Part 22 (1/2)

Alice, who looked terrible with the transformation leaning right-ear-ward, said yes, and that we had come to say what a fine, bold conception we thought the Doge's chapter was. This was what we had settled to say, but she needn't have burst out with it like that. I suppose she forgot herself. Oswald, in the agitation of his clothes, could say nothing. The elastic of the hat seemed to be very slowly slipping up the back of his head, and he knew that, if it once pa.s.sed the b.u.mp that backs of heads are made with, the hat would spring from his head like an arrow from a bow. And all would be frustrated.

”Yes,” said the Editor; ”that chapter seems to have had a great success--a wonderful success. I had no fewer than sixteen letters about it, all praising it in unmeasured terms.” He looked at Oswald's boots, which Oswald had neglected to cover over with his petticoats. He now did this.

”It _is_ a nice story, you know,” said Alice timidly.

”So it seems,” the gentleman went on. ”Fourteen of the sixteen letters bear the Blackheath postmark. The enthusiasm for the chapter would seem to be mainly local.”

Oswald would not look at Alice. He could not trust himself, with her looking like she did. He knew at once that only the piano-tuner and the electric bell man had been faithful to their trust. The others had all posted their letters in the pillar-box just outside our gate. They wanted to get rid of them as quickly as they could, I suppose.

Selfishness is a vile quality.

The author cannot deny that Oswald now wished he hadn't. The elastic was certainly moving, slowly, but too surely. Oswald tried to check its career by swelling out the b.u.mp on the back of his head, but he could not think of the right way to do this.

”I am very pleased to see you,” the Editor went on slowly, and there was something about the way he spoke that made Oswald think of a cat playing with a mouse. ”Perhaps you can tell me. Are there many spiritualists in Blackheath? Many clairvoyants?”

”Eh?” said Alice, forgetting that that is not the way to behave.

”People who foretell the future?” he said.

”I don't think so,” said Alice. ”Why?”

His eye twinkled. Oswald saw he had wanted her to ask this.

”Because,” said the Editor, more slowly than ever, ”I think there must be. How otherwise can we account for that chapter about the 'Doge's Home' being read and admired by sixteen different people before it is even printed. That chapter has not been printed, it has not been published; it will not be published till the May number of the _People's Pageant_. Yet in Blackheath sixteen people already appreciate its subtlety and its realism and all the rest of it. How do you account for this, Miss Daisy Dolman?”

”I am the Right Honourable Etheltruda,” said Alice. ”At least--oh, it's no use going on. We are not what we seem.”

”Oddly enough, I inferred that at the very beginning of our interview,”

said the Editor.

Then the elastic finished slipping up Oswald's head at the back, and the hat leapt from his head exactly as he had known it would. He fielded it deftly, however, and it did not touch the ground.

”Concealment,” said Oswald, ”is at an end.”

”So it appears,” said the Editor. ”Well, I hope next time the author of the 'Golden Gondola' will choose his instruments more carefully.”

”He didn't! We aren't!” cried Alice, and she instantly told the Editor everything.

Concealment being at an end, Oswald was able to get at his trousers pocket--it did not matter now how many boots he showed--and to get out Albert's uncle's letter.

Alice was quite eloquent, especially when the Editor had made her take off the hat with the blue bird, and the transformation and the tail, so that he could see what she really looked like. He was quite decent when he really understood how Albert's uncle's threatened marriage must have upset his brain while he was writing that chapter, and pondering on the dark future.

He began to laugh then, and kept it up till the hour of parting.

He advised Alice not to put on the transformation and the tail again to go home in, and she didn't.

Then he said to me: ”Are you in a finished state under Miss Daisy Dolman?” and when Oswald said, ”Yes,” the Editor helped him to take off all the womanly accoutrements, and to do them up in brown paper. And he lent him a cap to go home in.

I never saw a man laugh more. He is an excellent sort.