Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

“And now about your sister’s novel?” asked Mr. Brown, who felt that he had mystified the little woman sufficiently about her husband.

“Well, yes. She does want to get some money so badly! And it is clever;--isn’t it? I don’t think I ever read anything cleverer. Isn’t it enough to take your breath away when Orlando defends himself before the lords?” This referred to a very high flown passage which Mr. Brown had determined to cut out when he was thinking of printing the story for the pages of the “Olympus.” “And she will be so broken-hearted! I hope you are not angry with her because she wrote in that way.”

“Not in the least. I liked her letters. She wrote what she really thought.”

“That is so good of you! I told her that I was sure you were good-natured, because you answered so civilly. It was a kind of experiment of hers, you know.”

“Oh,--an experiment!”

“It is so hard to get at people. Isn’t it? If she’d just written, ‘Dear Sir, I send you a manuscript,’--you never would have looked at it:--would you?”

“We read everything, Mrs. Puffle.”

“But the turn for all the things comes so slowly; doesn’t it? So Polly thought----”

“Polly,--what did Polly think?”

“I mean Josephine. We call her Polly just as a nickname. She was so anxious to get you to read it at once! And now what must we do?” Mr. Brown sat silent awhile, thinking. Why did they call Josephine de Montmorenci Polly? But there was the fact of the MS., let the name of the author be what it might. On one thing he was determined. He would take no steps till he had himself seen the lady who wrote the novel. “You’ll go to the gentlemen in Paternoster Row immediately; won’t you?” asked Mrs. Puffle, with a pretty little beseeching look which it was very hard to resist.

“I think I must ask to see the authoress first,” said Mr. Brown.

“Won’t I do?” asked Mrs. Puffle. “Josephine is so particular. I mean she dislikes so very much to talk about her own writings and her own works.” Mr. Brown thought of the tenor of the letters which he had received, and found that he could not reconcile with it this character which was given to him of Miss de Montmorenci. “She has an idea,” continued Mrs. Puffle, “that genius should not show itself publicly. Of course, she does not say that herself. And she does not think herself to be a genius;--though I think it. And she is a genius. There are things in ‘Not so Black as he’s Painted’ which nobody but Polly could have written.”

Nevertheless Mr. Brown was firm. He explained that he could not possibly treat with Messrs. X., Y., and Z.,--if any treating should become possible,--without direct authority from the principal. He must have from Miss de Montmorenci’s mouth what might be the arrangements to which she would accede. If this could not be done he must wash his hands of the affair. He did not doubt, he said, but that Miss de Montmorenci might do quite as well with the publishers by herself, as she could with any aid from him. Perhaps it would be better that she should see Mr. X. herself. But if he, Brown, was to be honoured by any delegated authority, he must see the author. In saying this he implied that he had not the slightest desire to interfere further, and that he had no wish to press himself on the lady. Mrs. Puffle, with just a tear, and then a smile, and then a little coaxing twist of her lips, assured him that their only hope was in him. She would carry his message to Josephine, and he should have a further letter from that lady. “And you won’t tell Charles that I have been here,” said Mrs. Puffle as she took her leave.

“Certainly not. I won’t say a word of it.”

“It is so odd that you should have known him.”

“Don’t let him smoke too much, Mrs. Puffle.”

“I don’t intend. I’ve brought him down to one cigar and a pipe a day,--unless he smokes at the office.”

“They all do that;--nearly the whole day.”

“What; at the Post Office!”

“That’s why I mention it. I don’t think they’re allowed at any of the other offices, but they do what they please there. I shall keep the MS. till I hear from Josephine herself.” Then Mrs. Puffle took her leave with many thanks, and a grateful pressure from her pretty little hand.

Two days after this there came the promised letter from Josephine.

“DEAR MR. BROWN,

“I cannot understand why you should not go to X., Y., and Z.
without seeing me. I hardly ever see anybody; but, of course, you
must come if you will. I got my sister to go because she is so
gentle and nice, that I thought she could persuade anybody to do
anything. She says that you know Mr. Puffle quite well, which seems
to be so very odd. He doesn’t know that I ever write a word, and I
didn’t think he had an acquaintance in the world whom I don’t know
the name of. You’re quite wrong about one thing. They never smoke
at the Post Office, and they wouldn’t be let to do it. If you
choose to come, you must. I shall be at home any time on Friday
morning,--that is, after half-past nine, when Charles goes away.

“Yours truly,

“J. DE M.

“We began to talk about editors after dinner, just for fun; and Charles said that he didn’t know that he had ever seen one. Of course we didn’t say anything about the ‘Olympus;’ but I don’t know why he should be so mysterious.” Then there was a second postscript, written down in a corner of the sheet of paper. “I know you’ll be sorry you came.”

* * * * *

Our editor was now quite determined that he would see the adventure to an end. He had at first thought that Josephine was keeping herself in the background merely that she might enhance the favour of a personal meeting when that favour should be accorded. A pretty woman believing herself to be a genius, and thinking that good things should ever be made scarce, might not improbably fall into such a foible. But now he was convinced that she would prefer to keep herself unseen if her doing so might be made compatible with her great object. Mr. Brown was not a man to intrude himself unnecessarily upon any woman unwilling to receive him; but in this case it was, so he thought, his duty to persevere. So he wrote a pretty little note to Miss Josephine saying that he would be with her at eleven o’clock on the day named.

Precisely at eleven o’clock he knocked at the door of the house in King-Charles Street, which was almost instantaneously opened for him by the fair hands of Mrs. Puffle herself. “H--sh,” said Mrs. Puffle; “we don’t want the servants to know anything about it.” Mr. Brown, who cared nothing for the servants of the Puffle establishment, and who was becoming perhaps a little weary of the unravelled mystery of the affair, simply bowed and followed the lady into the parlour. “My sister is up stairs,” said Mrs. Puffle, “and we will go to her immediately.” Then she paused, as though she were still struggling with some difficulty;--“I am so sorry to say that Polly is not well.--But she means to see you,” Mrs. Puffle added, as she saw that the editor, over whom they had so far prevailed, made some sign as though he was about to retreat. “She never is very well,” said Mrs. Puffle, “and her work does tell upon her so much. Do you know, Mr. Brown, I think the mind sometimes eats up the body; that is, when it is called upon for such great efforts.” They were now upon the stairs, and Mr. Brown followed the little lady into her drawing-room.

There, almost hidden in the depths of a low arm-chair, sat a little wizened woman, not old indeed,--when Mr. Brown came to know her better, he found that she had as yet only counted five-and-twenty summers,--but with that look of mingled youth and age which is so painful to the beholder. Who has not seen it,--the face in which the eye and the brow are young and bright, but the mouth and the chin are old and haggard? See such a one when she sleeps,--when the brightness of the eye is hidden, and all the countenance is full of pain and decay, and then the difference will be known to you between youth with that health which is generally given to it, and youth accompanied by premature decrepitude. “This is my sister-in-law,” said Mrs. Puffle, introducing the two correspondents to each other. The editor looked at the little woman who made some half attempt to rise, and thought that he could see in the brightness of the eye some symptoms of the sauciness which had appeared so very plainly in her letters. And there was a smile too about the mouth, though the lips were thin and the chin poor, which seemed to indicate that the owner of them did in some sort enjoy this unravelling of her riddle,--as though she were saying to herself, “What do you think now of the beautiful young woman who has made you write so many letters, and read so long a manuscript, and come all the way at this hour of the morning to Camden Town?” Mr. Brown shook hands with her, and muttered something to the effect that he was sorry not to see her in better health.

“No,” said Josephine de Montmorenci, “I am not very well. I never am. I told you that you had better put up with seeing my sister.”

We say no more than the truth of Mr. Brown in declaring that he was now more ready than ever to do whatever might be in his power to forward the views of this young authoress. If he was interested before when he believed her to be beautiful, he was doubly interested for her now when he knew her to be a cripple;--for he had seen when she made that faint attempt to rise that her spine was twisted, and that, when she stood up, her head sank between her shoulders. “I am very glad to make your acquaintance,” he said, seating himself near her. “I should never have been satisfied without doing so.”

“It is so very good of you to come,” said Mrs. Puffle.

“Of course it is good of him,” said Josephine; “especially after the way we wrote to him. The truth is, Mr. Brown, we were at our wits’ end to catch you.”

This was an aspect of the affair which our editor certainly did not like. An attempt to deceive anybody else might have been pardonable; but deceit practised against himself was odious to him. Nevertheless, he did forgive it. The poor little creature before him had worked hard, and had done her best. To teach her to be less metaphysical in her writings, and more straightforward in her own practices, should be his care. There is something to a man inexpressibly sweet in the power of protecting the weak; and no one had ever seemed to be weaker than Josephine. “Miss de Montmorenci,” he said, “we will let bygones be bygones, and will say nothing about the letters. It is no doubt the fact that you did write the novel yourself?”

“Every word of it,” said Mrs. Puffle energetically.

“Oh, yes; I wrote it,” said Josephine.

“And you wish to have it published?”

“Indeed I do.”

“And you wish to get money for it?”

“That is the truest of all,” said Josephine.

“Oughtn’t one to be paid when one has worked so very hard?” said Mrs. Puffle.

“Certainly one ought to be paid if it can be proved that one’s work is worth buying,” replied the sage mentor of literature.

“But isn’t it worth buying?” demanded Mrs. Puffle.

“I must say that I think that publishers do buy some that are worse,” observed Josephine.

Mr. Brown with words of wisdom explained to them as well as he was able the real facts of the case. It might be that that manuscript, over which the poor invalid had laboured for so many painful hours, would prove to be an invaluable treasure of art, destined to give delight to thousands of readers, and to be, when printed, a source of large profits to publishers, booksellers, and author. Or, again, it might be that, with all its undoubted merits,--and that there were such merits Mr. Brown was eager in acknowledging,--the novel would fail to make any way with the public. “A publisher,”--so said Mr. Brown,--“will hardly venture to pay you a sum of money down, when the risk of failure is so great.”

“But Polly has written ever so many things before,” said Mrs. Puffle.

“That counts for nothing,” said Miss de Montmorenci. “They were short pieces, and appeared without a name.”

“Were you paid for them?” asked Mr. Brown.

“I have never been paid a halfpenny for anything yet.”

“Isn’t that cruel,” said Mrs. Puffle, “to work, and work, and work, and never get the wages which ought to be paid for it?”

“Perhaps there may be a good time coming,” said our editor. “Let us see whether we can get Messrs. X., Y., and Z. to publish this at their own expense, and with your name attached to it. Then, Miss de Montmorenci----”

“I suppose we had better tell him all,” said Josephine.

“Oh, yes; tell everything. I am sure he won’t be angry; he is so good-natured,” said Mrs. Puffle.

Mr. Brown looked first at one, and then at the other, feeling himself to be rather uncomfortable. What was there that remained to be told? He was good-natured, but he did not like being told of that virtue. “The name you have heard is not my name,” said the lady who had written the novel.

“Oh, indeed! I have heard Mrs. Puffle call you,--Polly.”

“My name is,--Maryanne.”

“It is a very good name,” said Mr. Brown,--“so good that I cannot quite understand why you should go out of your way to assume another.”

“It is Maryanne,--Puffle.”

“Oh;--Puffle!” said Mr. Brown.

“And a very good name, too,” said Mrs. Puffle.

“I haven’t a word to say against it,” said Mr. Brown. “I wish I could say quite as much as to that other name,--Josephine de Montmorenci.”

“But Maryanne Puffle would be quite unendurable on a title-page,” said the owner of the unfortunate appellation.

“I don’t see it,” said Mr. Brown doggedly.

“Ever so many have done the same,” said Mrs. Puffle. “There’s Boz.”

“Calling yourself Boz isn’t like calling yourself Josephine de Montmorenci,” said the editor, who could forgive the loss of beauty, but not the assumed grandeur of the name.

“And Currer Bell, and Jacob Omnium, and Barry Cornwall,” said poor Polly Puffle, pleading hard for her falsehood.

“And Michael Angelo Titmarsh! That was quite the same sort of thing,” said Mrs. Puffle.

Our editor tried to explain to them that the sin of which he now complained did not consist in the intention,--foolish as that had been,--of putting such a name as Josephine de Montmorenci on the title-page, but in having corresponded with him,--with him who had been so willing to be a friend,--under a false name. “I really think you ought to have told me sooner,” he said.

“If we had known you had been a friend of Charles’s we would have told you at once,” said the young wife.

“I never had the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Puffle in my life,” said Mr. Brown. Mrs. Puffle opened her little mouth, and held up both her little hands. Polly Puffle stared at her sister-in-law. “And what is more,” continued Mr. Brown, “I never said that I had had that pleasure.”

“You didn’t tell me that Charles smoked at the Post Office,” exclaimed Mrs. Puffle,--“which he swears that he never does, and that he would be dismissed at once if he attempted it?” Mr. Brown was driven to a smile. “I declare I don’t understand you, Mr. Brown.”

“It was his little Roland for our little Oliver,” said Miss Puffle.

Mr. Brown felt that his Roland had been very small, whereas the Oliver by which he had been taken in was not small at all. But he was forced to accept the bargain. What is a man against a woman in such a matter? What can he be against two women, both young, of whom one was pretty and the other an invalid? Of course he gave way, and of course he undertook the mission to X., Y., and Z. We have not ourselves read “Not so Black as he’s Painted,” but we can say that it came out in due course under the hands of those enterprising publishers, and that it made what many of the reviews called quite a success.

THE PANJANDRUM.

THE PANJANDRUM.