The Three Clerks Part 85

'Now, I'll bet ten to one he has never read the book at all--well, never mind--go on.'

"'The World's Last Wonder' is the description of a woman who kept a secret under certain temptations to reveal it, which, as Mr.

Tudor supposes, might have moved any daughter of Eve to break her faith."

'I haven't supposed anything of the kind,' said Charley.

'This secret, which we shall not disclose, as we would not wish to be thought less trustworthy than Mr. Tudor's wonderful woman--'

'We shall find that he does disclose it, of course; that is the way with all of them.'

--'Is presumed to permeate the whole three volumes.'

'It is told at full length in the middle of the second,' said Charley.

'And the effect upon the reader of course is, that he has ceased to interest himself about it, long before it is disclosed to him!

'The lady in question is engaged to be married to a gentleman, a circ.u.mstance which in the pages of a novel is not calculated to attract much special attention. She is engaged to be married, but the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo----'

'Intended sposo!' said Charley, expressing by his upturned lip a withering amount of scorn--'how well I know the fellow's low attempts at wit! That's the editor himself--that's my literary papa. I know him as well as though I had seen him at it.'

Katie and Mrs. Woodward exchanged furtive glances, but neither of them moved a muscle of her face.

'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo,' continued Mrs. Woodward.

'What the devil's a sposo?' said Uncle Bat, who was sitting in an arm-chair with a handkerchief over his head.

'Why, you're not a sposo, Uncle Bat,' said Linda; 'but Harry is, and so is Charley.'

'Oh, I see,' said the captain; 'it's a bird with his wings clipped.'

'But the gentleman who has the honour of being her intended sposo----' again read Mrs. Woodward.

'Now I'm sure I'm speaking by the card,' said Charley, 'when I say that there is not another man in London who could have written that line, and who would have used so detestable a word.

I think I remember his using it in one of his lectures to me; indeed I'm sure I do. Sposo! I should like to tweak his nose oh!'

'Are you going to let me go on?' said Mrs. Woodward--'her intended sposo'--Charley gave a kick with his foot and satisfied himself with that--'is determined to have nothing to say to her in the matrimonial line till she has revealed to him this secret which he thinks concerns his own honour.'

'There, I knew he'd tell it.'

'He has not told it yet,' said Norman.

'The lady, however, is obdurate, wonderfully so, of course, seeing that she is the world's last wonder, and so the match is broken off. But the secret is of such a nature that the lady's invincible objection to revealing it is bound up with the fact of her being a promised bride.'

'I wonder he didn't say sposa,' said Charley.

'I never thought of that,' said Katie.

Mrs. Woodward and Linda looked at her, but Charley did not, and her blunder pa.s.sed by unnoticed.

'Now that she is free from her matrimonial bonds, she is free also to tell the secret; and indeed the welfare both of the gentleman and of the lady imperiously demands that it should be told. Should he marry her, he is destined to learn it after his marriage; should he not marry her, he may hear it at any time.

She sends for him and tells him, not the first of these facts, by doing which all difficulty would have at once been put an end to--'

'It is quite clear he has never read the story, quite clear,'

said Charley.

'She tells him only the last, viz., that as they are now strangers he may know the secret; but that when once known it will raise a barrier between them that no years, no penance, no sorrow on his part, no tenderness on hers, can ever break down.

She then asks him--will he hear the secret?'

'She does not ask any such thing,' said Charley; 'the letter that contains it has been already sent to him. She merely gives him an opportunity of returning it unopened.'

'The gentleman, who is not without a grain of obstinacy in his own composition and many grains of curiosity, declares it to be impossible that he can go to the altar in ignorance of facts which he is bound to know, and the lady, who seems to be of an affectionate disposition, falls in tenderness at his feet. She is indeed in a very winning mood, and quite inclined to use every means allowable to a lady for retaining her lover; every means that is short of that specially feminine one of telling her secret.

'We will give an extract from this love scene, partly for the sake of its grotesque absurdity--'

Charley kicked out another foot, as though he thought that the editor of the _Daily Delight_ might perhaps be within reach.

'--And partly because it gives a fair example of the manner in which Mr. Tudor endeavours to be droll even in the midst of his most tender pa.s.sages.

'Leonora was at this time seated--'

'Oh, skip the extract,' said Charley; 'I suppose there are three or four pages of it?'

'It goes down to where Leonora says that his fate and her own are in his hands.'

'Yes, about three columns,' said Charley; 'that's an easy way of making an article--eh, Harry?'

'_Aliter non fit, amice, liber_,' said the cla.s.sical Norman.

'Well, skip the extract, grandmamma.'

'Now, did anyone ever before read such a mixture of the bombastic and the burlesque? We are called upon to cry over every joke, and, for the life of us, we cannot hold our sides when the catastrophes occur. It is a salad in which the pungency of the vinegar has been wholly subdued by the oil, and the fatness of the oil destroyed by the tartness of the vinegar.'

'His old simile,' said Charley; 'he was always talking about literary salads.'

'The gentleman, of course, gives way at the last minute,'

continued Mrs. Woodward. 'The scene in which he sits with the unopened letter lying on his table before him has some merit; but this probably arises from the fact that the letter is dumb, and the gentleman equally so.'

'D----nation!' said Charley, whose patience could not stand such impudence at this.

'The gentleman, who, as we should have before said, is the eldest son of a man of large reputed fortune----'

'There--I knew he'd tell it.'

'Oh, but he hasn't told it,' said Norman.

'Doesn't the word 'reputed' tell it?'

'--The eldest son of a man of large reputed fortune, does at last marry the heroine; and then he discovers--But what he discovers, those who feel any interest in the matter may learn from the book itself; we must profess that we felt none.