The Disentanglers Part 30

'"What a lovely old place!" I said to my companion. "Have you secret pa.s.sages 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 window _was_ shot 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 grat.i.tude, 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 not be 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-b.u.t.ter 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 the _Daily 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 and particularly 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 horrible _objet 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 then _I_ understood! The girl was his Jane, and she _had_ been 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 circ.u.mstances) 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, _except_ the 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 a.s.sault, 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.

X. ADVENTURE OF THE FAIR AMERICAN

I. The Prize of a Lady's Hand

'Yes, I guess that Pappa _was_ reckoned considerable of a crank. A great educational reformer, and a progressive Democratic stalwart, _that_ is 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 loved _me_, 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 it striking." 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. _I_ say 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 a.s.sented.

'Are they not educational?'