"So much by way of prelude. Now picture to yourself the immediate
setting of my conference. Just hand me that book by the
'Encyclopaedia.'"
It was Mallock's "New Republic." He took it, turned a page or so,
stuck a finger in it, and resumed.
"It is in a narrow, ill-kept road by the seaside, Bliss. A long wall,
plaster-faced, blotched and peeling, crested with uncivil glass
against the lower orders, is pierced by cast-iron gates clumsily
classical, and through the iron bars of these there is visible the
deserted gatekeeper's lodge, its cracked windows opaque with
immemorial dirt, and a rich undergrowth of nettles beneath the rusty
cypresses and stone-pines that border the carriage-way. An automobile
throbs in the road; its occupants regard a board leaning all askew
above the parapet, and hesitate to descend. On the board, which has
been enriched by the attentions of the passing boy with innumerable
radiant mud pellets, one reads with difficulty--
+-----------------------------------------------------+
| |
| THIS CLASSICAL VILLA |
| |
| with magnificent gardens in the Victorian-Italian |
| style reaching down to the sea, and |
| replete with Latin and Greek inscriptions, |
| a garden study, literary associations, fully |
| matured Oxford allusions, and a great |
| number of conveniently arranged |
| bedrooms, to be |
| |
| LET OR SOLD. |
| |
| _Apply to the owner_, |
| Mr. W. H. MALLOCK, |
| |
| original author of |
| "The New Republic." |
| |
| _Key within_. |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------+
"'This _must_ be it, my dear Archer,' says one of the occupants of the
motor-car, and he rises, throws aside his furs, and reveals--the
urbane presence of the Encyclopaedist. He descends, and rings a
clangorous bell.... Eh?"
"It's the garden of the 'New Republic'?"
"Exactly. Revisited. It's an astonishing thing. Do you know the date
of the 'New Republic'? The book's nearly forty years old! About the
time of Matthew Arnold's 'Friendship's Garland,' and since that time
there's been nothing like a systematic stocktaking of the
English-speaking mind--until the Encyclopaedist reported 'no effects.'
And I propose to make this little party in the motor-car a sort of
scratch expedition, under the impetus of the proposed Revival of
Thought. They are prospecting for a Summer Congress, which is to go
into the state of the republic of letters thoroughly. It isn't perhaps
quite Gosse's style, but he has to be there--in a way he's the
official British man of letters--but we shall do what we can for him,
we shall make him show a strong disposition towards protective ironies
and confess himself not a little bothered at being dragged into the
horrid business. And I think we must have George Moore, who has played
uncle to so many movements and been so uniformly disappointed in his
nephews. And William Archer, with that face of his which is so exactly
like his mind, a remarkably fine face mysteriously marred by an
expression of unscrupulous integrity. And lastly, Keyhole."
"Why Keyhole?" I asked.
"Hallery has to murder some one. I've planned that--and who _would_ he
murder but Keyhole?... And we have to hold the first meeting in
Mallock's garden to preserve the continuity of English thought.
"Very well! Then we invent a morose, elderly caretaker, greatly
embittered at this irruption. He parleys for a time through the gate
with all the loyalty of his class, mentions a number of discouraging
defects, more particularly in the drainage, alleges the whole place is
clammy, and only at Gosse's clearly enunciated determination to enter
produces the key."
Boon consulted his text. "Naturally one would give a chapter to the
Villa by the Sea and Mallock generally. Our visitors explore. They
visit one scene after another familiar to the good Mallockite; they
descend 'the broad flights of steps flanked by Gods and Goddesses'
that lead from one to another of the 'long, straight terraces set with
vases and Irish yews,' and the yews, you know, have suffered from the
want of water, the vases are empty, and ivy, under the benediction of
our modest climate, has already veiled the classical freedom--the
conscientious nudity, one might say--of the statuary. The laurels have
either grown inordinately or perished, and the 'busts of orators,
poets, and philosophers' 'with Latin inscriptions,' stand either
bleakly exposed or else swallowed up, in a thicket. There is a
pleasing struggle to translate the legends, and one gathers
scholarship is not extinct in England.
"The one oasis in a universal weediness is the pond about the 'scaly
Triton,' which has been devoted to the culture of spring onions, a
vegetable to which the aged custodian quite superfluously avows
himself very 'partial.' The visitors return to the house, walk along
its terrace, survey its shuttered front, and they spend some time
going through its musty rooms. Dr. Keyhole distinguishes himself by
the feverish eagerness of his curiosity about where Leslie slept and
where was the boudoir of Mrs. Sinclair. He insists that a very sad and
painful scandal about these two underlies the _New Republic_, and
professes a thirsty desire to draw a veil over it as conspicuously as
possible. The others drag him away to the summer dining-room, now a
great brier tangle, where once Lady Grace so pleasantly dined her
guests. The little arena about the fountain in a porphyry basin they
do not find, but the garden study they peer into, and see its inkpot
in the shape of a classical temple, just as Mr. Mallock has described
it, and the windowless theatre, and, in addition, they find a small
private gas-works that served it. The old man lets them in, and by the
light of uplifted vestas they see the decaying, rat-disordered ruins
of the scene before which Jenkinson who was Jowett, and Herbert who
was Ruskin, preached. It is as like a gorge in the Indian Caucasus as
need be. The Brocken act-drop above hangs low enough to show the toes
of the young witch, still brightly pink....
"They go down to the beach, and the old man, with evil chuckles,
recalls a hitherto unpublished anecdote of mixed bathing in the
'seventies, in which Mrs. Sinclair and a flushed and startled Dr.
Jenkinson, Greek in thought rather than action, play the chief parts,
and then they wade through a nettle-bed to that 'small classical
portico' which leads to the locked enclosure containing the three
tombs, with effigies after the fashion of Genoa Cemetery. But the key
of the gate is lost, so that they cannot go in to examine them, and
the weeds have hidden the figures altogether.
"'That's a pity,' some one remarks, 'for it's here, no doubt, that old
Laurence lies, with his first mistress and his last--under these
cypresses.'
"The aged custodian makes a derisive noise, and every one turns to
him.
"'I gather you throw some doubt?' the Encyclopaedist begins in his
urbane way.
"'Buried--under the cypresses--first mistress and last!' The old man
makes his manner invincibly suggestive of scornful merriment.
"'But isn't it so?'
"'Bless y'r 'art, _no_! Mr. Laurence--buried! Mr. Laurence worn't
never alive!'
"'But there was a _young_ Mr. Laurence?'
"'That was Mr. Mallup 'imself, that was! 'E was a great mistifier was
Mr. Mallup, and sometimes 'e went about pretendin' to be Mr. Laurence
and sometimes he was Mr. Leslie, and sometimes----But there, you'd
'ardly believe. 'E got all this up--cypresses, chumes, everythink--out
of 'is 'ed. Po'try. Why! 'Ere! Jest come along 'ere, gents!'
"He leads the way along a narrow privet alley that winds its
surreptitious way towards an alcove.
"'Miss Merton,' he says, flinging the door of this open.
"'The Roman Catholic young person?' says Dr. Tomlinson Keyhole.
"'Quite right, sir,' says the aged custodian.
"They peer in.
"Hanging from a peg the four visitors behold a pale blue dress cut in
the fashion of the 'seventies, a copious 'chignon' of fair hair, large
earrings, and on the marble bench a pair of open-work stockings and
other articles of feminine apparel. A tall mirror hangs opposite these
garments, and in a little recess convenient to the hand are the dusty
and decaying materials for a hasty 'make-up.'
"The old custodian watches the effect of this display upon the others
with masked enjoyment.
"'You mean Miss Merton _painted_?' said the Encyclopaedist, knitting
his brows.
"'Mr. Mallup did,' says the aged custodian.
"'You mean----?'
"'Mr. Mallup was Miss Merton. 'E got _'er_ up too. Parst 'er orf as a
young lady, 'e did. Oh, 'e was a great mistifier was Mr. Mallup. None
of the three of 'em wasn't real people, really; he got 'em all up.'
"'She had sad-looking eyes, a delicate, proud mouth, and a worn,
melancholy look,' muses Mr. Archer.
"'And young Laurence was in love with her,' adds the Encyclopaedist....
"'They was all Mr. Mallup,' says the aged custodian. 'Made up out of
'is 'ed. And the gents that pretended they was Mr. 'Uxley and Mr.
Tyndall in disguise, one was Bill Smithers, the chemist's assistant,
and the other was the chap that used to write and print the _Margate
Advertiser_ before the noo papers come.'"