Chapter 7

"At last!" Miss Beadon said. "I thought you were never coming." She was standing near the door, awaiting Farquharson's entry. She knew the value of a convenient position. "We have hardly seen anything of you of late." For once she was a trifle nervous. "But I've read all your speeches. Father has told me how splendidly you've got on."Not the ideal woman this, but a woman who at least could sympathize, who would not need to be taught the necessities of her position. Farquharson looked at her gravely. Something of her self-complacency had left her; she was nervous and a little tremulous as to the result of this meeting, for which she had plotted so eagerly."I have something to say to you," he said. "I must speak to these people first, and then—— See, there are chairs in that little recess. Will you wait for me there in ten minutes' time?"CHAPTER III"Youth from the windows of his innocenceSent forth his soul to scan the future years.Homeward it brings this strange intelligence—'In life there are no tears.'We who are older, shake our heads and say'Another tale, we know, we who are men.'But haply Youth espies the deathless years,Seeing beyond our ken.""I am not sorry that, after all, you were not there," wrote Lady Wereminster to Hare, a few weeks later. "The Burial Service always strikes me as comparatively gay when matched with the amended Marriage Service of the Church of England. The one gives hope; the other preaches duty instead. There is no romance in it, no mysticism. You are practically told it is your duty to marry because you are not good enough to remain unmarried, that you must bring children into the world because it would look so remarkably odd if you did not. As to the meaning of it all, whether it is to the glory of God or your next-door neighbour, the advertisement editor of theMorning Postis the best judge. Anyway, he is the person who immediately benefits."Did I tell you that Richard Farquharson and Dora Beadon were indissolubly united at St. Margaret's, Westminster, yesterday afternoon, by the bye? I suppose you read all in the papers; there was fuss enough, in all conscience. Miss Beadon saw to that. I dislike that girl more than ever. Is there anything more annoying than the incompetence of a woman who cannot fill the position she was born to?"And now what will happen? I feel responsible, having set the machinery in motion. As a girl, I played with lives quite easily; it amused me to turn fate, or juggle with purposes the meaning of which I could not fathom. Now, in old age, I have grown afraid. Souls are such tiresome things. I know old Akbar said, 'I never saw any one lost on a straight road,' but occasionally one wonders if there are any straight roads left, now the County Council has played so many tricks with London streets?"Dora Beadon is neither a fish nor a vegetable. She belongs to the new world which we have created in this after-Victorian era. Don't think I complain of her hypocrisy; I suppose we are all hypocrites more or less. I was one when I tried to persuade a man with a career to marry a selfish woman, with what I hoped to be a nondescript character, because I wanted him to save the reputation of a woman who reminds me more of my niece Asenath than any one I have ever met. As Dora is nondescript, she may be amiable. But—that mouth of hers! Have you ever seen it in repose?"Well, now they are started for good or ill. I pin my faith on the man's ambition. All life's a compromise. No woman can have both a Grecian nose and a perfect figure; no man can have success and happiness. And success means more to a man than to a woman. If we are human, there's no single moment in which we would not lay down the biggest prize the world can offer us at the feet of the man we love, and say, 'Please take it, dear; I only won it for you.' But a man likes to have his prize in a substantial form, and keep it on his sideboard, so that his wife can show it, very highly polished, to his guests. Look at the presentation cups in our men's messes! The trophies, challenge cups! Why, a man can't even kill a big salmon without having it photographed or modelled in a glass case. We women kill our salmon every day and no one knows it."So I dispose of Richard Farquharson. He is off my conscience. Life will give him something, although it is not the thing he wants. And Dora—she need not complain; she will have a little more wealth, a little more luxury, a little more panoply of amusement and flattery; that is enough for her. But there's still Evelyn."She came to the wedding. He made her—her husband. Oh, if she were only a less good Catholic! It is a magnificent system. It reduces its subjects to such a pitch of subjection that they obey in spite of themselves. The happiness, the welfare of one unworthy little soul—what does it matter, so long as the Vatican coffers are full, so long as the Celebrations on high days and festivals have still their proper number of spectators? Inviolable, magnificent, the one wall that will never be broken, it rears itself ever higher and higher as the ages roll on, cemented with the blood of a thousand victims whose names will never be written in any book of martyrology."You like human problems, so I give you one. There they stand, the three of them, as opposed in temperament as any of the subjects in Browning'sRing and the Book. I cannot depict them; I cannot even prophesy. Very long ago I found that God knew a great deal more than I did—a fact that hardly seems possible to the cocksureness of youth. So—wicked old woman as I am supposed to be by many of my best friends—I end this letter to you, who know me well, with a real pious intention."You remember the story of the bishop who was told the ship upon which he was travelling was about to sink? I will try and quote it from memory—"'The sea it was rough and the ship it did lurch,And it blew without reason or ruth;And the consequence was this mainstay of the ChurchSuffered much for the sake of the truth.And the sea it grew rough, and the night it grew black,And the rain-drops fell heavy and thick,And the bishop he heartily wished himself back,While Rangoon—it might go to Old Nick!"Oh, skipper, I really enjoy a good blow,And 'tis truly a glorious sight;But your candid opinion I'm anxious to know—Do you think there is danger to-night?"The skipper he hitched himself up, and he laughed,Then he suddenly grew very grave,As a hurricane squall seemed to stagger the craft,And she buried her nose in a wave.And he said, "Well, your Grace, it's a dirtyish night,But whether the vessel will ride,I really can't tell you; you'll know before night,In Providence we must confide.""Good gracious!" the bishop exclaimed in dismayAs he clutched at his old shovel hat;"This is terrible, skipper; you don't mean to sayThat really it hascome to that!"'"I think it has 'come to that' in this instance too!"PART IVTHE BESTOWAL"Human endurance is the one miracle left in the world."—E. ROBINS.CHAPTER I"Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,But cannot get the wood to burn;It hardly flames ere it begins to falter,And to the dark return.'Tis all I have—smoke, failure, foiled endeavour,Coldness and doubt and palsied lack;Such as I have I send Thee; perfect Giver,Send Thou Thy lightning back."GEORGE MACDONALD."Let men see, let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live."—MARCUS AURELIUS.The sensation of pain does not immediately strike a man who is severely wounded; first, he feels a sting like a lash, then numbness succeeds, presently he falls.Mental pain is, after all, very like physical. Acute shock paralyzes mind and soul; it puts a clog in the wheel of human machinery. Great calamities do not necessarily stop human functions from fulfilling their duties; a man eats or drinks, or may, in exceptional cases, even sleep as well in the first moment of a great crisis as before. Body and soul are braced to the day's routine; for a time they continue their offices unchecked. But presently the chill and paralysis of thought and action spread throughout his being. Then ordinary work is impossible. Merely to live is a labour, the most trivial effort an arduous achievement.In paralysis, limbs refuse to obey the message of the brain, or, misinterpreting it, do the thing they would not. So, when the roots of a life's happiness have been struck, the soul cannot hear the message of the over-wrought body that pleads to it for help in vain.In the days that followed, Farquharson and Evelyn travelled again, invisible companions, down the samevia crucisof agony and shame. To Evelyn, perhaps, the path was the more difficult to tread because for the first time faith had failed her. "Doubt comes," says the Catholic Church, "to those who wilfully play with sin." Unyielding, inflexible, she would have those who profess her faith remove themselves from the first taint of guilt, failing to help even the sorely wounded if he who suffered were one whose imminence brought danger. It is another of the paradoxes with which faith abounds; there are times when these same paradoxes raise an impenetrable wall against which the human heart beats vainly—bruised, bleeding, outwardly broken.Doggedly Evelyn kept to the open evidences of her belief, sure of their truth, though unable to find comfort in them. She knew priests who had done the same, men who had striven for weeks and years against overwhelming apathy, alone in the desert of temptation. She knew one who had died so, to whom no ray of illumination had come even at the last, although only she and his confessor knew as much. He was a man who had helped more men and women than any other member of his brotherhood; faith seemed to be given him merely to be spent in the service of others.But he was a man, and she was only a woman. And peace of some kind must surely have approached him, if one believes at all in supernatural influences, from the very atmosphere of the praying souls he stood amongst at Mass, from the mere nearness of the Sacred Host. Evelyn lived in an atmosphere of cynicism and doubt; it pressed upon her, bearing her down now that she had no rival force with which to combat it. And because by the narrow channel through which one doubt enters a thousand may follow, she found that the silence and solitude she had once loved were now thronged with ghosts, ghostly visions of the love she might have had but would not, and the life she might have lived with him she loved, one in companionship, one in ambition, one in the most dear and sacred intimacy of marriage, one in failure, one in success, one in the love of the children whose feet they would never now hear, whose lips would never now meet their own.There is no hell which equals in intensity the hell of an imagination so vivid as to create being from what is void. When Farquharson left the church with his wife, Evelyn followed them every step of the way home. She looked on to the future; she forced herself to pray for their happiness, while in her heart she knew that happiness would be her death-blow. As she had striven for him in the past, using all the human forces at her command in helping him attain the thing he wished, so she strove now to make herself desire that he should have the best life has to offer, not the mere earthly wreath of laurels, but the unfading crown of peace.But Farquharson, although she did not know it, had a harder task. He had tied himself for life to a woman who violated his every belief, whose nature warred with his at every turn. Realist and man of purpose as he was, his dear belief that in the world somewhere, somehow, there lived a second Margaret Cunningham whom he would ultimately possess, had sweetened all his work since he left Glune. When he met Evelyn he knew the dream was true, and Glune and she were absolutely at one. He pictured her its fitting mistress, visiting every haunt of his childhood, satisfying every memory and tradition, washing away with her tender tears the bitterness that had grown part of his heritage, as labourers would clear away useless timber and refuse, making all wholesome and clean.Glune was his now again, a princely wedding gift from Calvert and Beadon, but all pleasure in the possession was gone.A French writer once said that it is impossible to predict of any woman the exact change that marriage will make in her. We have all seen love turn to hate in a few hours under certain circumstances, but there are subtler changes still. Great emotions may bring havoc to certain natures; change comes inevitably, whether the emotions be great or small. Perhaps Dora had cared for Farquharson so far as in her lay before he became her husband, but now he was her property, an object of daily use, as important, perhaps, as her sponge or toothbrush, but quite unworthy of any deep regard. It was better to be with him than without him. It never struck her that she owed him any duty; if she thought about the matter at all it was merely to consider that a beneficent Creator had brought him into being for the special purpose of accompanying her when she wanted him, and transacting the business that she had slurred even as an unmarried woman; investing her money to its best advantage, and paying bills about whose magnitude she no longer felt even the smallest compunction.With those early days of marriage she was entirely content and satisfied. No doubt of her ability to please him crossed her mind; the useless are invariably self-satisfied. She had mapped out a motor tour which was intended to outdo anything that other brides had accomplished; restless, untiring, she swept Farquharson on from place to place, great towns and cities whose very stones breathed glory and mystery, under the shadows of mountains which at night looked cold and full of awe, types of the crushing power that seemed to rule men's destinies, but which were warmed and quickened to life by the first gleam of the morning sun. Beauty, tradition, mystery, these things meant nothing to Dora, and Farquharson, who longed to stay, was openly derided. Of late years he had had little or no time to spare for the love of nature which had trained him as a boy; he steeped his soul in colour which she did not even see.They went from big hotel to big hotel; nights spent in little village inns bored Dora inexpressibly. Day after day she went out of their road to buy the English papers. If their tour was not mentioned in them she flung them aside; when it was, she collected the cuttings eagerly. Farquharson realized that for his wife the meaning of life was resolved into a single hope—that the glare of publicity should be for ever upon them. He thought of the future. He could picture her at Glune, entertaining the Press, dragging out his relics, giving chapter and verse succinctly of all those dear records which had made him what he was. She would gossip with the villagers, she would leave no stone unturned to find out all about his childhood, and then repeat it at her next afternoon call. Nothing was sacred to her, and now for Evelyn's sake he had learned to look upon women as sacred, and to try to understand something even of his mother's nature. Women like Dora would drag her memory and his brother's in the dust that they might make suitable headlines for an "interview."It was for this he had bartered his dream—for this and to save a woman's honour.Well, there was work to do; thank God for work. Daily routine has saved many a man's brain from snapping, before now.Farquharson returned to town after six weeks' absence to find great arrears and accumulation of work, which he welcomed. Various by-elections were taking place all over the country; the issue of the next election mainly depended upon the people's decision concerning Tariff ReformversusFree Trade. Since the great Protectionist leader was unable through illness to carry on the contest, Farquharson was appealed to on all sides as the worthiest exponent of the cause. He was invited to speak in the north, in the midlands, south and west alike.In Taorna, too, there were difficulties. The position of the man he had left to act for him wanted strengthening. The Council for once was undecided; Farquharson's message flashed across the sea and was obeyed. Beadon read its terms and smiled."Men talk of grit," he said, "but you've got grip. Do you never lose touch of what you've once held?""That's a real man," was Hare's comment as he read next morning's paper. "What he has done for Taorna, he can do for England. I am beginning to have hopes for her. One man has saved his nation before now."That the country was passing through a crisis was apparent. Farquharson had set men talking. His speeches spread dissatisfaction and dissension, and unrest alone will make a nation rise. The Ministry sent its best men to oppose him; in one important ward it was even rumoured that the Liberals had bribed men to heckle and annoy the candidate whom he supported. But on the night in question it was Farquharson who faced them, having persuaded his somewhat timid follower to plead temporary illness. And as he spoke better than he had ever spoken before, even his enemies were silenced.Up in the north, that hot-bed of Liberalism, men weighed his words and were discomfited. It was their force, their overwhelming conviction which told with these level-headed men of business, who, unlike their Irish neighbours across the sea, were seldom swayed by impulse or carried away by enthusiasm. In Rowan, the nearest town to Bruchill, a Radical constituency from time immemorial, a meeting was held eventually, at which it was decided to ask Farquharson to stand in place of the retiring candidate. The news came at breakfast. It touched him very deeply; he had waited for this, hoping against hope, and refusing other invitations against the wishes of his party. He handed it to Dora without comment.She flung it down."A trumpery second-rate place like that! You'll refuse, of course," she said.Farquharson took his seat in the House as Member for Rowan three weeks later. After that matters moved more dramatically than usual in the undramatic House of Commons. Amongst its members may be found a great crowd of wavering and irresponsible beings delighted to identify themselves with a real leader; they followed Farquharson like sheep. A certain Bill, just brought forward, had roused the nation's indignation; it touched all classes, since every insurance office held large shares in the especial traffic which it threatened. The Bill gave Farquharson an early opportunity of taking his stand in the House, and he made the most of it.A few weeks later, in a crowded assembly representative not only of British but of foreign interest, as the Strangers' and the Speaker's Galleries were both full, Beadon proposed a vote of censure on the Government, which was seconded by Farquharson in a speech that turned the scale. The motion was carried by an overwhelming majority. The inevitable General Election followed, and event followed event in quick succession. Conservative agencies mustered all their forces, and Farquharson was bidden to speak in every direction. The pendulum swung round, and the Conservatives returned to power with a gain of twelve seats on the last amazing Liberal majority of three and a half years before.CHAPTER II"If glory does not intoxicate you continually, do not stand beneath her banners."—THE PRINCE DE LIGNE."Historians and the Press make the mistake," said Hare, "of treating the nation as a party. She is an individual, subject to fluctuations of health and reason, capable, like a true woman, of reaching any height or any depth. She is baffling, inconsistent, base, and noble within a breath. Wise men predict her rise or fall according to her temperament and environment. Look at Spain. Melancholy to the roots of her being, mysterious, ardent—she has those qualities which attain to the utmost height of glory for a while, then decline. The Escorial shows one side of the nation; much the same brooding silence and enmity as were the hall-marks of the Inquisition. I doubt if any man or woman can fully understand what made inquisitors act as they did until they have been to Spain. There is no power so cruel as that of a faith which literally obeys the scriptural injunction of destroying limb by limb the body which turns to evil and forsakes good. In Grenada you have another side, everything steeped in colour and mystery. Moorish, of course—how few of us realize, by the bye, that Spain was held by the Moors for an even longer period than she has been under the sway of the Spaniards. But Spain needs balance. Till she gets it she will never be a great nation. Take Italy, again. Had she cultivated her pagan characteristics, as opposed to the qualities which priests would tell you make for ultimate happiness, she would have done better. As it is, she is rebellious, chaotic, a mass of intrigue and suspicion, unreliable and weak. Germany—ah! there's a power to be reckoned with, scarcely, in my mind, to fear. Her death-blow is ambition. She is a one-man country, and one man is liable to err. France is a house divided against itself; a nation of charming women and irreligious men. In her dissensions our security lies. Russia"—he shrugged his shoulders—"with her internal troubles and her exchequer at so low an ebb, we need not fear her. In the future aspect of the Alliance, I fancy China and Japan united may be our bitter enemies. Theirs is a waiting game. At Berlin and Paris and London you will find students from these countries assimilating all that we can teach them, wisely using the best means that other nations can furnish for their own ends. You have the dominant characteristics of different types in every case. The real diplomatist deals rather with the Russian, the Italian, the Spaniard, than with Russia, Italy, and Spain.""Quite a good lesson in foreign affairs at first hand," said Lady Wereminster, turning to her neighbour, Meavy, who, a disappointed man, had had to resign his post through ill-health. "Given, if I mistake not, to some end. Has anything unusual struck you about our little party to-night?"Meavy looked round."Calvert, our host—Farquharson and his wife, Creagh, Beadon, Hare, the Brands, your husband, you and myself—your sex is in the minority, Lady Wereminster.""Precisely the same party that was down at Creagh to meet Mr. Farquharson on his first introduction to English social life," said Lady Wereminster. "That was a year ago. Since then——"She shrugged her shoulders."Tides ebb and flow, men come and go," quoted Meavy dreamily."One man's arrived," said Lady Wereminster. "A year ago we were bemoaning the drowsiness of the Empire. She has awakened now. I suppose, to carry on Mr. Hare's simile, she has had a good shaking. Every one needs it in his day.""I'm sureIdon't," said Dora Farquharson, breaking in. "Richard, do scold Lady Wereminster. She says I need shaking—I'm sure I don't, do I?""Oh, if we all got our deserts——" put in Hare somewhat grimly."Now Richard needs shaking if you like," continued Dora, who had begun, since marriage, to consider herself something of a wit. "He is the mostimpossiblehusband. Always off somewhere, at anybody's beck and call but mine. A dear boy, of course, but hopeless to live with. If he had married an unamiable wife I don't know what he would have done. When he's at home, he always says he is too busy to be disturbed.""You don't agree with the axiom that women ought to marry men they dislike because it is the only way of avoiding them, then?" said Lady Wereminster.Dora simpered."Oh no. I was always romantic—just the opposite to Richard. Not that I want to complain of you, old boy." She leant across the table and tapped her husband on the arm. "You're quite a good sort in your way; you don't mind your little wife chaffing you occasionally, do you?""No man is a hero to his—wife," Creagh misquoted gently.Lady Wereminster flashed."Don't tar us all with the same brush. There are wives and wives, remember; most of us ought to go through a training school for marriage. I'm sure useless subjects enough are taught in modern schools. 'How to be a good wife' would be an attractive variety.""Modern girls' schools are becoming more like boys'—delightful playgrounds.""I approve of hockey and the rest in their way," said Lady Wereminster. "If the modern woman would only take her marriage as seriously as she does her games she might even bring human nature into repute again. Marriage is the only profession which a woman enters with absolutely no doubt of her competency. She may be the most irresponsible creature in the world, but she thinks the art of ruling a household is like love or measles—easily caught. I don't know how it is in your Church, Evelyn, but in ours no spiritual director would dream of suggesting advice in such a matter unless he were directly asked to interfere. And yet the duties are apparent. Any woman may make or mar any man with whom she is in daily contact. A woman can drag a man down in more ways than one. A wife can belittle her husband at every turn—can, by persistently treating him as an inferior in his own house, end by making him inferior. She can swamp his energy with her idleness, freeze his love of work with her indifference, fritter his money away on trifles until he loses all desire to save for a rainy day, deny him pleasure and outlet at every turn. I have no sympathy for such wives when their husbands leave them. In many cases, indeed, they would never stay but for the children.""'A training school for wives founded by the Countess of Wereminster,'" said Brand maliciously. "High fees, of course. Shall we draw up the prospectus now? Will you accept my wife and Mrs. Farquharson as teachers, Lady Wereminster?""Delighted—if you'll agree to go in for the necessary examination as a husband," said Lady Wereminster promptly."'We do not what we ought,What we ought not, we do,And lean upon the thoughtThat chance will bring us through,'"suggested Creagh, smiling."Talk of duties," interposed Mrs. Farquharson, raising her voice, "mine are simply appalling. They were bad enough in my father's house; they are a hundred times worse now. But, of course, in my position they would necessarily be very arduous. And in the future—oh, but I mustn't talk of that; that's a political secret.""Rather an open one," said Brand very softly. "We have eyes and ears, Mrs. Farquharson. Your husband deserves the splendid luck you have brought him.""Oh well, it is a good thing, isn't it?" said Dora proudly. "But how did you know? Of course it has been rumoured for some time, but my father only decided things to-day, and we don't want it in the papers for another twenty-four hours.""It's an appointment in which his peculiar talents will tell," said Brand, drawing a bow at a venture."At first it was a toss-up between that and the Colonies," said Dora. "But—but in the present state of——""Foreign affairs?" suggested Brand."They thought—yes, they thought he would be more useful in that Office.""Yes, it's a big post," said Brand abstractedly. He looked at his watch. "I wonder how much longer we're going to sit here. I have to make my excuses early to Calvert to-night; a friend of mine is ill, and I promised to go to him straight after dinner." He lowered his voice again. "I tell you this in confidence, of course. My wife has taken out a patent in the art of little human kindnesses, you know; she doesn't like it infringed even by me." He smiled a little pathetically.Dora put out her hand."I know how good you are—no one better. Why, you even helped me once!""Ah, that—that was nothing. But some day I shall come upon you for the fulfilment of your promise, Mrs. Farquharson."Dora looked up, vaguely startled. Brand's tone was intentionally grave."My promise? Oh, I remember. Of course I'll do what I can. There's the signal to move," she said hurriedly, gathering her fan and gloves together.Farquharson stifled a sigh of relief as his wife left the room."That woman's insufferable," said Lady Wereminster. "How the man stands her I don't know. She trades on the patience that she knows he must possess to have reached his present position. Any woman, alas! has it in her personal power to make life unendurable for her husband, but I know of no surer method than persistently to wound his dearest susceptibilities. Dora treats Richard like a schoolboy—she would degrade a grocer if she lived with him long enough. 'My this, my that'—she makes me sick One feels tempted to remind her that the wife. who lays so frequent a stress on the possessive pronoun where her husband and children and house are concerned, is always suspected of holding them insecurely. Did you ever hear the story of the man who married a rich, vulgar wife, inclined to talk of 'my money, my garden, my furniture my dinner party,' etc., by way of pointing out the fact that she had paid for them? Before a room full of people one day she asked him, after some temporary absence, where he had been. 'Trying on your new trousers, which have just come back from the tailor's,' he answered. I hope she laid the lesson to heart.""I wish you'd learn to take care of yourself, Evelyn," she went on, inconsequently, peering sharply at Mrs. Brand. "There ought to be some one at hand who would take care of you, and pet you, and carry you off to the country every time those hollows come under your eyes. You think too much, Evelyn. And unless you can kill thought, thought kills you, remember. That's why light amusements that take one out of oneself are popular.""I get a lot of change one way and another," said Evelyn. "I go out, I mean.""It's no good to go out if you don't go out with the right person," said Lady Wereminster. "One has always to pay a price for happiness, although it does not seem to cost much at the time. Women sign a blank cheque for it—a most foolish proceeding. It's filled in by the recipient, and when the amount falls due there's nothing left to meet it. But we are poor economists, and even spend ourselves if we have nothing else to spend.""I can't have you two monopolizing each other all the evening," complained Dora Farquharson, looking up, aggrieved. "I wish those men would come up. How long they are. It's always so dull without men. And you must both be longing to be let in to this evening's secret—oh, perhaps you don't even know there is a secret?""If you know it, it can no longer be called one," said Lady Wereminster tartly.Dora bridled."I think a woman should begin as she means to go on, in marriage. I told Richard from the first that I expected to know everything about his work—all the secrets, I mean; not the dull part.""And what did Mr. Farquharson say?""Say!" Dora laughed. "Why, he never says anything. I suppose the so-called great people are usually dull and commonplace in private life. I always tell Richard that if I had only been allowed a trial trip in marriage I should never have said yes. He's a dreadful old stay-at-home, you know; doesn't really care to go out or to bother about one at all. He doesn't realize what a change it means to a girl who has been accustomed to a whole train of admirers all her life."Lady Wereminster put up her lorgnette."My dear Dora, don't talk about your youth to a woman who was present at your christening.""Oh, she can afford to," said Evelyn gently. She slipped her hand into Mrs. Farquharson's. "Are we ever to know the secret, Dora? and is it one that will please us all, or only you?""Oh, everybody will know it in forty-eight hours," said Dora, mollified; "but I think you are to be told to-night. It was Mr. Calvert's plan; he thought the announcement would make rather a charming climax to the evening. What an old cat Lady Wereminster is," she added, watching her opponent withdraw to a distant corner and settle herself comfortably in an arm-chair with the evening paper. "She never has a kind word for anybody. Fancy her trying to snub me; luckily I can afford to overlook that sort of thing in my position. Why, they say Richard may be anything at this rate. Of course, after a time I shall make father resign in his favour; he's nearly sixty-five, and no man's really worth anything in politics at that age. Besides, he should make way for Richard. I'm very ambitious, you know; there's nothing I don't mean to get for my husband. Look what I've done for him already. He would never have been heard of but for that Albert Hall meeting. Oh, it's no good talking of Taorna. Who in the world cares about Taorna except a few people on the Stock Exchange? I think it's only my duty to impress upon Richard a proper sense of the obligation he's under, don't you?"There is a limit to endurance."Obligation?" cried Evelyn indignantly. Mrs. Farquharson started. There was something in the other woman's voice that struck even her as unusual. "You've married a man in a million, Dora; a man in whose dictionary the word impossible is unknown; whom people are proud to know; whom you told me you loved. I don't believe he owes you anything, or any one else for that matter. If he did, there could be no possible question of obligation. In real love there's no bickering over trifles; you give, if you must call it giving, as you breathe, and as easily. Oh, Dora, Dora"—she put her hand on the girl's arm again—"don't make the mistake most women do and quarrel over the ridiculous difference in the change of a letter or two between meum and tuum!"Mrs. Farquharson rose, with an assumption of dignity."My dear Evelyn, if I didn't know you so well, I should really think you were jealous. Never mind, dear; I'll try to forget it. I was always one of your best friends, you know. By the bye, would you mind just putting a pin in my waist-band? It seems to have slipped somehow. Yes, it's a pretty frock, isn't it? But Paquin's getting very tiresome; I had to send up for it three times. They said it took five women forty-eight hours each, sitting up all night, merely to finish that embroidery. That alone cost six guineas a yard—but it looks nice, doesn't it? I always think you look so nice in that dear old frock of yours—you really do wear your things wonderfully, Evelyn.""Time makes one's dresses become trusted friends," said Evelyn wearily. How useless either to protest with or advise such a woman! "Was that your husband's voice?"As the men entered she moved again to Lady Wereminster's side, and Meavy, in obedience to her signal, crossed to Mrs. Farquharson."Well, what do you think of my boy's progress?" said Calvert. He seated himself between the two women, and Creagh and Beadon joined the group. "That last speech of his added a very important seat to your long list of victories. I'm a Liberal myself, as you know, but I can't say I was sorry we were beaten on that occasion."Creagh laughed."For once I was right, eh, Beadon? Do you remember one afternoon when we were talking about the man and the hour?""You have the man, but the hour has not yet struck," said Hare gravely. "After triumph, reaction.""You mean that in our national cocksureness lies our peril?" said Beadon. "We say we expect a fight, and then go to sleep on feather-beds in comfortable security.""I often think we are like careless housemaids," said Lady Wereminster, "who let the dust accumulate in corners, and bitterly resent the necessity of cleaning them out.""The truth is," said Hare, "we're getting too luxurious. Even for sport, men don't deny themselves now as they did at the beginning of the century. Love of luxury has spread even to the lower classes. A district messenger boy thinks himself very ill-used if he hasn't got his own bicycle, and our grooms' sons learn the piano. We make extravagance our god, not duty. Palatial hotels and motor-cars between them have killed home life in England. People won't realize it's a much greater compliment to be asked by their friends to dine in private houses instead of restaurants.""I know that modern girls spend more on their dress in a month than I did in a year," said Lady Wereminster. "I remember a young niece telling me that it was impossible to go through a London season with less than twenty-five new evening frocks. I used to wear book-muslins, and looked a great deal nicer in them then, Wereminster says, than my own great-grandchildren do now in hand-painted chiffon.""It's the tendency of the age," said Hare; "our class sins worse than any other in that respect. Luxury is a blight which has fallen upon the world; within the last ten years it has grown to be part and parcel of our existence. In the old days politicians and diplomatists took their duties seriously, and never grumbled at hard work. If a man does eight hours' work now he thinks himself ill-used, and goes to the country to recuperate. Duty is irksome—it always was—but fifty years ago men faced it as a force to be reckoned with, not to evade. Our blood was blood then, and ran red. Moral anæmia had not paled it.""The good old days," said Creagh, smiling. "Let us hope our grandchildren will talk of us as we are now talking of our forbears, and bend the knee before our memories as we do now before the memories of our heroes. Beadon's the man to go for, Hare; we are in his hands. Tell him to preach your gospel to his Ministry, to impress upon them the policy of constant energy and watchfulness, as opposed to drastic reforms which, alas! too often end in sloth.""The policy of the late Government reminds one of Lady Wereminster's simile," said Beadon. "The Ministers certainly swept out a good many rooms, but they left them bare.""Isn't it nearly time to tell our news?" said Calvert. "I have a littlebonne bouchefor you, Mrs. Brand—I know how much it will mean to you, the woman to whom Richard owes so much. Neither he nor I forget it, if you have." He took her hand, and patted it affectionately.Evelyn could not answer. There was a mist before her eyes."By the way, what I am about to say is in the strictest confidence," said Beadon. "But where is Mr. Brand? Oh, he had to leave early, I remember. I don't want it to reach the Press for fully forty-eight hours, as Richard's is the first appointment to be filled in my new Ministry. He is to be the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; the appointment has only just been confirmed. I think nothing can suit him better. His gift of languages, his tact and diplomacy and unwearying patience—all will tell to their fullest."Lady Wereminster clapped her hands."Hurrah! How glad I am! Come here, Mr. Farquharson, to be congratulated. Now you'll go on from strength to strength.""I'm delighted, my dear fellow," said Creagh, his face glowing with satisfaction. "It's the best thing for the country. But I don't know that I envy our neighbours across the sea, though; they'll tackle a rough customer in you.""Good," was Hare's comment; "you deserve it."Now we can sleep in peace," said Lord Wereminster benignly, "and sing 'I fear no foe' with some conviction."

Not the ideal woman this, but a woman who at least could sympathize, who would not need to be taught the necessities of her position. Farquharson looked at her gravely. Something of her self-complacency had left her; she was nervous and a little tremulous as to the result of this meeting, for which she had plotted so eagerly.

"I have something to say to you," he said. "I must speak to these people first, and then—— See, there are chairs in that little recess. Will you wait for me there in ten minutes' time?"

CHAPTER III

"Youth from the windows of his innocenceSent forth his soul to scan the future years.Homeward it brings this strange intelligence—'In life there are no tears.'We who are older, shake our heads and say'Another tale, we know, we who are men.'But haply Youth espies the deathless years,Seeing beyond our ken."

"Youth from the windows of his innocenceSent forth his soul to scan the future years.Homeward it brings this strange intelligence—'In life there are no tears.'

"Youth from the windows of his innocence

Sent forth his soul to scan the future years.

Homeward it brings this strange intelligence—

'In life there are no tears.'

We who are older, shake our heads and say'Another tale, we know, we who are men.'But haply Youth espies the deathless years,Seeing beyond our ken."

We who are older, shake our heads and say

'Another tale, we know, we who are men.'

But haply Youth espies the deathless years,

Seeing beyond our ken."

"I am not sorry that, after all, you were not there," wrote Lady Wereminster to Hare, a few weeks later. "The Burial Service always strikes me as comparatively gay when matched with the amended Marriage Service of the Church of England. The one gives hope; the other preaches duty instead. There is no romance in it, no mysticism. You are practically told it is your duty to marry because you are not good enough to remain unmarried, that you must bring children into the world because it would look so remarkably odd if you did not. As to the meaning of it all, whether it is to the glory of God or your next-door neighbour, the advertisement editor of theMorning Postis the best judge. Anyway, he is the person who immediately benefits.

"Did I tell you that Richard Farquharson and Dora Beadon were indissolubly united at St. Margaret's, Westminster, yesterday afternoon, by the bye? I suppose you read all in the papers; there was fuss enough, in all conscience. Miss Beadon saw to that. I dislike that girl more than ever. Is there anything more annoying than the incompetence of a woman who cannot fill the position she was born to?

"And now what will happen? I feel responsible, having set the machinery in motion. As a girl, I played with lives quite easily; it amused me to turn fate, or juggle with purposes the meaning of which I could not fathom. Now, in old age, I have grown afraid. Souls are such tiresome things. I know old Akbar said, 'I never saw any one lost on a straight road,' but occasionally one wonders if there are any straight roads left, now the County Council has played so many tricks with London streets?

"Dora Beadon is neither a fish nor a vegetable. She belongs to the new world which we have created in this after-Victorian era. Don't think I complain of her hypocrisy; I suppose we are all hypocrites more or less. I was one when I tried to persuade a man with a career to marry a selfish woman, with what I hoped to be a nondescript character, because I wanted him to save the reputation of a woman who reminds me more of my niece Asenath than any one I have ever met. As Dora is nondescript, she may be amiable. But—that mouth of hers! Have you ever seen it in repose?

"Well, now they are started for good or ill. I pin my faith on the man's ambition. All life's a compromise. No woman can have both a Grecian nose and a perfect figure; no man can have success and happiness. And success means more to a man than to a woman. If we are human, there's no single moment in which we would not lay down the biggest prize the world can offer us at the feet of the man we love, and say, 'Please take it, dear; I only won it for you.' But a man likes to have his prize in a substantial form, and keep it on his sideboard, so that his wife can show it, very highly polished, to his guests. Look at the presentation cups in our men's messes! The trophies, challenge cups! Why, a man can't even kill a big salmon without having it photographed or modelled in a glass case. We women kill our salmon every day and no one knows it.

"So I dispose of Richard Farquharson. He is off my conscience. Life will give him something, although it is not the thing he wants. And Dora—she need not complain; she will have a little more wealth, a little more luxury, a little more panoply of amusement and flattery; that is enough for her. But there's still Evelyn.

"She came to the wedding. He made her—her husband. Oh, if she were only a less good Catholic! It is a magnificent system. It reduces its subjects to such a pitch of subjection that they obey in spite of themselves. The happiness, the welfare of one unworthy little soul—what does it matter, so long as the Vatican coffers are full, so long as the Celebrations on high days and festivals have still their proper number of spectators? Inviolable, magnificent, the one wall that will never be broken, it rears itself ever higher and higher as the ages roll on, cemented with the blood of a thousand victims whose names will never be written in any book of martyrology.

"You like human problems, so I give you one. There they stand, the three of them, as opposed in temperament as any of the subjects in Browning'sRing and the Book. I cannot depict them; I cannot even prophesy. Very long ago I found that God knew a great deal more than I did—a fact that hardly seems possible to the cocksureness of youth. So—wicked old woman as I am supposed to be by many of my best friends—I end this letter to you, who know me well, with a real pious intention.

"You remember the story of the bishop who was told the ship upon which he was travelling was about to sink? I will try and quote it from memory—

"'The sea it was rough and the ship it did lurch,And it blew without reason or ruth;And the consequence was this mainstay of the ChurchSuffered much for the sake of the truth.And the sea it grew rough, and the night it grew black,And the rain-drops fell heavy and thick,And the bishop he heartily wished himself back,While Rangoon—it might go to Old Nick!"Oh, skipper, I really enjoy a good blow,And 'tis truly a glorious sight;But your candid opinion I'm anxious to know—Do you think there is danger to-night?"The skipper he hitched himself up, and he laughed,Then he suddenly grew very grave,As a hurricane squall seemed to stagger the craft,And she buried her nose in a wave.And he said, "Well, your Grace, it's a dirtyish night,But whether the vessel will ride,I really can't tell you; you'll know before night,In Providence we must confide.""Good gracious!" the bishop exclaimed in dismayAs he clutched at his old shovel hat;"This is terrible, skipper; you don't mean to sayThat really it hascome to that!"'

"'The sea it was rough and the ship it did lurch,And it blew without reason or ruth;And the consequence was this mainstay of the ChurchSuffered much for the sake of the truth.

"'The sea it was rough and the ship it did lurch,

And it blew without reason or ruth;

And the consequence was this mainstay of the Church

Suffered much for the sake of the truth.

And the sea it grew rough, and the night it grew black,And the rain-drops fell heavy and thick,And the bishop he heartily wished himself back,While Rangoon—it might go to Old Nick!

And the sea it grew rough, and the night it grew black,

And the rain-drops fell heavy and thick,

And the bishop he heartily wished himself back,

While Rangoon—it might go to Old Nick!

"Oh, skipper, I really enjoy a good blow,And 'tis truly a glorious sight;But your candid opinion I'm anxious to know—Do you think there is danger to-night?"

"Oh, skipper, I really enjoy a good blow,

And 'tis truly a glorious sight;

But your candid opinion I'm anxious to know—

Do you think there is danger to-night?"

The skipper he hitched himself up, and he laughed,Then he suddenly grew very grave,As a hurricane squall seemed to stagger the craft,And she buried her nose in a wave.

The skipper he hitched himself up, and he laughed,

Then he suddenly grew very grave,

As a hurricane squall seemed to stagger the craft,

And she buried her nose in a wave.

And he said, "Well, your Grace, it's a dirtyish night,But whether the vessel will ride,I really can't tell you; you'll know before night,In Providence we must confide."

And he said, "Well, your Grace, it's a dirtyish night,

But whether the vessel will ride,

I really can't tell you; you'll know before night,

In Providence we must confide."

"Good gracious!" the bishop exclaimed in dismayAs he clutched at his old shovel hat;"This is terrible, skipper; you don't mean to sayThat really it hascome to that!"'

"Good gracious!" the bishop exclaimed in dismay

As he clutched at his old shovel hat;

"This is terrible, skipper; you don't mean to say

That really it hascome to that!"'

"I think it has 'come to that' in this instance too!"

PART IV

THE BESTOWAL

"Human endurance is the one miracle left in the world."—E. ROBINS.

CHAPTER I

"Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,But cannot get the wood to burn;It hardly flames ere it begins to falter,And to the dark return.'Tis all I have—smoke, failure, foiled endeavour,Coldness and doubt and palsied lack;Such as I have I send Thee; perfect Giver,Send Thou Thy lightning back."GEORGE MACDONALD.

"Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,But cannot get the wood to burn;It hardly flames ere it begins to falter,And to the dark return.

"Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,

But cannot get the wood to burn;

It hardly flames ere it begins to falter,

And to the dark return.

'Tis all I have—smoke, failure, foiled endeavour,Coldness and doubt and palsied lack;Such as I have I send Thee; perfect Giver,Send Thou Thy lightning back."GEORGE MACDONALD.

'Tis all I have—smoke, failure, foiled endeavour,

Coldness and doubt and palsied lack;

Such as I have I send Thee; perfect Giver,

Send Thou Thy lightning back."GEORGE MACDONALD.

Send Thou Thy lightning back."

GEORGE MACDONALD.

"Let men see, let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live."—MARCUS AURELIUS.

The sensation of pain does not immediately strike a man who is severely wounded; first, he feels a sting like a lash, then numbness succeeds, presently he falls.

Mental pain is, after all, very like physical. Acute shock paralyzes mind and soul; it puts a clog in the wheel of human machinery. Great calamities do not necessarily stop human functions from fulfilling their duties; a man eats or drinks, or may, in exceptional cases, even sleep as well in the first moment of a great crisis as before. Body and soul are braced to the day's routine; for a time they continue their offices unchecked. But presently the chill and paralysis of thought and action spread throughout his being. Then ordinary work is impossible. Merely to live is a labour, the most trivial effort an arduous achievement.

In paralysis, limbs refuse to obey the message of the brain, or, misinterpreting it, do the thing they would not. So, when the roots of a life's happiness have been struck, the soul cannot hear the message of the over-wrought body that pleads to it for help in vain.

In the days that followed, Farquharson and Evelyn travelled again, invisible companions, down the samevia crucisof agony and shame. To Evelyn, perhaps, the path was the more difficult to tread because for the first time faith had failed her. "Doubt comes," says the Catholic Church, "to those who wilfully play with sin." Unyielding, inflexible, she would have those who profess her faith remove themselves from the first taint of guilt, failing to help even the sorely wounded if he who suffered were one whose imminence brought danger. It is another of the paradoxes with which faith abounds; there are times when these same paradoxes raise an impenetrable wall against which the human heart beats vainly—bruised, bleeding, outwardly broken.

Doggedly Evelyn kept to the open evidences of her belief, sure of their truth, though unable to find comfort in them. She knew priests who had done the same, men who had striven for weeks and years against overwhelming apathy, alone in the desert of temptation. She knew one who had died so, to whom no ray of illumination had come even at the last, although only she and his confessor knew as much. He was a man who had helped more men and women than any other member of his brotherhood; faith seemed to be given him merely to be spent in the service of others.

But he was a man, and she was only a woman. And peace of some kind must surely have approached him, if one believes at all in supernatural influences, from the very atmosphere of the praying souls he stood amongst at Mass, from the mere nearness of the Sacred Host. Evelyn lived in an atmosphere of cynicism and doubt; it pressed upon her, bearing her down now that she had no rival force with which to combat it. And because by the narrow channel through which one doubt enters a thousand may follow, she found that the silence and solitude she had once loved were now thronged with ghosts, ghostly visions of the love she might have had but would not, and the life she might have lived with him she loved, one in companionship, one in ambition, one in the most dear and sacred intimacy of marriage, one in failure, one in success, one in the love of the children whose feet they would never now hear, whose lips would never now meet their own.

There is no hell which equals in intensity the hell of an imagination so vivid as to create being from what is void. When Farquharson left the church with his wife, Evelyn followed them every step of the way home. She looked on to the future; she forced herself to pray for their happiness, while in her heart she knew that happiness would be her death-blow. As she had striven for him in the past, using all the human forces at her command in helping him attain the thing he wished, so she strove now to make herself desire that he should have the best life has to offer, not the mere earthly wreath of laurels, but the unfading crown of peace.

But Farquharson, although she did not know it, had a harder task. He had tied himself for life to a woman who violated his every belief, whose nature warred with his at every turn. Realist and man of purpose as he was, his dear belief that in the world somewhere, somehow, there lived a second Margaret Cunningham whom he would ultimately possess, had sweetened all his work since he left Glune. When he met Evelyn he knew the dream was true, and Glune and she were absolutely at one. He pictured her its fitting mistress, visiting every haunt of his childhood, satisfying every memory and tradition, washing away with her tender tears the bitterness that had grown part of his heritage, as labourers would clear away useless timber and refuse, making all wholesome and clean.

Glune was his now again, a princely wedding gift from Calvert and Beadon, but all pleasure in the possession was gone.

A French writer once said that it is impossible to predict of any woman the exact change that marriage will make in her. We have all seen love turn to hate in a few hours under certain circumstances, but there are subtler changes still. Great emotions may bring havoc to certain natures; change comes inevitably, whether the emotions be great or small. Perhaps Dora had cared for Farquharson so far as in her lay before he became her husband, but now he was her property, an object of daily use, as important, perhaps, as her sponge or toothbrush, but quite unworthy of any deep regard. It was better to be with him than without him. It never struck her that she owed him any duty; if she thought about the matter at all it was merely to consider that a beneficent Creator had brought him into being for the special purpose of accompanying her when she wanted him, and transacting the business that she had slurred even as an unmarried woman; investing her money to its best advantage, and paying bills about whose magnitude she no longer felt even the smallest compunction.

With those early days of marriage she was entirely content and satisfied. No doubt of her ability to please him crossed her mind; the useless are invariably self-satisfied. She had mapped out a motor tour which was intended to outdo anything that other brides had accomplished; restless, untiring, she swept Farquharson on from place to place, great towns and cities whose very stones breathed glory and mystery, under the shadows of mountains which at night looked cold and full of awe, types of the crushing power that seemed to rule men's destinies, but which were warmed and quickened to life by the first gleam of the morning sun. Beauty, tradition, mystery, these things meant nothing to Dora, and Farquharson, who longed to stay, was openly derided. Of late years he had had little or no time to spare for the love of nature which had trained him as a boy; he steeped his soul in colour which she did not even see.

They went from big hotel to big hotel; nights spent in little village inns bored Dora inexpressibly. Day after day she went out of their road to buy the English papers. If their tour was not mentioned in them she flung them aside; when it was, she collected the cuttings eagerly. Farquharson realized that for his wife the meaning of life was resolved into a single hope—that the glare of publicity should be for ever upon them. He thought of the future. He could picture her at Glune, entertaining the Press, dragging out his relics, giving chapter and verse succinctly of all those dear records which had made him what he was. She would gossip with the villagers, she would leave no stone unturned to find out all about his childhood, and then repeat it at her next afternoon call. Nothing was sacred to her, and now for Evelyn's sake he had learned to look upon women as sacred, and to try to understand something even of his mother's nature. Women like Dora would drag her memory and his brother's in the dust that they might make suitable headlines for an "interview."

It was for this he had bartered his dream—for this and to save a woman's honour.

Well, there was work to do; thank God for work. Daily routine has saved many a man's brain from snapping, before now.

Farquharson returned to town after six weeks' absence to find great arrears and accumulation of work, which he welcomed. Various by-elections were taking place all over the country; the issue of the next election mainly depended upon the people's decision concerning Tariff ReformversusFree Trade. Since the great Protectionist leader was unable through illness to carry on the contest, Farquharson was appealed to on all sides as the worthiest exponent of the cause. He was invited to speak in the north, in the midlands, south and west alike.

In Taorna, too, there were difficulties. The position of the man he had left to act for him wanted strengthening. The Council for once was undecided; Farquharson's message flashed across the sea and was obeyed. Beadon read its terms and smiled.

"Men talk of grit," he said, "but you've got grip. Do you never lose touch of what you've once held?"

"That's a real man," was Hare's comment as he read next morning's paper. "What he has done for Taorna, he can do for England. I am beginning to have hopes for her. One man has saved his nation before now."

That the country was passing through a crisis was apparent. Farquharson had set men talking. His speeches spread dissatisfaction and dissension, and unrest alone will make a nation rise. The Ministry sent its best men to oppose him; in one important ward it was even rumoured that the Liberals had bribed men to heckle and annoy the candidate whom he supported. But on the night in question it was Farquharson who faced them, having persuaded his somewhat timid follower to plead temporary illness. And as he spoke better than he had ever spoken before, even his enemies were silenced.

Up in the north, that hot-bed of Liberalism, men weighed his words and were discomfited. It was their force, their overwhelming conviction which told with these level-headed men of business, who, unlike their Irish neighbours across the sea, were seldom swayed by impulse or carried away by enthusiasm. In Rowan, the nearest town to Bruchill, a Radical constituency from time immemorial, a meeting was held eventually, at which it was decided to ask Farquharson to stand in place of the retiring candidate. The news came at breakfast. It touched him very deeply; he had waited for this, hoping against hope, and refusing other invitations against the wishes of his party. He handed it to Dora without comment.

She flung it down.

"A trumpery second-rate place like that! You'll refuse, of course," she said.

Farquharson took his seat in the House as Member for Rowan three weeks later. After that matters moved more dramatically than usual in the undramatic House of Commons. Amongst its members may be found a great crowd of wavering and irresponsible beings delighted to identify themselves with a real leader; they followed Farquharson like sheep. A certain Bill, just brought forward, had roused the nation's indignation; it touched all classes, since every insurance office held large shares in the especial traffic which it threatened. The Bill gave Farquharson an early opportunity of taking his stand in the House, and he made the most of it.

A few weeks later, in a crowded assembly representative not only of British but of foreign interest, as the Strangers' and the Speaker's Galleries were both full, Beadon proposed a vote of censure on the Government, which was seconded by Farquharson in a speech that turned the scale. The motion was carried by an overwhelming majority. The inevitable General Election followed, and event followed event in quick succession. Conservative agencies mustered all their forces, and Farquharson was bidden to speak in every direction. The pendulum swung round, and the Conservatives returned to power with a gain of twelve seats on the last amazing Liberal majority of three and a half years before.

CHAPTER II

"If glory does not intoxicate you continually, do not stand beneath her banners."—THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.

"Historians and the Press make the mistake," said Hare, "of treating the nation as a party. She is an individual, subject to fluctuations of health and reason, capable, like a true woman, of reaching any height or any depth. She is baffling, inconsistent, base, and noble within a breath. Wise men predict her rise or fall according to her temperament and environment. Look at Spain. Melancholy to the roots of her being, mysterious, ardent—she has those qualities which attain to the utmost height of glory for a while, then decline. The Escorial shows one side of the nation; much the same brooding silence and enmity as were the hall-marks of the Inquisition. I doubt if any man or woman can fully understand what made inquisitors act as they did until they have been to Spain. There is no power so cruel as that of a faith which literally obeys the scriptural injunction of destroying limb by limb the body which turns to evil and forsakes good. In Grenada you have another side, everything steeped in colour and mystery. Moorish, of course—how few of us realize, by the bye, that Spain was held by the Moors for an even longer period than she has been under the sway of the Spaniards. But Spain needs balance. Till she gets it she will never be a great nation. Take Italy, again. Had she cultivated her pagan characteristics, as opposed to the qualities which priests would tell you make for ultimate happiness, she would have done better. As it is, she is rebellious, chaotic, a mass of intrigue and suspicion, unreliable and weak. Germany—ah! there's a power to be reckoned with, scarcely, in my mind, to fear. Her death-blow is ambition. She is a one-man country, and one man is liable to err. France is a house divided against itself; a nation of charming women and irreligious men. In her dissensions our security lies. Russia"—he shrugged his shoulders—"with her internal troubles and her exchequer at so low an ebb, we need not fear her. In the future aspect of the Alliance, I fancy China and Japan united may be our bitter enemies. Theirs is a waiting game. At Berlin and Paris and London you will find students from these countries assimilating all that we can teach them, wisely using the best means that other nations can furnish for their own ends. You have the dominant characteristics of different types in every case. The real diplomatist deals rather with the Russian, the Italian, the Spaniard, than with Russia, Italy, and Spain."

"Quite a good lesson in foreign affairs at first hand," said Lady Wereminster, turning to her neighbour, Meavy, who, a disappointed man, had had to resign his post through ill-health. "Given, if I mistake not, to some end. Has anything unusual struck you about our little party to-night?"

Meavy looked round.

"Calvert, our host—Farquharson and his wife, Creagh, Beadon, Hare, the Brands, your husband, you and myself—your sex is in the minority, Lady Wereminster."

"Precisely the same party that was down at Creagh to meet Mr. Farquharson on his first introduction to English social life," said Lady Wereminster. "That was a year ago. Since then——"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Tides ebb and flow, men come and go," quoted Meavy dreamily.

"One man's arrived," said Lady Wereminster. "A year ago we were bemoaning the drowsiness of the Empire. She has awakened now. I suppose, to carry on Mr. Hare's simile, she has had a good shaking. Every one needs it in his day."

"I'm sureIdon't," said Dora Farquharson, breaking in. "Richard, do scold Lady Wereminster. She says I need shaking—I'm sure I don't, do I?"

"Oh, if we all got our deserts——" put in Hare somewhat grimly.

"Now Richard needs shaking if you like," continued Dora, who had begun, since marriage, to consider herself something of a wit. "He is the mostimpossiblehusband. Always off somewhere, at anybody's beck and call but mine. A dear boy, of course, but hopeless to live with. If he had married an unamiable wife I don't know what he would have done. When he's at home, he always says he is too busy to be disturbed."

"You don't agree with the axiom that women ought to marry men they dislike because it is the only way of avoiding them, then?" said Lady Wereminster.

Dora simpered.

"Oh no. I was always romantic—just the opposite to Richard. Not that I want to complain of you, old boy." She leant across the table and tapped her husband on the arm. "You're quite a good sort in your way; you don't mind your little wife chaffing you occasionally, do you?"

"No man is a hero to his—wife," Creagh misquoted gently.

Lady Wereminster flashed.

"Don't tar us all with the same brush. There are wives and wives, remember; most of us ought to go through a training school for marriage. I'm sure useless subjects enough are taught in modern schools. 'How to be a good wife' would be an attractive variety."

"Modern girls' schools are becoming more like boys'—delightful playgrounds."

"I approve of hockey and the rest in their way," said Lady Wereminster. "If the modern woman would only take her marriage as seriously as she does her games she might even bring human nature into repute again. Marriage is the only profession which a woman enters with absolutely no doubt of her competency. She may be the most irresponsible creature in the world, but she thinks the art of ruling a household is like love or measles—easily caught. I don't know how it is in your Church, Evelyn, but in ours no spiritual director would dream of suggesting advice in such a matter unless he were directly asked to interfere. And yet the duties are apparent. Any woman may make or mar any man with whom she is in daily contact. A woman can drag a man down in more ways than one. A wife can belittle her husband at every turn—can, by persistently treating him as an inferior in his own house, end by making him inferior. She can swamp his energy with her idleness, freeze his love of work with her indifference, fritter his money away on trifles until he loses all desire to save for a rainy day, deny him pleasure and outlet at every turn. I have no sympathy for such wives when their husbands leave them. In many cases, indeed, they would never stay but for the children."

"'A training school for wives founded by the Countess of Wereminster,'" said Brand maliciously. "High fees, of course. Shall we draw up the prospectus now? Will you accept my wife and Mrs. Farquharson as teachers, Lady Wereminster?"

"Delighted—if you'll agree to go in for the necessary examination as a husband," said Lady Wereminster promptly.

"'We do not what we ought,What we ought not, we do,And lean upon the thoughtThat chance will bring us through,'"

"'We do not what we ought,

What we ought not, we do,

And lean upon the thought

That chance will bring us through,'"

suggested Creagh, smiling.

"Talk of duties," interposed Mrs. Farquharson, raising her voice, "mine are simply appalling. They were bad enough in my father's house; they are a hundred times worse now. But, of course, in my position they would necessarily be very arduous. And in the future—oh, but I mustn't talk of that; that's a political secret."

"Rather an open one," said Brand very softly. "We have eyes and ears, Mrs. Farquharson. Your husband deserves the splendid luck you have brought him."

"Oh well, it is a good thing, isn't it?" said Dora proudly. "But how did you know? Of course it has been rumoured for some time, but my father only decided things to-day, and we don't want it in the papers for another twenty-four hours."

"It's an appointment in which his peculiar talents will tell," said Brand, drawing a bow at a venture.

"At first it was a toss-up between that and the Colonies," said Dora. "But—but in the present state of——"

"Foreign affairs?" suggested Brand.

"They thought—yes, they thought he would be more useful in that Office."

"Yes, it's a big post," said Brand abstractedly. He looked at his watch. "I wonder how much longer we're going to sit here. I have to make my excuses early to Calvert to-night; a friend of mine is ill, and I promised to go to him straight after dinner." He lowered his voice again. "I tell you this in confidence, of course. My wife has taken out a patent in the art of little human kindnesses, you know; she doesn't like it infringed even by me." He smiled a little pathetically.

Dora put out her hand.

"I know how good you are—no one better. Why, you even helped me once!"

"Ah, that—that was nothing. But some day I shall come upon you for the fulfilment of your promise, Mrs. Farquharson."

Dora looked up, vaguely startled. Brand's tone was intentionally grave.

"My promise? Oh, I remember. Of course I'll do what I can. There's the signal to move," she said hurriedly, gathering her fan and gloves together.

Farquharson stifled a sigh of relief as his wife left the room.

"That woman's insufferable," said Lady Wereminster. "How the man stands her I don't know. She trades on the patience that she knows he must possess to have reached his present position. Any woman, alas! has it in her personal power to make life unendurable for her husband, but I know of no surer method than persistently to wound his dearest susceptibilities. Dora treats Richard like a schoolboy—she would degrade a grocer if she lived with him long enough. 'My this, my that'—she makes me sick One feels tempted to remind her that the wife. who lays so frequent a stress on the possessive pronoun where her husband and children and house are concerned, is always suspected of holding them insecurely. Did you ever hear the story of the man who married a rich, vulgar wife, inclined to talk of 'my money, my garden, my furniture my dinner party,' etc., by way of pointing out the fact that she had paid for them? Before a room full of people one day she asked him, after some temporary absence, where he had been. 'Trying on your new trousers, which have just come back from the tailor's,' he answered. I hope she laid the lesson to heart."

"I wish you'd learn to take care of yourself, Evelyn," she went on, inconsequently, peering sharply at Mrs. Brand. "There ought to be some one at hand who would take care of you, and pet you, and carry you off to the country every time those hollows come under your eyes. You think too much, Evelyn. And unless you can kill thought, thought kills you, remember. That's why light amusements that take one out of oneself are popular."

"I get a lot of change one way and another," said Evelyn. "I go out, I mean."

"It's no good to go out if you don't go out with the right person," said Lady Wereminster. "One has always to pay a price for happiness, although it does not seem to cost much at the time. Women sign a blank cheque for it—a most foolish proceeding. It's filled in by the recipient, and when the amount falls due there's nothing left to meet it. But we are poor economists, and even spend ourselves if we have nothing else to spend."

"I can't have you two monopolizing each other all the evening," complained Dora Farquharson, looking up, aggrieved. "I wish those men would come up. How long they are. It's always so dull without men. And you must both be longing to be let in to this evening's secret—oh, perhaps you don't even know there is a secret?"

"If you know it, it can no longer be called one," said Lady Wereminster tartly.

Dora bridled.

"I think a woman should begin as she means to go on, in marriage. I told Richard from the first that I expected to know everything about his work—all the secrets, I mean; not the dull part."

"And what did Mr. Farquharson say?"

"Say!" Dora laughed. "Why, he never says anything. I suppose the so-called great people are usually dull and commonplace in private life. I always tell Richard that if I had only been allowed a trial trip in marriage I should never have said yes. He's a dreadful old stay-at-home, you know; doesn't really care to go out or to bother about one at all. He doesn't realize what a change it means to a girl who has been accustomed to a whole train of admirers all her life."

Lady Wereminster put up her lorgnette.

"My dear Dora, don't talk about your youth to a woman who was present at your christening."

"Oh, she can afford to," said Evelyn gently. She slipped her hand into Mrs. Farquharson's. "Are we ever to know the secret, Dora? and is it one that will please us all, or only you?"

"Oh, everybody will know it in forty-eight hours," said Dora, mollified; "but I think you are to be told to-night. It was Mr. Calvert's plan; he thought the announcement would make rather a charming climax to the evening. What an old cat Lady Wereminster is," she added, watching her opponent withdraw to a distant corner and settle herself comfortably in an arm-chair with the evening paper. "She never has a kind word for anybody. Fancy her trying to snub me; luckily I can afford to overlook that sort of thing in my position. Why, they say Richard may be anything at this rate. Of course, after a time I shall make father resign in his favour; he's nearly sixty-five, and no man's really worth anything in politics at that age. Besides, he should make way for Richard. I'm very ambitious, you know; there's nothing I don't mean to get for my husband. Look what I've done for him already. He would never have been heard of but for that Albert Hall meeting. Oh, it's no good talking of Taorna. Who in the world cares about Taorna except a few people on the Stock Exchange? I think it's only my duty to impress upon Richard a proper sense of the obligation he's under, don't you?"

There is a limit to endurance.

"Obligation?" cried Evelyn indignantly. Mrs. Farquharson started. There was something in the other woman's voice that struck even her as unusual. "You've married a man in a million, Dora; a man in whose dictionary the word impossible is unknown; whom people are proud to know; whom you told me you loved. I don't believe he owes you anything, or any one else for that matter. If he did, there could be no possible question of obligation. In real love there's no bickering over trifles; you give, if you must call it giving, as you breathe, and as easily. Oh, Dora, Dora"—she put her hand on the girl's arm again—"don't make the mistake most women do and quarrel over the ridiculous difference in the change of a letter or two between meum and tuum!"

Mrs. Farquharson rose, with an assumption of dignity.

"My dear Evelyn, if I didn't know you so well, I should really think you were jealous. Never mind, dear; I'll try to forget it. I was always one of your best friends, you know. By the bye, would you mind just putting a pin in my waist-band? It seems to have slipped somehow. Yes, it's a pretty frock, isn't it? But Paquin's getting very tiresome; I had to send up for it three times. They said it took five women forty-eight hours each, sitting up all night, merely to finish that embroidery. That alone cost six guineas a yard—but it looks nice, doesn't it? I always think you look so nice in that dear old frock of yours—you really do wear your things wonderfully, Evelyn."

"Time makes one's dresses become trusted friends," said Evelyn wearily. How useless either to protest with or advise such a woman! "Was that your husband's voice?"

As the men entered she moved again to Lady Wereminster's side, and Meavy, in obedience to her signal, crossed to Mrs. Farquharson.

"Well, what do you think of my boy's progress?" said Calvert. He seated himself between the two women, and Creagh and Beadon joined the group. "That last speech of his added a very important seat to your long list of victories. I'm a Liberal myself, as you know, but I can't say I was sorry we were beaten on that occasion."

Creagh laughed.

"For once I was right, eh, Beadon? Do you remember one afternoon when we were talking about the man and the hour?"

"You have the man, but the hour has not yet struck," said Hare gravely. "After triumph, reaction."

"You mean that in our national cocksureness lies our peril?" said Beadon. "We say we expect a fight, and then go to sleep on feather-beds in comfortable security."

"I often think we are like careless housemaids," said Lady Wereminster, "who let the dust accumulate in corners, and bitterly resent the necessity of cleaning them out."

"The truth is," said Hare, "we're getting too luxurious. Even for sport, men don't deny themselves now as they did at the beginning of the century. Love of luxury has spread even to the lower classes. A district messenger boy thinks himself very ill-used if he hasn't got his own bicycle, and our grooms' sons learn the piano. We make extravagance our god, not duty. Palatial hotels and motor-cars between them have killed home life in England. People won't realize it's a much greater compliment to be asked by their friends to dine in private houses instead of restaurants."

"I know that modern girls spend more on their dress in a month than I did in a year," said Lady Wereminster. "I remember a young niece telling me that it was impossible to go through a London season with less than twenty-five new evening frocks. I used to wear book-muslins, and looked a great deal nicer in them then, Wereminster says, than my own great-grandchildren do now in hand-painted chiffon."

"It's the tendency of the age," said Hare; "our class sins worse than any other in that respect. Luxury is a blight which has fallen upon the world; within the last ten years it has grown to be part and parcel of our existence. In the old days politicians and diplomatists took their duties seriously, and never grumbled at hard work. If a man does eight hours' work now he thinks himself ill-used, and goes to the country to recuperate. Duty is irksome—it always was—but fifty years ago men faced it as a force to be reckoned with, not to evade. Our blood was blood then, and ran red. Moral anæmia had not paled it."

"The good old days," said Creagh, smiling. "Let us hope our grandchildren will talk of us as we are now talking of our forbears, and bend the knee before our memories as we do now before the memories of our heroes. Beadon's the man to go for, Hare; we are in his hands. Tell him to preach your gospel to his Ministry, to impress upon them the policy of constant energy and watchfulness, as opposed to drastic reforms which, alas! too often end in sloth."

"The policy of the late Government reminds one of Lady Wereminster's simile," said Beadon. "The Ministers certainly swept out a good many rooms, but they left them bare."

"Isn't it nearly time to tell our news?" said Calvert. "I have a littlebonne bouchefor you, Mrs. Brand—I know how much it will mean to you, the woman to whom Richard owes so much. Neither he nor I forget it, if you have." He took her hand, and patted it affectionately.

Evelyn could not answer. There was a mist before her eyes.

"By the way, what I am about to say is in the strictest confidence," said Beadon. "But where is Mr. Brand? Oh, he had to leave early, I remember. I don't want it to reach the Press for fully forty-eight hours, as Richard's is the first appointment to be filled in my new Ministry. He is to be the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; the appointment has only just been confirmed. I think nothing can suit him better. His gift of languages, his tact and diplomacy and unwearying patience—all will tell to their fullest."

Lady Wereminster clapped her hands.

"Hurrah! How glad I am! Come here, Mr. Farquharson, to be congratulated. Now you'll go on from strength to strength."

"I'm delighted, my dear fellow," said Creagh, his face glowing with satisfaction. "It's the best thing for the country. But I don't know that I envy our neighbours across the sea, though; they'll tackle a rough customer in you."

"Good," was Hare's comment; "you deserve it.

"Now we can sleep in peace," said Lord Wereminster benignly, "and sing 'I fear no foe' with some conviction."

Back to Index Next