The executors were two old friends of the deceased, one of them a former partner in his paper-making concern.
On the evening of the second day, about an hour after dinner was over, Mr Hinks called at the house; as usual, he went into the study. Before long came a second visitor, Mr Quarmby, who joined Yule and Hinks. The three had all sat together for some time, when Marian, who happened to be coming down stairs, saw her father at the study door.
‘Ask your mother to let us have some supper at a quarter to ten,’ he said urbanely. ‘And come in, won’t you? We are only gossiping.’
It had not often happened that Marian was invited to join parties of this kind.
‘Do you wish me to come?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I should like you to, if you have nothing particular to do.’
Marian informed Mrs Yule that the visitors would have supper, and then went to the study. Mr Quarmby was smoking a pipe; Mr Hinks, who on grounds of economy had long since given up tobacco, sat with his hands in his trouser pockets, and his long, thin legs tucked beneath the chair; both rose and greeted Marian with more than ordinary warmth.
‘Will you allow me five or six more puffs?’ asked Mr Quarmby, laying one hand on his ample stomach and elevating his pipe as if it were a glass of beaded liquor. ‘I shall then have done.’
‘As many more as you like,’ Marian replied.
The easiest chair was placed for her, Mr Hinks hastening to perform this courtesy, and her father apprised her of the topic they were discussing.
‘What’s your view, Marian? Is there anything to be said for the establishment of a literary academy in England?’
Mr Quarmby beamed benevolently upon her, and Mr Hinks, his scraggy neck at full length, awaited her reply with a look of the most respectful attention.
‘I really think we have quite enough literary quarrelling as it is,’ the girl replied, casting down her eyes and smiling.
Mr Quarmby uttered a hollow chuckle, Mr Hinks laughed thinly and exclaimed, ‘Very good indeed! Very good!’ Yule affected to applaud with impartial smile.
‘It wouldn’t harmonise with the Anglo-Saxon spirit,’ remarked Mr Hinks, with an air of diffident profundity.
Yule held forth on the subject for a few minutes in laboured phrases. Presently the conversation turned to periodicals, and the three men were unanimous in an opinion that no existing monthly or quarterly could be considered as representing the best literary opinion.
‘We want,’ remarked Mr Quarmby, ‘we want a monthly review which shall deal exclusively with literature. The Fortnightly, the Contemporary—they are very well in their way, but then they are mere miscellanies. You will find one solid literary article amid a confused mass of politics and economics and general clap-trap.’
‘Articles on the currency and railway statistics and views of evolution,’ said Mr Hinks, with a look as if something were grating between his teeth.
‘The quarterlies?’ put in Yule. ‘Well, the original idea of the quarterlies was that there are not enough important books published to occupy solid reviewers more than four times a year. That may be true, but then a literary monthly would include much more than professed reviews. Hinks’s essays on the historical drama would have come out in it very well; or your “Spanish Poets,” Quarmby.’
‘I threw out the idea to Jedwood the other day,’ said Mr Quarmby, ‘and he seemed to nibble at it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ came from Yule; ‘but Jedwood has so many irons in the fire. I doubt if he has the necessary capital at command just now. No doubt he’s the man, if some capitalist would join him.’
‘No enormous capital needed,’ opined Mr Quarmby. ‘The thing would pay its way almost from the first. It would take a place between the literary weeklies and the quarterlies. The former are too academic, the latter too massive, for multitudes of people who yet have strong literary tastes. Foreign publications should be liberally dealt with. But, as Hinks says, no meddling with the books that are no books—biblia abiblia; nothing about essays on bimetallism and treatises for or against vaccination.’
Even here, in the freedom of a friend’s study, he laughed his Reading-room laugh, folding both hands upon his expansive waistcoat.
‘Fiction? I presume a serial of the better kind might be admitted?’ said Yule.
‘That would be advisable, no doubt. But strictly of the better kind.’
‘Oh, strictly of the better kind,’ chimed in Mr Hinks.
They pursued the discussion as if they were an editorial committee planning a review of which the first number was shortly to appear. It occupied them until Mrs Yule announced at the door that supper was ready.
During the meal Marian found herself the object of unusual attention; her father troubled to inquire if the cut of cold beef he sent her was to her taste, and kept an eye on her progress. Mr Hinks talked to her in a tone of respectful sympathy, and Mr Quarmby was paternally jovial when he addressed her. Mrs Yule would have kept silence, in her ordinary way, but this evening her husband made several remarks which he had adapted to her intellect, and even showed that a reply would be graciously received.
Mother and daughter remained together when the men withdrew to their tobacco and toddy. Neither made allusion to the wonderful change, but they talked more light-heartedly than for a long time.
On the morrow Yule began by consulting Marian with regard to the disposition of matter in an essay he was writing. What she said he weighed carefully, and seemed to think that she had set his doubts at rest.
‘Poor old Hinks!’ he said presently, with a sigh. ‘Breaking up, isn’t he? He positively totters in his walk. I’m afraid he’s the kind of man to have a paralytic stroke; it wouldn’t astonish me to hear at any moment that he was lying helpless.’
