The Real Thing and Other Tales

He gave her the packet, and she looked at it and held it for an instant to her nose.  “It has a queer, charming old fragrance,” he said.

“Charming?  It’s horrid.”  She handed him back the packet, saying again more emphatically “Don’t!”

“Don’t break a seal?”

“Don’t give back the papers.”

“Is it honest to keep them?”

“Certainly.  They’re yours as much as the people’s of the shop.  They were in the hidden chamber when the table came to the shop, and the people had every opportunity to find them out.  They didn’t—therefore let them take the consequences.”

Peter Baron reflected, diverted by her intensity.  She was pale, with eyes almost ardent.  “The table had been in the place for years.”

“That proves the things haven’t been missed.”

“Let me show you how they were concealed,” he rejoined; and he exhibited the ingenious recess and the working of the curious spring.  She was greatly interested, she grew excited and became familiar; she appealed to him again not to do anything so foolish as to give up the papers, the rest of which, in their little blank, impenetrable covers, he placed in a row before her.  “They might be traced—their history, their ownership,” he argued; to which she replied that this was exactly why he ought to be quiet.  He declared that women had not the smallest sense of honour, and she retorted that at any rate they have other perceptions more delicate than those of men.  He admitted that the papers might be rubbish, and she conceded that nothing was more probable; yet when he offered to settle the point off-hand she caught him by the wrist, acknowledging that, absurd as it was, she was nervous.  Finally she put the whole thing on the ground of his just doing her a favour.  She asked him to retain the papers, to be silent about them, simply because it would please her.  That would be reason enough.  Baron’s acquaintance, his agreeable relations with her, advanced many steps in the treatment of this question; an element of friendly candour made its way into their discussion of it.

“I can’t make out why it matters to you, one way or the other, nor why you should think it worth talking about,” the young man reasoned.

“Neither can I.  It’s just a whim.”

“Certainly, if it will give you any pleasure, I’ll say nothing at the shop.”

“That’s charming of you, and I’m very grateful.  I see now that this was why the spirit moved me to come up—to save them,” Mrs. Ryves went on.  She added, moving away, that now she had saved them she must really go.

“To save them for what, if I mayn’t break the seals?” Baron asked.

“I don’t know—for a generous sacrifice.”

“Why should it be generous?  What’s at stake?” Peter demanded, leaning against the doorpost as she stood on the landing.

“I don’t know what, but I feel as if something or other were in peril.  Burn them up!” she exclaimed with shining eyes.

“Ah, you ask too much—I’m so curious about them!”

“Well, I won’t ask more than I ought, and I’m much obliged to you for your promise to be quiet.  I trust to your discretion.  Good-by.”

“You ought to reward my discretion,” said Baron, coming out to the landing.

She had partly descended the staircase and she stopped, leaning against the baluster and smiling up at him.  “Surely you’ve had your reward in the honour of my visit.”

“That’s delightful as far as it goes.  But what will you do for me if I burn the papers?”

Mrs. Ryves considered a moment.  “Burn them first and you’ll see!”

On this she went rapidly downstairs, and Baron, to whom the answer appeared inadequate and the proposition indeed in that form grossly unfair, returned to his room.  The vivacity of her interest in a question in which she had discoverably nothing at stake mystified, amused and, in addition, irresistibly charmed him.  She was delicate, imaginative, inflammable, quick to feel, quick to act.  He didn’t complain of it, it was the way he liked women to be; but he was not impelled for the hour to commit the sealed packets to the flames.  He dropped them again into their secret well, and after that he went out.  He felt restless and excited; another day was lost for work—the dreadful job to be performed for Mr. Locket was still further off.

III

Ten days after Mrs. Ryves’s visit he paid by appointment another call on the editor of the Promiscuous.  He found him in the little wainscoted Chelsea house, which had to Peter’s sense the smoky brownness of an old pipebowl, surrounded with all the emblems of his office—a litter of papers, a hedge of encyclopædias, a photographic gallery of popular contributors—and he promised at first to consume very few of the moments for which so many claims competed.  It was Mr. Locket himself however who presently made the interview spacious, gave it air after discovering that poor Baron had come to tell him something more interesting than that he couldn’t after all patch up his tale.  Peter had begun with this, had intimated respectfully that it was a case in which both practice and principle rebelled, and then, perceiving how little Mr. Locket was affected by his audacity, had felt weak and slightly silly, left with his heroism on his hands.  He had armed himself for a struggle, but the Promiscuous didn’t even protest, and there would have been nothing for him but to go away with the prospect of never coming again had he not chanced to say abruptly, irrelevantly, as he got up from his chair:

“Do you happen to be at all interested in Sir Dominick Ferrand?”

Mr. Locket, who had also got up, looked over his glasses.  “The late Sir Dominick?”

“The only one; you know the family’s extinct.”

Mr. Locket shot his young friend another sharp glance, a silent retort to the glibness of this information.  “Very extinct indeed.  I’m afraid the subject today would scarcely be regarded as attractive.”

“Are you very sure?” Baron asked.

Mr. Locket leaned forward a little, with his fingertips on his table, in the attitude of giving permission to retire.  “I might consider the question in a special connection.”  He was silent a minute, in a way that relegated poor Peter to the general; but meeting the young man’s eyes again he asked: “Are you—a—thinking of proposing an article upon him?”

“Not exactly proposing it—because I don’t yet quite see my way; but the idea rather appeals to me.”

Mr. Locket emitted the safe assertion that this eminent statesman had been a striking figure in his day; then he added: “Have you been studying him?”

“I’ve been dipping into him.”

“I’m afraid he’s scarcely a question of the hour,” said Mr. Locket, shuffling papers together.

“I think I could make him one,” Peter Baron declared.

Mr. Locket stared again; he was unable to repress an unattenuated “You?”

“I have some new material,” said the young man, colouring a little.  “That often freshens up an old story.”

“It buries it sometimes.  It’s often only another tombstone.”

“That depends upon what it is.  However,” Peter added, “the documents I speak of would be a crushing monument.”

Mr. Locket, hesitating, shot another glance under his glasses.  “Do you allude to—a—revelations?”

“Very curious ones.”

Mr. Locket, still on his feet, had kept his body at the bowing angle; it was therefore easy for him after an instant to bend a little further and to sink into his chair with a movement of his hand toward the seat Baron had occupied.  Baron resumed possession of this convenience, and the conversation took a fresh start on a basis which such an extension of privilege could render but little less humiliating to our young man.  He had matured no plan of confiding his secret to Mr. Locket, and he had really come out to make him conscientiously that other announcement as to which it appeared that so much artistic agitation had been wasted.  He had indeed during the past days—days of painful indecision—appealed in imagination to the editor of the Promiscuous, as he had appealed to other sources of comfort; but his scruples turned their face upon him from quarters high as well as low, and if on the one hand he had by no means made up his mind not to mention his strange knowledge, he had still more left to the determination of the moment the question of how he should introduce the subject.  He was in fact too nervous to decide; he only felt that he needed for his peace of mind to communicate his discovery.  He wanted an opinion, the impression of somebody else, and even in this intensely professional presence, five minutes after he had begun to tell his queer story, he felt relieved of half his burden.  His story was very queer; he could take the measure of that himself as he spoke; but wouldn’t this very circumstance qualify it for the Promiscuous?

“Of course the letters may be forgeries,” said Mr. Locket at last.

“I’ve no doubt that’s what many people will say.”

“Have they been seen by any expert?”

“No indeed; they’ve been seen by nobody.”

“Have you got any of them with you?”

“No; I felt nervous about bringing them out.”