“Naw, don’t tell mother,” he mutters, and suffers himself to be led away.
“Oh, I am so ashamed! so ashamed, Mr. Bertram!” says Annie. “Do pray forgive him. He is only a lad.”
“I would forgive him much heavier offences. He is your brother.”
“God bless you, sir,” she says, softly, looking back at him as she goes out of the door.
“Dear little girl! Dear, honest little girl!” murmurs Bertram. “I will try and get her the kitchen, and the muffin, and the cat, which form her ideal, and some good fellow to sit with her by the hearth. Good Heavens! Can one ever be grateful enough for being saved from relationship to Sam? What an exciting and exhausting day! And I have been very Philistine!”
He looks wearily round the room; it has become shockingly disordered; the drawers of the cabinet are still on the floor; the chairs which fell are still upside down; the broken whip lies in the corner; he is extremely thirsty, and he has not an idea where the mineral waters or the syphon of seltzer, or even the glasses, are kept. In a single quarter of an hourwithout Critchett order and harmony have been replaced by chaos.
“What miserable, helpless creatures we are!” he reflects. “Of course it all comes from the utterly false system of one person leaning on others.”
Yet he reluctantly realises that this false system has its merits, as far as individual comfort goes.
At that moment there is a sharp ring at the door-bell, and a moment later still a male voice cries:
“Can I come in, Bertram?”
“You, Stanhope?” says Bertram, in extreme surprise.
“Myself,” replies the new-comer.
He is Sir Henry Stanhope, the Home Secretary of the actual Government. Bertram was his fag at Eton, and a good deal of cordial feelinghas always existed between them, despite the vast and irreconcilable difference of their political and social opinions. Sir Henry regards him as a maniac, but an interesting and lovable maniac. Bertram regards him in return as a hopeless Philistine, but a Philistine who means well and has good points, and who is, in the exercise of his horrible office, admirably conscientious. His conscientiousness has not, however, prevented him from allowing to go to the gallows a victim of prejudice who killed his wife because he was tired of seeing her red hair—a misguided æsthete for whose release Bertram pleaded in vain. Since the time of this unfortunate affair there has been some chillness in the relations of Stanhope and himself.
The Philistine minister looks at the disorder of the chamber with some surprise, and seats himself unbidden.
“My dear Bertram,” he says, rather distantly, “old acquaintance should not be forgot. Its memories bring me here to-day.”
“Thanks,” says Bertram, equally coldly; and looks an interrogation.
Sir Henry coughs.
“You have a good manyprotégésamongst the lower classes, I think?”
“I deny that there is a lower class.”
“I know you do. But let us for the moment use the language of a benighted and unkind world. Your peculiar views of duty have led you into forming these associations which cannot be agreeable toyour taste. But did it not occur to you that they might be compromising as well as—as rather unrefined?”
“Pray explain yourself,” says Bertram, with hostility in his tone.
Sir Henry feels nettled at the manner in which his amiably intended visit is received.
“Certainly,” he says. “In two words, you have a friend of the name of Hopper?”
Bertram colours.
“Frederic Hopper, yes. A very unfortunate person, originally a victim of the London police.”
“Possibly. The police are always accused of being oppressors or accomplices,” continues the minister. “This person is known to them as ‘Wet Whistle,’ because he has exaggerated views of themedicinal value of stimulants. This victim came again in collision with the brute force of the police early this morning, and you were present.”
Bertram is silent, conscious that the episode is not heroic.
“Mr. Frederic Hopper does not interest me in the least,” says Stanhope, with culpable heartlessness; “but it seems you used very singular language to the constables in the Park; and when the man was brought before the Westminster police-court he gave your name as that of the person who had indoctrinated him with subversive views, and it seems that you admitted having done so to the constables in Hyde Park, and stated that you deserved arrest more than did this man Hopper. The police, of course, reported all that yousaid at headquarters; and you are likely to be very seriously annoyed about this matter. It is very dangerous to play at anarchism in these days——”
“If any one is to blame, it is I rather than Hopper; but there is no question of anarchism.”
“I should certainly consider you the more to blame of the two. A magistrate would take the same view. The Chief Commissioner is of opinion that you ought to have been arrested with Hopper, since he places all the blame of the subversive principles which he had been delivering in public upon you.”
Bertram does not reply.
“He states that you had repeatedly wanted him to place explosives in public buildings, and that you had promised himthe run of the cellars of Buckingham Palace, if he would throw a hand grenade into the royal carriage as the Queen drives from Paddington Station next Monday.”
Bertram smiles faintly.
“Are you sure that these vivid romances are not composed in Scotland Yard?”
Sir Henry is thoroughly annoyed.
“No, sir. Scotland Yard has too many real tragedies to deal with to have time or patience to compose mock melodramas. The man Hopper said this, and much more, inculpating you as an anarchist. All this might have passed as a drunken ranter’s ravings, but unfortunately there were your published opinions in that organ of yours, theAge to Come. The magistrate, Mr.Adeane, being acquainted with these, thought the matter serious enough to communicate with me, whilst he committed the fellow for seven days. Mr. Adeane was justly of opinion that if you will incite persons to violent and nefarious acts, your social rank and intellectual culture ought not to save you from punishment.”
“Certainly they ought not.”
“Then you do not admit holding such opinions?”
“No; I am altogether opposed to force; to force of any kind.”
“Then yourprotégélied?”
“If he used such expressions, yes.”
“If! Do you suppose a magistrate would send a deposition which was never made to the Home Office? I repeat that what gave weight andcredence to this wretched agitator’s accusations of you were the very—very—advanced opinions acknowledged and disseminated by you in theAge to Come. Re-read for yourself these passages,” continues Stanhope, taking out his note-book. “Page iv. par. vi. No. 52; page iii. par. xi. No. 23; page xix. par. ii. No. 9; page viii. par. xv. No. 45—what is the meaning of such phrases as these? ‘The poor have always been robbed by capital since the creation of currency and the invention of trade. All excesses are to be excused to them in taking back their own.’ Or this: ‘The rich man, however estimable in private character, is in position a thief, and in conscience a scoundrel.’ Or this: ‘Poor-rates and workhouses are the insult whichis added to injury by the rich in their relations with the poor.’ Or this: ‘Nitric acid destroys more readily but not more cruelly than taxation.’”
“Do you consider these statements unjustified by the state of society?” asks Bertram.
“I consider them most dangerous when put before illiterate persons,” replies Stanhope. “The half-truths, or the quarter-truths, which they contain, are as poisonous as nux vomica.”
“Pray, then, let me go and pick oakum with the unfortunate man whom you consider I have contaminated.”
Stanhope with difficulty keeps down his rising anger.
“My dear Bertram, I regret that you appreciate my intentions so little. I received the communication I speak of from Mr. Adeane concerning you;and if I had done what I ought I should perhaps have given you some trouble. But I know you; and I know that it is an exaggerated altruism which runs away with you into dangerous places; and that you are the last man in the world to inculcate or to approve of crime.”
“But whatiscrime?” murmurs Bertram. “Have not regicides many apologists? Is Carlyle alone in admiring Cromwell? As boys are we not adorers of Harmodius and Aristogiton?”
“Fortunately,” continues Sir Henry, waving aside these historical precedents, “the magistrate took a lenient view of the case, considered it excused by drink (we are always so immorally lenient to drink in this country!), and so I was enabled, by using unacknowledged influence(a thing I loathe to do), to get the affair hushed up. But I cannot prevent your being marked by the police and considered a dangerous person. You will probably be ‘shadowed’ for some time, and if anything of this sort occurs again it will be out of my power to save you from exceedingly disagreeable consequences.”
Bertram is silent.
“Are you anxious to be a martyr in company with Hopper?” asks Stanhope, with impatience.
“If Hopper be made one, certainly.”
Stanhope rises from his chair.
“I regret that I intervened to screen you from the consequences of your lubies. I stretched my prerogative, and risked the accusation of illegality in my functions, in order toextricate you from the dilemma in which your own imprudence placed you, and this I did in memory of old Eton days. But I assure you that I shall not interfere again, and I am sorry that you so little appreciate my friendship. Men in office, it is true, should have no personal feelings.”
“I am of course grateful for your personal regard,” replies Bertram, in icy tones, “but I cannot allow any one to criticise or control my opinions.”
Sir Henry does not deign to reply. He takes his hat, and with a curt “good-day” goes out of the room.
“How impossible it is to live under a government which is utterly barbarian and unenlightened!” reflects Bertram; “and to think that Stanhope could become a member of it!Such a fine scholar, such a devoted Hellenist, as he was at Eton! And now sunk to a Home Secretary!—a keeper of the ban-dogs of the law! It is so extraordinary that these Philistines never can comprehend the beauty of altruistic and collectivist views. They always confound them with anarchy! As if any two creeds could possibly be more opposed. It is extremely disagreeable all the same. ‘Marked by the police!’ as if I had broken into a silversmith’s shop! I wonder where Critchett kept the mineral waters? I don’t know where anything is. If I had always served myself, how much better it would have been. It is so degrading this continual dependence upon others. Every kind of wrong-doing brings its own chastisement, and ourheresy and egotism in keeping others in servitude is visited on us by our own impotency to help ourselves in the simplest acts of daily life.”
Some one taps at the door in the midst of his reflections.
“Come in!” he cried, irritably. “Will annoyances never cease?”
“It’s me, sir,” says Mrs. Brown. “Please as how I’ve come to bring you back these two sovereigns as you gave my son.”
“Why? I gave them willingly.”
“I can’t hev him paid for his misbehaviour, sir, and he did misbehave hisself. Kate spoke in jest, and Sam, being tipsy, took it in earnest.”
Bertram, fascinated by a social problem, answers dreamily. “Tell me, Mrs. Brown,your son attended a Board School?”
“He did, sir.”
“And he passed the fourth standard?”
“He did, sir.”
“Then, my good woman, what benefit has that education been to him?”
“Lord, none, sir; and nobbut fools could ever suppose as ’twould be any!” replies Mrs. Brown, briskly.
“How very sad!” murmurs Bertram. “But I have always feared that the whole system of modern education was one gigantic error. You cannot feed minds wholesale as you feed machines.”
“’Tis sad as poor folks should be made to pay for such gammon as them schools, sir,” says Mrs. Brown. “I beg your pardon humbly for myboy’s misconduct, and you’ll please take back the money. As for the rest that Ann hev told me I’ll make bold to say as I ’eartily agree with it. You know, Mr. Bertram, I never could ’old with that pack o’ nonsense o’ your marriage with my girl.”
“I know you never approved, Mrs. Brown.”
“No, sir, ’cause I knows my place. Lord, sir, ye’d hev been miserable and my poor girl too.”
“Not through any fault of mine, Mrs. Brown.”
“No, sir; perhaps not. But miserable ye’d both hev bin. We’ll allus remember ye kindly, sir, and I ’opes as ye’ll still send us yer linen.”
“Certainly, certainly. I shall always be your friend. Pray take those sovereigns.”
“No, sir; let ’em lie. And might I be so bold as to ask hev ye took up your ’eritance, sir?”
“My cousin’s fortune? No, I have refused it.”
“Lord, sir! That’s a real right-down pity.”
“I do not see it so, Mrs. Brown.”
“Well, sir, a gent as wears such shirts as you shouldn’t quarrel with his bread and butter——”
A postman at that moment comes through the antechamber into the room, and tenders a registered letter with the receipt book for signature.
“What am I to do?” asks Bertram, helplessly. “Critchett has always seen to things of this kind.”
“You’re to sign your name in the book, sir,” says Mrs.Brown. He signs; and the postman retires.
“I’ll leave ye to read your letter, sir,” says Mrs. Brown; “and if a poor woman may give ye a word of advice, take them cobwebs out of your brain, sir, and open your eyes and see the world as ’tis. That ere man as ye thought so much on was a raskill, as rotten as shellfish o’ Saturday nights. Ye’ve too good a ’eart, Mr. Bertram, a deal too good a ’eart; and if you make yourself honey flies will eat yer; that’s true as gospel, sir.”
“Wilfrid! Wilfrid!” shouts an excited voice in the anteroom, as a robust form and a ruddy face, the face and form of a country gentleman, are visible in the distance.
Mrs. Brown discreetly retires.
“My dear Wilfrid, is it possiblytrue what I heard in the Marlborough this moment?” cries Southwold, out of breath. “Have you actually inherited the whole fortune of those Italian Erringtons, and have never said a syllable about it to your aunt and myself? It is really—really—most extraordinary conduct.”
“I do not see that the matter concerns you,” says Bertram, tranquilly.
“Not concern us?” repeats Southwold, considerably astonished. “Well, anything so very fortunate occurring in my wife’s family must concern every member of it. I never knew this young man, nor his father. There was that unfortunate dissension between your people and his. But it is very consoling that the grave has now closed on all past feud; andthat the poor fellow did not allow his father’s animosity to alienate him from his kith and kin. I really cannot congratulate you sufficiently.”
“There is nothing to congratulate me upon,” replies Bertram, impatiently.
“What?”
“Nothing whatever.”
“Why?”
“Because I decline the bequest.”
“Eh?”
“I decline the bequest.”
Lord Southwold pants like a blown horse, his small blue eyes grow large and black; his ruddy face deepens to purple. “Good God! You are mad as a hatter!”
“Are hatters less sane than the rest of society? I am incredulous of the possibility.”
“You can’t mean what you say—you are joking!”
“I am entirely serious. And, if you will allow me to say so, you must be aware that the matter does not, I repeat, in the most remote manner concern you.”
“Good Lord! Am I not your aunt’s husband?”
“I have always heard so, and Burke vouches for it.”
Southwold emits a strangled sound that is an oath, a snarl, and a groan in one.
“You ought to be placed in a padded room, sir?” he says at length, when he recovers his voice.
“Oh, I am never violent!” says Bertram with a slight smile, as he glances at the pieces of the broken whip.
“Where do the money and estates go?” roars Southwold.
“To a very respectable destination—Magdalen College.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“Oh Lord!”
The unhappy gentleman, gasping for breath, drops down on a seat.
“With this fortune you could marry Cicely Seymour! The girl likes you—more fool she!”
Bertram changes colour.
“You have no right to speak of that young lady: she is your guest.”
Southwold becomes furious.
“You dare to lecture me? You infernal ass! who are only fit for a strait-waistcoat.”
Bertram shrugs his shoulders.
“You are stark staring mad!” roars Southwold; “and I tell you you are a disgrace to your family.”
Bertram smiles.
“How extremely immoral, then, to wish me to accept and administer a great property.”
“Damnation!”
Southwold puts his hat on his head, strikes his cane violently on the back of a chair, and rushes out of the room.
“What can it possibly matter to him?” murmurs Bertram. “The idea of money excites some people as valerian does cats.”
Lord Southwold, in a whirlwind of disgust, walks as rapidly as a gouty toe will let him through the three or four streets which divide him from his own house in Berkeley Square, and mounts the staircase of his home with his wrath at boiling-point. He goes into his wife’s morning-room, where she and Cicely Seymour are sitting, one reading, the other writing letters.
“It’s true!” he shouts. “It’s perfectly true! it’s been left tohim and he won’t have it—can you believe that? he won’t have it!”
Cicely looks up from her book and says nothing; his wife looks up from her writing-pad and says with a sigh:
“Icanbelieve it—of him.”
“Well, I can’t; though I’ve heard him say it with my own ears,” returns her lord, as he drops down on a soft seat with the air of a man crushed, annihilated, effaced from creation.
“And he said, ‘What could it possibly matter to us?’” he added in a faint tone.
Cicely closes her book.
“Well, dear Lord Southwold, why should it matter?”
“Why?” he ejaculates. “Why?”
“Why?” repeats his wife. “Oh, Cicely!”
“Well, why?” she says, alittle impatiently. “If Mr. Bertram likes to live a poor man instead of becoming a rich one, what business is it of anybody’s?”
“Oh Lord!” sighs her host.
“Good heavens, Cicely!” cries his wife. “You might as well ask what does a man’s suicide matter to his family?”
“Suicide is a disgrace, or at least it is esteemed so. This is an honour.”
“An honour!” echo both her host and hostess in one breath.
“A very rare honour,” she replies, “to have a relative who in these days has the courage and loyalty to principle to refuse a fortune.”
Southwold is too utterly amazed and shocked to have any power to answer her.
“My dear girl, this is veryfar-fetched,” says his wife. “You are talking great nonsense, and approving great folly. I cannot believe that even my nephew Wilfrid will be capable of adhering to such a crazy and thankless decision.”
“I am sure he will adhere to it,” says Cicely Seymour, warmly. “At least if he do not I shall be very mistaken in him. Do you think,” she adds with indignation, “that his principles are mere sugared beignets, mere frothy soufflées of eggs and cream?”
“His principles!” cries Southwold, with a snort like an angry horse. “Do you mean those preposterous tomfooleries with which he entertained us yesterday?”
“I mean the doctrines taught in his own journal. He is anindividualist, an altruist, a collectivist, a Mazzïnist, a Tolstoi-ist. How could such a man with any consistency, with any decency, accept a great fortune?”
“My dear Cicely,” said Lady Southwold, with unkind incisiveness. “Only a great fortune could get such opinions forgiven to him; and as he is going to marry a washerwoman’s daughter, if what you heard in the Park is true, he will certainly never get her into society on any income less than thirty thousand a year!”
“He will not want to get her into society. Nobody gathers a dog-rose to put it under a forcing-frame.”
“You are very epigrammatic, my dear, but I am afraid you have not much more common sense than Wilfrid Bertram.”
“John,” she adds to her husband, “do you think it would be of any use if I went and tried to persuade him to suspend his decision?”
“I don’t think it would be the slightest,” replies her lord. “But you might try. There would be no harm in trying. Tell him it’s flying in the face of Providence.”
“I am afraid he doesn’t believe in Providence!” says Lady Southwold, with a sigh.
Twenty minutes later she returns to her morning-room with a discouraged air, and draws off her gloves.
“He was not at home,” she says, in answer to her husband’s look of interrogation. “The door was shut, and his card was stuck under the bell with ‘Out’ written upon it. I suppose I could have done no good ifI had seen him. For I met Scott-Gwynne in the street, and he told me he had just heard Mr. Fanshawe saying in the reading-room at the Travellers’ that Wilfrid had refused formally, and signed his refusal. Fanshawe was present.”
“But Mr. Fanshawe as a Socialist, as a Radical, must approve the refusal?” says Cicely Seymour, from where she sits by a stand of Malmaison roses.
Southwold laughs grimly.
“Fanshawe thinks all wealth should be equally distributed; but so long as it isn’t so, he gets all he can for himself, and considers everybody should do the same who has the opportunity.”
Cicely is silent.
“I suppose Wilfrid has gone to have tea and shrimps withthe washerwoman,” says Lady Southwold. “Cicely, give me some tea, please. I fear shrimps are an unknown joy to us.”
Cicely rises and goes over to the tea-table.
“Are you really positive that he is going to marry this girl?” asks his aunt, as Cicely hands her a cup and some muffin.
“The mother of the girl said so,” replies Cicely, coldly. “She did not, herself, seem to care about it.”
Lord Southwold laughs savagely.
“To make amésalliance, and not even to be welcome! By Jove! The fellow ought to be shot. Disgracing both our families in such a manner.”
“You are unfair to him, Lord Southwold,” says Cicely.
“In what way, my dear?”
“You do not attempt toenter into his views, his motives, his principles. His opinions may be somewhat exaggerated, but his loyalty to them is none the less admirable.”
“Oh, you do admit they’re exaggerated?”
“Some of them, yes. At least, in theAge to Comethere are things which one cannot wholly accept, but they always err on the side of generosity! And he is always consistent. Mr. Fanshawe may be more politic, but he is far less to be respected. You blame the refusal of this fortune. But you must admit it shows his consistency.”
“Only fools are consistent,” says Southwold, with unspeakable contempt.
“Really,” cries Lady Southwold, “one would think you were in love with Wilfrid to hear you, Cicely.”
Cicely colours a little.
“One is not necessarily in love because one can see two sides to a question. It seems to me extremely unjust to quarrel with anybody for endeavouring loyally to carry out the views which they profess. You seem to admire Mr. Fanshawe’s opportunism: I do not.”
“Fanshawe is a shrewd man of the world, Wilfrid is a monomaniac who has gone daft on altruism.”
“Or Annie-ism, as Lord Marlow observed with such exquisite wit,” says Cicely from her retreat amongst the roses, whither she has returned after dispensing the tea.
A footman puts aside theportièresof one of the doors, and announces:
“Mr. Bertram.”
There is a dead silence.
Lord and Lady Southwold stare blankly at him.
Cicely rises from her bower of roses and crosses the room to him. She holds out her hand with a charming smile.
“Let me congratulate you on your marriage, Mr. Bertram,” she says, in a very kind, sweet voice.
Bertram looks at her with a little embarrassment.
“It is very good of you, Miss Seymour; you are the only person who has said a kind word——”
“A kind word! Can you expect kind words?” begins Southwold, in great ire.
“My dear Wilfrid, when you afflict and disgrace us so,” says his aunt.
Bertram silences them with an impatient movement.
“Allow me to speak. My marriage will not disgrace you, for it will not take place——”
“Thank God!” cries Lady Southwold.
“It is not I who have withdrawn. It is—it is—Miss Brown, with the consent of her family. But I did not come to speak of this matter, which is one purely personal; one with which I was not aware you were acquainted. I came to apologise to Lord Southwold for my rudeness to him a little while ago.”
“All right, all right,” replies that choleraic but amiable person. “I’m afraid I used strong language myself; but really your pig-headed illusions are so uncommonly trying to a plain, ordinary man like myself——”
“And you haven’t refusedthe inheritance, Wilfrid?” asks his aunt, in great anxiety.
“I have refused, certainly,” replies Bertram; “I have signed and sealed refusal.”
Southwold emits a very wicked word; his wife groans aloud. Cicely Seymour, who has gone back to the roses, listens with a face grown bright with interest and approval.
“Miss Seymour does not blame me?” says Bertram, softly.
“No; I should do as you have done.”
“Thanks,” says Bertram, very gravely. Then he takes a registered letter out of his pocket.
“I have just received this,” he continues. “Will you allow me to read it to you? It was sent to me by the poor vicar of a village in the Pontinemarshes, near which my cousin met his death. He says that my cousin dictated it as he lay dying in his presbytery, and the priest wrote it; it has been sent to me through the Embassy in Rome. Hence the delay. To Folliott of course the man of business had telegraphed. The letter which he dictated to this priest is, of course, in Italian. I propose to translate it to you, for I think my uncle and you do not know that language. It is very short.”
He speaks to his aunt, but he looks at Cicely Seymour.
“‘I am a dead man,’” he reads aloud from the letter. “‘An old tusker has let life out of me for ever. You will get this when I am gone. I wish we had known each other. I have left you allI possess, not because you are a relative, but because I think you will do good with it. I have not been a student, but I have seen some numbers of your journal, and though I do not agree with you in all your opinions, I see you care for the poor. Come and live on my lands, and you’ll have work enough cut out for you. I have not done my duty—do yours.’ It is signed by him, and the signature is witnessed.”
They are all silent.
Lady Southwold has tears in her eyes.
“There is a postscript,” continues Bertram, “‘Take care of my horses and dogs.’ The priest adds that the poor fellow had desired him to send it to the English Embassy, and died half an hour after dictating it. That is all.”
“It is very touching,” says his aunt. “I wish we had known him.”
“So do I.”
“A pity you did not get it earlier,” says Southwold, “or had not been so precipitate.”
Bertram folds the letter up and looks across at the Malmaison roses.
“Magdalen College,” adds Southwold, grimly, “won’t trouble itself much about the horses and dogs.”
“Can’t you withdraw your refusal, Wilfrid?” asks his aunt.
Bertram is silent.
“Would they let you?” asks Southwold.
“It is a cruel position to be placed in,” says Bertram.
“Would it be utterly impossible,” says Southwold, sarcastically, “for you to regard it, asa mere, humdrum, ordinary Philistine person like myself would do, as a very fortuitous and felicitous piece of good luck?”
“Good luck!” echoes Bertram, in disgust. “Cannot you see that whatever I do I must feel humiliation and remorse; that however I may decide, I must feel that I leave some duty undone?”
“No,” says Southwold, very shortly, “I really cannot see anything of the sort. But I am obtuse, and I am very commonplace.”
There is again a prolonged silence.
It is broken by the low, clear voice of Cicely Seymour, on whose hair the last rays of the dim red London sun are shining in a nimbus.
“I understand what Mr.Bertram feels. To accept this fortune will be painful, and even odious to him with his views. But to let it go to others, even to Oxford, must be, after receiving this letter, equally distressing to him because he will feel that he has failed to carry out a dead man’s trust. Is not that your meaning, Mr. Bertram?”
“It is.”
“These are very fine-drawn sentiments, and they are, I confess, wholly beyond me,” says Southwold, with gruff contempt.
“I know what they both mean,” says his wife. “But to me too it is, I admit, rather far-fetched. It seems to me so easy and so simple to go back to Folliott and Hake and say, ‘I have changed my mind; I accept.’”
“But would it be right to do so?” says Bertram. “How can I be sure that the foul fiend of selfishness is not deluding me by taking the shape of duty?”
“You split straws!” growls Southwold. “The business of the world would never get done if men hemmed and hawed and tortured themselves as you do.Canyou retract your refusal? That’s the main question.”
“I can. Folliott said that they should take no action on it for twenty-four hours, but hold it in abeyance for that term. Fanshawe suggested that, indeed insisted on it.”
“Fortunate for you that a practical man was with you. I have a respect for Mr. Fanshawe which I did not feel before. Well, my dear Wilfrid, you can’t hesitate.”
Bertram does hesitate.
He looks across at the roses.
“Will you decide for me, Miss Seymour?”
“It is a great responsibility,” she replies, and her colour rises.
She plays with one of the roses nervously for a few moments. At last she looks up and says gravely:
“I think you should accept, Mr. Bertram. To you such wealth would be no sinecure, but always regarded as a great trust to be employed for the welfare of others.”
Bertram bends his head.
“Since you think so, I will endeavour to merit your opinion of me.”
“And if you go and live on the Italian lands you can be as self-sacrificing and as wretched as you like,” adds Southwold, gleefully. “Mosquitoes,malaria, malandrini, and the hourly probability of a shot from behind a hedge, or a dagger-thrust from an irate beggar, will certainly provide you with constant material for the most active altruism.”
“Of course he will be in England half the time; there is a great deal of the Errington property in England,” says Lady Southwold, before whose mental vision many charming prospects are dancing; and she rises and goes across to Cicely Seymour and kisses her on her sun-illumined hair.
“You will always give Wilfrid good counsel, won’t you darling?” she says, very tenderly.
“Mr. Bertram will want no counsel but his own conscience,” says Cicely Seymour, with the colour in her cheeks. “Oh,Lord Southwold, conscience is so rare in our days, it seems almost dead; you should not laugh at those who through all mockery try to keep alive its sacred flame!”
“Since Wilfrid has your esteem, my dear, I laugh at him no longer,” says Southwold, with pleasant malice. “I am thoroughly convinced that he is the wisest, and will be the happiest, of men.”
Ouida.
UNWIN BROTHERS,THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON