’You hit me rightly,’said Carting, tickled and touched; sensually excited by the bouquet of Victor Radnor’s hospitality and companionship, which added flavour to Fenellan’s compliments. These came home to him through his desire to be the ‘good spherical fellow’; for he, like modern diplomatists in the track of their eminent Berlinese New Type of the time, put on frankness as an armour over wariness, holding craft in reserve: his aim was at the refreshment of honest fellowship: by no means to discover that the coupling of his native bias with his professional duty was unprofitable nowadays. Wariness, however, was not somnolent, even when he said: ’You know, I am never the lawyer out of my office. Man of the world to men of the world; and I have not lost by it. I am Mrs. Barman Radnor’s legal adviser: you are Mr. Victor Radnor’s friend. They are, as we see them, not on the best of terms. I would rather—at its lowest, as a matter of business—be known for having helped them to some kind of footing than send in a round bill to my client—or another. I gain more in the end. Frankly, I mean to prove, that it’s a lawyer’s interest to be human.’
‘Because, now, see!’ said Fenellan, ’here’s the case. Miss Natalia Dreighton, of a good Yorkshire family—a large one, reads an advertisement for the post of companion to a lady, and answers it, and engages herself, previous to the appearance of the young husband. Miss Dreighton is one of the finest young women alive. She has a glorious contralto voice. Victor and she are encouraged by Mrs. Barman to sing duets together. Well?
Why, Euclid would have theorem’d it out for you at a glance at the trio. You have only to look on them, you chatter out your three Acts of a Drama without a stop. If Mrs. Barman cares to practise charity, she has only to hold in her Fury-forked tongue, or her Jarniman I think ‘s the name.’
Carting shrugged.
‘Let her keep from striking, if she’s Christian,’ pursued Fenetlan, ’and if kind let her resume the name of her first lord, who did a better thing for himself than for her, when he shook off his bars of bullion, to rise the lighter, and left a wretched female soul below, with the devil’s own testimony to her attractions—thousands in the Funds, houses in the City. She threw the young couple together. And my friend Victor Radnor is of a particularly inflammable nature. Imagine one of us in such a situation, Mr. Carting!’
‘Trying!’ said the lawyer.
’The dear fellow was as nigh death as a man can be and know the sweetness of a woman’s call to him to live. And here’s London’s garden of pines, bananas, oranges; all the droppings of the Hesperides here! We don’t reflect on it, Mr. Carling.’
‘Not enough, not enough.’