Tales of two people

“And there,” she said, with a little laugh, “is Thompson’s” (the Prince Consort’s Christian name is Thompson) “magnum opus. Vincents’ have just sent him his advance copies.”

The Prince Consort laughed nervously as I rose and walked to the table.

“Never mind, papa,” I heard Muriel say encouragingly. “You know Mr George Vincent says it’s very good.”

“Oh, he thought that would please your mother,” protested the Prince Consort.

I examined the two large thick volumes that lay on the table. I glanced at the title page: and I felt sorry for the poor Prince Consort. It must have been a terrible “grind” to write such a book – almost as bad as reading it. But I said something civil about the importance and interest of the subject.

“If you really don’t mind looking at it,” said the Prince Consort, “I should like awfully to send you a copy.”

“Oh yes! You must read it,” said Mrs Clinton. “Why, I’m going to read – well, some of it! I’ve promised!”

“So am I,” said little Muriel, while the Prince Consort rubbed his hands together with a sort of pride which was, on its other side, the profoundest humility. He was wondering, I think, that he should have been able to produce any book at all – even the worst of books – and admiring a talent which he had not considered himself to possess.

“I’m going to worry everybody who comes here to buy it – or to order it at Mudie’s, anyhow,” pursued Mrs Clinton. “What’s written in this house must be read.”

“I hope Vincents’ won’t lose a lot over it,” said the Prince Consort, shaking his head.

“Oh well, they’ve made a good deal out of me before now,” laughed his wife lightly.

I did not take the Prince Consort’s book away with me to the Continent. Whatever else it might be, it was certainly not holiday reading, and it would have needed a portmanteau to itself. But the reverberation of the extraordinary and almost unequalled “boom” which the book made reached me in the recesses of Switzerland. I came on The Times of three days before in my hotel, and it had three columns and a half on Mr Thompson Clinton’s work. The weekly Budget which my sister sent to me at Andermatt contained, besides a long review, a portrait of the Prince Consort (he must have sat to them on purpose) and a biographical sketch of him, quite accurate as to the remarkably few incidents which his previous life contained. It was this sketch which first caused me to begin to realise what was happening. For the sketch, after a series of eulogies (which to my prepossessed mind seemed absurdly extravagant) on the Prince Consort, reached its conclusion with the following remark: – “Mr Thompson Clinton’s wife is also a writer, and is known in the literary world as the author of more than one clever and amusing novel.” I laid down the Budget with a vague feeling that a revolution had occurred. It was now Mrs Clinton who “wrote too.”

I was right in my feeling, yet my feeling was inadequate to the reality with which I was faced on my return to England. The Prince Consort was the hero of the hour. I had written him a line of warm congratulation, and I settled at once to the book, not only in order to be able to talk about it, but also because I could not, without personal investigation, believe that he had done all they said. But he had. It was a wonderful book – full of learning and research, acute and profound in argument, and (greatest of all surprises) eminently lucid, polished, and even brilliant in style; irony, pathos, wit – the Prince Consort had them all. I laid the second volume down, wondering no longer that he had become an authority, that his name appeared in the lists of public banquets, that he was quoted now by one, now by the other, political party, and that translations into French and German were to be undertaken by distinguished savants.

And of course both The Quarterly and The Edinburgh had articles – “did him,” as his wife had phrased it. Upon which, being invited by Mrs Clinton to an evening party, I made a point of going.

There were a great many people there that night. A large group was on the hearthrug. I am tall, and looking over the heads of the assembly I saw the Prince Consort standing there. He was smiling, still rather nervously, and was talking in quick eager tones. Everyone listened in deferential silence, broken by murmurs of “Yes, yes,” or “How true!” or “I never thought of that!” And Muriel held the Prince Consort’s hand, and looked up at him with adoration in her young eyes. I rejoiced with the Prince Consort in his hour of deserved triumph, but I did not, somehow, find Muriel as “pretty a picture” as a lady told me later on that she was. Indeed, I thought that the child would have been as well – or better – in bed. I turned round and looked for Mrs Clinton. Ah, there she was, on her usual sofa. By her side sat Lady Troughton; nobody else was near. Mrs Clinton was talking very quickly and vivaciously to her companion, who rose as I approached, gave me her hand, and then passed on to join the group on the hearthrug. I sat down by Mrs Clinton, and began to congratulate her on her husband’s marvellous triumph.

“Yes,” said she, “do you see he’s in both the quarterlies?”

I said that such a tribute was only natural.

“And it’s selling wonderfully too,” she went on. “You may imagine how much obliged Vincents’ are to me for sending him there!”

“Did you know he was doing it?” I asked.

“Oh, I knew he was working at something. Muriel used to be always chaffing him about it.”

“She doesn’t chaff him now, I should think.”

“No,” said Mrs Clinton, twisting a ring on her finger round and round. Suddenly the group opened, and the Prince Consort came through, leading Muriel by the hand. He marched across the room, followed by his admirers. I rose, and he stood close by his wife, and began to talk about her last novel. He said that it was wonderfully clever, and told us all to get it and read it. Everybody murmured that such was their intention, and a lady observed:

“How charming for you to be able to provide your husband with recreation, Mrs Clinton!”

“Papa doesn’t care about novels much, really,” said Muriel.

“You do, I suppose, young lady?” asked someone.

“I like papa’s book better,” the child answered, and we all laughed, Mrs Clinton leading the chorus with almost exaggerated heartiness.

And then an enthusiastic woman must needs see where Mr Thompson Clinton (the Prince Consort bid fair to be double-barrelled before long) worked. She would take no denial, and at last Mrs Clinton rose, and, in spite of her husband’s protests, led the way to the study. I had been in the room a little while before I went abroad. It was much changed now. A row of Mrs Clinton’s novels, indeed, still stood on the top of the whatnot, but her “litter” (it had been her own playful name for her manuscripts and other properties) had vanished. Large, fat, solemn books, Blue-books, books of science, of statistics, and other horrors dominated the scene.

“And to think that the great book was actually written in this very room!” mused the enthusiastic woman in awestruck accents. “I shall always be glad to have seen it.”

Again we murmured assent; and the enthusiastic woman, with an obviously sudden remembrance of Mrs Clinton, turned to her, and said:

“Of course you don’t work in the same room?”

“Oh, I do my little writing anywhere,” smiled Mrs Clinton.

“In the dining-room, generally,” added Muriel “when it’s not wanted you know.”

“Ah, well, you don’t need such complete quiet as Mr Thompson Clinton must have to think out his books, do you?” asked the enthusiastic woman, with a most amiable smile.

“There’s plenty of thought in my wife’s books,” said the Prince Consort.

“Oh yes, of that sort,” conceded the enthusiastic woman.

Then we went back to the drawing-room, and the worshippers gradually took their leave, till only Lady Troughton and I were left. The child Muriel looked at her watch.

“Papa’s got to go on to a party at the – ,” she begun.

“There’s no hurry, my dear; no hurry at all,” interposed the Prince Consort.

“And, anyhow, I’m not going out, Muriel,” said Mrs Clinton. “I’m not asked there, you know.”

Yet Lady Troughton and I said “Good-bye.” The Prince Consort came downstairs with us, and made us renew our promises to procure his wife’s novel. “It’s really a striking book,” said he. “And, look here, Tom; just write her a line, and tell her how much you like it, will you? You’re sure to like it, you know.”

Lady Troughton stopped on the doorstep, and looked him full in the face. She said nothing; neither did he. But when they shook hands I saw her squeeze his. Then she was good enough to offer me a lift in her carriage, and I handed her in and followed myself. We drove a quarter of a mile or so in silence, and when we had gone thus far Lady Troughton made what appeared to me to be the only remark that could possibly be made.

“Poor little goose!” said Lady Troughton.

WHAT WAS EXPECTED OF MISS CONSTANTINE

I

“DO remember what’s expected of her!” cried my sister Jane.

It was not the first time that she had uttered this appeal; I daresay she had good cause for making it. I had started with the rude masculine idea that there was nothing expected – and nothing in particular to be expected – of the girl, except that she should please herself and, when the proper time came, invite the rest of us to congratulate her on this achievement.

Jane had seen the matter very differently from the first. She was in close touch with the Lexingtons and all their female friends and relatives; she was imbued with their views and feelings, and was unremitting in her efforts to pass them on to me. At least she made me understand, even if I could not entirely share, what was felt at female headquarters; but I was not going to let her see that. I did not want to take sides in the matter, and had no intention of saying anything that Jane could quote either to Lady Lexington or to Miss Constantine herself.

“What is expected of her?” I asked carelessly, taking my pipe out of my mouth.

“Nobody exactly presses her – well, there’s nobody who has the right – but of course she feels it herself,” Jane explained. She knitted her brows and added, “It must be overwhelming.”

“Then why in the world doesn’t she do it?” I asked. Here I was, I admit, being aggravating, in the vulgar sense of that word. For Jane’s demeanour hinted at the weightiest, the most disturbing reasons, and I had in my heart very little doubt about what they were.