Madame Gilbert's Cannibal

by Bennet Copplestone

"I was less than half-an-hour on the island."

"So you came, saw, and conquered all within half-an-hour. And then there broke in the heir of Toppys with his most intrusive spear. It was exceedingly tactless of him. A widow, especially a South Sea widow, would not have tarried long in the wooing. I can understand now that your feelings towards the heir must be tempestuous. A journey of fifteen thousand miles, a talk for less than half-an-hour with a pale brown widow of fascinating accent and aspect. Then the crushing arrival of the too jealous son, the rending asunder of scarce joined hearts, the flight to the boat without a moment of farewell, and—fifteen thousand weary miles of return. In your place, Mr. Gatepath, I should whole-heartedly loathe that doubly inconvenient son."

"You are pleased to be witty at my expense, Madame Gilbert," grumbled Gatepath. "And we wander sadly from the purpose of the interview with which you have honoured me this morning. That was to talk about the Cannibal, and not about the Cannibal's mother."

"Proceed," said Madame, lying back in her chair, and lighting yet another cigarette. "I am dying to make his further acquaintance."

"You are an astute woman, Madame Gilbert, and will already have grasped that the Trustees of the settled estates of the Barony of Topsham—of whom I am the legal adviser—are in a position profoundly embarrassing. They don't know what the devil to do, and I don't know what the devil of advice to give. Our strictly legal duty is beyond doubt. We should notify the heir of his succession, and take the necessary steps to have him seised of his ancestral lands and revenues. They are not great although they represent a fair competence, even in these days of exorbitant estate duties. There are wealthy members of the Family of Toppys engaged in business pursuits, but they, though deeply interested, are not at present in the direct line of succession. Some eight months have passed since Lord Topsham died, and no steps have been taken to acquaint the Twenty-Eighth Baron of his—of his damnable ill-fortune. We ought to have moved long since, we must move soon, yet how, and in what direction, can we move? I went to the Torres Straits to spy out the land and to consider a course of action. I have returned baffled. The Trustees are baffled. The Family of Toppys is baffled. We cannot delay much longer. The Family of Toppys is of the highest distinction, the Barony of Topsham is a part of the National history. A failure on the part of the Trustees to produce an heir cannot pass unnoticed. There are in my profession many unscrupulous practitioners, hedge lawyers, who would greedily wallow in the chance of hunting up an heir and securing his interest and business for themselves. The Trustees cannot permit this; Gatepaths cannot permit this. It were better that my firm should act for a cannibal lordship than that he should be the helpless prey of a legal pirate. And yet if Gatepaths did what is their undoubted duty—namely, notified the heir and represented him—they would infallibly lose the valuable, the very valuable, connections of all the other members of the family. We are in a horrid quandary. We cannot let slip from among our clients the Baron of Topsham, and we cannot let slip the other members, some of them very wealthy, of the House of Toppys. But how to keep both passes understanding. I have mentioned the risk, and it is no small risk, lest some hedge lawyer should get his nose upon the trail of His Cannibal Lordship of the Torres Straits. There is another risk which will become more insistent with every month of delay. The Twenty-Eighth Baron is nineteen years old, an age of full virile maturity in the South Sea. He may marry any day some native woman, and raise, with the utmost celerity, a crop of savage heirs to his body. If, at the instigation of his mother, he follows the detestable practice of his late father, the marriage will be legal by our law, and the spawn of it legitimate. Should this further disaster have time to mature—and nothing is more certain of consummation in a minimum of time—the coffee-coloured Cannibal line of Toppys will be impregnably entrenched. Nothing but a special Act of Parliament could bomb it out, and in these days of revolutionary socialism, the House of Commons would never pass a Disabling Act. The ribald cynicism of many Members would lead them to enjoy the gross humiliation of the Upper Chamber. We can look for no help from Parliament; we must look to our own brains and hands. I have gone to the Torres Straits and failed. It does not follow that Madame Gilbert would also fail."

"Wait a bit," quoth Madame. "I must know a lot more and see a lot more before I take any hand in this business. I confess frankly that my sympathies lean towards the Cannibal. He, the undoubted heir of an ancient family, is without friends in a far island. He is the son of his father, and, despite his skin, must be half white in blood. He may be more than half white in heart and brain. What have you against him except the rich Melanesian infusion in his veins? Nothing except the exquisite simplicity of his dress—you said, I recall, that he wore a bootlace about his middle and adorned his frizzy hair with feathers. Your visit was on the edge of the Southern summer at a season when even you or I would gladly travel light in clothing. I feel that a feather headdress and a petticoat of stripped banana leaves would become me mightily. Our Mother Eve was red golden like me and must have shone gloriously in a fig-leaf apron. If the Twenty-Eighth Baron Topsham were really a savage cannibal, in fact as well as by birth, I might perhaps share your wrath and agitation. But at present I am frankly on his side. His appearance in the House of Lords would be startling, but the old dears would be the better for a shock. So would London society. I confess that I look forward to his succession with intense amusement. It would be perfectly lovely, une bizarrerie superbe."

"You will excuse my inability to appreciate your levity," growled Gatepath.

"That is why you are baffled by this little domestic problem," said Madame. "If you and the portentous Family of Toppys had enough of humour to take yourselves less seriously, you would perceive that all the world will laugh when the disclosure comes. It is more agreeable to laugh with the world than to be laughed at by it. You think that your retainers, male and female, discreetly solemn in your presence, are desolated by the misfortunes of the family. Believe me when I tell you that they are howling with derision. Your men-servants and your maid-servants within your gates are roaring together over the Family humiliation. Your ox and your ass, and your old family coach-horse are gaping at you. Your chauffeur, educated maybe in a modern Radical school of motoring, is inclined by your misfortunes towards belief in a righteous Providence. Even your Rolls-Royce forgets its aristocratic ghostly calm and gurgles. Make up your ancient Toppys' minds, Mr. Gatepath, that no man or woman in this modern world cares a depreciated tuppence for the woes of an historic peerage. You and your Family of Toppys suffer from distorted vision. Laugh, man, laugh, and recover some sense of perspective. Put yourself outside this museum of mouldy antiquities, of which you are the hereditary legal adviser, and regard them for a moment from a point of detachment. Have you got that? Now laugh."

But the gloom upon the countenance of Gatepath remained unbroken. It was less the embarrassments of Toppys that obsessed him than the predicament into which his firm had drifted. If he stood by the Heir he lost the business of Toppys; if he stood by the Family he resigned the Heir to some intrusive perspicuous supplanter. The firm would get left either way. It is not surprising that Roger Gatepath and humour had become strangers.

The conspirators sat speechless for the space of two minutes, which is a long, long time of silence between Western people. It was Madame, of course, who broke the pause of contemplation.