The servants had left the room, and the doors were fast closed. Lord Arranmore sat a little forward in his high-backed chair, one hand grasping the arm, the other stretched flat upon the table before him. By his side, neglected, was a cedar-wood box of his favourite cigarettes.
"I am going," he said, thoughtfully, "to tell you a story, of whom the hero is—myself. A poor sort of entertainment perhaps, but then there is a little tragedy and a little comedy in what I have to tell. And you three are the three people in the world to whom certain things were better told."
They bent forward, fascinated by the cold directness of his speech, by the suggestion of strange things to come. The mask of their late gaiety had fallen away. Lady Caroom, grave and sad-eyed, was listening with an anxiety wholly unconcealed. Under the shaded lamplight their faces, dominated by that cold masterly figure at the head of the table, were almost Rembrandtesque.
"You have heard a string of incoherent but sufficiently damagingaccusations made against me to-day by a young lady whose very existence,I may say, was a surprise to me. It suited me then to deny them.Nevertheless they were in the main true."
The announcement was no shock. Every one of the three curiously enough had believed the girl.
"I must go a little further back than the time of which she spoke. At twenty-six years old I was an idle young man of good family, but scant expectations, supposed to be studying at the Bar, but in reality idling my time about town. In those days, Lady Caroom, you had some knowledge of me."
"Up to the time of your disappearance—yes. I remember, Arranmore," she continued, her manner losing for a moment some of its restraint, and her eyes and tone suddenly softening, "dancing with you that evening. We arranged to meet at Ranelagh the next day, and, when the next day came, you had vanished, gone as completely as though the earth had swallowed you up. For weeks every one was asking what has become of him. And then—I suppose you were forgotten."
"This," Lord Arranmore continued, "is the hardest part of my narrative, the hardest because the most difficult to make you understand. You will forgive my offering you the bare facts only. I will remind you that I was young, impressionable, and had views. So to continue!"
The manner of his speech was in its way chillingly impressive. He was still sitting in exactly the same position, one hand upon the arm of his high-backed chair, the other upon the table before him. He made use of no gestures, his face remained as white and emotionless as a carved image, his tone, though clear and low, was absolutely monotonous. But there was about him a subtle sense of repression apparent to all of them.
"On my way home that night my hansom knocked down an old man. He was not seriously hurt, and I drove him home. On the way he stared at me curiously. Every now and then he laughed—unpleasantly.
"'I have never seen any one out of your world before,' he said. 'I dare say you have never spoken to any one out of mine except to toss us alms. Come and see where I live.'
"He insisted, and I went. I found myself in a lodging-house, now pulled down and replaced by one of Lord Rowton's tenement houses. I saw a hundred human beings more or less huddled together promiscuously, and the face of every one of them was like the face of a rat. The old man dragged me from room to room, laughing all the time. He showed me children herded together without distinction of sex or clothing, here and there he pointed to a face where some apprehension of the light was fighting a losing battle with the ghouls of disease, of vice, of foul air, of filth. I was faint and giddy when we had looked over that one house, but the old man was not satisfied. He dragged me on to the roof and pointed eastwards. There, as far as the eyes could reach, was a blackened wilderness of smoke-begrimed dwellings. He looked at me and grinned. I can see him now. He had only one tooth, a blackened yellow stump, and every time he opened his mouth to laugh he was nearly choked with coughing. He leaned out over the palisading and reached with both his arms eastward. 'There,' he cried, frantically, 'you have seen one. There are thousands and tens of thousands of houses like this, a million crawling vermin who were born into the world in your likeness, as you were born, my fine gentleman. Day by day they wake in their holes, fill their lungs with foul air, their stomachs with rotten food, break their backs and their hearts over some hideous task. Every day they drop a little lower down. Drink alone keeps them alive, stirs their blood now and then so that they can feel their pulses beat, brings them a blessed stupor. And see over there the sun, God's sun, rises every morning, over them and you. Young man! You see those flaming spots of light? They are gin-palaces. You may thank your God for them, for they alone keep this horde of rotten humanity from sweeping westwards, breaking up your fine houses, emptying your wine into the street, tearing the silk and laces from your beautiful soft-limbed women. Bah! But you have read. It would be the French Revolution over again. Oh, but you are wise, you in the West, your statesmen and your philanthropists, that you build these gin-palaces, and smile, and rub your hands and build more and spend the money gaily. You build the one dam which can keep back your retribution. You keep them stupefied, you cheapen the vile liquor and hold it to their noses. So they drink, and you live. But a day of light may come.'"
Lord Arranmore ceased speaking, stretched out his hand and helped himself to wine with unfaltering fingers.
"I have tried," he continued, "to repeat the exact words which the old man used to me, and I do not find it so difficult as you might imagine, because at that time they made a great impression upon me. But I cannot, of course, hope to reproduce to you his terrible earnestness, the burning passion with which every word seemed to spring from his lips. Their effect upon me at that time you will be able to judge when I tell you this—that I never returned to my rooms, that for ten years I never set foot west of Temple Bar. I first joined a small society in Whitechapel, then I worked for myself, and finally I became a police-court missionary at Southwark Police-Court. The history of those years is the history of a slowly-growing madness. I commenced by trying to improve whole districts-I ended with the individual."
Brooks' wineglass fell with a little crash upon the tablecloth. The wine, a long silky stream, flowed away from him unstaunched, unregarded. His eyes were fixed upon Lord Arranmore. He leaned forward.
"A police-court missionary!" he cried, hoarsely.
Lord Arranmore regarded him for a moment in silence.
"Yes. As you doubtless surmise, I am your father. Afterwards you may ask me questions."
Brooks sat as one stupefied, and then a sudden warm touch upon his hand sent the blood coursing once more through his veins. Sybil's fingers lay for a moment upon his. She smiled kindly at him. Lord Arranmore's voice once more broke the short silence.
"The individual was my greatest disappointment," he continued. "Young and old, all were the same. I took them to live with me, I sent them abroad, I found them situations in this country, I talked with them, read with them, showed them the simplest means within their reach by means of which they might take into their lives a certain measure of beautiful things. Failure would only make me more dogged, more eager. I would spend months sometimes with one man or boy, and at last I would assure myself of success. I would find them a situation, see them perhaps once a week, then less often, and the end was always the same. They fell back. I had put the poison to sleep, but it was always there. It was their everlasting heritage, a gift from father to son, bred in the bone, a part of their blood.
"In those days I married a lady devoted to charitable works. Our purpose was to work together, but we found it impracticable. There was, I fear, little sympathy between us. The only bond was our work—and that was soon to be broken. For there came a time, after ten breathless years, when I paused to consider."
He raised his glass to his lips and drained it. The wine was powerful, but it brought no tinge of colour to his cheeks, nor any lustre to his eyes. He continued in the same firm, expressionless tone.
"There came a night when I found myself thinking, and I knew then that a new terror was stealing into my life. I made my way up to the roof of the house where that old man had first taken me, and I leaned once more over the palisading and looked eastwards. I fancied that I could still hear the echoes of his frenzied words, and for the first time I heard the note of mockery ringing clearly through them. There they stretched—the same blackened wilderness of roofs sheltering the same horde of drinking, filthy, cursing, parasitical creatures; there flared the gin-palaces, more of them, more brilliantly lit, more gorgeously decorated. Ten years of my life, and what had I done? What could any one do? The truth seemed suddenly written across the sky in letters of fire. I, a poor human creature, had been fighting with a few other fanatics against the inviolable, the unconquerable laws of nature. The hideous mistake of all individual effort was suddenly revealed to me. 'We were like a handful of children striving to dam a mighty torrent with a few handfuls of clay. Better a thousand times that these people rotted—and died in their holes, that disease should stalk through their streets, and all the evil passions born of their misery and filth should be allowed to blaze forth that the whole world might see, so the laws of the world might intervene, the great natural laws by which alone these things could be changed. I looked down at myself, then wasted to the bone, a stranger to the taste of wine or tobacco, to all the joys of life, a miserable heart-broken wretch, and I cursed that old man and the thought of him till my lips were dry and my throat ached. I walked back to my miserable dwelling with a red fire before my eyes, muttering, cursing that power which stood behind the universe, and which we call God, that there should be vomited forth into the world day by day, hour by hour, this black stream of human wretchedness, an everlasting mockery to those who would seek for the joy of life.
"They took me to the hospital, and they called my illness brain-fever. But long before they thought me convalescent I was conscious, lying awake and plotting my escape. With cunning I managed it. Of my wife and child I never once thought. Every trace of human affection seemed withered up in my heart. I took the money subscribed for me with a hypocrite's smile, and I slunk away from England. I went to Montreal in Canada, and I deliberately entered upon a life of low pleasures. Pardon me!"
He bent forward and with a steady hand readjusted the shade of a lamp which was in danger of burning. Lady Caroom leaned back in her chair with an indrawn sobbing breath. The action at such a moment seemed grotesque. His own coolness, whilst with steady fingers he probed away amongst the wounded places of his life, was in itself gruesome.
"My money," he continued, "was no large sum, but I eked it out with gambling. The luck was always on my side. It's quite true that I ruined the father of the young lady who paid me a visit to-day. After a somewhat chequered career he was settling down in a merchant's office in Montreal when I met him. His luck at cards was as bad as mine was good. I won all he had, and more. I believe that he committed suicide. A man there was kind to me, asked me to his house—I persuaded his wife to run away with me. These are amongst the slightest of my delinquencies. I steeped myself in sin. I revelled in it. I seemed to myself in some way to be showing my defiance for the hidden powers of life which I had cursed. I played a match with evil by day and by night until I was glutted. And then I stole away from the city, leaving behind a hideous reputation and not a single friend. Then a new mood came to me. I wanted to get to a place where I should see no human beings at all, and escape in that way from the memories which were still like a clot upon my brain. So I set my face westwards. I travelled till at last civilization lay behind. Still I pushed onward. I had stores in plenty, an Indian servant who chanced to be faithful, and whom I saw but twice a day. At last I reached Lake Ono. Here between us we built a hut. I sent my Indian away then, and when he fawned at my feet to stay I kicked him. This was my third phase of living, and it was true that some measure of sanity came back to me. Oh, the blessed relief of seeing the face of neither man nor woman. It was the unpeopled world of Nature—uncorrupted, fresh, magnificent, alive by day and by night with everlasting music of Nature. The solitudes of those great forests were like a wonderful balm. So the fevers were purged out of me, and I became once more an ordinary human being. I was content, I think, to die there, for I had plenty to eat and drink, and the animals and birds who came to me morning and evening kept me from even the thought of loneliness. The rest is obvious. I lost two cousins in South Africa, an uncle in the hunting-field. A man in Montreal had recognized me. I was discovered. But before I returned I killed Brooks, the police-court missionary. This girl has forced me to bring him to life again."
It was a strange silence which followed. Brooks sat back in his chair, pale, bewildered, striving to focus this story properly, to attain a proper comprehension of these new strange things. And behind all there smouldered the slow burning anger of the child who has looked into the face of a deserted mother. Lady Caroom was white to the lips, and in her eyes the horror of that story so pitilessly told seemed still to linger.
Lord Arranmore spoke again. Still he sat back in his high-backed chair, and still he spoke in measured, monotonous tones. But this time, if only their ears had been quick enough to notice it, there lay behind an emotion, held in check indeed, but every now and then quivering for expression. He had turned to Lady Caroom.
"Chance," he said, "has brought together here at the moment when the telling of these things has become a necessity, the two people who have in a sense some right to hear them, for from each I have much to ask. Sybil is your daughter, and from her there need be no secrets. So, Catherine, I ask you again, now that you know everything, are you brave enough to be my wife?"
She raised her eyes, and he saw the horror there. But he made no sign.She rose and held out her hand for Sybil.
"Arranmore," she said, "I am afraid."
He looked down upon his plate.
"So let it be, then," he said. "It would need a brave woman indeed to join her lot with mine after the things which I have told you. At heart, Catherine, I am almost a dead man. Believe me, you are wise."
He rose, and the two women passed from the room. Then he resumed his former seat, and attitude, and Brooks, though he tried to speak, felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth, a dry and nerveless thing.
For in these doings there was tragedy.
"There remains to me you, Philip Kingston, my son," Lord Arranmore said, in the same measured tone. "You also have before you the story of my life, you are able from it to form some sort of idea as to what my future is likely to be. I do not wish to deceive you. My early enthusiasms are extinct. I look upon the ten or twenty years or so which may be left to me of life as merely a space of time to be filled with as many amusements and new sensations as may be procurable without undue effort. I have no wish to convert, or perhaps pervert you, to my way of thinking. You live still in Utopia, and to me Utopia does not exist. So make your choice deliberately. Do you care to come to me?"
Then Brooks found words of a sort.
"Lord Arranmore," he said, "forgive me if what I must say sounds undutiful. I know that you have suffered. I can realize something of what you have been through. But your desertion of my mother and me was a brutality. What you call your creed of life sounds to me hideous. You and I are far apart, and so far as I am concerned, God grant that we may remain so."
For the first time Lord Arranmore smiled. He poured out with steady hand yet another glass of wine, and he nodded towards the door.
"I am obliged to you," he said, "for your candour. I have met with enough hypocrisy in life to be able to appreciate it. Be so good as to humour my whim—and to leave me alone."
Brooks rose from his seat, hesitated for a single moment, and left the room. Lord Arranmore leaned back in his high-backed chair and looked round at the empty places. The cigarette burned out between his fingers, his wine remained untasted. The evening's entertainment was over.
"The domestic virtues," Lord Arranmore said softly to himself, "being denied to me, the question remains how to pass one's time."
He rose wearily from his seat, and walking to the window looked out upon St. James's Square. A soft rain hung about the lamp-posts, the pavements were thick with umbrellas. He returned to his chair with a shrug of the shoulders.
"The only elucidation from outside seems to be a change of climate," he mused. "I should prefer to think of something more original. In the meantime I will write to that misguided young man in Medchester."
He drew paper and pen towards him and began to write. Even his handwriting seemed a part of the man—cold, shapely, and deliberate.
"My DEAR BROOKS,
"I have been made acquainted through Mr. Ascough with your desire to leave the new firm of Morrison and Brooks, and while I congratulate you very much upon the fact itself, I regret equally the course of reasoning which I presume led to your decision. You will probably have heard from Mr. Ascough by this time on a matter of business. You are, by birth, Lord Kingston of Ross, and the possessor of the Kingston income, which amounts to a little over two thousand a year. Please remember that this comes to you not through any grace or favour of mine, but by your own unalienable right as the eldest son of the Marquis of Arranmore. I cannot give it to you. I cannot withhold it from you. If you refuse to take it the amount must accumulate for your heirs, or in due time find its way to the Crown. Leave the tithe alone by all means, if you like, but do not carry quixotism to the borders of insanity by declining to spend your own money, and thereby cramp your life.
"I trust to hear from Mr. Ascough of your more reasonable frame of mind, and while personally I agree with you that we are better apart, you can always rely upon me if I can be of any service to you.
"Yours sincerely,
He read the letter through thoughtfully and folded it up.
"I really don't see what the young fool can kick about in that," he said, throwing it into the basket. "Well, Hennibul, how are you?"
Mr. Hennibul, duly ushered in by a sedate butler, pronounced himself both in words and appearance fit and well. He took a chair and a cigarette, and looked about him approvingly.
"Nice house, yours, Arranmore. Nice old-fashioned situation, too. Why don't you entertain?"
"No friends, no inclination, no womankind!"
Mr. Hennibul smiled incredulously.
"Your card plate is chock-full," he said, "and there are a dozen women in town at least of your connections who'd do the polite things by you. As to inclination—well, one must do something."
"That's about the most sensible thing you have said, Hennibul," Arranmore remarked. "I've just evoked the same fact out of my own consciousness. One must do something. It's tiresome, but it's quite true." Politics?
"Hate 'em! Not worth while anyway."
"Travel."
"Done all I want for a bit, but I keep that in reserve.
"Hunt."
"Bad leg, but I do a bit at it."
"Society."
"Sooner go on the County Council."
"City."
"Too much money already."
"Write a book." "No one would read it."
"Start a magazine."
"Too hard work."
Mr. Hennibul sighed.
"You're rather a difficult case," he admitted. "You'd better come round to the club and play bridge."
"I never played whist—and I'm bad-tempered."
"Bit of everything then."
Lord Arranmore smiled.
"That's what it'll end in, I suppose."
"Pleasant times we had down at Enton," Mr. Hennibul remarked. "How's the nice young lawyer—Brooks his name was, I think?"
"All right, I believe."
"And the ladies?
"I believe that they are quite well. They were in Scotland last timeI heard of them."
Mr. Hennibul found conversation difficult.
"I saw that you were in Paris the other week," he remarked.
"I went over to see Bernhardt's new play," Arranmore continued.
"Good?"
"It disappointed me. Very likely though the fault was with myself."
Mr. Hennibul looked across at his host shrewdly.
"What did you see me for?" he asked, suddenly. "You're bored to death trying to keep up a conversation."
Lord Arranmore laughed.
"Upon my word, I don't know, Hennibul," he answered. "For the same old reason, I suppose. One must see some one, do something. I thought that you might amuse me."
"And I've failed," Hennibul declared, smiling. "Come to supper at theSavoy to-night. The two new American girls from the Lyric and St. JohnLyttleton are to be there. Moderately respectable, I believe, but a bitnoisy perhaps."
Arranmore shook his head.
"You're a good fellow, Hennibul," he said, "but I'm too old for that sort of thing."
Hennibul rose to his feet.
"Well," he said, "I've kept the best piece of advice till last because I want you to think of it. Marry!"
Lord Arranmore did not smile. He did not immediately reply.
"You are a bachelor!" he remarked.
"I am a man of a different disposition," Hennibul answered. "I find pleasure in everything—everything amuses me. My work is fascinating, my playtime is never big enough. I really don't know where a wife would come in. However, if ever I did get a bit hipped, find myself in your position, for instance, I can promise you that I'd take my own medicine. I've thought of it more than once lately."
"Perhaps by that time," Lord Arranmore said, "the woman whom you wanted to marry wouldn't have you."
Hennibul looked serious for a moment. A new idea had occurred to him.
"One must take one's chances!" he said.
"You are a philosopher," Arranmore declared. "Will you have some tea—or a whisky-and-soda?"
"Neither, thanks. In an abortive attempt to preserve my youth I neither take tea nor drinks between meals. I will have one of your excellent cigarettes and get round to the club. Why, this is Enton over again, for here comes Molyneux."
The Hon. Sydney Molyneux shook hands with both of them in somewhat dreary fashion, and embarked upon a few disjointed remarks. Hennibul took his leave, and Arranmore yawned openly.
"What is the matter with you, Sydney?" he asked. "You are duller than ever. I am positively not going to sit here and mumble about the weather. How are the Carooms? Have you heard from them lately?"
"They are up in Yorkshire," Molyneux announced, "staying with the Pryce-Powells. I believe they're all right. I'm beastly fit myself, but I had a bit of a facer last week. I—er—I wanted to ask you a question.
"Well?"
"About that fellow Brooks I met at your place down at Enton. Lawyer at Medchester, isn't he? I thought that he and Sybil seemed a bit thick somehow. Don't suppose there could have been anything in it, eh? He's no one in particular, I suppose. Lady Caroom wouldn't be likely to listen to anything between Sybil and him?"
Arranmore raised his eyebrows.
"Brooks is a very intelligent young man," he said, "and some girls are attracted by brains, you know. I don't know anything about his relations with Sybil Caroom, but he has ample private means, and I believe that he is well-born."
"Fellow's a gentleman, of course," Molyneux declared, "but Lady Caroom is a little ambitious, isn't she? I always seemed to be in the running all right lately. I spent last Sunday with them at Chelsom Castle. Awful long way to go, but I'm fond of Sybil. I thought she was a bit cool to me, but, like a fool, I blundered on, and in the end—I got a facer."
"Very sorry for you," Arranmore yawned.
"What made me think about Brooks was that she was awfully decent to me before Enton," Molyneux continued. "I don't mind telling you that I'm hard hit. I want to know who Brooks is. If he's only a country lawyer, he's got no earthly chance with Lady Caroom, and Sybil'd never go against her mother. They're too great pals for that. Never saw them so thick."
"Was Lady Caroom—quite well?" Arranmore asked, irrelevantly.
"Well, now you mention it," Molyneux said, "I don't think she was quite in her usual form. She was much quieter, and it struck me that she was aging a bit. Wonderful woman, though. She and Sybil were quite inseparable at Chelsom—more like sisters than anything, 'pon my word."
Lord Arranmore looked into the fire, and was silent for several minutes.
"So far as regards Brooks," he said, "I do not think that he would be an acceptable son-in-law to Lady Caroom, but I am not in the least sure. He is by no means an insignificant person. If he were really anxious to marry Sybil Caroom, he would be a rival worth consideration. I cannot tell you anything more."
"Much obliged to you I'm sure. I shall try again when they come to town, of course."
Arranmore rose up.
"I am going down to Christie's to see some old French manuscripts," he said. "Is that on your way?"
Molyneux shook his head.
"Going down to the House, thanks," he answered. "I'll look you up again some time, if I may."
They walked out into the street together. Arranmore stepped into his brougham and was driven off. At the top of St. James's Street he pulled the check-string and jumped out. He had caught a glimpse of a girl's face looking into a shop window. He hastily crossed the pavement and accosted her, hat in hand.
"Miss Scott, will you permit me the opportunity of saying a few words to you?"
Mary turned round, speechless for more than a minute or two.
"I will not detain you for more than a minute or two. I hope that you will not refuse me."
"I will listen to anything you have to say, Lord Arranmore," she said, "but let me tell you that I have been to see Mr. Ascough. He told me that he had your permission to explain to me fully the reasons of your coming to Montreal and the story of your life before."
"Well?"
She hesitated. He stood before her, palpably anxiously waiting for her decision.
"I was perhaps wrong to judge so hastily, Lord Arranmore," she said, "and I am inclined to regret my visit to Enton. If you care to know it, I do not harbour any animosity towards you. But I cannot possibly accept this sum of money. I told Mr. Ascough so finally."
"It is only justice, Miss Scott," he said, in a low tone. "I won the money from your father fairly in one sense, but unfairly in another, for I was a good player and he was a very poor one. You will do me a great, an immeasurable kindness, if you will allow me to make this restitution."
She shook her head.
"If my forgiveness is of any value to you, Lord Arranmore," she said, "you may have it. But I cannot accept the money."
"You have consulted no one?"
"No one."
You have a guardian or friends?
"I have been living with my uncle, Mr. Bullsom. He has been very kind to me, and I have—"
"Mary!"
They both turned round. Selina and Mr. Bullsom had issued from the shop before which they stood, Both were looking at Lord Arranmore with curiosity, in Selina's case mixed with suspicion.
"Is this your uncle?" he asked. "Will you introduce me?"
Mary bit her lip.
"Uncle, this is Lord Arranmore," she said. "Mr. Bullsom, my cousin,Miss Bullsom."
Mr. Bullsom retained presence of mind enough to remove a new and very shiny silk hat, and to extend a yellow, dog-skinned gloved hand.
"Very proud to meet your lordship," he declared. "I—I wasn't aware—"
Lord Arranmore extricated his hand from a somewhat close grasp, and bowed to Selina.
"We are neighbours, you know, Mr. Bullsom," he said, "at Medchester. I met your niece there, and recognized her at once, though she was a little slip of a girl when I knew her last. Her father and I were in Montreal together."
"God bless my soul," Mr. Bullsom exclaimed, in much excitement. "It's your lawyers, then, who have been advertising for Mary?"
Lord Arranmore bowed.
"That is so," he admitted. "I am sorry to say that I cannot induce your niece to look upon a certain transaction between her father and myself from a business-like point of view. I think that you and I, Mr. Bullsom, might come to a better understanding. Will you give me an appointment? I should like to discuss the matter with you."
"With the utmost pleasure, my lord," Mr. Bullsom declared heartily."Can't expect these young ladies to see through a business matter, eh?I will come to your lordship's house whenever you like."
"It would be quite useless, uncle," Mary interposed, firmly. "LordArranmore has already my final answer."
Mr. Bullsom was a little excited.
"Tut, tut, child!" he exclaimed. "Don't talk nonsense. I should be proud to talk this matter over with Lord Arranmore. We are staying at the Metropole, and if your lordship would call there to-morrow and take a bit of lunch, eh, about one o'clock—if it isn't too great a liberty."
Selina had never loved her father more sincerely. Lord Arranmore smiled faintly, but good-humoredly.
"You are exceedingly kind," he said. "For our business talk, perhaps, it would be better if you would come to St. James's House at, say, 10:30, if that is convenient. I will send a carriage."
"I'll be ready prompt," Mr. Bullsom declared. "Now, girls, we will say good-afternoon to his lordship and get a four-wheeler."
Selina raised her eyes and dropped them again in the most approved fashion. Mr. Bullsom shook hands as though it were a sacrament; Mary, who was annoyed, did not smile at all.
"This is all quite unnecessary, Lord Arranmore," she said, while her uncle was signalling for a cab. I shall not change my mind, and I am sorry that you spoke to uncle about it at all."
"It is a serious matter to me, Miss Scott," Lord Arranmore said, gravely. "And there is still another point of view from which I might urge it."
"It is wasted time," she declared, firmly.
Selina detached herself from her father, and stood by Lord Arranmore's side.
"I suppose you are often in London, Lord Arranmore?" she asked shyly.
"A great deal too often," he answered.
"We read about your beautiful parties at Enton," she said, with a sigh."It is such a lovely place."
"I am glad you like it," he answered, absently. "I see your uncle cannot find a four-wheeler. You must take my carriage. I am only going a few steps."
Mary's eager protest was drowned in Selina's shrill torrent of thanks. Lord Arranmore beckoned to his coachman, and the brougham, with its pair of strong horses, drew up against the pavement. The footman threw open the door. Selina entered in a fever for fear a cab which her father was signalling should, after all, respond to his summons. Mr. Bullsom found his breath taken away.
"We couldn't possibly take your lordship's carriage," he protested.
"I have only a few steps to go, Mr. Bullsom, and it would be a kindness, for my horses are never more than half exercised. At 10:30 to-morrow then."
He stood bareheaded upon the pavement for a moment, and Selina's eyes and smile had never worked harder. Mary leaned back, too angry to speak. Selina and Mr. Bullsom sat well forward, and pulled both windows down.
"The long and short of it is, then, Mr. Henslow, that you decline to fulfil your pledges given at the last election?" Brooks asked, coldly.
"Nothing of the sort," Mr. Henslow declared, testily. "You have no right to suggest anything of the sort."
"No right!"
"Certainly not. You are my agent, and you ought to work with me instead—"
"I have already told you," Brooks interrupted, '"that I am nothing of the sort. I should not dream of acting for you again, and if you think a formal resignation necessary, I will post you one to-morrow. I am one of your constituents, nothing more or less. But as I am in some measure responsible for your presence here, I consider myself within my rights in asking you these questions."
"I'm not going to be hectored!" Mr. Henslow declared.
"Nobody wants to hector you! You gave certain pledges to us, and you have not fulfilled one of them."
"They won't let me. I'm not here as an independent Member. I'm here as a Liberal, and Sir Henry himself struck out my proposed question and motion. I must go with the Party."
"You know quite well," Brooks said, "that you are within your rights in keeping the pledges you made to the mass meeting at Medchester."
Henslow shook his head.
"It would be no good," he declared. "I've sounded lots of men about it. I myself have not changed. I believe in some measure of protection. I am a firm believer in it. But the House wouldn't listen to me. The times are not ripe for anything of the sort yet."
"How do you know until you try?" Brooks protested. "Your promise was to bring the question before Parliament in connection with the vast and increasing number of unemployed. You are within your rights in doing so, and to speak frankly we insist upon it, or we ask for your resignation."
"Are you speaking with authority, young man?" Mr. Henslow asked.
"Of course I am. I am the representative of the Liberal ParliamentaryCommittee, and I am empowered to say these things to you, and more.
"Well, I'll do the best I can to get a date," Mr. Henslow said, grumblingly, "but you fellows are always in such a hurry, and you don't understand that it don't go up here. We have to wait our time month after month sometimes."
"I don't see any motion down in your name at all yet," Brooks remarked.
"I told you that Sir Henry struck it through."
"Then I shall call upon him and point out that he is throwing away a Liberal seat at the next election," Brooks replied. "He isn't the sort of man to encourage a Member to break his election pledges."
"You'll make a mess of the whole thing if you do anything of the sort," Henslow declared. "Look here, come and have a bit of dinner with me, and talk things over a bit more pleasantly, eh? There's no use in getting our rags out."
"Please excuse me," Brooks said. "I have arranged to dine elsewhere. I do not wish to seem dictatorial or unreasonable, but I have just come from Medchester, where the distress is, if anything, worse than ever. It makes one's heart sick to walk the streets, and when I look into the people's faces I seem to always hear that great shout of hope and enthusiasm which your speech in the market-place evoked. You see, there is only one real hope for these people, and that is legislation, and you are the man directly responsible to them for that."
"I'll tell you what I'll do!" Mr. Henslow said, in a burst of generosity. "I'll send another ten guineas to the Unemployed Fund."
"Take my advice and don't," Brooks answered, dryly. "They might be reminded of the people who clamoured for bread and were offered a stone. Do your duty here. Keep your pledges. Speak in the House with the same passion and the same eloquence as when you sowed hope in the heart of those suffering thousands. Some one must break away from this musty routine of Party politics. The people will be heard, Mr. Henslow. Their voice has dominated the fate of every nation in time, and it will be so with ours."
Mr. Henslow was silent for a few minutes. This young man who would not drink champagne, or be hail-fellow-well-met, and who was in such deadly earnest, was a nuisance.
"I tell you what I'll do," he said at last. "I'll have a few words withSir Henry, and see you tomorrow at what time you like."
"Certainly," Brooks answered, rising. "If you will allow me to make a suggestion, Mr. Henslow, I would ask you to run through in your memory all your speeches and go through your pledges one by one. Let Sir Henry understand that your constituents will not be trifled with, for it is not a question of another candidate, it is a question of another party. You have set the ball rolling, and I can assure you that the next Member whom Medchester sends here, whether it be you or any one else, will come fully pledged to a certain measure of Protection."
Mr. Henslow nodded.
"Very well," he said, gloomily. "Where are you staying?
"At the Metropole. Mr. Bullsom is there also."
"I will call," Mr. Henslow promised, "at three o'clock, if that is convenient."
Brooks passed out across the great courtyard and through the gates. He had gone to his interview with Henslow in a somewhat depressed state of mind, and its result had not been enlivening. Were all politics like this? Was the greatest of causes, the cause of the people, to be tossed about from one to the other, a joke with some, a juggling ball with others, never to be dealt with firmly and wisely by the brains and generosity of the Empire? He looked back at the Houses of Parliament, with their myriad lights, their dark, impressive outline. And for a moment the depression passed away. He thought of the freedom which had been won within those walls, of the gigantic struggles, the endless, restless journeying onward towards the truths, the great truths of the world. All politicians were not as this man Henslow. There were others, more strenuous, more single-hearted. He himself—and his heart beat at the thought—why should he not take his place there? The thought fascinated him,—every word of Lord Arranmore's letter which he had recently received, seemed to stand out before him. His feet fell more blithely upon the pavement, he carried himself with a different air. Here were ample means to fill his life,—means by which he could crush out that sweet but unhappy tangle of memories which somehow or other had stolen the flavour out of life for the last few weeks.
At the hotel he glanced at the clock. It was just eight, and he was to accompany the Bullsoms to the theatre. He met them in the hall, and Selina looked with reproach at his morning clothes. She was wearing a new swansdown theatre cloak, with a collar which she had turned up round her face like a frame. She was convinced that she had never looked so well in her life.
"Mr. Brooks, how naughty of you," she exclaimed, shaking her head in mock reproach. "Why, the play begins at 8:15, and it is eight o'clock already. Have you had dinner?"
"Oh, I can manage with something in my room while I change," he answered cheerily. "I'm going to take you all out to supper after the theatre, you know. Don't wait for me—I'll come on. His Majesty's, isn't it?"
"I'll keep your seat," Selina promised him, lowering her voice. "That is, if you are very good and come before it is half over. Do you know that we met a friend of yours, and he lent us his carriage, and I think he's charming."
Brooks looked surprised. He glanced at Mary, and saw a look in her face which came as a revelation to him.
"You don't mean—"
"Lord Arranmore!" Selina declared, triumphantly. "He was so nice, he wouldn't let us come home in a cab. He positively made us take his own carriage."
Mr. Bullsom came hurrying up.
"Cab waiting," he announced. "Come on, girls."
"See you later, then, Brooks."
Brooks changed his clothes leisurely, and went into the smoking-room for some sandwiches and a glass of wine. A small boy shouting his number attracted his attention. He called him, and was handed a card.
"Lord Arranmore!"
"You can show the gentleman here," Brooks directed.
Arranmore came in, and nodded a little wearily to Brooks, whom he had not seen since the latter had left Enton.
"I won't keep you," he remarked. "I just wanted a word with you about that obstinate young person Miss—er—Scott."
Brooks wheeled an easy-chair towards him.
"I am in no great hurry," he remarked.
Arranmore glanced at the clock.
"More am I," he said, "but I find I am dining with the Prime Minister at nine o'clock. It occurs to me that you may have some influence with her."
"We are on fairly friendly terms," Brooks admitted.
"Just so. Well, she may have told you that my solicitors approached her, as the daughter of Martin Scott, with the offer of a certain sum of money, which is only a fair and reasonable item, which I won from her father at a time when we were not playing on equal terms. It was through that she found me out."
"Yes, I knew as much as that."
"So I imagined. But the hot-headed young woman has up to now steadily refused to accept anything whatever from me. Quite ridiculous of her. There's no doubt that I broke up the happy home, and all that sort of thing, and I really can't see why she shouldn't permit me the opportunity of making some restitution."
"You want her to afford you the luxury of salving your conscience,"Brooks remarked, dryly.
Lord Arranmore laughed hardly.
"Conscience," he repeated. "You ought to know me better, Brooks, than to suppose me possessed of such a thing. No; I have a sense of justice, that is all—a sort of weakness for seeing the scales held fairly. Now, don't you think it is reasonable that she should accept this money from me?"
"It depends entirely upon how she feels," Brooks answered. "You have no right to press it upon her if she has scruples. Nor have you any right to try and enlist her family on your side, as you seem to be doing."
Will you discuss it with her?
"I should not attempt to influence her," Brooks answered.
"Be reasonable, Brooks. The money can make no earthly difference to me, and it secures for her independence. The obligation, if only a moral one, is real enough. There is no question of charity. Use your influence with her."
Brooks shook his head.
"I have great confidence in Miss Scott's own judgment," he said. "I prefer not to interfere."
Arranmore sat quite still for a moment. Then he rose slowly to his feet.
"I am sorry to have troubled you," he said. "The world seems to have grown more quixotic since I knew it better. I am almost afraid to ask you whether my last letter has yet received the favour of your consideration."
Brooks flushed a little at the biting sarcasm in Arranmore's tone, but he restrained himself.
"I have considered—the matter fully," he said; "and I have talked it over with Mr. Ascough. There seems to be no reason why I should refuse the income to which I seem to be entitled."
Lord Arranmore nodded and lit a cigarette.
"I am thankful," he said, dryly, "for so much common-sense. Mr.Ascough will put you in possession of a banking account at any moment.Should you consider it—well—intrusive on my part if I were to inquireas to your plans?"
Brooks hesitated.
"They are as yet not wholly formed," he said, "but I am thinking of studying social politics for some time here in London with the intention of entering public life."
"A very laudable ambition," Lord Arranmore answered. "If I can be of any assistance to you, I trust that you will not fail to let me know."
"I thank you," Brooks answered. "I shall not require any assistance from you."
Lord Arranmore winced perceptibly. Brooks, who would not have believed him capable of such a thing, for a moment doubted his eyes.
"I am much obliged for your candour," Lord Arranmore said, coldly, and with complete self-recovery. "Don't trouble to come to the door. Good-evening."
Brooks was alone. He sat down in one of the big easy-chairs, and for a moment forgot that empty stall next to Selina. He had seen the first sign of weakness in a man whom he had judged to be wholly and entirely heartless.
"I AM sure," he said, "that Selina would consider this most improper."
"You are quite right," Mary assured him, laughing. "It was one of the first things she mentioned. When I told her that I should ask any one to tea I liked she was positively indignant."
"It is hard to believe that you are cousins," he remarked.
"We were brought up very differently."
He looked around him. He was in a tiny sitting-room of a tiny flat high up in a great building. Out of the window he seemed to look down upon the Ferris wheel. Inside everything was cramped but cosy. Mary Scott sat behind the tea-tray, and laughed at his expression.
"I will read your thoughts," she exclaimed. "You are wondering how you will get out of this room without knocking anything over."
"On the contrary," he answered, "I was wondering how I ever got in."
"You were really very clever. Now do have some more tea, and tell me all the news."
"I will have the tea, if you please," he answered, "and you shall have the news, such as it is."
"First of all then," she said, "I hear that you are leaving Medchester, giving up your business and coming to live in London, and that you have had some money left you. Do you know that all this sounds very mysterious?"
"I admit it," he answered, slowly stirring his tea. "Yet in the main—it is true."
"How nice to hear all about it," she sighed, contentedly. "You know I have scarcely had a word with you while my uncle and cousins were up. Selina monopolized you most disgracefully."
He looked at her with twinkling eyes.
"Selina was very amusing," he said.
"You seemed to find her so," she answered. "But Selina isn't here now, and you have to entertain me. You are really going to live in London?"
He nodded.
"I have taken rooms!"
"Delightful. Whereabouts?" "In Jermyn Street!"
"And are you going to practise?"
He shook his head.
"No, I shall have enough to live on. I am going to study social subjects and politics generally."
"You are going into Parliament?" she exclaimed, breathlessly.
"Some day, perhaps," he answered, hesitatingly. "If I can find a constituency."
She was silent for a moment.
"Do you know, I think I rather dislike you," she said. "I envy you most hideously."
He laughed.
"What an evil nature!"
"Well, I've never denied it. I'm dreadfully envious of people who have the chance of doing things, whose limitations are not chalked out on the blackboard before them."
"Oh, well, you yourself are not at Medchester now," he reminded her. "You have kicked your own limitation away. Literature is as wide a field as politics."
"That is true enough," she answered. "I must not grumble. After Medchester this is elysium. But literature is a big name to give my little efforts. I'm just a helper on a lady's threepenny paper, and between you and me I don't believe they think much of my work yet."
He laughed.
"Surely they haven't been discouraging you?"
"No, they have been very kind. But they keep on assuring me that I am bound to improve, and the way they use the blue pencil! However, it's only the journalist's part they go for. The little stories are all right still.''
"I should think so," he declared, warmly. "I think they are charming."
"How nice you are," she sighed. "No wonder Selina didn't like going home."
He looked at her in amused wonder.
"Do you know," he said, "you are getting positively frivolous. I don't recognize you. I never saw such a change."
She leaned back in her chair, laughing heartily, her eyes bright, her beautiful white teeth in delightful evidence.
"Oh, I suppose it's the sense of freedom," she exclaimed. "It's delightful, isn't it? Medchester had got on my nerves. I hated it. One saw nothing but the ugly side of life, day after day. It was hideously depressing. Here one can breathe. There's room for every one."
"The change agrees with you!"
"Why not. I feel years younger. Think how much there is to do, and see, even for a pauper like myself—picture galleries, the shops, the people, the theatres."
He looked at her thoughtfully.
"Don't think me a prig, will you?" he said, "but I want to understand you. In Medchester you used to work for the people—it was the greater part of your life. You are not giving that up altogether, are you?"
She laughed him to scorn.
"Am I such a butterfly? No, I hope to get some serious work to do, and I am looking forward to it. I have a letter of introduction to a Mrs. Capenhurst, whom I am going to see on Sunday. I expect to learn a lot from her. I was very, very sorry to leave my own girls. It was the only regret I had in leaving Medchester. By the bye, what is this about Mr. Henslow?"
"We are thinking of asking him to resign," Brooks answered. "He has been a terrible disappointment to us."
She nodded.
"I am sorry. From his speeches he seemed such an excellent candidate."
"He was a magnificent candidate," Brooks said ruefully, "but a shocking Member. I am afraid what I heard in the City the other day must have some truth in it. They say that he only wanted to be able to write M.P. after his name for this last session to get on the board of two new companies. He will never sit for Medchester again."
"He was at the hotel the other day, wasn't he?" Mary asked, "with you and uncle? What has he to say for himself?"
"Well, he shelters himself behind the old fudge about duty to his Party," Brooks answered. "You see the Liberals only just scraped in last election because of the war scandals, and their majority is too small for them to care about any of the rank and file introducing any disputative measures. Still that scarcely affects the question. He won his seat on certain definite pledges, and if he persists in his present attitude, we shall ask him at once to resign."
You still keep up your interest in Medchester, then?"
"Why, yes!" he answered. "Between ourselves, if I could choose, I would rather, when the time comes, stand for Medchester than anywhere."
"I am glad! I should like to see you Member for Medchester. Do you know, even now, although I am so happy, I cannot think about the last few months there without a shudder. It seemed to me that things were getting worse and worse. The people's faces haunt me sometimes."
He looked up at her sympathetically.
"If you have once lived with them," he said, "once really understood, you never can forget. You can travel or amuse yourself in any way, but their faces are always coming before you, their voices seem always in your ears. It is the one eternal sadness of life. And the strangest part of it is, that just as you who have once really understood can never forget, so it is the most difficult thing in the world to make those people understand who have not themselves lived and toiled amongst them. It is a cry which you cannot translate, but if once you have heard it, it will follow you from the earth to the stars."
"You too, then," she said, "have some of the old aim at heart. You are not going to immerse yourself wholly in politics?"
"My studies," he said, "will be in life. It is not from books that I hope to gain experience. I want to get a little nearer to the heart of the thing. You and I may easily come across one another, even in this great city."
"You," she said, "are going to watch, to observe, to trace the external only that you may understand the internal. But I am going to work on my hands and knees."
"And you think that I am going to play the dilettante?"
"Not altogether. But you will want to pass from one scheme to another to see the inner workings of all. I shall be content to find occupation in any one.
"I shall be coming to you," he said, "for information and help."
"I doubt it," she answered, cheerfully. "Never mind! It is pleasant to build castles, and we may yet find ourselves working side by side."
He suddenly looked at her.
"I have answered all your questions," he said. "There is something about you which I should like to know."
"I am sure you shall."
"Lord Arranmore came to me when I was staying at the Metropole with your uncle and cousin. He wished me to use my influence with you to induce you to accept a certain sum of money which it seemed that you had already declined."
"Well?"
"Of course I refused. In the first place, as I told him, I was not aware that I possessed any influence over you. And in the second I had every confidence in your own judgment."
She was suddenly very thoughtful.
"My own judgment," she repeated. "I am afraid that I have lost a good deal of faith in that lately."
"Why?"
"I have learned to repent of that impulsive visit of mine to Enton."
"Again why?"
"I was mad with rage against Lord Arranmore. I think that I was wrong.It was many years ago, and he has repented."
Brooks smiled faintly. The idea of Lord Arranmore repenting of anything appealed in some measure to his sense of humour.
"Then I am afraid that I did him some great harm in accusing him like that—openly. He has seemed to me since like an altered man. Tell me, those others who were there—they believed me?"
"Yes."
"It did him harm—with the lady, the handsome woman who was playing billiards with him?"
"Yes."
"Was he engaged to her?
"No! He proposed to her afterwards, and she refused him."
Her eyes were suddenly dim.
"I am sorry," she said.
"I think," he said, quietly, "that you need not be. You probably saved her a good deal of unhappiness."
She looked at him curiously.
"Why are you so bitter against Lord Arranmore?" she asked.
"I?" he laughed. "I am not bitter against him. Only I believe him to be a man without heart or conscience or principles."
"That is your opinion—really?"
"Really! Decidedly."
"Then I don't agree with you," she answered.
"Why not?"
"Simply that I don't."
"Excellent! But you have reasons as well as convictions?
"Perhaps. Why, for instance, is he so anxious for me to have this money? That must be a matter of conscience?"
"Not necessarily. An accident might bring his Montreal career to light.His behaviour towards you would be an excellent defence."
She shook her head.
"He isn't mean enough to think so far ahead for his own advantage.Villain or paragon, he is on a large scale, your Lord Arranmore."
"He has had the good fortune," Brooks said, with a note of satire in his tone, "to attract your sympathies."
"Why not? I struck hard enough at him, and he has borne me no ill-will. He even made friends with Selina and my uncle to induce me to accept his well, conscience money."
"I need not ask you what the result was," Brooks said. "You declined it, of course."
She looked at him thoughtfully.
"I refused it at first, as you know," she said. "Since then, well, I have wavered."
He looked at her blankly.
"You mean—that you have contemplated—accepting it?"
"Why not? There is reason in it. I do not say that I have accepted it, but at any rate I see nothing which should make you look upon my possible acceptance as a heinous thing."
He was silent for a moment.
"May I ask you then what the position is?"
"I will tell you. Lord Arranmore is coming to me perhaps this afternoon for my answer. I asked him for a few days to think it over."
"And your decision—is it ready?"
"No, I don't think it is," she admitted. "To tell you the truth, I shall not decide until he is actually here—until I have heard just how he speaks of it."
He got up and stood for a moment looking out of the window. Then he turned suddenly towards her with outstretched hand.
"I am going—Miss Scott. Good-afternoon." She rose and held out her hand.
"Aren't you—a little abrupt?" she asked.
"Perhaps I am. I think that it is better that I should go away now. There are reasons why I do not want to talk about Lord Arranmore, or discuss this matter with you, and if I stayed I might do both. Will you dine with me somewhere on Friday night? I will come and fetch you."
"Of course I will. Do be careful how you walk. About 7:30."
"I will be here by then," he answered.
On the last flight of stone steps he came face to face with LordArranmore, who nodded and pointed upwards with his walking-stick.
"How much of this sort of thing?" he asked, dryly.
"Ten storeys," Brooks answered, and passed out into the street.
Lord Arranmore looked after him—watched him until he was out of sight.Then he stood irresolute for several moments, tapping his boots.
"Damned young fool!" he muttered at last; and began the ascent.