“It is utter nonsense,” he said, without moving his head.
“Oh, Churchill!” she exclaimed.
“It is utter nonsense,” he repeated. “It is out of the question that it should be published.” She glanced her eyes round the company, but ventured no spoken appeal. Jack Hallam said something about unnecessary severity and want of courtesy. Watt simply shook his head. “I say it is trash,” said Smith, rising from his chair. “You shall not disgrace yourself. Give it to me.” She put her hand upon the manuscript, as though to save it. “Give it to me,” he said sternly, and took it from her unresisting grasp. Then he stalked to the fire, and tearing the sheets in pieces, thrust them between the bars.
Of course there was a great commotion. We were all up in a moment, standing around her as though to console her. Miss Collins came in and absolutely wept over her ill-used friend. For the instant I had forgotten “The New Inmate,” as though it had never been written. She was deluged in tears, hiding her face upon the table; but she uttered no word of reproach, and ventured not a syllable in defence of her essay. “I didn’t think it was so bad as that,” she murmured amidst her sobs. I did not dare to accuse the man of cruelty. I myself had become so small among them that my voice would have had no weight. But I did think him cruel, and hated him on her account as well as on my own. Jack Hallam remarked that for this night, at least, our work must be considered to be over. “It is over altogether,” said Churchill Smith. “I have known that for weeks past; and I have known, too, what fools we have been to make the attempt. I hope, at least, that we may have learnt a lesson that will be of service to us. Perhaps you had better go now, and I’ll just say a word or two to my cousin before I leave her.”
How we got out of the room I hardly remember. There was, no doubt, some leave-taking between us four and the unfortunate Lydia, but it amounted, I think, to no more than mere decency required. To Churchill Smith I know that I did not speak. I never saw either of the cousins again; nor, as has been already told, did I ever distinctly hear what was their fate in life. And yet how intimately connected with them had I been for the last six or eight months! For not calling upon her, so that we might have mingled the tears of our disappointment together, I much blamed myself; but the subject which we must have discussed—the failure, namely, of the Panjandrum—was one so sore and full of sorrow, that I could not bring myself to face the interview. Churchill Smith, I know, made various efforts to obtain literary employment; but never succeeded, because he would yield no inch in the expression of his own violent opinions. I doubt whether he ever earned as much as £10 by his writings. I heard of his living—and almost starving—still in London, and then that he went to fight for Polish freedom. It is believed that he died in a Russian prison, but I could never find anyone who knew with accuracy the circumstances of his fate. He was a man who could go forth with his life in his hand, and in meeting death could feel that he encountered only that which he had expected. Mrs. St. Quinten certainly vanished during the next summer from the street in which she had bestowed upon us so many muffins, and what became of her I never heard.
On that evening Pat Regan and I consoled ourselves together as best we might, Jack Hallam and Walter Watt having parted from us under the walls of Marylebone Workhouse. Pat and I walked down to a modest house of refreshment with which we were acquainted in Leicester Square, and there arranged the obsequies of the Panjandrum over a pint of stout and a baked potato. Pat’s equanimity was marvellous. It had not even yet been ruffled, although the indignities thrown upon him had almost surpassed those inflicted on myself. His “Lord Bateman” had been first rejected; and, after that, his subsequent contributions had been absolutely ignored, merely because Mr. Churchill Smith had not approved his cousin’s essay upon Bishop Berkeley! “It was rot; real rot,” said Pat, alluding to Lydia’s essay, and apologising for Smith. “But why not have gone on and heard yours?” said I. “Mine would have been rot, too,” said Pat. “It isn’t so easy, after all, to do this kind of thing.”
We agreed that the obsequies should be very private. Indeed, as the Panjandrum had as yet not had a body of its own, it was hardly necessary to open the earth for the purposes of interment. We agreed simply to say nothing about it to anyone. I would go to Mr. X. and tell him that we had abandoned our project, and there would be an end of it. As the night advanced, I offered to read “The New Inmate” to my friend; but he truly remarked that of reading aloud they had surely had enough that night. When he reflected that but for the violence of Mr. Smith’s proceedings we might even then, at that moment, have been listening to an essay upon the “Basis of Political Rights,” I think that he rejoiced that the Panjandrum was no more.
On the following morning I called on Mr. X., and explained to
