"Well, try and meet him. You, as an Englishman, would perhaps call him
hard and narrow,--after forty years of London I sometimes find him so
myself,--but he is a fine man, and he has a good wife. So have you," he
added unexpectedly--"Robin has told me that."
I laughed, in what the Twins call the "silly little gratified way" which
obtrudes itself into my demeanour when any one praises Kitty.
"I hope you are in the same happy situation," I said.
"No, I am a bachelor. My brother John has not achieved a K.C.B., but he
is a more fortunate man than I."
The conversation dropped here, but I repeated it to my wife afterwards.
"Of course, the whole thing is as clear as daylight," she said. "These
two brothers both wanted to marry the same girl. She took the farmer
one, so the other, poor thing, went off to London and became a famous
doctor instead. That's all. He might have been Robin's father, but he's
only his uncle."
Happy the mind which can reconstruct a romance out of such scanty
material.
Sir James ultimately dined at my house, and became a firm friend of all
that dwelt therein, especially Phillis.
Then came Robin's second surprise--his book. It was a novel, and a very
good novel too. He had been at it for some time, he told me, but it was
only recently that he had contrived to finish it off. Being distrustful
of its merits, he had decided to offer it to just one good publisher,
who could take it or leave it. If he took it, well and good. But if the
publisher (and possibly just one other) exhibited an attitude of
aloofness, Robin had fully decided not to hawk his bantling about among
other less reputable and more amenable firms, but to consign it to his
bedroom fire.
However, this inhuman but only-too-unusual sacrifice of the parental
instinct was averted by the one good publisher, who accepted the book,
and introduced Robin to the public.
Either through shyness or indifference Robin had told us nothing of the
approaching interesting event, and it was not until one morning in
October, when a parcel of complimentary copies arrived from the
publisher's, that we were apprised of the fact that we had been
cherishing an author in our midst. Robin solemnly presented us with a
copy apiece (which I thought handsome but extravagant), and also sent
one to his parents, who, though I think they rather doubted the
propriety of possessing a son who wrote novels at all, wrote back
comparing it very favourably with _The Pilgrim's Progress_, the only
other work of fiction with which they were acquainted.
The book itself dealt with matters rather than men, and with men rather
than women; which was characteristic of its author, but rather
irritating for the Twins. It had a good deal to say about the under-side
of journalism,--graphic and convincing, all this,--and contained a
rather technical but absorbingly interesting account of some most
exciting financial operations, winding up with a great description of a
panic on the Stock Exchange. But there were few light and no tender
passages, from which it will be seen that Robin as an author appealed to
the male rather than the female intellect.
The Twins, I think, were secretly rather disappointed with the book,
less from any particular fondness for the perusal of love-passages than
from a truly human desire to note how Robin would have handled them; for
it is always interesting to see to what extent our friends will give
themselves away when they commit the indiscretion of a book. On this
occasion Robin had been exasperatingly self-contained.