The scene was a dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street. To such caves
many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the
clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The
furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a
certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now
seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of
books to which the amateur would at once have flown. They were in
'boards' of faded blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: they
were all First Editions of the most desirable kind. The bottles in the
liqueur case were antique; a coat of arms, not undistinguished, was in
relief on the silver stoppers. But the liquors in the flasks were humble
and conventional. Merton, the tenant of the rooms, was in a Zingari
cricketing coat; he occupied the arm-chair, while Logan, in evening
dress, maintained a difficult equilibrium on the slippery sofa. Both men
were of an age between twenty-five and twenty-nine, both were pleasant to
the eye. Merton was, if anything, under the middle height: fair, slim,
and active. As a freshman he had coxed his College Eight, later he rowed
Bow in that vessel. He had won the Hurdles, but been beaten by his
Cambridge opponent; he had taken a fair second in Greats, was believed to
have been 'runner up' for the Newdigate prize poem, and might have won
other laurels, but that he was found to do the female parts very fairly
in the dramatic performances of the University, a thing irreconcilable
with study. His father was a rural dean. Merton's most obvious vice was
a thirst for general information. 'I know it is awfully bad form to know
anything,' he had been heard to say, 'but everyone has his failings, and
mine is occasionally useful.'
Logan was tall, dark, athletic and indolent. He was, in a way, the last
of an historic Scottish family, and rather fond of discoursing on the
ancestral traditions. But any satisfaction that he derived from them
was, so far, all that his birth had won for him. His little patrimony
had taken to itself wings. Merton was in no better case. Both, as they
sat together, were gloomily discussing their prospects.
In the penumbra of smoke, and the malignant light of an ill trimmed lamp,
the Great Idea was to be evolved. What consequences hung on the Great
Idea! The peace of families insured, at a trifling premium. Innocence
rescued. The defeat of the subtlest criminal designers: undreamed of
benefits to natural science! But I anticipate. We return to the
conversation in the Ryder Street den.
'It is a case of emigration or the workhouse,' said Logan.
'Emigration! What can you or I do in the Colonies? They provide even
their own ushers. My only available assets, a little Greek and less
Latin, are drugs in the Melbourne market,' answered Merton; 'they breed
their own dominies. Protection!'
'In America they might pay for lessons in the English accent . . . ' said
Logan.
'But not,' said Merton, 'in the Scotch, which is yours; oh distant cousin
of a marquis! Consequently by rich American lady pupils "you are not one
to be desired."'
'Tommy, you are impertinent,' said Logan. 'Oh, hang it, where is there
an opening, a demand, for the broken, the stoney broke? A man cannot
live by casual paragraphs alone.'
'And these generally reckoned "too high-toned for our readers,"' said
Merton.
'If I could get the secretaryship of a golf club!' Logan sighed.
'If you could get the Chancellorship of the Exchequer! I reckon that
there are two million applicants for secretaryships of golf clubs.'
'Or a land agency,' Logan murmured.
'Oh, be practical!' cried Merton. 'Be inventive! Be modern! Be up to
date! Think of something _new_! Think of a felt want, as the
Covenanting divine calls it: a real public need, hitherto but dimly
present, and quite a demand without a supply.'
'But that means thousands in advertisements,' said Logan, 'even if we ran
a hair-restorer. The ground bait is too expensive. I say, I once knew a
fellow who ground-baited for salmon with potted shrimps.'
'Make a paragraph on him then,' said Merton.
'But results proved that there was no felt want of potted shrimps--or not
of a fly to follow.'
'Your collaboration in the search, the hunt for money, the quest,
consists merely in irrelevancies and objections,' growled Merton,
lighting a cigarette.
'Lucky devil, Peter Nevison. Meets an heiress on a Channel boat, with
4,000_l_. a year; and there he is.' Logan basked in the reflected
sunshine.
'Cut by her people, though--and other people. I could not have faced the
row with her people,' said Merton musingly.
'I don't wonder they moved heaven and earth, and her uncle, the bishop,
to stop it. Not eligible, Peter was not, however you took him,' Logan
reflected. 'Took too much of this,' he pointed to the heraldic flask.
'Well, _she_ took him. It is not much that parents, still less
guardians, can do now, when a girl's mind is made up.'
'The emancipation of woman is the opportunity of the indigent male
struggler. Women have their way,' Logan reflected.
'And the youth of the modern aged is the opportunity of our sisters, the
girls "on the make,"' said Merton. 'What a lot of old men of title are
marrying young women as hard up as we are!'
'And then,' said Logan, 'the offspring of the deceased marchionesses make
a fuss. In fact marriage is always the signal for a family row.'
'It is the infernal family row that I never could face. I had a chance--'
Merton seemed likely to drop into autobiography.
'I know,' said Logan admonishingly.
'Well, hanged if I could take it, and she--she could not stand it either,
and both of us--'
'Do not be elegiac,' interrupted Logan. 'I know. Still, I am rather
sorry for people's people. The unruly affections simply poison the lives
of parents and guardians, aye, and of the children too. The aged are now
so hasty and imprudent. What would not Tala have given to prevent his
Grace from marrying Mrs. Tankerville?'
Merton leapt to his feet and smote his brow.
'Wait, don't speak to me--a great thought flushes all my brain. Hush! I
have it,' and he sat down again, pouring seltzer water into a half empty
glass.
'Have what?' asked Logan.
'The Felt Want. But the accomplices?'
'But the advertisements!' suggested Logan.
'A few pounds will cover _them_. I can sell my books,' Merton sighed.
'A lot of advertising your first editions will pay for. Why, even to
launch a hair-restorer takes--'
'Oh, but,' Merton broke in, '_this_ want is so widely felt, acutely felt
too: hair is not in it. But where are the accomplices?'
'If it is gentleman burglars I am not concerned. No Raffles for me! If
it is venal physicians to kill off rich relations, the lives of the
Logans are sacred to me.'
'Bosh!' said Merton, 'I want "lady friends," as Tennyson says: nice
girls, well born, well bred, trying to support themselves.'
'What do you want _them_ for? To support them?'
'I want them as accomplices,' said Merton. 'As collaborators.'
'Blackmail?' asked Logan. 'Has it come to this? I draw the line at
blackmail. Besides, they would starve first, good girls would; or marry
Lord Methusalem, or a beastly South African _richard_.'
'Robert Logan of Restalrig, that should be'--Merton spoke
impressively--'you know me to be incapable of practices, however
lucrative, which involve taint of crime. I do not prey upon the society
which I propose to benefit. But where are the girls?'
'Where are they not?' Logan asked. 'Dawdling, as jesters, from country
house to country house. In the British Museum, verifying references for
literary gents, if they can get references to verify. Asking leave to
describe their friends' parties in _The Leidy's News_. Trying for places
as golfing governesses, or bridge governesses, or gymnastic mistresses at
girls' schools, or lady laundresses, or typewriters, or lady teachers of
cookery, or pegs to hang costumes on at dress-makers'. The most
beautiful girl I ever saw was doing that once; I met her when I was
shopping with my aunt who left her money to the Armenians.'
'You kept up her acquaintance? The girl's, I mean,' Merton asked.
'We have occasionally met. In fact--'
'Yes, I know, as you said lately,' Merton remarked. 'That's one, anyhow,
and there is Mary Willoughby, who got a second in history when I was up.
_She_ would do. Better business for her than the British Museum. I know
three or four.'
'I know five or six. But what for?' Logan insisted.
'To help us in supplying the widely felt want, which is my discovery,'
said Merton.
'And that is?'
'Disentanglers--of both sexes. A large and varied staff, calculated to
meet every requirement and cope with every circumstance.' Merton quoted
an unwritten prospectus.
'I don't follow. What the deuce is your felt want?'
'What we were talking about.'
'Ground bait for salmon?' Logan reverted to his idea.
'No. Family rows about marriages. Nasty letters. Refusals to recognise
the choice of a son, a daughter, or a widowed but youthful old parent,
among the upper classes. Harsh words. Refusals to allow meetings or
correspondence. Broken hearts. Improvident marriages. Preaching down a
daughter's heart, or an aged parent's heart, or a nephew's, or a niece's,
or a ward's, or anybody's heart. Peace restored to the household.
Intended marriage off, and nobody a penny the worse, unless--'
'Unless what?' said Logan.
'Practical difficulties,' said Merton, 'will occur in every enterprise.
But they won't be to our disadvantage, the reverse--if they don't happen
too often. And we can guard against _that_ by a scientific process.'
'Now will you explain,' Logan asked, 'or shall I pour this whisky and
water down the back of your neck?'
He rose to his feet, menace in his eye.
'Bear fighting barred! We are no longer boys. We are men--broken men.
Sit down, don't play the bear,' said Merton.
'Well, explain, or I fire!'
'Don't you see? The problem for the family, for hundreds of families, is
to get the undesirable marriage off without the usual row. Very few
people really like a row. Daughter becomes anaemic; foreign cures are
expensive and no good. Son goes to the Devil or the Cape. Aged and
opulent, but amorous, parent leaves everything he can scrape together to
disapproved of new wife. Relations cut each other all round. Not many
people really enjoy that kind of thing. They want a pacific
solution--marriage off, no remonstrances.'
'And how are you going to do it?'
'Why,' said Merton, 'by a scientific and thoroughly organised system of
disengaging or disentangling. We enlist a lot of girls and fellows like
ourselves, beautiful, attractive, young, or not so young, well connected,
intellectual, athletic, and of all sorts of types, but all _broke_, all
without visible means of subsistence. They are people welcome in country
houses, but travelling third class, and devilishly perplexed about how to
tip the servants, how to pay if they lose at bridge, and so forth. We
enlist them, we send them out on demand, carefully selecting our agents
to meet the circumstances in each case. They go down and disentangle the
amorous by--well, by entangling them. The lovers are off with the old
love, the love which causes all the worry, without being on with the new
love--our agent. The thing quietly fizzles out.'
'Quietly!' Logan snorted. 'I like "quietly." They would be on with the
new love. Don't you see, you born gomeral, that the person, man or
woman, who deserts the inconvenient A.--I put an A. B. case--falls in
love with your agent B., and your B. is, by the nature of the thing, more
ineligible than A.--too poor. A babe could see that. You disappoint me,
Merton.'
'You state,' said Merton, 'one of the practical difficulties which I
foresaw. Not that it does not suit _us_ very well. Our comrade and
friend, man or woman, gets a chance of a good marriage, and, Logan, there
is no better thing. But parents and guardians would not stand much of
that: of people marrying our agents.'
'Of course they wouldn't. Your idea is crazy.'
'Wait a moment,' said Merton. 'The resources of science are not yet
exhausted. You have heard of the epoch-making discovery of Jenner, and
its beneficent results in checking the ravages of smallpox, that scourge
of the human race?'
'Oh don't talk like a printed book,' Logan remonstrated. 'Everybody has
heard of vaccination.'
'And you are aware that similar prophylactic measures have been adopted,
with more or less of success, in the case of other diseases?'
'I am aware,' said Logan, 'that you are in danger of personal suffering
at my hands, as I already warned you.'
'What is love but a disease?' Merton asked dreamily. 'A French _savant_,
Monsieur Janet, says that nobody ever falls in love except when he is a
little bit off colour: I forget the French equivalent.'
'I am coming for you,' Logan arose in wrath.
'Sit down. Well, your objection (which it did not need the eyes of an
Argus to discover) is that the patients, the lovers young, whose loves
are disapproved of by the family, will fall in love with our agents,
insist on marrying _them_, and so the last state of these afflicted
parents--or children--will be worse than the first. Is that your
objection?'
'Of course it is; and crushing at that,' Logan replied.
'Then science suggests prophylactic measures: something akin to
vaccination,' Merton explained. 'The agents must be warranted "immune."
Nice new word!'
'How?'
'The object,' Merton answered, 'is to make it impossible, or highly
improbable, that our agents, after disentangling the affections of the
patients, curing them of one attack, will accept their addresses, offered
in a second fit of the fever. In brief, the agents must not marry the
patients, or not often.'
'But how can you prevent them if they want to do it?'
'By a process akin, in the emotional region of our strangely blended
nature, to inoculation.'
'Hanged if I understand you. You keep on repeating yourself. You
dodder!'
'Our agents must have got the disease already, the pretty fever; and be
safe against infection. There must be on the side of the agent a prior
attachment. Now, don't interrupt, there always _is_ a prior attachment.
You are in love, I am in love, he, she, and they, all of the broken
brigade, are in love; all the more because they have not a chance.
"Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth." So,
you see, our agents will be quite safe not to crown the flame of the
patients, not to accept them, if they do propose, or expect a proposal.
"Every security from infection guaranteed." There is the felt want. Here
is the remedy; not warranted absolutely painless, but salutary, and
tending to the amelioration of the species. So we have only to enlist
the agents, and send a few advertisements to the papers. My first
editions must go. Farewell Shelley, Tennyson, Keats, uncut Waverleys,
Byron, _The Waltz_, early Kiplings (at a vast reduction on account of the
overflooded state of the market). Farewell Kilmarnock edition of Burns,
and Colonel Lovelace, his _Lucasta_, and _Tamerlane_ by Mr. Poe, and the
rest. The money must be raised.' Merton looked resigned.
'I have nothing to sell,' said Logan, 'but an entire set of clubs by
Philp. Guaranteed unique, and in exquisite condition.'
'You must part with them,' said Merton. 'We are like Palissy the potter,
feeding his furnace with the drawing-room furniture.'
'But how about the recruiting?' Logan asked. 'It's like one of these
novels where you begin by collecting desperados from all quarters, and
then the shooting commences.'
'Well, we need not ransack the Colonies,' Merton replied. 'Patronise
British industries. We know some fellows already and some young women.'
'I say,' Logan interrupted, 'what a dab at disentangling Lumley would
have been if he had not got that Professorship of Toxicology at
Edinburgh, and been able to marry Miss Wingan at last!'
'Yes, and Miss Wingan would have been useful. What a lively girl, ready
for everything,' Merton replied.
'But these we can still get at,' Logan asked: 'how are you to be sure
that they are--vaccinated?'
'The inquiry is delicate,' Merton admitted, 'but the fact may be almost
taken for granted. We must give a dinner (a preliminary expense) to
promising collaborators, and champagne is a great promoter of success in
delicate inquiries. _In vino veritas_.'
'I don't know if there is money in it, but there is a kind of larkiness,'
Logan admitted.
'Yes, I think there will be larks.'
'About the dinner? We are not to have Johnnies disguised as hansom
cabbies driving about, and picking up men and women that look the right
sort, in the streets, and compelling them to come in?'
'Oh no, _that_ expense we can cut. It would not do with the women,
obviously: heavens, what queer fishes that net would catch! The flag of
the Disentanglers shall never be stained by--anything. You know some
likely agents: I know some likely agents. They will suggest others, as
our field of usefulness widens. Of course there is the oath of secrecy:
we shall administer that after dinner to each guest apart.'
'Jolly difficult for those that are mixed up with the press to keep an
oath of secrecy!' Logan spoke as a press man.
'We shall only have to do with gentlemen and ladies. The oath is not
going to sanction itself with religious terrors. Good form--we shall
appeal to a "sense of form"--now so widely diffused by University
Extension Lectures on the Beautiful, the Fitting, the--'
'Oh shut up!' cried Logan. 'You always haver after midnight. For, look
here, here is an objection; this precious plan of yours, parents and
others could work it for themselves. I dare say they do. When they see
the affections of a son, or a daughter, or a bereaved father beginning to
stray towards A., they probably invite B. to come and stay and act as a
lightning conductor. They don't need us.'
'Oh, don't they? They seldom have an eligible and satisfactory lightning
conductor at hand, somebody to whom they can trust their dear one. Or,
if they have, the dear one has already been bored with the intended
lightning conductor (who is old, or plain, or stupid, or familiar, at
best), and they won't look at him or her. Now our Disentanglers are not
going to be plain, or dull, or old, or stale, or commonplace--we'll take
care of that. My dear fellow, don't you know how dismal the _parti_
selected for a man or girl invariably is? Now _we_ provide a different
and superior article, a _fresh_ article too, not a familiar bore or a
neighbour.'
'Well, there is a good deal in that, as you say,' Logan admitted. 'But
decent people will think the whole speculation shady. How are you to get
round that? There is something you have forgotten.'
'What?' Merton asked.
'Why it stares you in the face. References. Unexceptionable references;
people will expect them all round.'
'Please don't say "unexceptionable"; say "references beyond the reach of
cavil."' Merton was a purist. 'It costs more in advertisements, but my
phrase at once enlists the sympathy of every liberal and elegant mind.
But as to references (and I am glad that you have some common sense,
Logan), there is, let me see, there is the Dowager.'
'The divine Althaea--Marchioness of Bowton?'
'The same,' said Merton. 'The oldest woman, and the most recklessly up-
to-date in London. She has seen _bien d'autres_, and wants to see more.'
'She will do; and my aunt,' Logan said.
'Not, oh, of course not, the one who left her money to the Armenians?'
Merton asked.
'No, another. And there's old Lochmaben's young wife, my cousin, widely
removed, by marriage. She is American, you know, and perhaps you know
her book, _Social Experiments_?'
'Yes, it is not half bad,' Merton conceded, 'and her heart will be in
what I fear she will call "the new departure." And she is pretty, and
highly respected in the parish.'
'And there's my aunt I spoke of, or great aunt, Miss Nicky Maxwell. The
best old thing: a beautiful monument of old gentility, and she would give
her left hand to help any one of the clan.'
'She will do. And there's Mrs. Brown-Smith, Lord Yarrow's daughter, who
married the patent soap man. _Elle est capable de tout_. A real good
woman, but full of her fun.'
'That will do for the lady patronesses. We must secure them at once.'
'But won't the clients blab?' Logan suggested.
'They can't,' Merton said. 'They would be laughed at consumedly. It
will be their interest to hold their tongues.'
'Well, let us hope that they will see it in that light.' Logan was not
too sanguine.
Merton had a better opinion of his enterprise.
'People, if they come to us at all for assistance in these very delicate
and intimate affairs, will have too much to lose by talking about them.
They may not come, we can only try, but if they come they will be silent
as the grave usually is.'
'Well, it is late, and the whisky is low,' said Logan in mournful tones.
'May the morrow's reflections justify the inspiration of--the whisky.
Good night!'
'Good night,' said Merton absently.
He sat down when Logan had gone, and wrote a few notes on large sheets of
paper. He was elaborating the scheme. 'If collaboration consists in
making objections, as the French novelist said, Logan is a rare
collaborator,' Merton muttered as he turned out the pallid lamp and went
to bed.
Next morning, before dressing, he revolved the scheme. It bore the
change of light and survived the inspiration of alcohol. Logan looked in
after breakfast. He had no new objections. They proceeded to action.