‘She’s invaluable,’ said Reggie; ‘she’s my official quarreller.’
‘Your◦– what did you say?’ gasped his sister-in-law.
‘I introduced her into the house-party for the express purpose of concentrating the feuds and quarrelling that would otherwise have broken out in all directions among the womenkind. I didn’t need the advice and warning of sundry friends to foresee that we shouldn’t get through six months of close companionship without a certain amount of pecking and sparring, so I thought the best thing was to localise and sterilise it in one process. Of course, I made it well worth the lady’s while, and as she didn’t know any of you from Adam, and you don’t even know her real name, she didn’t mind getting herself disliked in a useful cause.’
‘You mean to say she was in the know all the time?’
‘Of course she was, and so were one or two of the men, so she was able to have a good laugh with us behind the scenes when she’d done anything particularly outrageous. And she really enjoyed herself. You see, she’s in the position of poor relation in a rather pugnacious family, and her life has been largely spent in smoothing over other people’s quarrels. You can imagine the welcome relief of being able to go about saying and doing perfectly exasperating things to a whole houseful of women◦– and all in the cause of peace.’
‘I think you are the most odious person in the whole world,’ said Reggie’s sister-in-law. Which was not strictly true; more than anybody, more than ever she disliked Mrs Pentherby. It was impossible to calculate how many quarrels that woman had done her out of.
Mark
Augustus Mellowkent was a novelist with a future; that is to say, a limited but increasing number of people read his books, and there seemed good reason to suppose that if he steadily continued to turn out novels year by year a progressively increasing circle of readers would acquire the Mellowkent habit, and demand his works from the libraries and bookstalls. At the instigation of his publisher he had discarded the baptismal Augustus and taken the front name of Mark.
‘Women like a name that suggests some one strong and silent, able but unwilling to answer questions. Augustus merely suggests idle splendour, but such a name as Mark Mellowkent, besides being alliterative, conjures up a vision of some one strong and beautiful and good, a sort of blend of Georges Carpentier and the Reverend What’s-his-name.’
One morning in December Augustus sat in his writing-room, at work on the third chapter of his eighth novel. He had described at some length, for the benefit of those who could not imagine it, what a rectory garden looks like in July; he was now engaged in describing at greater length the feelings of a young girl, daughter of a long line of rectors and archdeacons, when she discovers for the first time that the postman is attractive.
‘Their eyes met, for a brief moment, as he handed her two circulars and the fat wrapper-bound bulk of the East Essex News. Their eyes met, for the merest fraction of a second, yet nothing could ever be quite the same again. Cost what it might she felt that she must speak, must break the intolerable, unreal silence that had fallen on them. “How is your mother’s rheumatism?” she said.’
The author’s labours were cut short by the sudden intrusion of a maidservant.
‘A gentleman to see you, sir,’ said the maid, handing a card with the name Caiaphas Dwelf inscribed on it; ‘says it’s important.’
Mellowkent hesitated and yielded; the importance of the visitor’s mission was probably illusory, but he had never met any one with the name Caiaphas before. It would be at least a new experience.
Mr Dwelf was a man of indefinite age; his high, narrow forehead, cold grey eyes, and determined manner bespoke an unflinching purpose. He had a large book under his arm, and there seemed every probability that he had left a package of similar volumes in the hall. He took a seat before it had been offered him, placed the book on the table, and began to address Mellowkent in the manner of an ‘open letter’.
‘You are a literary man, the author of several well-known books–’
‘I am engaged on a book at the present moment◦– rather busily engaged,’ said Mellowkent pointedly.
‘Exactly,’ said the intruder; ‘time with you is a commodity of considerable importance. Minutes, even, have their value.’
‘They have,’ agreed Mellowkent, looking at his watch.
‘That,’ said Caiaphas, ‘is why this book that I am introducing to your notice is not a book that you can afford to be without. Right Here is indispensable for the writing man; it is no ordinary encyclopædia, or I should not trouble to show it to you. It is an inexhaustible mine of concise information–’
‘On a shelf at my elbow,’ said the author, ‘I have a row of reference books that supply me with all the information I am likely to require.’
‘Here,’ persisted the would-be salesman, ‘you have it all in one compact volume. No matter what the subject may be which you wish to look up, or the fact you desire to verify, Right Here gives you all that you want to know in the briefest and most enlightening form. Historical reference, for instance; career of John Huss, let us say. Here we are: “Huss, John, celebrated religious reformer. Born 1369, burned at Constance 1415. The Emperor Sigismund universally blamed.”
‘If he had been burnt in these days every one would have suspected the Suffragettes,’ observed Mellowkent.
‘Poultry-keeping, now,’ resumed Caiaphas, ‘that’s a subject that might crop up in a novel dealing with English country life. Here we have all about it: “The Leghorn as egg-producer. Lack of maternal instinct in the Minorca. Gapes in chickens, its cause and cure. Ducklings for the early market, how fattened.” There, you see, there it all is, nothing lacking.’
‘Except the maternal instinct in the Minorca, and that you could hardly be expected to supply.’
‘Sporting records, that’s important too; now how many men, sporting men even, are there who can say off-hand what horse won the Derby in any particular year? Now it’s just a little thing of that sort–’
‘My dear sir,’ interrupted Mellowkent, ‘there are at least four men in my club who can not only tell me what horse won in any given year, but what horse ought to have won and why it didn’t. If your book could supply a method for protecting one from information of that sort, it would do more than anything you have yet claimed for it.’
‘Geography,’ said Caiaphas imperturbably; ‘that’s a thing that a busy man, writing at high pressure, may easily make a slip over. Only the other day a well-known author made the Volga flow into the Black Sea instead of the Caspian; now, with this book–’
‘On a polished rose-wood stand behind you there reposes a reliable and up-to-date atlas,’ said Mellowkent; ‘and now I must really ask you to be going.’
‘An atlas,’ said Caiaphas, ‘gives merely the chart of the river’s course, and indicates the principal towns that it passes. Now Right Here gives you the scenery, traffic, ferry-boat charges, the prevalent types of fish, boatmen’s slang terms, and hours of sailing of the principal river steamers. It gives you–’
Mellowkent sat and watched the hard-featured, resolute, pitiless salesman, as he sat doggedly in the chair wherein he had installed himself, unflinchingly extolling the merits of his undesired wares. A spirit of wistful emulation took possession of the author. Why could he not live up to the cold stern name he had adopted? Why must he sit here weakly and listen to this weary, unconvincing tirade? Why could he not be Mark Mellowkent for a few brief moments, and meet this man on level terms?