The Honourable Company had won its first victory: Major Apsley, having fulfilled Miss Blossom’s commands, had seen what she expected him to see, and was disentangled from Miss Limmer.
The children still call their new stepmother None-so-pretty.
IV. ADVENTURE OF THE RICH UNCLE
‘His God is his belly, Mr. Graham,’ said the client, ‘and if the text strikes you as disagreeably unrefined, think how it must pain me to speak thus of an uncle, if only by marriage.’
The client was a meagre matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and she carried a battered reticule of early Victorian days, in which Merton suspected that tracts were lurking. She had an anxious peevish mouth; in truth she was not the kind of client in whom Merton’s heart delighted.
And yet he was sorry for her, especially as her rich uncle’s cook was the goddess of the gentleman whose god had just been denounced in scriptural terms by the client, a Mrs. Gisborne. She was sad, as well she might be, for she was a struggler, with a large family, and great expectations from the polytheistic uncle who adored his cook and one of his nobler organs.
‘What has his history been, this gentleman’s—Mr. Fulton, I think you called him?’
‘He was a drysalter in the City, sir,’ and across Merton’s mind flitted a vision of a dark shop with Finnan haddocks, bacon, and tongues in the window, and smelling terribly of cheese.
‘Oh, a drysalter?’ he said, not daring to display ignorance by asking questions to corroborate his theory of the drysalting business.
‘A drysalter, sir, and isinglass importer.’
Merton was conscious of vagueness as to isinglass, and was distantly reminded of a celebrated racehorse. However, it was clear that Mr. Fulton was a retired tradesman of some kind. ‘He went out of isinglass—before the cheap scientific substitute was invented (it is made out of old quill pens)—with seventy-five thousand pounds. And it ought to come to my children. He has not another relation living but ourselves; he married my aunt. But we never see him: he said that he could not stand our Sunday dinners at Hampstead.’
A feeling not remote from sympathy with Mr. Fulton stole over Merton’s mind as he pictured these festivals. ‘Is his god very—voluminous?’
Mrs. Gisborne stared.
‘Is he a very portly gentleman?’
‘No, Mr. Graham, he is next door to a skeleton, though you would not expect it, considering.’
‘Considering his devotion to the pleasures of the table?’
‘Gluttony, shameful waste I call it. And he is a stumbling block and a cause of offence to others. He is a patron of the City and Suburban College of Cookery, and founded two scholarships there, for scholars learning how to pamper the—’
‘The epicure,’ said Merton. He knew the City and Suburban College of Cookery. One of his band, a Miss Frere, was a Fellow and Tutor of that academy.
‘And about what age is your uncle?’ he asked.
‘About sixty, and not a white hair on his head.’
‘Then he may marry his cook?’
‘He will, sir.’
‘And is very likely to have a family.’
Mrs. Gisborne sniffed, and produced a pocket handkerchief from the early Victorian reticule. She applied the handkerchief to her eyes in silence. Merton observed her with pity. ‘We need the money so; there are so many of us,’ said the lady.
‘Do you think that Mr. Fulton is—passionately in love, with his domestic?’
‘He only loves his meals,’ said Mrs. Gisborne; ‘he does not want to marry her, but she has a hold over him through—his—’
‘Passions, not of the heart,’ said Merton hastily. He dreaded an anatomical reference.
‘He is afraid of losing her. He and his cronies give each other dinners, jealous of each other they are; and he actually pays the woman two hundred a year.’
‘And beer money?’ said Merton. He had somewhere read or heard of beer money as an item in domestic finance.
‘I don’t know about that. The cruel thing is that she is a woman of strict temperance principles. So am I. I am sure it is an awful thing to say, Mr. Graham, but Satan has sometimes put it into my heart to wish that the woman, like too, too many of her sort, was the victim of alcoholic temptations. He has a fearful temper, and if once she was not fit for duty at one of his dinners, this awful gnawing anxiety would cease to ride my bosom. He would pack her off.’
‘Very natural. She is free from the besetting sin of the artistic temperament?’
‘If you mean drink, she is; and that is one reason why he values her. His last cook, and his last but one—’ Here Mrs. Gisborne narrated at some length the tragic histories of these artists.
‘Providential, I thought it, but now,’ she said despairingly.
‘She certainly seems a difficult woman to dislodge,’ said Merton. ‘A dangerous entanglement. Any followers allowed? Could anything be done through the softer emotions? Would a guardsman, for instance—?’
‘She hates the men. Never one of them darkens her kitchen fire. Offers she has had by the score, but they come by post, and she laughs and burns them. Old Mr. Potter, one of his cronies, tried to get her away that way, but he is over seventy, and old at that, and she thought she had another chance to better herself. And she’ll take it, Mr. Graham, if you can’t do something: she’ll take it.’
‘Will you permit me to say that you seem to know a good deal about her! Perhaps you have some sort of means of intelligence in the enemy’s camp?’
‘The kitchen maid,’ said Mrs. Gisborne, purpling a little, ‘is the sister of our servant, and tells her things.’
‘I see,’ said Merton. ‘Now can you remember any little weakness of this, I must frankly admit, admirable artist and exemplary woman?’
‘You are not going to take her side, a scheming red-faced hussy, Mr. Graham?’
‘I never betrayed a client, Madam, and if you mean that I am likely to help this person into your uncle’s arms, you greatly misconceive me, and the nature of my profession.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I will say that your heart does not seem to be in the case.’
‘It is not quite the kind of case with which we are accustomed to deal,’ said Merton. ‘But you have not answered my question. Are there any weak points in the defence? To Venus she is cold, of Bacchus she is disdainful.’
‘I never heard of the gentlemen I am sure, sir, but as to her weaknesses, she has the temper of a—’ Here Mrs. Gisborne paused for a comparison. Her knowledge of natural history and of mythology, the usual sources of parallels, failed to provide a satisfactory resemblance to the cook’s temper.
‘The temper of a Megæra,’ said Merton, admitting to himself that the word was not, though mythological, what he could wish.
‘Of a Megæra as you know that creature, sir, and impetuous! If everything is not handy, if that poor girl is not like clockwork