The Disentanglers

‘The lady’s wealth is based on a successful Straddle, operated by her only known male ancestor, in – Bristles – Hogs’ Bristles and Lard,’ said the Earl.

‘Miss Bangs!’ exclaimed Logan, knowing the name, wealth, and the source of the wealth of the ruling Chicago heiress of the day.

‘I am to be understood to speak of Miss Bangs – as her name has been pronounced between us – with all the respect due to youth, beauty, and an amiable disposition,’ said the peer; ‘but Bristles, Mr. Logan, Hogs’ Bristles and Lard. And a Straddle!’

‘Lucky devil, Scremerston,’ thought Logan, for Scremerston was the only son of Lord Embleton, and he, as it seemed, had secured that coveted prize of the youth of England, the heart of the opulent Miss Bangs. But Logan only sighed and stared at the wall as one who hears of an irremediable disaster.

‘If they really were betrothed,’ said Lord Embleton, ‘I would have nothing to say or do in the way of terminating the connection, however unwelcome. A man’s word is his word. It is in these circumstances of doubt (when the fortunes of a house ancient, though titularly of mere Tudor noblesse, hang in the balance) that, despairing of other help, I have come to you.’

‘But,’ asked Logan, ‘have things gone so very far? Is the disaster irremediable? I am acquainted with your son, Lord Scremerston; in fact, he was my fag at school. May I speak quite freely?’

‘Certainly; you will oblige me.’

‘Well, by the candour of early friendship, Scremerston was called the Arcadian, an allusion to a certain tenderness of heart allied with – h’m – a rather confident and sanguine disposition. I think it may console you to reflect that perhaps he rather overestimates his success with the admirable young lady of whom we spoke. You are not certain that she has accepted him?’

‘No,’ said the Earl, obviously relieved. ‘I am sure that he has not positively proposed to her. He knows my opinion: he is a dutiful son, but he did seem very confident – seemed to think that his honour was engaged.’

‘I think we may discount that a little,’ said Logan, ‘and hope for the best.’

‘I shall try to take that view,’ said the Earl. ‘You console me infinitely, Mr. Logan.’

Logan was about to speak again, when his client held up a gently deprecating hand.

‘That is not all, Mr. Logan. I have a daughter – ’

Logan chanced to be slightly acquainted with the daughter, Lady Alice Guevara, a very nice girl.

‘Is she attached to a South African Jew?’ Logan thought.

‘In this case,’ said the client, ‘there is no want of blood; Royal in origin, if it comes to that. To the House of Bourbon I have no objection, in itself, that would be idle affectation.’

Logan gasped.

Was this extraordinary man anxious to reject a lady ‘multimillionaire’ for his son, and a crown of some sort or other for his daughter?

‘But the stain of ill-gotten gold – silver too – is ineffaceable.’

‘It really cannot be Bristles this time,’ thought Logan.

‘And a dynasty based on the roulette-table… ’

‘Oh, the Prince of Scalastro!’ cried Logan.

‘I see that you know the worst,’ said the Earl.

Logan knew the worst fairly well. The Prince of Scalastro owned a percentage of two or three thousand which Logan had dropped at the tables licensed in his principality.

‘To the Prince, personally, I bear no ill-will,’ said the Earl. ‘He is young, brave, scientific, accomplished, and this unfortunate attachment began before he inherited his – h’m – dominions. I fear it is, on both sides, a deep and passionate sentiment. And now, Mr. Logan, you know the full extent of my misfortunes: what course does your experience recommend? I am not a harsh father. Could I disinherit Scremerston, which I cannot, the loss would not be felt by him in the circumstances. As to my daughter – ’

The peer rose and walked to the window. When he came back and resumed his seat, Logan turned on him a countenance of mournful sympathy. The Earl silently extended his hand, which Logan took. On few occasions had a strain more severe been placed on his gravity, but, unlike a celebrated diplomatist, he ‘could command his smile.’

‘Your case,’ he said, ‘is one of the most singular, delicate, and distressing which I have met in the course of my experience. There is no objection to character, and poverty is not the impediment: the reverse. You will permit me, no doubt, to consult my partner, Mr. Merton; we have naturally no secrets between us, and he possesses a delicacy of touch and a power of insight which I can only regard with admiring envy. It was he who carried to a successful issue that difficult case in the family of the Sultan of Mingrelia (you will observe that I use a fictitious name). I can assure you, Lord Embleton, that polygamy presents problems almost insoluble; problems of extreme delicacy – or indelicacy.’

‘I had not heard of that affair,’ said the Earl. ‘Like Eumæus in Homer and in Mr. Stephen Phillips, I dwell among the swine, and come rarely to the city.’

‘The matter never went beyond the inmost diplomatic circles,’ said Logan. ‘The Sultan’s favourite son, the Jam, or Crown Prince, of Mingrelia (Jamreal, they called him), loved four beautiful Bollachians, sisters – again I disguise the nationality.’

‘Sisters!’ exclaimed the peer; ‘I have always given my vote against the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill; but four, and all alive!’

‘The law of the Prophet, as you are aware, is not monogamous,’ said Logan; ‘and the Eastern races are not averse to connections which are reprobated by our Western ideas. The real difficulty was that of religion.

‘Oh, why from the heretic girl of my soulShould I fly, to seek elsewhere an orthodox kiss?’

hummed Logan, rather to the surprise of Lord Embleton. He went on: ‘It is not so much that the Mingrelians object to mixed marriages in the matter of religion, but the Bollachians, being Christians, do object, and have a horror of polygamy. It was a cruel affair. All four girls, and the Jamreal himself, were passionately attached to each other. It was known, too, that, for political reasons, the maidens had received a dispensation from the leading Archimandrite, their metropolitan, to marry the proud Paynim. The Mingrelian Sultan is suzerain of Bollachia; his native subjects are addicted to massacring the Bollachians from religious motives, and the Bollachian Church (Nestorians, as you know) hoped that the four brides would convert the Jamreal to their creed, and so solve the Bollachian question. The end, they said, justified the means.’

‘Jesuitical,’ said the Earl, shaking his head sadly.

‘That is what my friend and partner, Mr. Merton, thought,’ said Logan, ‘when we were applied to by the Sultan. Merton displayed extraordinary tact and address. All was happily settled, the Sultan and the Jamreal were reconciled, the young ladies met other admirers, and learned that what they had taken for love was but a momentary infatuation.’

The Earl sighed, ‘Renovare dolorem! My family,’ said he, ‘is, and has long been – ever since the Gunpowder Plot – firmly, if not passionately, attached to the Church of England. The Prince of Scalastro is a Catholic.’

‘Had we a closer acquaintance with the parties concerned!’ murmured Logan.

‘You must come and visit us at Rookchester,’ said the Earl. ‘In any case I am most anxious to know better one whose ancestor was so closely connected with my own. We shall examine my documents under the tuition of the lady you mentioned, Miss Willoughby, if she will accept the hospitality of a kinsman.’

Logan murmured acquiescence, and again asked permission to consult Merton, which was granted. The Earl then shook hands and departed, obviously somewhat easier in his mind.

This remarkable conversation was duly reported by Logan to Merton.

‘What are we to do next?’ asked Logan.

‘Why you can do nothing but reconnoitre. Go down to Rookchester. It is in Northumberland, on the Coquet – a pretty place, but there is no fishing just now. Then we must ask Lord Embleton to meet Miss Willoughby. The interview can be here: Miss Willoughby will arrive, chaperoned by Miss Blossom, after the Earl makes his appearance.’

‘That will do, as far as his bothering old manuscripts are concerned; but how about the real business – the two undesirable marriages?’

‘We must first see how the land lies. I do not know any of the lovers. What sort of fellow is Scremerston?’

‘Nothing remarkable about him – good, plucky, vain little fellow. I suppose he wants money, like the rest of the world: but his father won’t let him be a director of anything, though he is in the House and his name would look well on a list.’

‘So he wants to marry dollars?’

‘I suppose he has no objection to them; but have you seen Miss Bangs?’

‘I don’t remember her,’ said Merton.

‘Then you have not seen her. She is beautiful, by Jove; and, I fancy, clever and nice, and gives herself no airs.’

‘And she has all that money, and yet the old gentleman objects!’

‘He can not stand the bristles and lard,’ said Logan.

‘Then the Prince of Scalastro – him I have come across. You would never take him for a foreigner,’ said Merton, bestowing on the Royal youth the highest compliment which an Englishman can pay, but adding, ‘only he is too intelligent and knows too much.’

‘No; there is nothing the matter with him,’ Logan admitted – ‘nothing but happening to inherit a gambling establishment and the garden it stands in. He is a scientific character – a scientific soldier. I wish we had a few like him.’

‘Well, it is a hard case,’ said Merton. ‘They all seem to be very good sort of people. And Lady Alice Guevara? I hardly know her at all; but she is pretty enough – tall, yellow hair, brown eyes.’

‘And as good a girl as lives,’ added Logan. ‘Very religious, too.’

‘She won’t change her creed?’ asked Merton.

‘She would go to the stake for it,’ said Logan. ‘She is more likely to convert the Prince.’

‘That would be one difficulty out of the way,’ said Merton. ‘But the gambling establishment? There is the rub! And the usual plan won’t work. You are a captivating person, Logan, but I do not think that you could attract Lady Alice’s affections and disentangle her in that way. Besides, the Prince would have you out. Then Miss Bangs’ dollars, not to mention herself, must have too strong a hold on Scremerston. It really looks too hard a case for us on paper. You must go down and reconnoitre.’

Logan agreed, and wrote asking Lord Embleton to come to the office, where he could see Miss Willoughby and arrange about her visit to him and his manuscripts. The young lady was invited to arrive rather later, bringing Miss Blossom as her companion.

On the appointed day Logan and Merton awaited Lord Embleton. He entered with an air unwontedly buoyant, and was introduced to Merton. The first result was an access of shyness. The Earl hummed, began sentences, dropped them, and looked pathetically at Logan. Merton understood. The Earl had taken to Logan (on account of their hereditary partnership in an ancient iniquity), and it was obvious that he would say to him what he would not say to his partner. Merton therefore withdrew to the outer room (they had met in the inner), and the Earl delivered himself to Logan in a little speech.

‘Since we met, Mr. Logan,’ said he, ‘a very fortunate event has occurred. The Prince of Scalastro, in a private interview, has done me the honour to take me into his confidence. He asked my permission to pay his addresses to my daughter, and informed me that, finding his ownership of the gambling establishment distasteful to her, he had determined not to renew the lease to the company. He added that since his boyhood, having been educated in Germany, he had entertained scruples about the position which he would one day occupy, that he had never entered the rooms (that haunt of vice), and that his acquaintance with my daughter had greatly increased his objections to gambling, though his scruples were not approved of by his confessor, a very learned priest.’

‘That is curious,’ said Logan.

‘Very,’ said the Earl. ‘But as I expect the Prince and his confessor at Rookchester, where I hope you will join us, we may perhaps find out the reasons which actuate that no doubt respectable person. In the meantime, as I would constrain nobody in matters of religion, I informed the Prince that he had my permission to – well, to plead his cause for himself with Lady Alice.’

Logan warmly congratulated the Earl on the gratifying resolve of the Prince, and privately wondered how the young people would support life, when deprived of the profits from the tables.

It was manifest, however, from the buoyant air of the Earl, that this important question had never crossed his mind. He looked quite young in the gladness of his heart, ‘he smelled April and May,’ he was clad becomingly in summer raiment, and to Logan it was quite a pleasure to see such a happy man. Some fifteen years seemed to have been taken from the age of this buxom and simple-hearted patrician.

He began to discuss with Logan all conceivable reasons why the Prince’s director had rather discouraged his idea of closing the gambling-rooms for ever.

‘The Father, Father Riccoboni, is a Jesuit, Mr. Logan,’ said the Earl gravely. ‘I would not be uncharitable, I hope I am not prejudiced, but members of that community, I fear, often prefer what they think the interests of their Church to those of our common Christianity. A portion of the great wealth of the Scalastros was annually devoted to masses for the souls of the players – about fifteen per cent. I believe – who yearly shoot themselves in the gardens of the establishment.’

‘No more suicides, no more subscriptions, I suppose,’ said Logan; ‘but the practice proved that the reigning Princes of Scalastro had feeling hearts.’

While the Earl developed this theme, Miss Willoughby, accompanied by Miss Blossom, had joined Merton in the outer room. Miss Blossom, being clad in white, with her blue eyes and apple-blossom complexion, looked like the month of May. But Merton could not but be struck by Miss Willoughby. She was tall and dark, with large grey eyes, a Greek profile, and a brow which could, on occasion, be thunderous and lowering, so that Miss Willoughby seemed to all a remarkably fine young woman; while the educated spectator was involuntarily reminded of the beautiful sister of the beautiful Helen, the celebrated Clytemnestra. The young lady was clad in very dark blue, with orange points, so to speak, and compared with her transcendent beauty, Miss Blossom, as Logan afterwards remarked, seemed a

‘Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,’

he intending to quote the poet Burns.

After salutations, Merton remarked to Miss Blossom that her well-known discretion might prompt her to take a seat near the window while he discussed private business with Miss Willoughby. The good-humoured girl retired to contemplate life from the casement, while Merton rapidly laid the nature of Lord Embleton’s affairs before the other lady.

‘You go down to Rookchester as a kinswoman and a guest, you understand, and to do the business of the manuscripts.’

‘Oh, I shall rather like that than otherwise,’ said Miss Willoughby, smiling.

‘Then, as to the regular business of the Society, there is a Prince who seems to be thought unworthy of the daughter of the house; and the son of the house needs disentangling from an American heiress of great charm and wealth.’

‘The tasks might satisfy any ambition,’ said Miss Willoughby. ‘Is the idea that the Prince and the Viscount should both neglect their former flames?’

‘And burn incense at the altar of Venus Verticordia,’ said Merton, with a bow.

‘It is a large order,’ replied Miss Willoughby, in the simple phrase of a commercial age: but as Merton looked at her, and remembered the vindictive feeling with which she now regarded his sex, he thought that she, if anyone, was capable of executing the commission. He was not, of course, as yet aware of the moral resolution lately arrived at by the young potentate of Scalastro.

‘The manuscripts are the first thing, of course,’ he said, and, as he spoke, Logan and Lord Embleton re-entered the room.

Merton presented the Earl to the ladies, and Miss Blossom soon retired to her own apartment, and wrestled with the correspondence of the Society and with her typewriting-machine.

The Earl proved not to be nearly so shy where ladies were concerned. He had not expected to find in his remote and long-lost cousin, Miss Willoughby, a magnificent being like Persephone on a coin of Syracuse, but it was plain that he was prepossessed in her favour, and there was a touch of the affectionate in his courtesy. After congratulating himself on recovering a kinswoman of a long-separated branch of his family, and after a good deal of genealogical disquisition, he explained the nature of the lady’s historical tasks, and engaged her to visit him in the country at an early date. Miss Willoughby then said farewell, having an engagement at the Record Office, where, as the Earl gallantly observed, she would ‘make a sunshine in a shady place.’

When she had gone, the Earl observed, ‘Bon sang ne peut pas mentir! To think of that beautiful creature condemned to waste her lovely eyes on faded ink and yellow papers! Why, she is, as the modern poet says, “a sight to make an old man young.”’

He then asked Logan to acquaint Merton with the new and favourable aspect of his affairs, and, after fixing Logan’s visit to Rookchester for the same date as Miss Willoughby’s, he went off with a juvenile alertness.

‘I say,’ said Logan, ‘I don’t know what will come of this, but something will come of it. I had no idea that girl was such a paragon.’

‘Take care, Logan,’ said Merton. ‘You ought only to have eyes for Miss Markham.’

Miss Markham, the precise student may remember, was the lady once known as the Venus of Milo to her young companions at St. Ursula’s. Now mantles were draped on her stately shoulders at Madame Claudine’s, and Logan and she were somewhat hopelessly attached to each other.

‘Take care of yourself at Rookchester,’ Merton went on, ‘or the Disentangler may be entangled.’

‘I am not a viscount and I am not an earl,’ said Logan, with a reminiscence of an old popular song, ‘nor I am not a prince, but a shade or two wuss; and I think that Miss Willoughby will find other marks for the artillery of her eyes.’

‘We shall have news of it,’ said Merton.

II. The Affair of the Jesuit

Trains do not stop at the little Rookchester station except when the high and puissant prince the Earl of Embleton or his visitors, or his ministers, servants, solicitors, and agents of all kinds, are bound for that haven. When Logan arrived at the station, a bowery, flowery, amateur-looking depot, like one of the ‘model villages’ that we sometimes see off the stage, he was met by the Earl, his son Lord Scremerston, and Miss Willoughby. Logan’s baggage was spirited away by menials, who doubtless bore it to the house in some ordinary conveyance, and by the vulgar road. But Lord Embleton explained that as the evening was warm, and the woodland path by the river was cool, they had walked down to welcome the coming guest.

The walk was beautiful indeed along the top of the precipitous red sandstone cliffs, with the deep, dark pools of the Coquet sleeping far below. Now and then a heron poised, or a rock pigeon flew by, between the river and the cliff-top. The opposite bank was embowered in deep green wood, and the place was very refreshing after the torrid bricks and distressing odours of the July streets of London.

The path was narrow: there was room for only two abreast. Miss Willoughby and Scremerston led the way, and were soon lost to sight by a turn in the path. As for Lord Embleton, he certainly seemed to have drunk of that fountain of youth about which the old French poet Pontus de Tyard reports to us, and to be going back, not forward, in age. He looked very neat, slim, and cool, but that could not be the only cause of the miracle of rejuvenescence. Closely regarding his host in profile, Logan remarked that he had shaved off his moustache and the little, obsolete, iron-grey chin-tuft which, in moments of perplexity, he had been wont to twiddle. Its loss was certainly a very great improvement to the clean-cut features of this patrician.

‘We are a very small party,’ said Lord Embleton, ‘only the Prince, my daughter, Father Riccoboni, Miss Willoughby, my sister, Scremerston, and you and I. Miss Willoughby came last week. In the mornings she and I are busy with the manuscripts. We have found most interesting things. When their plot failed, your ancestor and mine prepared a ship to start for the Western seas and attack the treasure-ships of Spain. But peace broke out, and they never achieved that adventure. Miss Willoughby is a cousin well worth discovering, so intelligent, and so wonderfully attractive.’

‘So Scremerston seems to think,’ was Logan’s idea, for the further he and the Earl advanced, the less, if possible, they saw of the pair in front of them; indeed, neither was visible again till the party met before dinner.

However, Logan only said that he had a great esteem for Miss Willoughby’s courage and industry through the trying years of poverty since she left St. Ursula’s.

‘The Prince we have not seen very much of,’ said the Earl, ‘as is natural; for you will be glad to know that everything seems most happily arranged, except so far as the religious difficulty goes. As for Father Riccoboni, he is a quiet intelligent man, who passes most of his time in the library, but makes himself very agreeable at meals. And now here we are arrived.’

They had reached the south side of the house – an eighteenth-century building in the red sandstone of the district, giving on a grassy terrace. There the host’s maiden sister, Lady Mary Guevara, was seated by a tea-table, surrounded by dogs – two collies and an Aberdeenshire terrier. Beside her were Father Riccoboni, with a newspaper in his hand, Lady Alice, with whom Logan had already some acquaintance, and the Prince of Scalastro. Logan was presented, and took quiet notes of the assembly, while the usual chatter about the weather and his journey got itself transacted, and the view of the valley of the Coquet had justice done to its charms.

Lady Mary was very like a feminine edition of the Earl, refined, shy, and with silvery hair. Lady Alice was a pretty, quiet type of the English girl who is not up to date, with a particularly happy and winning expression. The Prince was of a Teutonic fairness; for the Royal caste, whatever the nationality, is to a great extent made in Germany, and retains the physical characteristics of that ancient forest people whom the Roman historian (never having met them) so lovingly idealised. The Prince was tall, well-proportioned, and looked ‘every inch a soldier.’ There were a great many inches.

As for Father Riccoboni, the learned have remarked that there are two chief clerical types: the dark, ascetic type, to be found equally among Unitarians, Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Catholics, and the burly, well-fed, genial type, which ‘cometh eating and drinking.’ The Father was of this second kind; a lusty man – not that you could call him a sensual-looking man, still less was he a noisy humourist; but he had a considerable jowl, a strong jaw, a wide, firm mouth, and large teeth, very white and square. Logan thought that he, too, had the makings of a soldier, and also felt almost certain that he had seen him before. But where? – for Logan’s acquaintance with the clergy, especially the foreign clergy, was not extensive. The Father spoke English very well, with a slight German accent and a little hoarseness; his voice, too, did not sound unfamiliar to Logan. But he delved in his subconscious memory in vain; there was the Father, a man with whom he certainly had some associations, yet he could not place the man.

A bell jangled somewhere without as they took tea and tattled; and, looking towards the place whence the sound came, Logan saw a little group of Italian musicians walking down the avenue which led through the park to the east side of the house and the main entrance. They entered, with many obeisances, through the old gate of floreated wrought iron, and stopping there, about forty yards away, they piped, while a girl, in the usual contadina dress, clashed her cymbals and danced not ungracefully. The Father, who either did not like music or did not like it of that sort, sighed, rose from his seat, and went into the house by an open French window. The Prince also rose, but he went forward to the group of Italians, and spoke to them for a few minutes. If he did not like that sort of music, he took the more excellent way, for the action of his elbow indicated a movement of his hand towards his waistcoat-pocket. He returned to the party on the terrace, and the itinerant artists, after more obeisances, walked slowly back by the way they had come.