘That seems safe,’ said Merton. ‘But it cuts out some of our most powerful teachers.’
‘Serve them right!’ said Miss Martin. ‘Teachers! the arrant humbugs.’
‘You will report at once on your return?’ said Merton. ‘I shall be on tenter-hooks till I see you again. If I knew what you are really about, I’d take counsel’s opinion. Medical opinion does not satisfy me: I want legal.’
‘How nervous you are!’ said Miss Martin. ‘Counsel would be rather stuck up, I think; it is a new kind of case,’ and the lady laughed in an irritating way. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ she said. ‘I’ll telegraph to you on the Monday morning after the lecture. If everything goes well, I’ll telegraph, “Happy ending.” If anything goes wrong—but it can’t—I’ll telegraph, “Unhappy ending.”’
‘If you do, I shall be off to Callao.
‘On no conditionIs ExtraditionAllowed in Callao!’
‘On no conditionIs ExtraditionAllowed in Callao!’
said Merton.
‘But if there is any uncertainty—and theremaybe,’ said Miss Martin, ‘I’ll telegraph, “Will report.”’
* * * * *
Merton passed a miserable week of suspense and perplexity of mind. Never had he been so imprudent;he felt sure of that, and it was the only thing of which he did feel sure. The newspapers contained bulletins of an epidemic of smallpox at Bulcester. How would that work into the plot? Then the high animal spirits and daring fancy of Miss Martin might carry her into undreamed-of adventures.
‘But they won’t let her have even a glass of champagne,’ reflected Merton. ‘One glass makes her reckless.’
It was with a trembling hand that Merton, about ten on the Monday morning, took the telegraphic envelope of Fate.
‘I can’t face it,’ he said to Logan. ‘Read the message to me.’ Merton was unmanned!
Logan carelessly opened the envelope and read:
‘Happy ending,but awfully disappointed. Will call at one o’clock.’
‘Oh, thanks to all gracious Powers,’ said Merton falling limply on to a sofa. ‘Ring, Logan, and order a small whisky-and-soda.’
‘I won’t,’ said Logan. ‘Horrid bad habit. Would you like me to send out for smelling-salts? Be a man, Merton! Pull yourself together!’
‘You don’t know that awful girl,’ said Merton, slowly recovering self-control. ‘However, as she is disappointed though the ending is happy, her infernal plan must have been miscarried, whatever it was. Itmustbe all right, though I sha’n’t be quite happy till I see her. I am no coward, Logan’ (and Merton was later to prove that he possessed coolness and audacity in no common measure), ‘but it is the awful sense of responsibility. She is quite capable of getting us into the newspapers.’
‘You funk being laughed at,’ said Logan.
Merton lay on the sofa, smoking too many cigarettes, till, punctually at one o’clock, a peal at the bell announced the arrival of Miss Martin. She entered, radiant, smiling, and in her costume of innocence she looked like a sylph.
‘It is all right—they are engaged, with Mr. Warren’s full approval,’ she exclaimed.
‘Were we on the stage, I should embrace you!’ exclaimed Merton rapturously.
‘We are not on the stage,’ replied Miss Martin demurely. ‘AndIhave no occasion to congratulate myself. My plot did not come off; never had a look in. Do you want to be vaccinated? If so, shake hands,’ and Miss Martin extended her own hands ungloved.
‘I do not want to be vaccinated,’ said Merton.
‘Then don’t shake hands,’ said Miss Martin.
‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked Merton.
‘Look there!’ said the lady, lifting her hand to his eyes. Merton kissed it.
‘Oh,take care!’ shrieked Miss Martin. ‘It would be awkward—on the lips. Do you see my ring?’
Merton and Logan examined her ring. It was a beautifulcinque centojewel in white and blue enamel, with a high gold top containing a pointed ruby.
‘It’s very pretty,’ said Merton—‘quite of the best period. But what is the mystery?’
‘It is a poison ring of the Borgias,’ said Miss Martin. ‘I borrowed it from Sir Josiah Wilkinson. If it scratched you’ (here she exhibited the mechanism of the jewel), ‘why, there you are!’
‘Where? Poisoned?’
‘No! Vaccinated!’ said Miss Martin. ‘It is full of the stuff they vaccinate you with, but it is quite safe as far as the old poison goes. Sir Josiah sterilised it, in case of accidents, before he put in the glycerinated lymph. My own idea! He was delighted. Shall I shake hands with the office-boy?—it might do him good—or would Kutuzoff give a paw?’
Kutuzoff was the Russian cat.
‘By no means—not for worlds,’ said Merton. ‘Kutuzoff is a Conscientious Objector. But were you going to shake hands with Miss Truman with that horrible ring? Sacred emblems enamelled on it,’ said Merton, gingerly examining the jewel.
‘No; I was not going to do that,’ replied Miss Martin. ‘My idea was to acquire the confidence of the lover—the younger Mr. Warren—explain to him how the thing works, lend it to him, and then let him press his Jane’s wrist with it in some shady arbour. Then his Jane would have been all that the heart of Mr. Warrenpèrecould desire. But it did not come off.’
‘Thank goodness!’ ejaculated Merton. ‘There might have been an awful row. I don’t know what the offence would have been in the eye of the law. Vaccinating a Conscientious Objector, without consent, yet without violence,—what would the law say tothat?’
‘We might make ithamesucken under trustin Scotland,’ said Logan, ‘if it was done on the premises of the young lady’s domicile.’
‘We have not that elegant phrase in England,’ said Merton. ‘Perhaps it would have been a commonassault; but, anyhow, it would have got into the newspapers. Never again be officer of mine, Miss Martin.’
‘But how did all end happily?’ asked Logan.
‘Why,youmay call it happily and so may the lovers, butIcall it very disappointing,’ said Miss Martin.
‘Tell us all about it!’ cried Logan.
‘Well, I went down, simple as you see me.’
‘Simplex munditiis!’ said Merton.
‘And was met at the station by young Mr. Warren. His father, with the wisdom of a Nonconformist serpent, had sent him alone to make my acquaintance and be fascinated. My things were put on a four-wheeler. I was all young enthusiasm in the manner ofThe Young Girl. He was a good-looking boy enough, though in a bowler hat, with turn-down collar. But he was gloomy. I was curious about the public buildings, ecstatic about the town hall, and a kind of Moeso-Gothic tabernacle (if it was not Moeso-Gothic in style I don’t know what it was) where the Rev. Mr. Truman holds forth. But I could not waken him up, he seemed miserable. I soon found out the reason. The placards of the local newspapers shrieked in big type with
Spread Of Smallpox.135Cases.
Spread Of Smallpox.135Cases.
When I saw that I took young Mr. Warren’s hand.’
‘Were you wearing the ring?’ asked Merton.
‘No; it was in my dressing-bag. I said, “Mr. Warren, I know what care clouds your brow. You are brooding over the fate of the young, the fair, thebeloved—the unvaccinated. I know the story of your heart.”
‘“How the D--- I mean, how do you know, Miss Martin, about my private affairs?”
‘“A little bird has told me,” I said (style ofThe Young Girl, you know). “I have friends in Bulcester who esteem you. No, I must not mention names, but I come, not too late, I hope, to bring you security. She shall be preserved from this awful scourge, and you shall be her preserver.” He wanted to know how it was to be done, of course, and after taking his word of honour for secrecy, I told him that the remedy would lie in his own hands, showed him the ring, and taught him how to work it. Mr. Squeers,’ went on Miss Martin, ‘had never wopped a boy in a cab before, and I had never beheld a scene of passionate emotion before—in a four-wheeler. He called me his preserver, he said that I was an angel, he knelt at my feet, and, if we had been on the stage—as Mr. Merton said—’
‘And were you on the stage?’ asked Merton.
‘That is neither here nor there. It was an instructive experience, and you little know the treasures of passion that may lie concealed in the heart of a young oilcloth manufacturer.’
‘Happy young oilcloth manufacturer!’ murmured Merton.
‘They are both happy, but I did not manage my fortunate conclusion in my own way. When young Mr. Warren had moderated the transports of his gratitude we were in the suburbs of Bulcester, where the mill-owners live in houses of the most promiscuousarchitecture: Tudor, Jacobean, Queen Anne, Bedford Park Queen Anne,chalets, Chineseries, “all standing naked in the open air,” for the trees have not grown up round them yet. Then we came to a gate without a lodge, the cabman got down and opened it, and we were in the visible presence of Mr. Warren’s villa. The style is the Scottish Baronial; all pepper-pots, gables and crowsteps.
‘“What a lovely old place!” I said to my companion. “Have you secret passages and sliding panels and dark turnpike stairs? What a house for conspiracies! There is a real turret window; can’t you fancy it suddenly shot up and the king’s face popped out, very red, and bellowing, ‘Treason!’”
‘At that moment, when my imagination was in full career, the turret windowwasshot up, and a face, very red, with red whiskers, was popped out.
‘“That is my father,” said young Mr. Warren; and we alighted, and a very small maidservant opened the portals of the baronial hall, while the cabman carried up my trunk, and Mr. Warren, senior, greeted me in the hall.
‘“Welcome to Bulcester!” he said, with a florid air, and “hoped James and I had made friends on the way,” and then he actually winked! He is a widower, and I was dying for tea, but there we sat, and when the little maid came in, it was to say that a gentleman wanted to see Mr. Warren in the study. So he went out, and then, James being the victim of gratitude, I took my courage in both hands and asked if I might have tea. James said that they usually had it after the lecture was over, which would notbe till nine, and that some people had been asked to meet me. Then I knew that I was got among a strange, outlandish race who eat strange meats and keep High Teas, and my spirit fainted within me.
‘“Oh, Mr. James!” I said, “if you love me have a cup of tea and some bread-and-butter sent up to my room, and tell the maid to show me the way to it.”
‘So he sent for her, and she showed me to the best spare room, with oleographs of Highland scenery on the walls, and coloured Landseer prints, and tartan curtains, and everything made of ormolu that can be made of ormolu. In about twenty minutes the girl returned with tea and poached eggs and toast, and jam and marmalade. So I dressed for the lecture, which was to begin at eight—just when people ought to be dining—and came down into the drawing-room. The elder Mr. Warren was sitting alone, reading theDaily News, and he rose with an air of happy solemnity and shook hands again.
‘“You can let James alone now, Miss Martin,” he said, and he winked again, rubbed his hands, and grinned all over his expansive face.
‘“Let James alone!” I said.
‘“Yes; don’t go upsetting the lad—he’s not used to young ladies like you. You leave James to himself. James will do very well. I have a little surprise for James.”
‘He certainly had a considerable surprise for me, but I merely asked if it was James’s birthday, which it was not.
‘Luckily James entered. All his gloom was gone, thanks to me, and he was remarkably smiling andparticularly attentive to myself. Mr. Warren seemed perplexed.
‘“James, have you heard any good news?” he asked. “You seem very gay all of a sudden.”
‘James caught my eye.
‘“No, father,” he said. “What news do you mean? Anything in business? A large order from Sarawak?”
‘Mr. Warren was silent, but presently took me into a corner on the pretence of showing me some horribleobjet d’art—a treacly bronze.
‘“I say,” he said, “you must have made great play in the cab coming from the station. James looks a new man. I never would have guessed him to be so fickle. But, mind you, no more of it! Let James be—he will do very well.”
‘How was James to do very well? Why were my fascinations not to be exercised, as per contract? I began to suspect the worst, and I was thinking of nothing else while we drove to the premises of the Bulcester Literary Society. Could Jane have drowned herself out of the way, or taken smallpox, which might ruin her charms? Well, I had not a large audience, on account of fear of infection, I suppose, and all the people present wore the red badge, like Mr. Warren, only he wore one on each arm. This somewhat amazed me, but as I had never spoken in public before I was rather in a flutter. However, I conquered my girlish shyness, and if the audience was not large it was enthusiastic. When I came to the peroration about wishing them all happy endings and real beginnings of true life, don’t you know, the audience actually rose at me, and cheered like anything.Then someone proposed, “Three cheers for young Warren,” and they gave them like mad; I did not know why, nor did he: he looked quite pale. Then his father, with tears in his voice, proposed a vote of thanks to me, and said that he and the brave hearts of old Bulcester, his old friends and brothers in arms, were once more united; and the people stormed the platform and shook his hand and slapped him on the back. At last we got out by a back way, where our cab was waiting. Young Mr. Warren was as puzzled as myself, and his father was greatly overcome and sobbing in a corner. We got into the house, where people kept arriving, and at last a fine old clerical-looking bird entered with a red badge on one arm and a very pretty girl in white on the other. She had a red badge too.
‘Young Mr. Warren, who was near me when they came in, gave a queer sort of cry, and thenIunderstood! The girl was his Jane, and shehadbeen vaccinated, also her father, that afternoon, owing to the awful panic the old man got into after reading the evening papers about the smallpox. The gentleman whom Mr. Warren went to see in the study, just after my arrival, had brought him this gratifying intelligence, and he had sent the gentleman back to ask the Trumans to a High Tea of reconciliation. The people at the lecture had heard of this, and that was why they cheered so for young Warren, because his affair was as commonly known to all Bulcester as that of Romeo and Juliet at Verona. They are hearty people at Bulcester, and not without elements of old English romance.
‘Old Mr. Warren publicly embraced Jane Truman, and then brought her and presented her to me as James’s bride. We both cried a little, I think, and then we all sat down to High Tea, and I am scarcely yet the woman I used to be. It was a height! And a weight! And a length! After tea Mr. Warren made a speech, and said that Bulcester had come back to him, and I was afraid that he would brag dreadfully, but he did not; he was too happy, I think. And then Mr. Truman made a speech and said that though they felt obliged to own that they had come to the conclusion that though Anti-vaccination was a holy thing, still (in the circumstances) vaccination was good enough. But they yet clung to principles for which Hampden died on the field, and Russell on the scaffold, and many of their own citizens in bed! There must be no Coercion. Everyone who liked must be allowed to have smallpox as much as he pleased. All other issues were unimportant except that of freedom!
‘Here I rose—I was rather excited—and said that I hoped the reverend speaker was not deserting the sacred principle of compulsory temperance? Would the speaker allow people freedom to drink? All other issues were unimportant compared with that of freedom,exceptthe interest of depriving a poor man of his beer. To catch smallpox was a Briton’s birthright, but not to take a modest quencher. No freedom to drink! “Down with the drink!” I cried, and drained my tea-cup, and waved it, amidst ringing cheers. Mr. Truman admitted that there were exceptions—one exception, at least.Disease must be free to all, not alcohol nor Ritualism. He thanked his young friend the gifted lecturer for recalling him to his principles.
‘The principles of the good old cause, the Puritan cause, were as pure as glycerinated lymph, and he proposed to found a Liberal Vaccinationist League. They are great people for leagues at Bulcester, and they like the initials L. V. L. There was no drinking of toasts, for there was nothing to drink them in, and—do you know, Mr. Merton?—I think it must be nearly luncheon time.’
‘Champagne appears to me to be indicated,’ said Merton, who rang the bell and then summoned Miss Blossom from her typewriting.
‘We have done nothing,’ Merton said, ‘but heaven only knows what we have escaped in the adventure of the Lady Novelist and the Vaccinationist.’
On taking counsel’s opinion, Merton learned, with a shudder, that if young Warren had used the Borgia ring, and if Jane had resented it, he might have been indicted for a common assault, under 24 and 25 Victoria, cap. 100, sec. 24, for ‘unlawfully and maliciously administering a noxious thing with intent to annoy.’
‘I don’t think she could have proved the intent to annoy,’ said the learned counsel.
‘You don’t know a Bulcester jury as it was before the epidemic,’ said Merton. ‘And I might have been an accessory before the fact, and, anyhow, we should all have got into the newspapers.’
Miss Martin was the most admired of the bridesmaids at the Warren-Truman marriage.
‘Yes, I guess that Pappawasreckoned considerable of a crank. A great educational reformer, and a progressive Democratic stalwart,thatis the kind of hair-pin Pappa was! But it is awkward for me, some.’
These remarks, though of an obsolete and exaggerated transatlantic idiom, were murmured in the softest of tones, in the most English of silken accents, by the most beautiful of young ladies. She occupied the client’s chair in Merton’s office, and, as she sat there and smiled, Merton acknowledged to himself that he had never met a client so charming and so perplexing.
Miss McCabe had been educated, as Merton knew, at an aristocratic Irish convent in Paris, a sanctuary of old names and old creeds. This was the plan of her late father (spoken of by her as Pappa), an educational reformer of eccentric ideas, who, though of ancient (indeed royal) Irish descent, was of American birth. The young lady had thus acquired abroad, much against her will, that kind of English accent which some of her countrywomen reckon ‘affected.’But her intense patriotism had induced her to study, in the works of American humourists, and to reproduce in her discourse, the flowers of speech of which a specimen has been presented. The national accent was beyond her, but at least she could be true to what she (erroneously) believed to be the national idiom.
‘Your case is peculiar,’ said Merton thoughtfully, ‘and scarcely within our province. As a rule our clients are the parents, guardians, or children of persons entangled in undesirable engagements. But you, I understand, are dissatisfied with the matrimonial conditions imposed by the will of the late Mr. McCabe?’
‘I want to take my own pick out of the crowd—’ said Miss McCabe.
‘I can readily understand,’ said Merton, bowing, ‘that the throng of wooers is enormous,’ and he vaguely thought of Penelope.
‘The scheme will be popular. It will hit our people right where they live,’ said Miss McCabe, not appropriating the compliment. ‘You see Pappa struck ile early, and struck it often. He was what our Howells calls a “multimillionaire,” and I’m his only daughter. Pappa lovedme, but he loved the people better. Guess Pappa was not mean, not worth a cent. He was a white man!’
Miss McCabe, with a glow of lovely enthusiasm, contemplated the unprecedented whiteness of the paternal character.
‘“What the people want,” Pappa used to say, “is education. They want it short, and they want itstriking.” That was why he laid out five millions on his celebrated Museum of Freaks, with a staff of competent professors and lecturers. “The McCabe Museum of Natural Varieties, lectures and all, is open gratuitously to the citizens of our Republic, and to intelligent foreigners.” That was how Pappa put it.Isay that he dead-headed creation!’
‘Truly Republican munificence,’ said Merton, ‘worthy of your great country.’
‘Well, I should smile,’ said Miss McCabe.
‘But—excuse my insular ignorance—I do not exactly understand how a museum of freaks, admirably organised as no doubt it is, contributes to the cause of popular education.’
‘You have museums even in London?’ asked Miss McCabe.
Merton assented.
‘Are they not educational?’
‘The British Museum is mainly used by the children of the poor, as a place where they play a kind of subdued hide-and-seek,’ said Merton.
‘That’s because they are not interested in tinned Egyptian corpses and broken Greek statuary ware,’ answered the fair Republican. ‘Now, Mr. Merton, did you ever see or hear of apopularmuseum, a museum that the People would give its cents to see?’
‘I have heard of Mr. Barnum’s museum,’ said Merton.
‘That’s the idea: it is right there,’ said Miss McCabe. ‘But old man Barnum was not scientific. He saw what our people wanted, but he did not see,Pappa said, how to educate them through their natural instincts. Barnum’s mermaid was not genuine business. It confused the popular mind, and fostered superstition—and got found out. The result was scepticism, both religious and scientific. Now, Pappa used to argue, the lives of our citizens are monotonous. They see yellow dogs, say, but each yellow dog has only one tail. They see men and women, but almost all of them have only one head: and even a hand with six fingers is not common. This is why the popular mind runs into grooves. This causes what they call “the dead level of democracy.” Even our men of genius, Pappa allowed (for he was a very fair-minded man), do not go ahead of the European ticket, but rather the reverse. Your Tennyson has the inner tracks of our Longfellow: your Thackeray gives our Bertha Runkle his dust. The papers called Pappa unpatriotic, and a bad American. But he wasnot: he was a white man. When he saw his country’s faults he put his finger on them, right there, and tried to cure them.’
‘A noble policy,’ murmured Merton.
Miss McCabe was really so pretty and unusual, that he did not care how long she was in coming to the point.
‘Well, Pappa argued that there was more genius, or had been since the Declaration of Independence, even in England, than in the States. “And why?” he asked. “Why, because they have morevarietyin England. Things are not all on one level there—”’
‘Our dogs have only one tail apiece,’ said Merton, ‘in spite of the proverb “as proud as a dog with twotails,” and a plurality of heads is unusual even among British subjects.’
‘Yes,’ answered Miss McCabe, ‘but you have varieties among yourselves. You have a King and a Queen; and your peerage is rich in differentiated species. A Baronet is not a Marquis, nor is a Duke an Earl.’
‘He may be both,’ said Merton, but Miss McCabe continued to expose the parental philosophy.
‘Now Pappa would not hear of aristocratic distinctions in our country. He was a Hail Columbia man, on the Democratic ticket. Butsomethingis wanted, he said, to get us out of grooves, and break the monotony. That something, said Pappa, Nature has mercifully provided in Freaks. The citizens feel this, unconsciously: that’s why they spend their money at Barnum’s. But Barnum was not scientific, and Barnum was not straight about his mermaid. So Pappa founded his Museum of Natural Varieties, all of them honest Injun. Here the lecturers show off the freaks, and explain how Nature works them, and how she can always see them and go one better. We have the biggest gold nugget and the weeniest cunning least gold nugget; the biggest diamond and the smallest diamond; the tallest man and the smallest man; the whitest negro and the yellowest red man in the world. We have the most eccentric beasts, and the queerest fishes, and everything is explained by lecturers of world-wide reputation, on the principles of evolution, as copyrighted by our Asa Gray and our Agassiz.Thatis what Pappa called popular education, and it hits our citizens right where they live.’
Miss McCabe paused, in a flush of filial and patriotic enthusiasm. Merton inwardly thought that among the queerest fishes the late Mr. McCabe must have been pre-eminent. But what he said was, ‘The scheme is most original. Our educationists (to employ a term which they do not disdain), such as Mr. Herbert Spencer, Sir Joshua Fitch, and others, have I thought out nothing like this. Our capitalists never endow education on this more than imperial scale.’
‘Guess they are scaly varmints!’ interposed Miss McCabe.
Merton bowed his acquiescence in the sentiment.
‘But,’ he went on, ‘I still do not quite understand how your own prospects in life are affected by Mr. McCabe’s most original and, I hope, promising experiment?’
‘Pappa loved me, but he loved his country better, and taught me to adore her, and be ready for any sacrifice.’ Miss McCabe looked straight at Merton, like an Iphigenia blended with a Joan of Arc.
‘I do sincerely trust that no sacrifice is necessary,’ said Merton. ‘The circumstances do not call for so—unexampled a victim.’
‘I am to be Lady Principal of the museum when I come to the age of twenty-five: that is, in six years,’ said Miss McCabe proudly. ‘You don’t callthata sacrifice?’
Merton wanted to say that the most magnificent of natural varieties would only be in its proper place. But theman of businessand the manager of a great and beneficent association overcame the mere amateur of beauty, and he only said that the position ofLady Principal was worthy of the ambition of a patriot, and a friend of the species.
‘Well, I reckon! But a clause in Pappa’s will is awkward for me, some. It is about my marriage,’ said Miss McCabe bravely.
Merton assumed an air of grave interest.
‘Pappa left it in his will that I was to marry the man (under the age of five-and-thirty, and of unimpeachable character and education) who should discover, and add to the museum, the most original and unheard-of natural variety, whether found in the Old or the New World.’
Merton could scarcely credit the report of his ears.
‘Would you oblige me by repeating that statement?’ he said, and Miss McCabe repeated it in identical terms, obviously quoting textually from the will.
‘Now I understand your unhappy position,’ said Merton, thoroughly agreeing with the transatlantic critics who had pronounced the late Mr. McCabe ‘considerable of a crank.’ ‘But this is far too serious a matter for me—for our Association. I am no legist, but I am convinced that, at least British, and I doubt not American, law would promptly annul a testatory clause so utterly unreasonable and unprecedented.’
‘Unreasonable!’ exclaimed Miss McCabe, rising to her feet with eyes of flame, ‘I am my father’s daughter, and his wish is my law, whatever the laws that men make may say.’
Her affectation of slang had fallen off; she was absolutely natural now, and entirely in earnest.
Merton rose also.
‘One moment,’ he said. ‘It would be impertinence in me to express my admiration of you—of what you say. As the question is not a legal one (in such I am no fit adviser) I shall think myself honoured if you will permit me to be of any service in the circumstances. They are less unprecedented than I hastily supposed. History records many examples of fathers, even of royal rank, who have attached similar conditions to the disposal of their daughters’ hands.’
Merton was thinking of the kings in the treatises of Monsieur Charles Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy, and other historians of Fairyland; of monarchs who give their daughters to the bold adventurers that bring the smallest dog, or the singing rose, or the horse magical.
‘What you really want, I think,’ he went on, as Miss McCabe resumed her seat, ‘is to have your choice, as you said, among the competitors?’
‘Yes,’ replied the fair American, ‘that is only natural.’
‘But then,’ said Merton, ‘much depends on who decides as to the merits of the competitors. With whom does the decision rest?’
‘With the people.’
‘With the people?’
‘Yes, with the popular vote, as expressed through the newspaper that my father founded—The Yellow Flag. The public is to see the exhibits, the new varieties of nature, and the majority of votes is to carry the day. “Trust the people!” that was Pappa’s word.’
‘Then anyone who chooses, of the age, character, and education stipulated under the clause in the will,may go and bring in whatever variety of nature he pleases and take his chance?’
‘That is it all the time,’ said the client. ‘There is a trust, and the trustees, friends of Pappa’s, decide on the qualifications of the young men who enter for the competition. If the trustees are satisfied they allot money for expenses out of the exploration fund, so that nobody may be stopped because he is poor.’
‘There will be an enormous throng of competitors in these conditions—and with such a prize,’ Merton could not help adding.
‘I reckon the trustees are middling particular. They’ll weed them out.’
‘Is there any restriction on the nationality of the competitors?’ asked Merton, on whom an idea was dawning.
‘Only members of the English speaking races need apply,’ said Miss McCabe. ‘Pappa took no stock in Spaniards or Turks.’
‘The voters will be prejudiced in favour of their own fellow citizens?’ asked Merton. ‘That is only natural.’
‘Trust the people,’ said Miss McCabe. ‘The whole thing is to be kept as dark as a blind coloured person hunting in a dark cellar for a black cat that is not there.’
‘A truly Miltonic illustration,’ said Merton.
‘The advertisement for competitors will be carefully worded, so as to attract only young men of science. The young men are not to be told aboutme: the prize is in dollars, “with other advantages to be later specified.” The varieties found are to beconveyed to a port abroad, not yet named, and shipped for New York in a steamer belonging to the McCabe Trust.’
‘Then am I to understand that the conditions affecting your marriage are still an entire secret?’
‘That is so,’ said Miss McCabe, ‘and I guess from what the marchioness told me, your reference, that you can keep a secret.’
‘To keep secrets is the very essential of my vocation,’ said Merton.
Butthissecret, as will be seen, he did not absolutely keep.
‘The arrangements,’ he added, ‘are most judicious.’
‘Guess Pappa was ’cute,’ said Miss McCabe, relapsing into her adopted mannerisms.
‘I think I now understand the case in all its bearings,’ Merton went on. ‘I shall give it my serious consideration. Perhaps I had better say no more at present, but think over the matter. You remain in town for the season?’
‘Guess we’ve staked out a claim in Berkeley Square,’ said Miss McCabe, ‘an agreeable location.’ She mentioned the number of the house.
‘Then we are likely to meet now and then,’ said Merton, ‘and I trust that I may be permitted to wait on you occasionally.’
Miss McCabe graciously assented; her chaperon, Lady Rathcoffey, was summoned by her from the inner chamber and the society of Miss Blossom, the typewriter; the pair drove away, and Merton was left to his own reflections.
‘I do not know what can be done for her,’ hethought, ‘except to see that there is at least one eligible man, a gentleman, among the crowd of competitors, and that he is a likely man to win the beautiful prize. And that man is Bude, by Jove, if he wants to win it.’
The Earl of Bude, whose name at once occurred to Merton, was a remarkable personage. The world knew him as rich, handsome, happy, and a mighty hunter of big game. They knew not the mysterious grief that for years had gnawed at his heart. Why did not Bude marry? No woman could say. The world, moreover, knew not, but Merton did, that Lord Bude was the mysterious Mr. Jones Harvey, who contributed the most original papers to the Proceedings of the Geographical and Zoological Societies, and who had conferred many strange beasts on the Gardens of the latter learned institution. The erudite papers were read, the eccentric animals were conferred, in the name of Mr. Jones Harvey. They came from outlandish addresses in the ends of the earth, but, in the flesh, Jones Harvey had been seen by no man, and his secret had been confided to Merton only, to Logan, and two other school friends. He did good to science by stealth, and blushed at the idea of being a F.R.S. There was no show of science about Bude, and nothing exotic, except the singular circumstance that, however he happened to be dressed, he always wore a ring, or pin, or sleeve links set with very ugly and muddy looking pearls. From these ornaments Lord Bude was inseparable; to chaff about presents from dusky princesses on undiscovered shores he was impervious. Even Mertondid not know the cause of his attachment to these ungainly jewels, or the dark memory of mysterious loss with which they were associated.
Merton’s first care was to visit the divine Althæa, Mrs. Brown-Smith, and other ladies of his acquaintance. Their cards were deposited at the claim staked out by Miss McCabe in Berkeley Square, and that young lady soon ‘went everywhere,’ and publicly confessed that she ‘was having a real lovely time.’ By a little diplomacy Lord Bude was brought acquainted with Miss McCabe. She consented to overlook his possession of a coronet; titles were, to this heroine, not marvels (as to some of her countrywomen and ours), but rather matters of indifference, scarcely even suggesting hostile prejudice. The observers in society, mothers and maids, and the chroniclers of fashion, soon perceived that there was at least a markedcamaraderiebetweenthe elegant aristocrat, hitherto indifferent to woman, untouched, as was deemed, by love, and the lovely Child of Freedom. Miss McCabe sat by him while he drove his coach; on the roof of his drag at Lord’s; and of his houseboat at Henley, where she fainted when the crew of Johns Hopkins University, U. S., was defeated by a length by Balliol (where Lord Bude had been the favourite pupil of the great Master). Merton remarked these tokens of friendship with approval. If Bude could be induced to enter for the great competition, and if he proved successful, there seemed no reason to suppose that Miss McCabe would be dissatisfied with the People’s choice.
Towards the end of the season, and in Bude’ssmoking-room, about five in the July morning after a ball at Eglintoun House, Merton opened his approaches. He began, cautiously, from talk of moors and forests; he touched on lochs, he mentioned the Highland traditions of water bulls (which haunt these meres); he spoke of theBeathach mòr Loch Odha, a legendary animal of immeasurable length. TheBeathachhas twelve feet; he has often been heard crashing through the ice in the nights of winter. These tales the narrator has gleaned from the lips of the Celtic peasantry of Letter Awe.
‘I daresay he does break the ice,’ said Bude. ‘In the matter of cryptic survivals of extinct species I can believe a good deal.’
‘The sea serpent?’ asked Merton.
‘Seen him thrice,’ said Bude.
‘Then why did not Jones Harvey weigh in with a letter toNature?’
‘Jones Harvey has a scientific reputation to look after, and knows he would be laughed at. That’s the kind of hair-pinheis,’ said Bude, quoting Miss McCabe. ‘By Jove, Merton, that girl—’ and he paused.
‘Yes, she is pretty,’ said Merton.
‘Pretty! I have seen the women of the round world—before I went to—well, never mind where, I used to think the Poles the most magnificent, butshe—’
‘Whips creation,’ said Merton. ‘But I,’ he went on, ‘am rather more interested in these other extraordinary animals. Do you seriously believe, with your experience, that some extinct species are—not extinct?’
‘To be sure I do. The world is wide. But they are very shy. I once stalked a Bunyip, in Central Australia, in a lagoon. The natives said he was there: I watched for a week, squatting in the reeds, and in the grey of the seventh dawn I saw him.’
‘Did you shoot?’
‘No, I observed him through a field glass first.’
‘What is the beggar like?’
‘Much like some of the Highland water cattle, as described, but it is his ears they take for horns. Australia has no indigenous horned animal. He is, I should say, about nine feet long, marsupial (he rose breast high), and web-footed. I saw that when he dived. Other white men have seen him—Buckley, the convict, for one, when he lived among the blacks.’
‘Buckley was not an accurate observer.’
‘Jones Harvey is.’
‘Any other queer beasts?’
‘Of course, plenty. You have heard of the Mylodon, the gigantic Sloth? His bones, skin, and hair were lately found in a cave in Patagonia, with a lot of his fodder. You can see them at the British Museum in South Kensington. Primitive Patagonian man used the female of the species as a milch-cow. He was a genial friendly kind of brute, accessible to charm of manner and chopped hay. They fed him on that, in a domesticated state.’
‘But he is extinct. Hesketh Pritchard went to look for a live Mylodon, and did not find him.’
‘Did not know where to look,’ said Bude.
‘But you do?’ asked Merton.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Then why don’t you bring one over to the Zoo?’
‘I may some day.’
‘Are there any more survivors of extinct species?’
‘Merton, is this an interview? Are you doing Mr. Jones Harvey at home for a picture paper?’
‘No, I’ve dropped the Press,’ said Merton, ‘I ask in a spirit of scientific curiosity.’
‘Well, there is the Dinornis, the Moa of New Zealand. A bird as big as the Roc in the “Arabian Nights.”’
‘Have you seenhim?’
‘No, but I have seenher, the hen bird. She was sitting on eggs. No man knows her nest but myself, and old Te-iki-pa, the chief medicine-man, or Tohunga, of the Maori King. The Moa’s eyrie is in the King’s country. It is a difficult country, and a dangerous business, if the cock Moa chances to come home.’
‘Bude, is this worthy of an old friend, thisblague?’
‘Do you doubt my word?’
‘If you give me your word I must believe—that you dreamed it.’
Then a strange thing happened.
Bude walked to a small case of instruments that stood on a table in the smoking-room. He unlocked it, took out a lancet, brought a Rhodian bowl from a shelf, and bared his arm.
‘Do you want proof?’
‘Proof that you saw a hen Moa sitting?’ asked Merton in amazement.
‘Not exactly, but proof that Te-iki-pa knew a thing or two, quite as out of the way as the habitat of the Moa.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Bare your arm, and hold it over the bowl.’
The room was full of the yellow dusky light of an early summer morning in London. Outside the heavy carts were rolling by: in full civilisation the scene was strange.
‘The Blood Covenant?’ asked Merton.
Bude nodded.
Merton turned up his cuff, Bude let a little blood drop into the bowl, then performed the same operation on his own arm.
‘This is all rot,’ he said, ‘but without this I cannot show you, by virtue of my oath to Te-iki-pa, what I mean to show you. Now repeat after me what I am going to say.’
He spoke a string of words, among which Merton, as he repeated them, could only recognisemanaandatua. The vowel sounds were as in Italian.
‘Now these words you must never report to any one, without my permission.’
‘Not likely,’ said Merton, ‘I only remember two of them, and these I knew before.’
‘All right,’ said Bude.
He then veiled his face in a piece of silk that lay on a sofa, and rapidly, in a low voice, chanted a kind of hymn in a tongue unknown to Merton. All this he did with a bored air, as if he thought the performance a superfluous mummery.
‘Now what shall I show you? Something simple.Look at the bookcase, and think of any book you may want to consult.’
Merton thought of the volume in M. of theEncyclopædia Britannica. The volume slowly slid from the shelf, glided through the air to Merton, and gently subsided on the table near him, open at the wordMoa.
Merton walked across to the bookcase, took all the volumes from the shelf, and carefully examined the backs and sides for springs and mechanical advantages. There were none.
‘Not half bad!’ he said, when he had completed his investigation.
‘You are satisfied that Te-iki-pa knew something? If you had seen what I have seen, if you had seen the three days dead—’ and Bude shivered slightly.
‘I have seen enough. Do you know how it is done?’
‘No.’
‘Well, a miracle is not what you call logical proof, but I believe that you did see the Moa, and a still more extraordinary bird, Te-iki-pa.’
‘Yes, they talk of strange beasts, but “nothing is stranger than man.” Did you ever hear of the Berbalangs of Cagayan Sulu?’
‘Never in my life,’ said Merton.
‘Heaven preserve me fromthem,’ said Bude, and he gently stroked the strange muddy pearls in the sleeve-links on his loose shirt-cuff. ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us,’ he exclaimed, crossing himself (he was of the old faith), and he fell silent.
It was a moment of emotion. Six silvery strokes were sounded from a little clock on the chimney-piece. The hour of confidences had struck.
‘Bude, you are serious about Miss McCabe?’ asked Merton.
‘I mean to put it to the touch at Goodwood.’
‘No use!’ said Merton.
Bude changed colour.
‘Areyou?’
‘No,’ interrupted Merton. ‘But she is not free.’
‘There is somebody in America? Nobody here, I think.’
‘It is hardly that,’ said Merton. ‘Can you listen to rather a long story? I’ll cut it as much as possible. You must remember that I am practically breaking my word of honour in telling you this. My honour is in your hands.’
‘Fire away,’ said Bude, pouring a bottle of Apollinaris water into a long tumbler, and drinking deep.
Merton told the tale of Miss McCabe’s extraordinary involvement, and of the wild conditions on which her hand was to be won. ‘And as to her heart, I think,’ he added, ‘if you pull off the prize—
If my heart by signs can tell,Lordling, I have marked her daily,And I think she loves thee well.’
If my heart by signs can tell,Lordling, I have marked her daily,And I think she loves thee well.’
‘Thank you for that, old cock,’ replied the peer, shaking Merton’s hand. He had recovered from his emotion.
‘I’m on,’ he added, after a moment’s silence, ‘but I shall enter as Jones Harvey.’
‘His name and his celebrated papers will impress the trustees,’ said Merton. ‘Now what variety of nature shall you go for? Wildmencount. Shall you fetch a Berbalang of what do you call it?’
Bude shuddered. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘I think I shall fetch a Moa.’
‘But no steamer could hold that gigantic denizen of the forests.’
‘You leave that to Jones Harvey. Jones is ’cute, some,’ he said, reminiscent of the adored one, and he fell into a lover’s reverie.
He was aroused by Merton’s departure: he finished the Apollinaris water, took a bath, and went to bed.