The Disentanglers

‘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 he seems to be a patriotic fellow, are you certain that you are wise in objecting?’

‘I do object,’ 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 as that; 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 to me. 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 with you to 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 have him carry her off under my very nose? Not much, Mr. Graham. Why where do I come 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.’

‘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 the other 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 it may be 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 interest you,’ his letter said, ‘I have run across a curiously interesting subject, what you would call hysterical. 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, rather unconventional, 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.

‘Jephson has played 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 new gloves, 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, or I did not —you were 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 that she is 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 put the 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, there is a 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.

VII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE EXEMPLARY EARL

I. The Earl’s Long-Lost Cousin

‘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 the mast: 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 was a member of my own family. Our name is not Harris – 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 Grandfather here,’ thought Logan, but he only smiled, and said, ‘Assuredly – my own opinion. I wish I could respect my ancestor!’

‘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, and he, I find, was your ancestor’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 an historical 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.

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