Andrew Lang - The Disentanglers

It has been suggested to the Author that the incident of the Berbalangs, in The Adventure of the Fair American, is rather improbable. He can only refer the sceptical to the perfectly genuine authorities cited in his footnotes.

The scene was a dusky shabby little room in Ryder Street. To such caves many repair whose days are passed, and whose food is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of books to which the amateur would at once have flown. They were in ‘boards’ of faded blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: they were all First Editions of the most desirable kind. The bottles in the liqueur case were antique; a coat of arms, not undistinguished, was in relief on the silver stoppers. But the liquors in the flasks were humble and conventional. Merton, the tenant of the rooms, was in a Zingari cricketing coat; he occupied the arm-chair, while Logan, in evening dress, maintained a difficult equilibrium on the slippery sofa. Both men were of an age between twenty-five and twenty-nine, both were pleasant to the eye. Merton was, if anything, under the middle height: fair, slim, and active. As a freshman he had coxed his College Eight, later he rowed Bow in that vessel. He had won the Hurdles, but been beaten by his Cambridge opponent; he had taken a fair second in Greats, was believed to have been ‘runner up’ for the Newdigate prize poem, and might have won other laurels, but that he was found to do the female parts very fairly in the dramatic performances of the University, a thing irreconcilable with study. His father was a rural dean. Merton’s most obvious vice was a thirst for general information. ‘I know it is awfully bad form to know anything,’ he had been heard to say, ‘but everyone has his failings, and mine is occasionally useful.’

Logan was tall, dark, athletic and indolent. He was, in a way, the last of an historic Scottish family, and rather fond of discoursing on the ancestral traditions. But any satisfaction that he derived from them was, so far, all that his birth had won for him. His little patrimony had taken to itself wings. Merton was in no better case. Both, as they sat together, were gloomily discussing their prospects.

In the penumbra of smoke, and the malignant light of an ill trimmed lamp, the Great Idea was to be evolved. What consequences hung on the Great Idea! The peace of families insured, at a trifling premium. Innocence rescued. The defeat of the subtlest criminal designers: undreamed of benefits to natural science! But I anticipate. We return to the conversation in the Ryder Street den.

‘It is a case of emigration or the workhouse,’ said Logan.

‘Emigration! What can you or I do in the Colonies? They provide even their own ushers. My only available assets, a little Greek and less Latin, are drugs in the Melbourne market,’ answered Merton; ‘they breed their own dominies. Protection!’

‘In America they might pay for lessons in the English accent.. ’ said Logan.

‘But not,’ said Merton, ‘in the Scotch, which is yours; oh distant cousin of a marquis! Consequently by rich American lady pupils “you are not one to be desired.”’

‘Tommy, you are impertinent,’ said Logan. ‘Oh, hang it, where is there an opening, a demand, for the broken, the stoney broke? A man cannot live by casual paragraphs alone.’

‘And these generally reckoned “too high-toned for our readers,”’ said Merton.

‘If I could get the secretaryship of a golf club!’ Logan sighed.

‘If you could get the Chancellorship of the Exchequer! I reckon that there are two million applicants for secretaryships of golf clubs.’

‘Or a land agency,’ Logan murmured.

‘Oh, be practical!’ cried Merton. ‘Be inventive! Be modern! Be up to date! Think of something new ! Think of a felt want, as the Covenanting divine calls it: a real public need, hitherto but dimly present, and quite a demand without a supply.’

‘But that means thousands in advertisements,’ said Logan, ‘even if we ran a hair-restorer. The ground bait is too expensive. I say, I once knew a fellow who ground-baited for salmon with potted shrimps.’

‘Make a paragraph on him then,’ said Merton.

‘But results proved that there was no felt want of potted shrimps – or not of a fly to follow.’

‘Your collaboration in the search, the hunt for money, the quest, consists merely in irrelevancies and objections,’ growled Merton, lighting a cigarette.

‘Lucky devil, Peter Nevison. Meets an heiress on a Channel boat, with 4,000 l . a year; and there he is.’ Logan basked in the reflected sunshine.

‘Cut by her people, though – and other people. I could not have faced the row with her people,’ said Merton musingly.

‘I don’t wonder they moved heaven and earth, and her uncle, the bishop, to stop it. Not eligible, Peter was not, however you took him,’ Logan reflected. ‘Took too much of this,’ he pointed to the heraldic flask.

‘Well, she took him. It is not much that parents, still less guardians, can do now, when a girl’s mind is made up.’

‘The emancipation of woman is the opportunity of the indigent male struggler. Women have their way,’ Logan reflected.

‘And the youth of the modern aged is the opportunity of our sisters, the girls “on the make,”’ said Merton. ‘What a lot of old men of title are marrying young women as hard up as we are!’

‘And then,’ said Logan, ‘the offspring of the deceased marchionesses make a fuss. In fact marriage is always the signal for a family row.’

‘It is the infernal family row that I never could face. I had a chance – ’

Merton seemed likely to drop into autobiography.

‘I know,’ said Logan admonishingly.

‘Well, hanged if I could take it, and she – she could not stand it either, and both of us – ’

‘Do not be elegiac,’ interrupted Logan. ‘I know. Still, I am rather sorry for people’s people. The unruly affections simply poison the lives of parents and guardians, aye, and of the children too. The aged are now so hasty and imprudent. What would not Tala have given to prevent his Grace from marrying Mrs. Tankerville?’

Merton leapt to his feet and smote his brow.

‘Wait, don’t speak to me – a great thought flushes all my brain. Hush! I have it,’ and he sat down again, pouring seltzer water into a half empty glass.

‘Have what?’ asked Logan.

‘The Felt Want. But the accomplices?’

‘But the advertisements!’ suggested Logan.

‘A few pounds will cover them . I can sell my books,’ Merton sighed.

‘A lot of advertising your first editions will pay for. Why, even to launch a hair-restorer takes – ’

‘Oh, but,’ Merton broke in, ‘ this want is so widely felt, acutely felt too: hair is not in it. But where are the accomplices?’

‘If it is gentleman burglars I am not concerned. No Raffles for me! If it is venal physicians to kill off rich relations, the lives of the Logans are sacred to me.’

‘Bosh!’ said Merton, ‘I want “lady friends,” as Tennyson says: nice girls, well born, well bred, trying to support themselves.’

‘What do you want them for? To support them?’

‘I want them as accomplices,’ said Merton. ‘As collaborators.’

‘Blackmail?’ asked Logan. ‘Has it come to this? I draw the line at blackmail. Besides, they would starve first, good girls would; or marry Lord Methusalem, or a beastly South African richard .’