When he came out it was exactly as if he had been in custody, for beside
him walked a stout man with a big black beard, who, save that he wore
spectacles, might have been a policeman, and in whom at a second glance I
recognised the highest contemporary enterprise.
“This is Mr. Morrow,” said Paraday, looking, I thought, rather white: “he
wants to publish heaven knows what about me.”
I winced as I remembered that this was exactly what I myself had wanted.
“Already?” I cried with a sort of sense that my friend had fled to me for
protection.
Mr. Morrow glared, agreeably, through his glasses: they suggested the
electric headlights of some monstrous modern ship, and I felt as if
Paraday and I were tossing terrified under his bows. I saw his momentum
was irresistible. “I was confident that I should be the first in the
field. A great interest is naturally felt in Mr. Paraday’s
surroundings,” he heavily observed.
“I hadn’t the least idea of it,” said Paraday, as if he had been told he
had been snoring.
“I find he hasn’t read the article in _The Empire_,” Mr. Morrow remarked
to me. “That’s so very interesting—it’s something to start with,” he
smiled. He had begun to pull off his gloves, which were violently new,
and to look encouragingly round the little garden. As a “surrounding” I
felt how I myself had already been taken in; I was a little fish in the
stomach of a bigger one. “I represent,” our visitor continued, “a
syndicate of influential journals, no less than thirty-seven, whose
public—whose publics, I may say—are in peculiar sympathy with Mr.
Paraday’s line of thought. They would greatly appreciate any expression
of his views on the subject of the art he so nobly exemplifies. In
addition to my connexion with the syndicate just mentioned I hold a
particular commission from _The Tatler_, whose most prominent department,
‘Smatter and Chatter’—I dare say you’ve often enjoyed it—attracts such
attention. I was honoured only last week, as a representative of _The
Tatler_, with the confidence of Guy Walsingham, the brilliant author of
‘Obsessions.’ She pronounced herself thoroughly pleased with my sketch
of her method; she went so far as to say that I had made her genius more
comprehensible even to herself.”
Neil Paraday had dropped on the garden-bench and sat there at once
detached and confounded; he looked hard at a bare spot in the lawn, as if
with an anxiety that had suddenly made him grave. His movement had been
interpreted by his visitor as an invitation to sink sympathetically into
a wicker chair that stood hard by, and while Mr. Morrow so settled
himself I felt he had taken official possession and that there was no
undoing it. One had heard of unfortunate people’s having “a man in the
house,” and this was just what we had. There was a silence of a moment,
during which we seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was possible
the presence of universal fate; the sunny stillness took no pity, and my
thought, as I was sure Paraday’s was doing, performed within the minute a
great distant revolution. I saw just how emphatic I should make my
rejoinder to Mr. Pinhorn, and that having come, like Mr. Morrow, to
betray, I must remain as long as possible to save. Not because I had
brought my mind back, but because our visitors last words were in my ear,
I presently enquired with gloomy irrelevance if Guy Walsingham were a
woman.
“Oh yes, a mere pseudonym—rather pretty, isn’t it?—and convenient, you
know, for a lady who goes in for the larger latitude. ‘Obsessions, by
Miss So-and-so,’ would look a little odd, but men are more naturally
indelicate. Have you peeped into ‘Obsessions’?” Mr. Morrow continued
sociably to our companion.
Paraday, still absent, remote, made no answer, as if he hadn’t heard the
question: a form of intercourse that appeared to suit the cheerful Mr.
Morrow as well as any other. Imperturbably bland, he was a man of
resources—he only needed to be on the spot. He had pocketed the whole
poor place while Paraday and I were wool-gathering, and I could imagine
that he had already got his “heads.” His system, at any rate, was
justified by the inevitability with which I replied, to save my friend
the trouble: “Dear no—he hasn’t read it. He doesn’t read such things!” I
unwarily added.
“Things that are _too_ far over the fence, eh?” I was indeed a godsend
to Mr. Morrow. It was the psychological moment; it determined the
appearance of his note-book, which, however, he at first kept slightly
behind him, even as the dentist approaching his victim keeps the horrible
forceps. “Mr. Paraday holds with the good old proprieties—I see!” And
thinking of the thirty-seven influential journals, I found myself, as I
found poor Paraday, helplessly assisting at the promulgation of this
ineptitude. “There’s no point on which distinguished views are so
acceptable as on this question—raised perhaps more strikingly than ever
by Guy Walsingham—of the permissibility of the larger latitude. I’ve an
appointment, precisely in connexion with it, next week, with Dora Forbes,
author of ‘The Other Way Round,’ which everybody’s talking about. Has
Mr. Paraday glanced at ‘The Other Way Round’?” Mr. Morrow now frankly
appealed to me. I took on myself to repudiate the supposition, while our
companion, still silent, got up nervously and walked away. His visitor
paid no heed to his withdrawal; but opened out the note-book with a more
fatherly pat. “Dora Forbes, I gather, takes the ground, the same as Guy
Walsingham’s, that the larger latitude has simply got to come. He holds
that it has got to be squarely faced. Of course his sex makes him a less
prejudiced witness. But an authoritative word from Mr. Paraday—from the
point of view of _his_ sex, you know—would go right round the globe. He
takes the line that we _haven’t_ got to face it?”
I was bewildered: it sounded somehow as if there were three sexes. My
interlocutor’s pencil was poised, my private responsibility great. I
simply sat staring, none the less, and only found presence of mind to
say: “Is this Miss Forbes a gentleman?”
Mr. Morrow had a subtle smile. “It wouldn’t be ‘Miss’—there’s a wife!”
“I mean is she a man?”
“The wife?”—Mr. Morrow was for a moment as confused as myself. But when
I explained that I alluded to Dora Forbes in person he informed me, with
visible amusement at my being so out of it, that this was the “pen-name”
of an indubitable male—he had a big red moustache. “He goes in for the
slight mystification because the ladies are such popular favourites. A
great deal of interest is felt in his acting on that idea—which _is_
clever, isn’t it?—and there’s every prospect of its being widely
imitated.” Our host at this moment joined us again, and Mr. Morrow
remarked invitingly that he should be happy to make a note of any
observation the movement in question, the bid for success under a lady’s
name, might suggest to Mr. Paraday. But the poor man, without catching
the allusion, excused himself, pleading that, though greatly honoured by
his visitor’s interest, he suddenly felt unwell and should have to take
leave of him—have to go and lie down and keep quiet. His young friend
might be trusted to answer for him, but he hoped Mr. Morrow didn’t expect
great things even of his young friend. His young friend, at this moment,
looked at Neil Paraday with an anxious eye, greatly wondering if he were
doomed to be ill again; but Paraday’s own kind face met his question
reassuringly, seemed to say in a glance intelligible enough: “Oh I’m not
ill, but I’m scared: get him out of the house as quietly as possible.”
Getting newspaper-men out of the house was odd business for an emissary
of Mr. Pinhorn, and I was so exhilarated by the idea of it that I called
after him as he left us: “Read the article in _The Empire_ and you’ll
soon be all right!”