This, of course, was owing to the criminal secrecy with which Viola
conducted her affairs. The Minor Canon wrote to me as if I had seduced,
or was about to seduce, his daughter. (He had upset himself by rushing up
to take her back to Canterbury, and finding that she wouldn't go with
him.) I think, in his excitement, he ordered me to give her up. He was a
guileless and indeed a holy man; and it's always the guileless and the
holy people who raise the uncleanest scandals. And Mrs. Thesiger wrote,
and the General and the Dean; and I've no doubt the Archbishop would have
written too, if I hadn't unearthed _my_ General at his club, and asked
him if he knew the Thesigers, and found out that he did, and implored him
to arrange the horrid business for me as best he could. I said he might
tell them that if the girl had been left to them to look after her, she
would have got into rooms in--I named the street, and testified to the
sinister character of the house. And my General wrote and explained to
the other General and to the Minor Canon what a thoroughly nice chap I
was, and how lamentably they had misunderstood what I believed he was
pleased to call my relations with Miss Thesiger. I'm not at all sure that
he didn't even go farther and stick in a lot about my family, and suggest
that I was eligible to the extent that, though my fortunes were still
to make, I had (besides private means that enabled me to live in spite of
journalism) considerable expectations (he knew an aunt of mine--better,
it would seem, than I did). In short, that I was a thoroughly nice chap,
and that the father of seven daughters (five unmarried) might do far
worse than cultivate my acquaintance. He must have gone quite as far as
that, or farther, otherwise I couldn't account for the peculiarly tender
note that the Minor Canon put into the letter of apology that he wrote
me, still less for the invitation I received by the same post from Mrs.
Thesiger to spend Whitsuntide with them at Canterbury. (Viola had said
she was going home for Whitsuntide.)