Though I was read in silence at the breakfast table and not passed on to
the Archdeacon, I lay dormant in Mrs. Selldon's mind all day, and came to
her aid that night when she was at her wits' end for something to talk
about.
Mrs. Selldon, though a most worthy and estimable person, was of a
phlegmatic temperament; her sympathies were not easily aroused, her mind
was lazy and torpid, in conversation she was unutterably dull. There
were times when she was painfully conscious of this, and would have given
much for the ceaseless flow of words which fell from the lips of her
friend Mrs. Milton-Cleave. And that evening after my arrival chanced to
be one of these occasions, for there was a dinner-party at the
Archdeaconry, given in honour of a well-known author who was spending a
few days in the neighbourhood.
"I wish you could have Mr. Shrewsbury at your end of the table, Thomas,"
Mrs. Selldon had remarked to her husband with a sigh, as she was
arranging the guests on paper that afternoon.
"Oh, he must certainly take you in, my dear," said the Archdeacon. "And
he seems a very clever, well-read man, I am sure you will find him easy
to talk to."
Poor Mrs. Selldon thought that she would rather have had some one who was
neither clever nor well-read. But there was no help for her, and,
whether she would or not, she had to go in to dinner with the literary
lion.
Mr. Mark Shrewsbury was a novelist of great ability. Some twenty years
before, he had been called to the bar, and, conscious of real talent, had
been greatly embittered by the impossibility of getting on in his
profession. At length, in disgust, he gave up all hopes of success and
devoted himself instead to literature. In this field he won the
recognition for which he craved; his books were read everywhere, his name
became famous, his income steadily increased, and he had the pleasant
consciousness that he had found his vocation. Still, in spite of his
success, he could not forget the bitter years of failure and
disappointment which had gone before, and though his novels were full of
genius they were pervaded by an undertone of sarcasm, so that people
after reading them were more ready than before to take cynical views of
life.
He was one of those men whose quiet impassive faces reveal scarcely
anything of their character. He was neither tall nor short, neither dark
nor fair, neither handsome nor the reverse; in fact his personality was
not in the least impressive; while, like most true artists, he observed
all things so quietly that you rarely discovered that he was observing at
all.
"Dear me!" people would say, "Is Mark Shrewsbury really here? Which is
he? I don't see any one at all like my idea of a novelist."
"There he is--that man in spectacles," would be the reply.
And really the spectacles were the only noteworthy thing about him.
Mrs. Selldon, who had seen several authors and authoresses in her time,
and knew that they were as a rule most ordinary, hum-drum kind of people,
was quite prepared for her fate. She remembered her astonishment as a
girl when, having laughed and cried at the play, and taken the chief
actor as her ideal hero, she had had him pointed out to her one day in
Regent Street, and found him to be a most commonplace-looking man, the
very last person one would have supposed capable of stirring the hearts
of a great audience.
Meanwhile dinner progressed, and Mrs. Selldon talked to an empty-headed
but loquacious man on her left, and racked her brains for something to
say to the alarmingly silent author on her right. She remembered hearing
that Charles Dickens would often sit silent through the whole of dinner,
observing quietly those about him, but that at dessert he would suddenly
come to life and keep the whole table in roars of laughter. She feared
that Mr. Shrewsbury meant to imitate the great novelist in the first
particular, but was scarcely likely to follow his example in the last. At
length she asked him what he thought of the cathedral, and a few tepid
remarks followed.
"How unutterably this good lady bores me!" thought the author.
"How odd it is that his characters talk so well in his books, and that he
is such a stick!" thought Mrs. Selldon.
"I suppose it's the effect of cathedral-town atmosphere," reflected the
author.
"I suppose he is eaten up with conceit and won't trouble himself to talk
to me," thought the hostess.
By the time the fish had been removed they had arrived at a state of
mutual contempt. Mindful of the reputation they had to keep up, however,
they exerted themselves a little more while the _entrees_ went round.
"Seldom reads, I should fancy, and never thinks!" reflected the author,
glancing at Mrs. Selldon's placid unintellectual face. "What on earth
can I say to her?"
"Very unpractical, I am sure," reflected Mrs. Selldon. "The sort of man
who lives in a world of his own, and only lays down his pen to take up a
book. What subject shall I start?"
"What delightful weather we have been having the last few days!" observed
the author. "Real genuine summer weather at last." The same remark had
been trembling on Mrs. Selldon's lips. She assented with great
cheerfulness and alacrity; and over that invaluable topic, which is
always so safe, and so congenial, and so ready to hand, they grew quite
friendly, and the conversation for fully five minutes was animated.
An interval of thought followed.
"How wearisome is society!" reflected Mrs. Selldon. "It is hard that we
must spend so much money in giving dinners and have so much trouble for
so little enjoyment."
"One pays dearly for fame," reflected the author. "What a confounded
nuisance it is to waste all this time when there are the last proofs of
'What Caste?' to be done for the nine-o'clock post to-morrow morning!
Goodness knows what time I shall get to bed to-night!"
Then Mrs. Selldon thought regretfully of the comfortable easy chair that
she usually enjoyed after dinner, and the ten minutes' nap, and the
congenial needle-work. And Mark Shrewsbury thought of his chambers in
Pump Court, and longed for his type-writer, and his books, and his swivel
chair, and his favourite meerschaum.
"I should be less afraid to talk if there were not always the horrible
idea that he may take down what one says," thought Mrs. Selldon.
"I should be less bored if she would only be her natural self," reflected
the author. "And would not talk prim platitudes." (This was hard, for
he had talked nothing else himself.) "Does she think she is so
interesting that I am likely to study her for my next book?"
"Have you been abroad this summer?" inquired Mrs. Selldon, making another
spasmodic attempt at conversation.
"No, I detest travelling," replied Mark Shrewsbury. "When I need change
I just settle down in some quiet country district for a few
months--somewhere near Windsor, or Reigate, or Muddleton. There is
nothing to my mind like our English scenery."
"Oh, do you know Muddleton?" exclaimed Mrs. Selldon. "Is it not a
charming little place? I often stay in the neighbourhood with the Milton-
Cleaves."
"I know Milton-Cleave well," said the author. "A capital fellow, quite
the typical country gentleman."
"Is he not?" said Mrs. Selldon, much relieved to have found this subject
in common. "His wife is a great friend of mine; she is full of life and
energy, and does an immense amount of good. Did you say you had stayed
with them?"
"No, but last year I took a house in that neighbourhood for a few months;
a most charming little place it was, just fit for a lonely bachelor. I
dare say you remember it--Ivy Cottage, on the Newton Road."
"Did you stay there? Now what a curious coincidence! Only this morning
I heard from Mrs. Milton-Cleave that Ivy Cottage has been taken this
summer by a Mr. Sigismund Zaluski, a Polish merchant, who is doing untold
harm in the neighbourhood. He is a very clever, unscrupulous man, and
has managed to take in almost every one."
"Why, what is he? A swindler? Or a burglar in disguise, like the _House
on the Marsh_ fellow?" asked the author, with a little twinkle of
amusement in his face.
"Oh, much worse than that," said Mrs. Selldon, lowering her voice. "I
assure you, Mr. Shrewsbury, you would hardly credit the story if I were
to tell it you, it is really stranger than fiction." Mark Shrewsbury
pricked up his ears, he no longer felt bored, he began to think that,
after all, there might be some compensation for this wearisome dinner-
party. He was always glad to seize upon material for future plots, and
somehow the notion of a mysterious Pole suddenly making his appearance in
that quiet country neighbourhood and winning undeserved popularity rather
took his fancy. He thought he might make something of it. However, he
knew human nature too well to ask a direct question.
"I am sorry to hear that," he said, becoming all at once quite
sympathetic and approachable. "I don't like the thought of those simple,
unsophisticated people being hoodwinked by a scoundrel."
"No; is it not sad?" said Mrs. Selldon. "Such pleasant, hospitable
people as they are! Do you remember the Morleys?"
"Oh yes! There was a pretty daughter who played tennis well."
"Quite so--Gertrude Morley. Well, would you believe it, this miserable
fortune-hunter is actually either engaged to her or on the eve of being
engaged! Poor Mrs. Milton-Cleave is so unhappy about it, for she knows,
on the best authority, that Mr. Zaluski is unfit to enter a respectable
house."
"Perhaps he is really some escaped criminal?" suggested Mr. Shrewsbury,
tentatively.
Mrs. Selldon hesitated. Then, under the cover of the general roar of
conversation, she said in a low voice:--
"You have guessed quite rightly. He is one of the Nihilists who were
concerned in the assassination of the late Czar."
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Mark Shrewsbury, much startled. "Is it
possible?"
"Indeed, it is only too true," said Mrs. Selldon. "I heard it only the
other morning, and on the very best authority. Poor Gertrude Morley! My
heart bleeds for her."
Now I can't help observing here that this must have been the merest
figure of speech, for just then there was a comfortable little glow of
satisfaction about Mrs. Selldon's heart. She was so delighted to have
"got on well," as she expressed it, with the literary lion, and by this
time dessert was on the table, and soon the tedious ceremony would be
happily over.
"But how did he escape?" asked Mark Shrewsbury, still with the thought of
"copy" in his mind.
"I don't know the details," said Mrs. Selldon. "Probably they are only
known to himself. But he managed to escape somehow in the month of March
1881, and to reach England safely. I fear it is only too often the case
in this world--wickedness is apt to be successful."
"To flourish like a green bay tree," said Mark Shrewsbury, congratulating
himself on the aptness of the quotation, and its suitability to the
Archediaconal dinner-table. "It is the strangest story I have heard for
a long time." Just then there was a pause in the general conversation,
and Mrs. Selldon took advantage of it to make the sign for rising, so
that no more passed with regard to Zaluski.
Shrewsbury, flattering himself that he had left a good impression by his
last remark, thought better not to efface it later in the evening by any
other conversation with his hostess. But in the small hours of the
night, when he had finished his bundle of proofs, he took up his notebook
and, strangling his yawns, made two or three brief, pithy notes of the
story Mrs. Selldon had told him, adding a further development which
occurred to him, and wondering to himself whether "Like a Green Bay Tree"
would be a selling title.
After this he went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just, or the
unbroken sleep which goes by that name.