FullReads

‘What became of the scraps?’ I asked. ‘Did your father keep them?’

‘Yes, he did. And I used to try, when I was younger, to make out something from them. But even I never seemed to get near it. I’ve never thrown them away, though. They’re in a box.’

I got them for a piece of gold that I could ill spare–some score or so of shreds of yellow paper, traversed with pale ink. The joy of the archaeologist with an unknown papyrus, of the detective with a clue, surged in me. Indeed, I was not sure whether I was engaged in private inquiry or in research; so recent, so remote was the mystery. After two days’ labour, I marshalled the elusive words. This is the text of them:

MR. COATES, SIR,

They say Revenge is sweet. I am fortunate to find it is so. I have compelled you to be far more a Fool than you made me at the fete-champetre of Lady B. & I, having accomplished my aim, am ready to forgive you now, as you implored me on the occasion of the fete. But pray build no Hope that I, forgiving you, will once more regard you as my Suitor. For that cannot ever be. I decided you should show yourself a Fool before many people. But such Folly does not commend your hand to mine. Therefore desist your irksome attention &, if need be, begone from Bath. I have punished you, & would save my eyes the trouble to turn away from your person. I pray that you regard this epistle as privileged and private.

E. T. L. 10 of February.

The letter lies before me as I write. It is written throughout in a firm and very delicate Italian hand. Under the neat initials is drawn, instead of the ordinary flourish, an arrow, and the absence of any erasure in a letter of such moment suggests a calm, deliberate character and, probably, rough copies. I did not, at the time, suffer my fancy to linger over the tessellated document. I set to elucidating the reference to the fete-champetre. As I retraced my footsteps to the little bookshop, I wondered if I should find any excuse for the cruel faithlessness of Emma Tylney Long.

The bookseller was greatly excited when I told him I had re-created the letter. He was very eager to see it. I did not pander to his curiosity. He even offered to buy the article back at cost price. I asked him if he had ever heard, in his youth, of any scene that had passed between Miss Tylney Long and Mr. Coates at some fete-champetre. The old man thought for some time, but he could not help me. Where then, I asked him, could I search old files of local news-papers? He told me that there were supposed to be many such files mouldering in the archives of the Town Hall.

I secured access, without difficulty, to these files. A whole day I spent in searching the copies issued by this and that journal during the months that Romeo was in Bath. In the yellow pages of these forgotten prints I came upon many complimentary allusions to Mr. Coates: ‘The visitor welcomed (by all our aristocracy) from distant Ind,’ ‘the ubiquitous,’ ‘the charitable riche.’ Of his ‘forthcoming impersonation of Romeo and Juliet’ there were constant puffs, quite in the modern manner. The accounts of his debut all showed that Mr. Pryse Gordon’s account of it was fabulous. In one paper there was a bitter attack on ‘Mr. Gordon, who was responsible for this insult to Thespian art, the gentry, and the people, for he first arranged the whole production’–an extract which makes it clear that this gentleman had a good motive for his version of the affair.

But I began to despair of ever learning what happened at the fete-champetre. There were accounts of ‘a grand garden-party, whereto Lady Belper, on March the twenty-eighth, invited a host of fashionable persons.’ The names of Mr. Coates and of ‘Sir James Tylney Long and his daughter’ were duly recorded in the lists. But that was all. I turned at length to a tiny file, consisting of five copies only, Bladud’s Courier. Therein I found this paragraph, followed by some scurrilities which I will not quote: