Part 3 (2/2)

”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 cla.s.sical 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”They go down to the beach, and the old man, with evil chuckles, recalls a hitherto unpublished anecdote of mixed bathing in the 'seventies, in which Mrs.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 cla.s.sical portico' which leads to the locked enclosure containing the three tombs, with effigies after the fas.h.i.+on 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 surrept.i.tious 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.sistant, and the other was the chap that used to write and print the _Margate Advertiser_ before the noo papers come.'”

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

Of Art, of Literature, of Mr. Henry James

-- 1

The Garden by the Sea chapter was to have gone on discursively with a discussion upon this project of a conference upon the Mind of the Race. The automobile-ful of gentlemen who had first arrived was to have supplied the opening interlocutors, but presently they were to have been supplemented by the most unexpected accessories. It would have been an enormously big dialogue if it had ever been written, and Boon's essentially lazy temperament was all against its ever getting written. There were to have been disputes from the outset as to the very purpose that had brought them all together. ”A sort of literary stocktaking” was to have been Mr. Archer's phrase. Repeated.

Unhappily, its commercialism was to upset Mr. Gosse extremely; he was to say something pa.s.sionately bitter about its ”utter lack of dignity.” Then relenting a little, he was to urge as an alternative ”some controlling influence, some standard and restraint, a new and better Academic influence.” Dr. Keyhole was to offer his journalistic services in organizing an Academic plebiscite, a suggestion which was to have exasperated Mr. Gosse to the pitch of a gleaming silence.

In the midst of this conversation the party is joined by Hallery and an American friend, a quiet Harvard sort of man speaking meticulously accurate English, and still later by emissaries of Lord Northcliffe and Mr. Hearst, by Mr. Henry James, rather led into it by a distinguished hostess, by Mr. W. B. Yeats, late but keen, and by that Sir Henry Lunn who organizes the Swiss winter sports hotels. All these people drift in with an all too manifestly simulated accidentalness that at last arouses the distrust of the elderly custodian, so that Mr. Orage, the gifted editor of the _New Age_, arriving last, is refused admission. The sounds of the conflict at the gates do but faintly perturb the conference within, which is now really getting to business, but afterwards Mr. Orage, slightly wounded in the face by a dexterously plied rake and incurably embittered, makes his existence felt by a number of unpleasant missiles discharged from over the wall in the direction of any audible voices. Ultimately Mr. Orage gets into a point of vantage in a small pine-tree overlooking the seaward corner of the premises, and from this he contributes a number of comments that are rarely helpful, always unamiable, and frequently in the worst possible taste.

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