The Club of Queer Trades

Ch. 3: The Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit

The revolt of Matter against Man (which I believe to exist) has now

been reduced to a singular condition. It is the small things rather

than the large things which make war against us and, I may add,

beat us. The bones of the last mammoth have long ago decayed, a

mighty wreck; the tempests no longer devour our navies, nor the

mountains with hearts of fire heap hell over our cities. But we are

engaged in a bitter and eternal war with small things; chiefly with

microbes and with collar studs. The stud with which I was engaged

(on fierce and equal terms) as I made the above reflections, was

one which I was trying to introduce into my shirt collar when a

loud knock came at the door.

My first thought was as to whether Basil Grant had called to fetch

me. He and I were to turn up at the same dinner-party (for which I

was in the act of dressing), and it might be that he had taken it

into his head to come my way, though we had arranged to go

separately. It was a small and confidential affair at the table of

a good but unconventional political lady, an old friend of his. She

had asked us both to meet a third guest, a Captain Fraser, who had

made something of a name and was an authority on chimpanzees. As

Basil was an old friend of the hostess and I had never seen her, I

felt that it was quite possible that he (with his usual social

sagacity) might have decided to take me along in order to break the

ice. The theory, like all my theories, was complete; but as a fact

it was not Basil.

I was handed a visiting card inscribed: "Rev. Ellis Shorter", and

underneath was written in pencil, but in a hand in which even hurry

could not conceal a depressing and gentlemanly excellence, "Asking

the favour of a few moments' conversation on a most urgent

matter."!

I had already subdued the stud, thereby proclaiming that the image

of God has supremacy over all matters (a valuable truth), and

throwing on my dress-coat and waistcoat, hurried into the

drawing-room. He rose at my entrance, flapping like a seal; I can

use no other description. He flapped a plaid shawl over his right

arm; he flapped a pair of pathetic black gloves; he flapped his

clothes; I may say, without exaggeration, that he flapped his

eyelids, as he rose. He was a bald-browed, white-haired,

white-whiskered old clergyman, of a flappy and floppy type. He

said:

"I am so sorry. I am so very sorry. I am so extremely sorry. I come

--I can only say--I can only say in my defence, that I come--upon

an important matter. Pray forgive me."

I was burning to get away, for it was already doubtful if I should

be in time for dinner. But there was something about the old man's

honest air of bitterness that seemed to open to me the

possibilities of life larger and more tragic than my own.

Nevertheless the old gentleman, being a gentleman as well as old,

noticed my secret impatience and seemed still more unmanned.

"Yes," said the Reverend Mr Shorter, feverishly flapping his plaid

shawl about. "He told me you helped him in a great difficulty--and

my difficulty! Oh, my dear sir, it's a matter of life and death."

I rose abruptly, in an acute perplexity. "Will it take long, Mr

Shorter?" I asked. "I have to go out to dinner almost at once."

He rose also, trembling from head to foot, and yet somehow, with

all his moral palsy, he rose to the dignity of his age and his

office.

"I have no right, Mr Swinburne--I have no right at all," he said.

"If you have to go out to dinner, you have of course--a perfect

right--of course a perfect right. But when you come back--a man

will be dead."

The triviality of the dinner had been in those two minutes dwarfed

and drowned in my mind. I did not want to go and see a political

widow, and a captain who collected apes; I wanted to hear what had

brought this dear, doddering old vicar into relation with immediate

perils.

"No, thank you, no, thank you; not just now," he repeated with

that hysterical eagerness with which people who do not drink at

all often try to convey that on any other night of the week they

would sit up all night drinking rum-punch. "Not just now, thank

you."

I saw a struggle in his eye and I conquered. When the cup of tea

came he drank it like a dipsomaniac gulping brandy. Then he fell

back and said:

"I have had such a time, Mr Swinburne. I am not used to these

excitements. As Vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex'--he threw this in

with an indescribable airiness of vanity--'I have never known

such things happen."

"As Vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex," he said, "I have never been

forcibly dressed up as an old woman and made to take part in a

crime in the character of an old woman. Never once. My experience

may be small. It may be insufficient. But it has never occurred

to me before."

"I have never heard of it," I said, "as among the duties of a

clergyman. But I am not well up in church matters. Excuse me if

perhaps I failed to follow you correctly. Dressed up--as what?"

I thought in my heart that it required no great transformation to

make an old woman of him, but the thing was evidently more tragic

than comic, and I said respectfully:

"I will begin at the beginning," said Mr Shorter, "and I will tell

my story with the utmost possible precision. At seventeen minutes

past eleven this morning I left the vicarage to keep certain

appointments and pay certain visits in the village. My first visit

was to Mr Jervis, the treasurer of our League of Christian

Amusements, with whom I concluded some business touching the claim

made by Parkes the gardener in the matter of the rolling of our

tennis lawn. I then visited Mrs Arnett, a very earnest

churchwoman, but permanently bedridden. She is the author of

several small works of devotion, and of a book of verse, entitled

(unless my memory misleads me) Eglantine."

He uttered all this not only with deliberation, but with something

that can only be called, by a contradictory phrase, eager

deliberation. He had, I think, a vague memory in his head of the

detectives in the detective stories, who always sternly require

that nothing should be kept back.

"I then proceeded," he went on, with the same maddening

conscientiousness of manner, "to Mr Carr (not Mr James Carr, of

course; Mr Robert Carr) who is temporarily assisting our organist,

and having consulted with him (on the subject of a choir boy who

is accused, I cannot as yet say whether justly or not, of cutting

holes in the organ pipes), I finally dropped in upon a Dorcas

meeting at the house of Miss Brett. The Dorcas meetings are

usually held at the vicarage, but my wife being unwell, Miss

Brett, a newcomer in our village, but very active in church work,

had very kindly consented to hold them. The Dorcas society is

entirely under my wife's management as a rule, and except for Miss

Brett, who, as I say, is very active, I scarcely know any members

of it. I had, however, promised to drop in on them, and I did so.

"When I arrived there were only four other maiden ladies with Miss

Brett, but they were sewing very busily. It is very difficult, of

course, for any person, however strongly impressed with the

necessity in these matters of full and exact exposition of the

facts, to remember and repeat the actual details of a

conversation, particularly a conversation which (though inspired

with a most worthy and admirable zeal for good work) was one which

did not greatly impress the hearer's mind at the time and was in

fact--er--mostly about socks. I can, however, remember distinctly

that one of the spinster ladies (she was a thin person with a

woollen shawl, who appeared to feel the cold, and I am almost sure

she was introduced to me as Miss James) remarked that the weather

was very changeable. Miss Brett then offered me a cup of tea,

which I accepted, I cannot recall in what words. Miss Brett is a

short and stout lady with white hair. The only other figure in the

group that caught my attention was a Miss Mowbray, a small and

neat lady of aristocratic manners, silver hair, and a high voice

and colour. She was the most emphatic member of the party; and her

views on the subject of pinafores, though expressed with a natural

deference to myself, were in themselves strong and advanced.

Beside her (although all five ladies were dressed simply in black)

it could not be denied that the others looked in some way what you

men of the world would call dowdy.

"After about ten minutes' conversation I rose to go, and as I did

so I heard something which--I cannot describe it--something which

seemed to--but I really cannot describe it."

"I heard," said the vicar solemnly, "I heard Miss Mowbray (the

lady with the silver hair) say to Miss James (the lady with the

woollen shawl), the following extraordinary words. I committed

them to memory on the spot, and as soon as circumstances set me

free to do so, I noted them down on a piece of paper. I believe I

have it here." He fumbled in his breast-pocket, bringing out mild

things, note-books, circulars and programmes of village concerts.

"I heard Miss Mowbray say to Miss James, the following words:

`Now's your time, Bill.'"

He gazed at me for a few moments after making this announcement,

gravely and unflinchingly, as if conscious that here he was

unshaken about his facts. Then he resumed, turning his bald head

more towards the fire.

"This appeared to me remarkable. I could not by any means

understand it. It seemed to me first of all peculiar that one

maiden lady should address another maiden lady as `Bill'. My

experience, as I have said, may be incomplete; maiden ladies may

have among themselves and in exclusively spinster circles wilder

customs than I am aware of. But it seemed to me odd, and I could

almost have sworn (if you will not misunderstand the phrase), I

should have been strongly impelled to maintain at the time that

the words, `Now's your time, Bill', were by no means pronounced

with that upper-class intonation which, as I have already said,

had up to now characterized Miss Mowbray's conversation. In fact,

the words, `Now's your time, Bill', would have been, I fancy,

unsuitable if pronounced with that upper-class intonation.

"I was surprised, I repeat, then, at the remark. But I was still

more surprised when, looking round me in bewilderment, my hat and

umbrella in hand, I saw the lean lady with the woollen shawl

leaning upright against the door out of which I was just about to

make my exit. She was still knitting, and I supposed that this

erect posture against the door was only an eccentricity of

spinsterhood and an oblivion of my intended departure.

"I said genially, `I am so sorry to disturb you, Miss James, but I

must really be going. I have--er--' I stopped here, for the words

she had uttered in reply, though singularly brief and in tone

extremely business-like, were such as to render that arrest of my

remarks, I think, natural and excusable. I have these words also

noted down. I have not the least idea of their meaning; so I have

only been able to render them phonetically. But she said," and Mr

Shorter peered short-sightedly at his papers, "she said: `Chuck it,

fat 'ead,' and she added something that sounded like `It's a kop',

or (possibly) `a kopt'. And then the last cord, either of my sanity

or the sanity of the universe, snapped suddenly. My esteemed friend

and helper, Miss Brett, standing by the mantelpiece, said: `Put 'is

old 'ead in a bag, Sam, and tie 'im up before you start jawin'.

You'll be kopt yourselves some o' these days with this way of coin'

things, har lar theater.'

"My head went round and round. Was it really true, as I had

suddenly fancied a moment before, that unmarried ladies had some

dreadful riotous society of their own from which all others were

excluded? I remembered dimly in my classical days (I was a scholar

in a small way once, but now, alas! rusty), I remembered the

mysteries of the Bona Dea and their strange female freemasonry. I

remembered the witches' Sabbaths. I was just, in my absurd

lightheadedness, trying to remember a line of verse about Diana's

nymphs, when Miss Mowbray threw her arm round me from behind. The

moment it held me I knew it was not a woman's arm.

"Miss Brett--or what I had called Miss Brett--was standing in front

of me with a big revolver in her hand and a broad grin on her face.

Miss James was still leaning against the door, but had fallen into

an attitude so totally new, and so totally unfeminine, that it gave

one a shock. She was kicking her heels, with her hands in her

pockets and her cap on one side. She was a man. I mean he was a

wo--no, that is I saw that instead of being a woman she--he, I

mean--that is, it was a man."

Mr Shorter became indescribably flurried and flapping in

endeavouring to arrange these genders and his plaid shawl at the

same time. He resumed with a higher fever of nervousness:

"As for Miss Mowbray, she--he, held me in a ring of iron. He had

her arm--that is she had his arm--round her neck--my neck I mean--

and I could not cry out. Miss Brett--that is, Mr Brett, at least Mr

something who was not Miss Brett--had the revolver pointed at me.

The other two ladies--or er--gentlemen, were rummaging in some bag

in the background. It was all clear at last: they were criminals

dressed up as women, to kidnap me! To kidnap the Vicar of Chuntsey,

in Essex. But why? Was it to be Nonconformists?

"The brute leaning against the door called out carelessly, `'Urry

up, 'Arry. Show the old bloke what the game is, and let's get off.'

"`If you take my advice you bloomin' well will,' said the man at

the door, whom they called Bill. `A man wot knows wet 'e's doin' is

worth ten wot don't, even if 'e's a potty old parson.'

"`Bill's right enough,' said the coarse voice of the man who held

me (it had been Miss Mowbray's). `Bring out the picture, 'Arry.'

"The man with the revolver walked across the room to where the

other two women--I mean men--were turning over baggage, and asked

them for something which they gave him. He came back with it across

the room and held it out in front of me. And compared to the

surprise of that display, all the previous surprises of this awful

day shrank suddenly.

"It was a portrait of myself. That such a picture should be in the

hands of these scoundrels might in any case have caused a mild

surprise; but no more. It was no mild surprise that I felt. The

likeness was an extremely good one, worked up with all the

accessories of the conventional photographic studio. I was leaning

my head on my hand and was relieved against a painted landscape of

woodland. It was obvious that it was no snapshot; it was clear that

I had sat for this photograph. And the truth was that I had never

sat for such a photograph. It was a photograph that I had never had

taken.

"I stared at it again and again. It seemed to me to be touched up a

good deal; it was glazed as well as framed, and the glass blurred

some of the details. But there unmistakably was my face, my eyes,

my nose and mouth, my head and hand, posed for a professional

photographer. And I had never posed so for any photographer.

"`Be'old the bloomin' miracle,' said the man with the revolver,

with ill-timed facetiousness. `Parson, prepare to meet your God.'

And with this he slid the glass out of the frame. As the glass

moved, I saw that part of the picture was painted on it in Chinese

white, notably a pair of white whiskers and a clerical collar. And

underneath was a portrait of an old lady in a quiet black dress,

leaning her head on her hand against the woodland landscape. The

old lady was as like me as one pin is like another. It had required

only the whiskers and the collar to make it me in every hair.

"`Entertainin', ain't it?' said the man described as 'Arry, as he

shot the glass back again. `Remarkable resemblance, parson.

Gratifyin' to the lady. Gratifyin' to you. And hi may hadd,

particlery gratifyin' to us, as bein' the probable source of a

very tolerable haul. You know Colonel Hawker, the man who's come

to live in these parts, don't you?'

"`Well,' said the man 'Arry, pointing to the picture, `that's 'is

mother. 'Oo ran to catch 'im when 'e fell? She did,' and he flung

his fingers in a general gesture towards the photograph of the old

lady who was exactly like me.

"`Tell the old gent wot 'e's got to do and be done with it,' broke

out Bill from the door. `Look 'ere, Reverend Shorter, we ain't

goin' to do you no 'arm. We'll give you a sov. for your trouble if

you like. And as for the old woman's clothes--why, you'll look

lovely in 'em.'

"`You ain't much of a 'and at a description, Bill,' said the man

behind me. `Mr Shorter, it's like this. We've got to see this man

Hawker tonight. Maybe 'e'll kiss us all and 'ave up the champagne

when 'e sees us. Maybe on the other 'and--'e won't. Maybe 'e'll be

dead when we goes away. Maybe not. But we've got to see 'im. Now as

you know, 'e shuts 'isself up and never opens the door to a soul;

only you don't know why and we does. The only one as can ever get

at 'im is 'is mother. Well, it's a confounded funny coincidence,'

he said, accenting the penultimate, `it's a very unusual piece of

good luck, but you're 'is mother.'

"`When first I saw 'er picture,' said the man Bill, shaking his

head in a ruminant manner, `when I first saw it I said--old

Shorter. Those were my exact words--old Shorter.'

"`That's easy said, your 'oldness,' said the man with the revolver,

good-humouredly; `you've got to put on those clothes,' and he

pointed to a poke-bonnet and a heap of female clothes in the corner

of the room.

"I will not dwell, Mr Swinburne, upon the details of what followed.

I had no choice. I could not fight five men, to say nothing of a

loaded pistol. In five minutes, sir, the Vicar of Chuntsey was

dressed as an old woman--as somebody else's mother, if you

please--and was dragged out of the house to take part in a crime.

"It was already late in the afternoon, and the nights of winter

were closing in fast. On a dark road, in a blowing wind, we set out

towards the lonely house of Colonel Hawker, perhaps the queerest

cortege that ever straggled up that or any other road. To every

human eye, in every external, we were six very respectable old

ladies of small means, in black dresses and refined but antiquated

bonnets; and we were really five criminals and a clergyman.

"I will cut a long story short. My brain was whirling like a

windmill as I walked, trying to think of some manner of escape. To

cry out, so long as we were far from houses, would be suicidal, for

it would be easy for the ruffians to knife me or to gag me and

fling me into a ditch. On the other hand, to attempt to stop

strangers and explain the situation was impossible, because of the

frantic folly of the situation itself. Long before I had persuaded

the chance postman or carrier of so absurd a story, my companions

would certainly have got off themselves, and in all probability

would have carried me off, as a friend of theirs who had the

misfortune to be mad or drunk. The last thought, however, was an

inspiration; though a very terrible one. Had it come to this, that

the Vicar of Chuntsey must pretend to be mad or drunk? It had come

to this.

"I walked along with the rest up the deserted road, imitating and

keeping pace, as far as I could, with their rapid and yet lady-like

step, until at length I saw a lamp-post and a policeman standing

under it. I had made up my mind. Until we reached them we were all

equally demure and silent and swift. When we reached them I

suddenly flung myself against the railings and roared out: `Hooray!

Hooray! Hooray! Rule Britannia! Get your 'air cut. Hoop-la! Boo!'

It was a condition of no little novelty for a man in my position.

"The constable instantly flashed his lantern on me, or the

draggled, drunken old woman that was my travesty. `Now then, mum,'

he began gruffly.

"`Come along quiet, or I'll eat your heart,' cried Sam in my ear

hoarsely. `Stop, or I'll flay you.' It was frightful to hear the

words and see the neatly shawled old spinster who whispered them.

"I yelled, and yelled--I was in for it now. I screamed comic

refrains that vulgar young men had sung, to my regret, at our

village concerts; I rolled to and fro like a ninepin about to fall.

"`If you can't get your friend on quiet, ladies,' said the

policeman, `I shall have to take 'er up. Drunk and disorderly she

is right enough.'

"I redoubled my efforts. I had not been brought up to this sort of

thing; but I believe I eclipsed myself. Words that I did not know I

had ever heard of seemed to come pouring out of my open mouth.

"I screamed in my terror those awful songs of joy. In all the

nightmares that men have ever dreamed, there has never been

anything so blighting and horrible as the faces of those five men,

looking out of their poke-bonnets; the figures of district visitors

with the faces of devils. I cannot think there is anything so

heart-breaking in hell.

"For a sickening instant I thought that the bustle of my companions

and the perfect respectability of all our dresses would overcome

the policeman and induce him to let us pass. He wavered, so far as

one can describe anything so solid as a policeman as wavering. I

lurched suddenly forward and ran my head into his chest, calling

out (if I remember correctly), `Oh, crikey, blimey, Bill.' It was

at that moment that I remembered most dearly that I was the Vicar

of Chuntsey, in Essex.

"`Oh, pray, constable, don't make a disturbance with our poor

friend. We will get her quietly home. She does drink too much, but

she is quite a lady--only eccentric.'

"`Pray let me take her home,' reiterated Bill, in the resumed

character of Miss James, `she wants looking after.' `She does,'

said the policeman, `but I'll look after her.'

"`Look here, ladies,' said the constable sternly, `I don't like the

eccentricity of your friend, and I don't like 'er songs, or 'er

'ead in my stomach. And now I come to think of it, I don't like the

looks of you I've seen many as quiet dressed as you as was wrong

'uns. Who are you?'

"`We've not our cards with us,' said Miss Mowbray, with

indescribable dignity. `Nor do we see why we should be insulted by

any Jack-in-office who chooses to be rude to ladies, when he is

paid to protect them. If you choose to take advantage of the

weakness of our unfortunate friend, no doubt you are legally

entitled to take her. But if you fancy you have any legal right to

bully us, you will find yourself in the wrong box.'

"The truth and dignity of this staggered the policeman for a

moment. Under cover of their advantage my five persecutors turned

for an instant on me faces like faces of the damned and then

swished off into the darkness. When the constable first turned his

lantern and his suspicions on to them, I had seen the telegraphic

look flash from face to face saying that only retreat was possible

now.

"By this time I was sinking slowly to the pavement, in a state of

acute reflection. So long as the ruffians were with me, I dared not

quit the role of drunkard. For if I had begun to talk reasonably

and explain the real case, the officer would merely have thought

that I was slightly recovered and would have put me in charge of my

friends. Now, however, if I liked I might safely undeceive him.

"But I confess I did not like. The chances of life are many, and

it may doubtless sometimes lie in the narrow path of duty for a

clergyman of the Church of England to pretend to be a drunken old

woman; but such necessities are, I imagine, sufficiently rare to

appear to many improbable. Suppose the story got about that I had

pretended to be drunk. Suppose people did not all think it was

pretence!

"I lurched up, the policeman half-lifting me. I went along weakly

and quietly for about a hundred yards. The officer evidently

thought that I was too sleepy and feeble to effect an escape, and

so held me lightly and easily enough. Past one turning, two

turnings, three turnings, four turnings, he trailed me with him,

a limp and slow and reluctant figure. At the fourth turning, I

suddenly broke from his hand and tore down the street like a

maddened stag. He was unprepared, he was heavy, and it was dark.

I ran and ran and ran, and in five minutes' running, found I was

gaining. In half an hour I was out in the fields under the holy

and blessed stars, where I tore off my accursed shawl and bonnet

and buried them in clean earth."

The old gentleman had finished his story and leant back in his

chair. Both the matter and the manner of his narration had, as

time went on, impressed me favourably. He was an old duffer and

pedant, but behind these things he was a country-bred man and

gentleman, and had showed courage and a sporting instinct in the

hour of desperation. He had told his story with many quaint

formalities of diction, but also with a very convincing realism.

"And now," said Shorter, leaning forward again with something like

servile energy, "and now, Mr Swinburne, what about that unhappy

man Hawker. I cannot tell what those men meant, or how far what

they said was real. But surely there is danger. I cannot go to the

police, for reasons that you perceive. Among other things, they

wouldn't believe me. What is to be done?"

"My friend Basil Grant," I said, "is the best man we can go to. He

and I were to have gone to the same dinner tonight; but he will

just have come back by now. Have you any objection to taking a

cab?"

A rattle in a hansom brought us underneath the sombre pile of

workmen's flats in Lambeth which Grant inhabited; a climb up a

wearisome wooden staircase brought us to his garret. When I

entered that wooden and scrappy interior, the white gleam of

Basil's shirt-front and the lustre of his fur coat flung on the

wooden settle, struck me as a contrast. He was drinking a glass

of wine before retiring. I was right; he had come back from the

dinner-party.

He listened to the repetition of the story of the Rev. Ellis

Shorter with the genuine simplicity and respect which he never

failed to exhibit in dealing with any human being. When it was

over he said simply:

I was so startled at this totally irrelevant reference to the

worthy collector of chimpanzees with whom I ought to have dined

that evening, that I glanced sharply at Grant. The result was

that I did not look at Mr Shorter. I only heard him answer, in

his most nervous tone, "No."

Basil, however, seemed to find something very curious about his

answer or his demeanour generally, for he kept his big blue eyes

fixed on the old clergyman, and though the eyes were quite quiet

they stood out more and more from his head.

"Quite," answered the vicar, and I was certainly puzzled to

find him returning so much to the timidity, not to say the

demoralization, of his tone when he first entered my presence.

"Then our course is clear," he said. "You have not even begun your

investigation, my dear Mr Shorter; the first thing for us to do is

to go together to see Captain Fraser."

"Oh," he said, with emphasis. "Oh--you don't think it necessary;

then," and he added the words with great clearness and

deliberation, "then, Mr Ellis Shorter, I can only say that I would

like to see you without your whiskers."

And at these words I also rose to my feet, for the great tragedy

of my life had come. Splendid and exciting as life was in

continual contact with an intellect like Basil's, I had always the

feeling that that splendour and excitement were on the borderland

of sanity. He lived perpetually near the vision of the reason of

things which makes men lose their reason. And I felt of his

insanity as men feel of the death of friends with heart disease.

It might come anywhere, in a field, in a hansom cab, looking at a

sunset, smoking a cigarette. It had come now. At the very moment

of delivering a judgement for the salvation of a fellow creature,

Basil Grant had gone mad.

And with that he made a dash at the old gentleman, who made a dash

for the door, but was intercepted. And then, before I knew where I

was the quiet room was turned into something between a pantomime

and a pandemonium by those two. Chairs were flung over with a

crash, tables were vaulted with a noise like thunder, screens were

smashed, crockery scattered in smithereens, and still Basil Grant

bounded and bellowed after the Rev. Ellis Shorter.

And now I began to perceive something else, which added the last

half-witted touch to my mystification. The Rev. Ellis Shorter, of

Chuntsey, in Essex, was by no means behaving as I had previously

noticed him to behave, or as, considering his age and station, I

should have expected him to behave. His power of dodging, leaping,

and fighting would have been amazing in a lad of seventeen, and in

this doddering old vicar looked like a sort of farcical

fairy-tale. Moreover, he did not seem to be so much astonished as

I had thought. There was even a look of something like enjoyment

in his eyes; so there was in the eye of Basil. In fact, the

unintelligible truth must be told. They were both laughing.

"Come, come, Mr Grant," he panted, "you can't do anything to me.

It's quite legal. And it doesn't do any one the least harm. It's

only a social fiction. A result of our complex society, Mr Grant."

"I don't blame you, my man," said Basil coolly. "But I want your

whiskers. And your bald head. Do they belong to Captain Fraser?"

"What the deuce does all this mean?" I almost screamed. "Are you

all in an infernal nightmare? Why should Mr Shorter's bald head

belong to Captain Fraser? How could it? What the deuce has Captain

Fraser to do with the affair? What is the matter with him? You

dined with him, Basil."

"Well," said Basil, with a slow and singular smile, "the fact is I

was detained by a visitor. I have him, as a point of fact, in my

bedroom."

"In your bedroom?" I repeated; but my imagination had reached that

point when he might have said in his coal scuttle or his waistcoat

pocket.

Grant stepped to the door of an inner room, flung it open and

walked in. Then he came out again with the last of the bodily

wonders of that wild night. He introduced into the sitting-room,

in an apologetic manner, and by the nape of the neck, a limp

clergyman with a bald head, white whiskers and a plaid shawl.

"Sit down, gentlemen," cried Grant, striking his hands heartily.

"Sit down all of you and have a glass of wine. As you say, there is

no harm in it, and if Captain Fraser had simply dropped me a hint I

could have saved him from dropping a good sum of money. Not that

you would have liked that, eh?"

The two duplicate clergymen, who were sipping their Burgundy with

two duplicate grins, laughed heartily at this, and one of them

carelessly pulled off his whiskers and laid them on the table.

"Only another addition, Cherub, to your collection of Queer Trades.

These two gentlemen (whose health I have now the pleasure of

drinking) are Professional Detainers."

"It's really very simple, Mr Swinburne," began he who had once

been the Rev. Ellis Shorter, of Chuntsey, in Essex; and it gave

me a shock indescribable to hear out of that pompous and familiar

form come no longer its own pompous and familiar voice, but the

brisk sharp tones of a young city man. "It is really nothing very

important. We are paid by our clients to detain in conversation,

on some harmless pretext, people whom they want out of the way

for a few hours. And Captain Fraser--" and with that he hesitated

and smiled.

"The fact is that Captain Fraser, who is one of my best friends,

wanted us both out of the way very much. He is sailing tonight for

East Africa, and the lady with whom we were all to have dined is--

er--what is I believe described as `the romance of his life'. He

wanted that two hours with her, and employed these two reverend

gentlemen to detain us at our houses so as to let him have the

field to himself."

"And of course," said the late Mr Shorter apologetically to me, "as

I had to keep a gentleman at home from keeping an appointment with

a lady, I had to come with something rather hot and strong--rather

urgent. It wouldn't have done to be tame."

The other man idly pushed back his artificial bald head, revealing

close red hair, and spoke dreamily, perhaps under the influence of

Basil's admirable Burgundy.

"It's wonderful how common it's getting, gentlemen. Our office is

busy from morning till night. I've no doubt you've often knocked

up against us before. You just take notice. When an old bachelor

goes on boring you with hunting stories, when you're burning to be

introduced to somebody, he's from our bureau. When a lady calls on

parish work and stops hours, just when you wanted to go to the

Robinsons', she's from our bureau. The Robinson hand, sir, may be

darkly seen."

"That may have been a mistake, sir," he said. "But it was not our

fault. It was all the munificence of Captain Fraser. He requested

that the highest price and talent on our tariff should be employed

to detain you gentlemen. Now the highest p*****t in our office goes

to those who impersonate vicars, as being the most respectable and

more of a strain. We are paid five guineas a visit. We have had the

good fortune to satisfy the firm with our work; and we are now

permanently vicars. Before that we had two years as colonels, the

next in our scale. Colonels are four guineas."

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.