Grimsby Street, where Mrs. Grace, Edith's grandmother, had lodgings, to which Edith Grace had been driven that morning from Victoria, is one of the humble, dull, dingy, thoroughfares formed of small private houses in Chelsea. The ground here is very low and very flat. The houses have all half-sunken basements, bow windows on the first floor and two floors above. They are all painted of the same light, washed-out drab. They all have light drab Venetian blinds. All have tiny areas paved with light drab flags; all three steps rising six or eight inches each from the front gate to the front door. All have six steps descending from the flagged passage to the dark drab, blistered low house-door under the steps. The aspect of dull, respectable mediocrity of the whole monotonous street is heart-breaking. The sun, even of this cloudless June day, did not brighten it. The sun cannot make washed-out drab look pleasant. From end to end is not a tree or shrub or creeper, not even a single red brick to break the depressing uniformity; the chimney-pots are painted drab too. The area-railings are all black. All the doors are the colour of unpolished oak. The knockers flat and shapeless and bulged with blistered paint.
Mrs. Grace lived at Number 28, half-way down the street. She rented the first floor unfurnished. She had lost some money in the disaster which swallowed up her granddaughter's little all. The utmost economy now became necessary for the old woman, and she had resolved to give up the tiny room until now Edith's.
Mrs. Grace was a tall, well-made woman, of seventy years, very upright and youthful in manner for one of her years. She was of quick nature, and looked upon all matters from an extremely optimist or pessimist point of view. This disposition had little or no effect upon her spirits. It afforded her as much satisfaction to consider the direst, as the pleasantest, results. She was uniformly good-natured, and always saw the hand of beneficent Providence in calamity.
That Thursday morning when Edith alighted from the cab, Mrs. Grace was sitting in her front room window looking out at the placid, drab street. With an exclamation of surprise and dismay she ran down stairs, let the girl in, embraced and kissed her vehemently, crying, "My darling! my darling child! What has happened? Is there no such place at all as Eltham House, or has it been burned down?"
Edith burst into tears. She was not given to weeping, but the relief at finding herself at home, after the anxiety and adventures through which she had gone, broke her down, and, with her arm round the old woman's waist, she led Mrs. Grace upstairs to the sitting-room.
"Sit down, dear. Sit down and have your cry out. Take off your hat and rest yourself. Have you had your breakfast? Did you find Mrs. Leigh dead? or has there been a railway accident? Have your cry out. I am sorry I ever let you away from my sight. You are not hurt, are you? Where is your luggage? I declare that cabman has driven off with it. I must get someone to run after him. Did you take his number?"
"No, mother." Edith called her grandmother simply mother. It was shorter than grandmother, and more respectful than granny. "I have no luggage with me. I left it at Eltham House. No accident has happened. Simply I did not like the place. I could not stop there. I felt strange and lonely and afraid, and I came back. I ran away."
"And quite right too, dear. I am very, very sorry I ever let you go away from me. I am sure I do not know how I have got on since you left me. I thought of telegraphing you to come back. But it's all right now that you are here again, and I shall take good care you do not go off from me any more until some fairy prince comes for my child. We shall be able to live some way together, dear. With a little economy we need not be separated. Your room is just as you left it; nothing stirred. I hadn't the courage to go into it. Go into your own room, pet, and take off your things." She took Edith by the hand and led her to the little room which had been hers so long, and which seemed so secure after that large chamber in which she had spent so many minutes of anxiety and fear at Eltham House.
Then, in few words, she told all to the old woman, omitting the visit of Leigh to the room when he believed her to be gone. She explained her flight by saying this Mr. Leigh had wearied her with attentions. She said nothing about his having asked her to let him kiss her patriarchally. She wound up by declaring she could not endure him and his objectionable devotion, and that she had come away by the first train, having left a note to say the place did not suit her, and that her luggage was to be sent after her. Then she told of the loss of her ticket and Mr. Leigh's opportune appearance, and last of all, of his promise or threat of calling.
The story, as it met the ears of Mrs. Grace, did not show Leigh in a very offensive light. No doubt he had been at Eltham House when Edith arrived, and that gave the girl an unpleasant shock, for which she was not prepared, and which coloured all her subsequent thoughts of him. She had been a little put out, or offended, or frightened. She had gone to her room, locked the door and slipped away back to London next morning. That was all, and the old woman made much of getting the girl home again, and dwelt little on the reason of her flight. She put down the cause of flight to an over-sensitive young girl confronted for the first time with vulgar admiration and the cold world beyond home.
Edith confessed to have eaten no breakfast, and slept nothing during the night, so Mrs. Grace insisted upon her taking food, and lying down awhile in her room. Then she came away, shutting the door softly behind her, and sat in the window-place of the sitting-room to think over the affair.
Thought with Mrs. Grace was never logical or consequential, and at the present moment the delight of regaining Edith coloured her ideas with pleasant hues. It had been sorely against her grain she allowed the girl to go from her at all. Nothing but her granddaughter's emphatic wish would have brought her to consent to it. Before they lost their money they had had enough for modest luxury in these cheap lodgings. All Edith's money had been engulfed, and some of her own. There was still enough for the existence of two. Edith was not fit for the world, and this experience afforded convincing evidence that no other experiment of the kind should be tried.
When the little man, Leigh had come to arrange about Edith, she looked on him with scant favour. He was about to take the child from her. He had told Edith he would call later to-day to ask how she had got on. She should receive him with pleasure. No doubt he had persecuted Edith a little, and the girl had been put out and frightened. But was not this very persecution the means of driving Edith back to her home? And were not his attentions not only a proof, if proofs were needed, of the girl's beauty, but also of the unadvisability of letting her stray from her side? That argument would be conclusive with Edith when they talked the matter over quietly. If a man of this man's appearance had, under the potent spell of her beauty, so far forgotten himself as to offer her marked attentions, how much more persistent and emphatic would be the homage drawn towards her from other men. Her good looks had turned the head of this Leigh until he forgot his deformities. Could she expect other men, men of fair proportions, would be more insensible or less persistent?
Mrs. Grace did not believe Edith had any insuperable objection to marriage, or the notion of a suitor. But she knew the girl's pride of family would prevent her ever attorning to the attentions of an admirer who was not a gentleman. The Graces of Gracedieu, in Derbyshire, had come over with the Norman William, and although her own husband had been only the poor cadet of that house, and her son, Edith's father, a lawyer, who died young, leaving little for his widow and orphan, Edith was as proud of her lineage as though through her veins ran "all the blood of all the Howards." Indeed Edith had somewhat strained and fantastic theories of family and breeding and blood. She had always impressed upon Edith that she was a lady by birth and breeding. Edith was disposed to assume that she was a duchess by descent. There was no haughtiness or arrogance in her grand-daughter; the girl was extremely simple, and gentle, and good-natured; but she kept aloof from the people round her, not out of disdain, but because of the feeling that she was not of them, that they would not understand her or she them, and that they by her presence would only be made unhappy in reflecting on their own humble origin.
When Edith first declared her resolution of earning her own bread, and going out as a governess or companion, Mrs. Grace had made sure this pride of family or birth would successfully bar the way to any bargain, and when the bargain was struck with Mr. Leigh, she felt confident the arrangement would not last long. The end had come sooner than she had dared to hope, and she was delighted. She was thankful to Leigh for being the cause of Edith's failure to rest from home.
Another aspect of the affair was that Edith had come away from Eltham House suddenly, without leave, and without notice. This Mr. Leigh was to call. If he chose to be disagreeable he might urge that breach of contract and something unpleasant might arise from Edith's hasty act. The best thing to do was to see the man when he came, and be polite to him. If he had been a little impudent, over attentive, that was not a very great fault, and all chance of repetition was past. He had been most useful to Edith that morning when she found she had no ticket. Of course, she should pay him the money back--that is, if she had it in the house, which she doubted--and, of course, she should thank him for his goodness to her darling daughter. No duties could be plainer than these. Edith too must apologise for her flight, and thank Mr. Leigh for his kindness to her this morning. That was obviously necessary, and then all the unpleasantness would be as though it had never taken place.
Off and on Mrs. Grace sat at the window until afternoon. At one o'clock she ate a light luncheon; having by a visit to Edith's room found that the girl slept, she let her sleep on. In health, after fatigue and excitement, no one should be waked for food. When the old woman had finished her meal, and the table was cleared by the landlady's daughter who attended upon the lodgers, Mrs. Grace took her work and resumed her place by the window.
Time slipped away, and she began to think that after all Mr. Leigh might not come, when, lifting her eyes from her work, she saw two men cross the road and approach the house. One of these was the dwarf, the other a complete stranger to her, a tall, powerful-looking young man in a frock-coat and low crowned hat. The two seemed in earnest discourse. Neither looked up. The younger man leant over the elder as if listening intently. They disappeared from view and Mrs. Grace heard them ascend the steps and knock. She hastened to Edith, whom she found just awake and told her Mr. Leigh had arrived. Then she went back to the sitting-room and, when word came up that Mr. Leigh and a friend wished to see her, sent down an invitation for the gentlemen to come up. The two were shown in.
"I do myself, Mrs. Grace, the great pleasure and honour of calling upon you to inquire after Miss Grace, and I have taken the liberty of asking my friend to keep me company," said the little man, bowing profoundly and sweeping the ground with his hat. His tones were most respectful, his manner intensely ceremonious.
Mrs. Grace, waving her hand to a couple of chairs, said: "I am glad to see you and your friend, Mr. Leigh. Will you, please, be seated."
"Mrs. Leigh, my friend, Mr. John Hanbury, whose fame as a public speaker is as wide as the ground covered by the English language."
"Very happy, indeed, to make Mr. Hanbury's acquaintance, and very much honoured by Mr. Hanbury's call," said the old lady bowing again, and then sitting down with another gesture towards the chairs.
The two men sat down. Hanbury felt uncomfortable at Leigh's bombastic introduction, but at the moment he was completely powerless. He felt indignant at this man calling him a friend, but Leigh had it in his power to make him seem ridiculous over a good part of London; there was nothing for this but to grin and bear it.
"Mr. Hanbury and I happening to have business this way, and I remembering my promise to call and enquire how Miss Grace is after her journey this morning, I thought I'd presume on your kindness and bring him with me."
Mrs. Grace said no apology was necessary, that she was glad Mr. Leigh had brought his friend.
Hanbury winced again. What had this man brought him here for? What was the meaning of his hocus-pocus talk about miracle gold. Was this poor fellow as misshapen in mind as in body? Who was this old woman? Could she be the woman he had spoken of? Nonsense. She was a lady, no doubt, not the kind of woman you would expect to find in such a street of Chelsea, but what then? What of her?
"I hope Miss Grace has taken no harm of her fright?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Leigh? I am sure I don't know what she would have done only for your opportune appearance on the scene. Here she is, to thank you in person."
The two men rose.
The door opened and Edith Grace, pale and impassive, entered the room.
Hanbury made a step forward, and cried, "Dora!"
The little man laid his hand on the young man's arm and held him back.
Hanbury looked down at the dwarf in anger and glanced quickly at the girl.
"My grand-daughter, Miss Grace--Mr. John Hanbury, whose speeches I have often asked you to read for me, Edith."
Hanbury fell back a pace and bowed mechanically like one in a dream. He looked from the dwarf to the girl and from the girl to the dwarf, but could find no word to say, had no desire to say a word. He was completely overcome by amazement. The presence of five thousand people, with eyes fixed in expectation upon him, would have acted as a powerful stimulant to composed exaltation, but the presence of this one girl half stunned him.
He was dimly conscious of sitting down and hearing a long explanation about trains and disinclination to leave home and regrets and cabs, but nothing of it conveyed a clear idea to his mind. He gathered vaguely that this girl, who was one of the Graces of Gracedieu in Derbyshire, had arrived in London that morning without ticket or money, and the dwarf happened providentially to be in the same train and paid the fare for her.
What he heard left little or no impression upon him except when she spoke. All his attention was fixed in wondering regard upon her face and form.
It was not until Leigh and he were in the street once more that he recovered from the shock and surprise.
"That is the most marvellous thing I ever saw in all my life," said he, as the two walked away.
"Yes," said Leigh, "the most marvellous."
"I can scarcely believe it even yet," said Hanbury in a tone of reverie.
"When you fainted in Welbeck Place," began the dwarf with great emphasis and deliberation.
"Ay," said Hanbury with a start and in a voice of sharp and painful wakefulness. For a while he had forgotten why he had so uncouth a companion.
"When you fainted in Welbeck Place," repeated Leigh coldly, steadily, "I went over to where you were lying, took off my hat to your young lady----"
"Eh?" interrupted Hanbury, with a grimace. "Great Heavens," he thought, "is Dora Ashton, grand-daughter of Lord Byngfield, to be called 'my young lady' by this creature? Why doesn't he call her my young woman, at once? Ugh!"
"I was saying when you interrupted me," said Leigh sternly (it was plain to Hanbury this man was not going to overlook any point of advantage in his position) "that when you were lying in a dead faint in Welbeck Place, and I went to offer help, I took off my hat to your young lady and said, 'Miss Grace, can I be of any use?' or words to that effect."
"I do not wonder." He forgot for a moment his annoyance and disgust. "It is the most astonishing likeness I ever saw in all my life. It may be possible to detect a difference between the two when they are side by side, but I could not tell one from the other when apart."
"Hah! You could not tell one from the other. I could not when I first saw your young lady----"
"May I ask you to say Miss Ashton, or if you would still further oblige me, not to speak of the lady at all."
"Oh-ho! That's the sort of thing it is, is it? Hah! Sly dog! Knowing shaver! Hot 'un!"
Hanbury's face blazed, and for a moment he seemed about to forget himself, turn on the dwarf and rend him. Making a powerful effort he controlled his rage. "You are disastrously wrong, and you give me great pain."
"Very good. I'll do you a favour and take your word for it. Hah!"
This insolence was intolerable, and yet--and yet--and--yet it must be borne with for a while.
"I was saying, when you interrupted me a second time, that I could not tell the difference between the two, when I saw Miss Ashton this afternoon.NowI could."
"Indeed?" said Hanbury, with frigid politeness. At first this wretched creature had been all silky fur and purring sounds; now he seemed all claws and hisses.
"Yes. Miss Ashton has more go more vitality, more vigour, moreverve, more enterprise, more enthusiasm, more divinity."
Hanbury turned round and gazed at the hunchback with astonishment. There was the hurry of eloquence in his words, and the flash of enthusiasm in his eyes. This man was not an ordinary man, physically or intellectually. Hanbury instantly altered his mental attitude towards the dwarf. He no longer assumed the pose of a superior, the method of a master. He recognised an equal. As Leigh had named the qualities of Dora, one by one, Hanbury had felt that thrill which always goes through a man of eloquent emotions when listening to felicitous description. In the judicious and intelligent use of a term there is freemasonry among intellectual men. It is by the phrase, and not the thought, that an intellectual man recognises a fellow. Thought is common, amorphous; with words the intellectual man models it into forms of beauty.
"I do not understand you," said Hanbury. "How do you connect vigour and divinity? The great gods did nothing."
"Ay, the great gods of the Greeks did nothing. But here in the North our gods are hard-working. You, I know, are a Tory."
"Well, it is somewhat doubtful what I am."
"I am for the people."
"So am I."
"But we differin totoas to the means by which the people may be helped."
"Yes,in toto."
"Now then, here is the position: You are a Tory and I am a Radical."
"I do not call myself a Tory. Indeed, I came into this neighbourhood to-day in the democratic interest, if I may put it in that way. But shall we get anything out of a political discussion?"
"I daresay not."
"Then shall we say good-bye to one another here? I may rely on your keeping this whole affair quiet?"
"But you have not heard my request yet. I told you I could show you something more wonderful than mystery gold. I told you I could show you a more wonderful thing than even miracle gold. I have shown that to you. Now I want my hush money."
"What is it?"
"An introduction to Miss Ashton."
"An introduction to Miss Ashton!"
"Yes. Ah, look! That is the first poster of an evening paper I have seen to-day. How dull the evening papers are, to be sure."
"When do you wish to meet Miss Ashton?"
"Now. There never was any time past or future as good as the present."
"Come with me."
Hanbury turned west and led the way. He smiled grimly but said nothing. Here was poetic justice for Dora with a vengeance. Here was Nemesis in the person of this misshapen representative of the people. Here was a bridegroom of Democracy from a Chelsea slum. She had been anxious to see the people of the slums and now one of the people was anxious to see her. Poetic justice was fully vindicated or would be when he introduced this stunted demagogue to the daughter of a hundred earls.
For a while Leigh said nothing, so that Hanbury had ample time for thought. Two years ago he had made his first appearance on a platform as a Tory Democrat. His own birth and surroundings had been of neither the very high nor the very low. His father, years dead, William Hanbury, had been a merchant in Fenchurch Street, his mother, still living, was daughter of the late Sir Ralph Preston, Baronet, and brother of the present General Sir Edward Preston. John Hanbury did not know much about his father's family. For two or three generations the Hanburys had lived as private gentlemen of modest means, until some whim took his father, and he went into business in Fenchurch Street and made money. John was the only child, and had a couple of thousand a year of his own, and the reversion of his mother's money. He was thus well off for a young man, and quite independent. He had money enough to adopt any career or pursue none.
Up to a couple of years ago he had been roving in taste. Then he made a few speeches from Tory Democratic platforms and people said he was a born orator, and born orators, by perversion of thought, are supposed to be born statesmen as well. Hence he had made up his mind to devote himself to politics. But up to this time he had few strong political views and no political faith.
He seemed to be about growing into a philosophical politician, that is, a politician useful at times to each party and abhorred by both.
In feeling and tastes John Hanbury was an aristocrat. Although his father had been in business he had never sunk to the level of a City man, whose past and present was all of the City. William Hanbury had been known before his migration into the regions of commerce, and William Hanbury's wife was a baronet's daughter, and no baronet of yesterday either, and John Hanbury had had two grandfathers who did not work, and furthermore the money which William Hanbury put into business had not, as far as could be traced, come out of business.
It was about a year after John Hanbury made his first platform speech that he became very friendly with the Ashtons. He had known Dora's father for a little while as a member of a non-political West End club. When Mr. Ashton saw that the young man had been haranguing from a platform he took him in hand one day at luncheon at the club and pointed out that meddling in politics meant suicide to happiness. "Both my wife and my daughter are violent politicians; but I will encourage no politics while I am at home. A man's house is to cover and shield him from the storms of the elements, and the storms of parties, and I will have no wrangle under the house tree. I don't want to say anything against politicians, but I don't want to have anything to do with them."
"And what side do Mrs. Ashton and Miss Ashton hold with?"
"The wrong side, of course, sir; they are women. Let us say no more of them. I do not know what their side is called by the charlatans and jugglers of to-day. I hear a jargon going on often when it is fancied I am not attending to what is being said. With everything I hear I adopt a good and completely impartial plan. I alter all the epithets before the nouns to their direct opposite. This, sir, creates as great a turmoil and confusion in my own head as though I were an active politician; but, sir, I save my feelings and retain my self-respect by giving no heed, taking no interest, saying no word. When a man adopts politics he takes a shrew, an infernal shrew, sir, for a wife."
The Honourable Mrs. Ashton (she was daughter of Lord Byngfield) saw the summarised report of Hanbury's speech and immediately took an intense interest in the young man. From the printed reports and the verbal accounts she got of him she conceived a high expectation of the future before him, if he were taken in hand at once, for, alas! was he not on the wrong path?
Accordingly she made up her mind to lie in wait for him and catch him and convert him or rather divert him, for as yet he was not fully committed to any party. She met him in the drawing-room of a friend. She invited him to her small old house in Curzon Street, and when he came set about the important work of conversion or diversion.
Mrs. Ashton was a tall, thin woman of forty-five with very great vitality and energy. How so frail and slender a body sufficed to restrain so fiery and irrepressible a spirit was a puzzle. It seemed as though the working of the spirit would shake the poor body to pieces. It was impossible to be long near her without catching some of her enthusiasm, and at first John Hanbury, being a young man and quite unused to female propagandists, was almost carried away. But in time he recovered his breath and found himself firm on his feet and at leisure to look around him.
Then he saw Miss Ashton, Dora Ashton, and she was another affair altogether, and affected him differently. He fell in love with Dora. She certainly was the loveliest and most sprightly girl whose hand his hand had ever touched. Notwithstanding the fiery earnestness of her mother, and the statement of her father that his wife and daughter were politicians, she was no politician in a party sense. She was an advocate of progress and the poor, subjects which all parties profess to have at heart, but prominence to which justly or unjustly gives a decidedly Liberal if not Radical tinge to the banner carried by their advocates.
In time Dora began to show no objection to the company of John Hanbury and later the two became informally engaged. They were both opposed to affording the world food for gossip and they agreed to say nothing of their engagement until a very short time before their marriage. They understood one another. That was enough for them. It was certain neither family would object. No question of money was likely to arise. In fact true love would run as smooth as the Serpentine. A little savour of romance and difficulty was imported by a wholly unnecessary secrecy.
John Hanbury had not yet made any distinct profession of political faith. Dora said the man who had not settled his political creed was unfit for matrimony. This was said playfully, but the two agreed it would be advisable for John to take his place in public before he took his place as a householder. At present he lived with his widowed mother, who had for some secret reason or other as great, nay, a greater horror of politics than even Mr. Ashton himself.
Dora had long importuned John to take her through some of the poorer streets of Westminster, the Chelsea district, for instance. She did not mean slumming in the disguise of a factory girl, but just a stroll through a mean but reputable street. Under persistent pressure he consented, and out of this walk to-day had sprung the meeting with this strange being at his side and the meeting with the beautiful girl so astonishingly like Dora.
Dora had asked, insisted in her enthusiastic way, upon piercing this unknown region of Westminster in order to see some of the London poor in the less noisome of their haunts. At the shocking catastrophe which had overtaken the negro, one of the people, he had fainted and fallen, for the purposes of blighting ridicule, into the hands of this man of the people by his side. This man of the people had mistaken Dora for that girl in Grimsby Street and he had mistaken the girl in Grimsby Street for Dora. This man of the people had introduced him to that girl who was so like Dora, and now claimed to be introduced to Dora who was so like that girl. This was indeed the ideal of poetic justice! Dora had been the cause of bringing this man and him together and putting him in this man's power. Dora was an aristocratic advocate of the people. By introducing this man to Dora in Curzon Street he should silence him, thus getting back to the position in which he was before he set out that afternoon and this man should have introduced him to Miss Grace, who was Dora's double, and he should have introduced this man to Dora who was Miss Grace's double.
So far the situation had all the completeness of a mathematic problem, of a worked-out sum in proportion, of a Roland for an Oliver, or a Chinese puzzle.
But over and above there was, for John Hanbury, a little gain, a tiny profit. Dora in her enthusiasm might have no objection to walk through the haunts of the people; how would she like the people to walk into her mother's drawing-room, particularly when the people were represented by the poor, maimed, conceited creature at his side.
John Hanbury suddenly looked down. Leigh was hobbling along laboriously at his side. It all at once struck Hanbury with remorse and pity that he had been walking at a pace in no way calculated for the comfort of his companion. In his absorption he had given no heed to the stunted legs and deformed chest at his side. He slackened his steps and said, with the first touch of consideration or kindness he had yet displayed: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leigh. I fear I have been going too fast."
"Hah!" said the little man, "most young men go too fast."
"I assure you," said he, keeping to the literal meaning of his words, "I was quite unconscious of the rate I was walking at."
"Just so. You forgot me. You were thinking of yourself."
"I am afraid I was not thinking of you."
"Don't bother yourself about me. I am used to be forgotten unless when I can make myself felt. Now you would give a good deal to forget me altogether. Hah!"
"We have not very much farther to go. But I ought to have called a cab."
"And deprived me of the honour of walking beside you! That would have been much more unkind. But I am glad we have not much farther to walk. And you are glad we have not much farther to walk--together. Do you know why you are taking this stroll with me?"
"Oh, yes. It is part of our bargain."
"Ah, the bargain is only an accident. The reason why you are taking this stroll with me is because you do not want to cut a ridiculous figure in the papers."
"No doubt."
"Because you do not want to appear contemptible for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. How would you like to walk from your childhood to your grave the butt and derision of all who set eyes on you?"
Hanbury did not answer the question.
"This little walk I am taking with you now is only a short stage on the long road I am always travelling between lines of people that point and laugh and jeer and grin and howl at me. I am basking in the splendours of your youth and your fame."
Hanbury did not see his way to say anything to this either.
"Have you read much fiction?" asked Leigh after a pause.
"Well, yes," with a laugh. "Government statistics and Blue Books generally." He wanted to alter the current of conversation if possible.
"I don't mean books of fiction dealing with figures of that kind, but works of fiction dealing with figures of another kind. With human figures, for instance? For instance, have you read Hugo's 'Notre Dame'?"
"Yes," with a frown.
"And Dickens's 'Old Curiosity Shop'?"
"Yes," with a shudder.
"And which do you consider the most hideous and loathsome, Quasimodo, Quilp, or Leigh?"
"Mr. Leigh, you surely are not adopting this means of punishing me for my heedlessness in hurrying just now? If so you are adopting an extremely painful way of reminding me of my rudeness."
"Painful means! Painful means! As I live under Heaven, this man is thinking of himself now! Thinking of himself still! He is thinking of the pain it gives him to remember I am a hump-backed cripple, and not of the pain it is to me to be the hump-backed cripple!--to be the owner of the accursed carrion carcase he would spurn into a sewer if he met one openand it were dark!"
Leigh paused and flamed and frothed.
"If you allow yourself to give way to such absurd vagaries as these, how do you expect me to fulfil the final part of our compact?"
"Quite right, Mr. Hanbury. I will moderate my raptures, sir. This is not, as you might say, either the time or place for heroics. The idiot boy is a more engaging part than the iconoclast maniac. The truth is, I have eaten nothing to-day yet, and I am a bit lightheaded. You don't use eau-de-cologne? Few men do. I do. It is very refreshing. Now let us go on. I am quite calm."
They had stopped a minute, and Leigh spilled some perfumed spirit from his small silver flask, and inhaled the spirit noisily.
"Hah! I feel all right again. Speaking of the idiot boy makes me think of asking you if, when you were at school, you had the taste for speaking?"
"Mr. Leigh," said Hanbury severely, "you allow yourself great freedom with liberties."
"Ha-ha-ha! Capital. You are right. I should not have said that. You will try to forgive me. I shall remember your words, though. They would go well in a play. But we must dismiss folly. The weather is too hot for repartee. At least, I find it too hot. Talking of heat reminds me of a furnace, and that brings me back to something I said to you about my having made a discovery or invention in chemistry, which will completely outshine mystery gold. The Italians have a saying that as a man grows old he gives up love, and devotes himself to wine. Love has never been much in my way, and now that I have passed the bridge, thepons asinorumover which all men who are such asses as to live long enough go when they turn thirty-five, I have no intention of taking to wine, for it does not agree with me. But I am seriously thinking of taking to gold. Gold, sir, is a thing that becomes all times of life, and glorifies age. There is a vast fortune in my discovery. Hah!"
"And what may be the nature of your discovery?"
"Do you know anything of chemistry?"
"Nothing."
"Or of metallurgy even?"
"No."
"What a pity! I cannot therefore hope to rouse in you the divine enthusiasm of a scientist. I had just come back from Stratford-at-Bow when I had the pleasure and honour of meeting you to-day. I had been down there looking after the first drawing of the retorts, and my expectations had never dared to contemplate such a result as I have reached."
"May I know what your discovery is?"
"The philosopher's stone, sir. Ha-ha ha! You will laugh at me. So will all sensible men laugh at me when I say I have discovered the philosopher's stone. The universal agent. The great solvent. The mighty elixir. But remember, sir, in the history of the world's progress it is always the sensible men who have been the fools."
"I am afraid you will not have many believers in the beginning."
"I know I shall not. But I do not want many believers. I am not like the advertising stockbrokers who are willing to make any man's fortune but their own. I shall keep my secret dark, and make my fortune in quiet, with no more noise about how I am doing it than an army contractor."
"And what do you purpose making gold out of--lead?"
"No, sir, phosphorus. Out of phosphorus."
"It is the right colour, to begin with."
"And it is in the right place."
"Where?"
"Here," tapping his brown, wrinkled forehead, "in my brain. I am going to turn the phosphorus of my brain into gold. All the things that have been made by man have been made out of the phosphorus of the brain, why not gold also?"
"Truly, why not gold also?"
"You were right when you said I should have few believers at first. In the beginning there will be little or no profit. Bah, let me not talk like a fool. Of course, you and I know that gold cannot be made until we discover the universal atom and learn how to handle it. My discovery is a combination of substances which will defy all the known tests for gold. The dry or the wet method will be powerless confronted with it. The cupel and acid will proclaim it gold. It will scorn the advances of oxygen and remain fixed a thousand years in the snowy heart of the furnace. It will be as flexible as ribbed grass, as ductile as the web of a spider, as malleable as the air between the gold-beater's skins.
"You say it will be almost as dear as gold itself at the beginning."
"Yes, almost as dear as gold."
"How much will it cost?"
"I have not yet counted up all the cost. There are certain ingredients the cost of which it is difficult to ascertain," he said in an abstracted voice.
"This is Mrs. Ashton's house."
Leigh aroused out of the abstraction and looked up. Miss Ashton was at the open window of the drawing-room.
"I am so troubled about the calculation that I am not sure whether it will pay at all to make it. Yesterday morning I had given up all thought of my alchemy. I resolved to direct my studies towards the elixir of life. Yesterday I made up my mind the elixir was beyond me, and I resolved to go on making the gold. To day I am in doubt again. Like all alchemists, I am superstitious. I shall look for an omen to guide me."
"Miss Ashton is at the window. She recognises you. She is saluting you."
The dwarf drew a pace back from the house and swept the ground with his hat.
"Take that for a good omen," said Hanbury, as he went up to the door.
"Did I not tell you I would show you something more wonderful than mystery gold?"
"Yes."
"Did I keep my word?"
"The likeness is most astonishing. Come in."
"If the likeness is not complete it may go hard with the miracle gold."
The Honourable Mrs. Ashton's drawing-room would, under ordinary circumstances, be open to any friend or acquaintance brought there by Hanbury. He was a well-received frequenter of the house, and though the relations between him and Miss Ashton had not been announced, they were understood in the household, and any of the family who were within were always at home to him.
Of course, if Mrs. Ashton's had been an ordinary West-end drawing-room, Hanbury would not bring there a man he had picked up accidentally in the street. But Mrs. Ashton's was not by any means an ordinary West-end drawing-room. Neither good social position nor good coats were essentials in that chamber of liberty. So long as one was distinguished in arts, or science, or politics, but particularly in politics, he was welcome, and all the more if he were a violent Radical. Being merely cracked, did not exclude anyone, so long as the cracked man was clever. Mere cleverness or talent, however, would not qualify for entrance. It was necessary to be fairly respectable in manner and behaviour, and not to be infamous at all. Mrs. Ashton was an enthusiast, but she was no fool. She did not insist upon Dukes being vulgar, or Radicals being fops, but she expected Dukes to be gentlemen, and Radicals before coming to her house to lay aside all arrogance because of their humble birth or position. Mrs. Ashton had the blood of a lady, and the manners of a lady, and the habits of a lady, by reason of her birth and bringing-up. To these qualities she had the good sense to add the heart of a Christian and the good taste to reject the Christian cant. She did not employ either the curses or the slangs of any of the creeds, but contented herself with trying to live up to the principle of the great scheme of charity to be found running through all Christ's teachings. She was an Episcopalian, because her people before her had been Episcopalian, but she had nowhere in the New Dispensation found any law enjoining her to hate Mahommedans or Buddhists, or even Christians of another sect. Indeed, although at heart a pious woman, she preferred not to speak of religious matters. But she set her face against impieties. "To put it on no higher ground," she would say, "they are bad taste, bad form. A blasphemy is not worth uttering unless there is some human being to hear it, and the only reason it is of any value then, is because it hurts or shocks the hearer, and to do anything of the kind ought not to be allowed." So that, having found out Leigh was more or less a Radical, and had streaks of cleverness in him, Hanbury was not very shy of introducing him at Curzon Street.
There was another reason why the young man experienced no doubt of Leigh's welcome. This was Thursday, late in the afternoon, and Mrs. Ashton was at home every Thursday from four to seven. In the little crowd of people who came to her informal receptions, were many of strange and interesting views and theories and faces and figures. Leigh's would, no doubt, be the most remarkable figure present that day, but the callers would be too varied and many-coloured and cosmopolitan to take a painful interest in the dwarf. In the crowd and comparative hurry of a Thursday afternoon, Leigh would have fewer chances than at ordinary times of attracting attention by solecisms of which he might be guilty.
Before knocking at the door, Hanbury turned to Leigh and said: "By the way, there are likely to be a good number of people here at this hour on Thursday."
"I know. An At home."
"Precisely. You will not, of course, say a word about what occurred earlier. I mean in that blind street."
"Welbeck Place, you mean; no, no. Why to speak, to breathe of it among a lot of people who are only your very intimate and most dear friends would be worse than publishing it in every evening newspaper. I suppose no one here will mention anything about it."
"No," answered Hanbury. "No one here," was a great improvement in synonyms for Dora upon "your young lady." This halt and miserable creature seemed capable of education. He had not only natural smartness, but docile receptivity also when he chose to exercise it. "Miss Ashton will say nothing about it," he added aloud. "And now, Mr. Leigh, most of the people you will meet here to-day are smart people, and I should like to know if I may say you are the last and the first of the alchemists, last in point of time and first in point of power? or am I to refer to you as a Radical--you will find several Radicals here?"
"Hah! Neither. Do not refer to me as either an alchemist or a Radical. You said there would be politicians?"
"Yes. Undoubtedly politicians'"
"Very good. Introduce me as a Time Server. If politicians are present they will be curious to see a man of my persuasion. Sir, the dodo is as common as the English goose compared with a man of my persuasion among politicians."
"Is not the joke rather a stupid one? Rather childish? Eh? You can't expect to find that intelligent people will either laugh or wince at such a poor pleasantry? They will only yawn."
"Sir, you domyintelligence an injustice when you fancy I try jokes upon men of whose intelligence I am not assured. If there is a joke in what I said, I begyourpardon. I had no intention of making one."
"Oh, all right," said Hanbury with a reckless laugh as the door opened and the two entered the house.
While they were going up stairs, Hanbury asked in a tone of amused perplexity:
"How on earth am I to say 'Mr. Leigh, the distinguished Time Server?'"
"You have said it very well now, for a first attempt. You will say it still better after this rehearsal: practice makes perfect."
When they got into the drawing-room, Hanbury led his companion towards Mrs. Ashton, who was standing talking to a distinguished microscopist, Dr. Stein. He had of late been pursuing the unhappy microbe, and had at last pushed the beast into a corner, and when it turned horrent, at bay upon him and he had thrust it through the body with an antiseptic poisoned in an epigram, and so slain the beast summarily and for ever. The hostess had been listening to the doctor's account of the expiring groans of the terrified microbe, and had just said with an amused smile:
"And now, Dr. Stein, that the microbe has been disposed of, to what do you intend directing your attention?"
"I am not yet sure. I have not quite decided." The speaker's back was towards the door which Mrs. Ashton faced. "I have been so long devoted to the infinitely little I think I must now attack big game. Having made an end of the microbe, I am going to look through the backward telescope of time and try to start the mastodon again. I am sick of the infinitely little----"
"Ah, Mr. Hanbury," said the hostess, seeing the young man and his small companion, and feeling that the words of the doctor must be overheard by the dwarf.
"My friend, Mr. Leigh," said Hanbury, with a nervous laugh, "who wishes to be known as a distinguished Time Server, is most anxious to be introduced to you, Mrs. Ashton. Mrs. Ashton--Mr. Leigh." The latter bowed profoundly.
"I am delighted to meet a gentleman who has the courage to describe himself as a time-server." She was in doubt as to what he intended to convey, and repeated his description of himself to show she was not afraid of bluntness, even if she did not court it in so aggressive a form.
Dr. Stein moved away and was lost to sight.
"Pardon me," said Leigh, bowing first to her and then to Hanbury, "there is no great courage on my part. It is infamous to be a time-server. I am a servant of time."
Hanbury flushed angrily and bit his lip, and secretly cursed his weakness in bringing this man to this place. Before he could control himself sufficiently for speech Leigh went on:
"I am not as great a master of phrases as Mr. Hanbury," (the young man's anger increased), "and in asking him to say time-server I made a slip of the tongue."
"Liar!" thought the other man furiously.
"I should have described myself as a servant of time; I am a clock-maker."
"The miserable quibbler!" thought Hanbury, somewhat relieved. "I dare say he considers this a telling kind of pun. I am very sorry I did not face the newspapers, rather than bring him here. I must have been mad to think of introducing him."
"And what kind of clock do you admire most, Mr. Leigh?" asked Mrs. Ashton, smiling now. She set down the little man with the short deformed body as an eccentric being, who had a taste for verbal tricks, by some supposed to be pleasantries.
"I prefer, madam, the clocks that go."
"Fast or slow?"
"Fast. It is better to beat the sun than to be beaten by the sun."
"But are not the clocks that go correctly the best of all?"
"When a clock marks twenty-five hours to the day we live twenty-five hours to the day: when it marks twenty-three we live twenty-three. There are thus two hours a day in favour of going fast."
"But," said Hanbury, who suddenly recovered his good humour or semblance of it; for Leigh was not doing or saying anything outrageous, and Dora had risen from her seat by the window and was coming towards them. "It does not make any difference whether you go fast or slow, each spindle will wear out in its allotted number of revolutions, no matter what the speed."
"No," said Leigh, his eyes flashing as he caught sight of Miss Ashton "The machinery is not so liable to rust or the oil to clog when going fast as when going slow. Fluidity of the oil ensures the minimum of friction. Besides, it is better to wear out than to rust out."
"That depends," laughed Hanbury, "on what you are or what you do. Would you like, for instance, to wear out our hangman?"
"That, in its turn, would depend to an enormous extent on the material you set him to work upon?" said Leigh with a saturnine smile.
"So it would, indeed, Mr. Leigh, but let us hope we have not in all this country enough worthy material to try the constitution of the most feeble man. Mr. Leigh, Miss Ashton, my daughter."
Dora smiled and bent graciously to him. He bowed, but not nearly so low as when Hanbury introduced him to her mother. There was no exaggeration in his bow this time. He raised his head more quickly, more firmly, and then threw it up and held it back, looking around him with hard, haughty eyes. To Hanbury's astonishment Leigh appeared quite at his ease. He was neither confused nor insolent.
As Hanbury saw Dora approach and meet Leigh, he was more struck than before with the extraordinary likeness between her and Edith Grace. Dora had just perceptibly more colour in her pale olive face, and just perceptibly more vigour in her movements, and just perceptibly more fire in her eyes; but the difference was extremely slight, and would certainly be missed by an ordinary observer.
Was she still angry with him? She showed him no sign of resentment or forgiveness. She gave her eyes and attention to this man whom he had been forced to bring with him. This lying, malignant satyr, who hid the spirit of the Inquisition in the body of a deformed gorilla! Bah! how could Dora Ashton, whose blood went back to the blood of those who escaped the Saxon spears and shafts and blades at Hastings, look with interest and favour upon this misshapen manikin!
"Yes," went on Leigh, turning to Mrs. Ashton, "I am a servant of time. I am now engaged in making a clock which will, I think, be the most remarkable in the world."
"Have you been to Strasburg?" asked Hanbury, because he believed Leigh had not been there.
"Bah! Strasburg, no! Why should I go to Strasburg? To see other clocks is only to see how effects have been produced. With a conjuror the great difficulty is not to discover how to perform any trick, but to discover a trick that will be worth performing. If you tell any mediocre mechanist of an effect produced in mechanism, he can tell how it is done or how it could be done."
"What! Can you construct a clock like Burdeau's, I mean one that would produce the same effects?" asked Hanbury with a scarcely perceptible sneer.
"Produce the same effect! Easily. Burdeau's clock represented Louis XIV. surrounded by upper lackeys, other monarchs who did him homage. Hah! There is nothing easier. It is more fit for a puppet show to amuse the groundlings of a country fair than for a monumental work of genius like a great clock."
"Did not the machinery of Burdeau's clock go wrong upon the occasion of its public exhibition?" asked Hanbury with a polite, malicious smile.
"It did, and the figure of the Grand Monarque, who, like me, was not over tall, instead of receiving homage from the figure of William III., fell down before the effigy of William and grovelled. Bah! there was no difficulty or merit in producing that effect."
"I was thinking of some effect wrought by that public exhibition and eccentricity on the part of the clock."
"You mean getting Burdeau thrown into the Bastille by the Grand Monarque?"
"Yes. Do you think an effect of that kind could be produced in our day by a clock?"
"Upon a clock maker?"
"Suppose so."
"Hah! You would, no doubt, likemeto try it?"
"Well, you boasted you could produce any effect."
"Hah! If they did take me and throw me into the Bastille to-day, now, at this moment, I should not mind it, nor would my clock mind it either. It is not in the power of any king or potentate of earth to divorce me from my clock!" He swelled out his chest and flung his shoulders and head back.
"What! Even if he put you in the Bastille? Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Hanbury derisively. "That is too much indeed. Why, it is not clock making, but necromancy."
The little man stepped back a pace, looked at Hanbury contemptuously from head to foot, and said:
"It is true, although you may not be able to understand it." Then turned to Mrs. Ashton. "A clock cannot be made to go for ever quite independent of man. But I think I have invented a new means of dealing with clocks; indeed, I am quite sure my plan is absolutely new. If a constitutional tyrant were to lock me up in any bastile this instant, my clock, I mean what of it is now completed and in working order, would be wound up to-night between twelve and one o'clock, just as if I were there. I admit no stranger into my workshop."
"That is very extraordinary," said Miss Ashton, speaking for the first time.
Leigh made a gesture deprecating extraordinariness.
"I am not going in for any nonsense about perpetual motion. There will be thousands of figures in my clock, thousands of automaton Figures of Time to move in one endless procession. These figures will differ from all others to be found in horloges. They will be designed wholly to please and educate the eye by their artistic virtues and graces. The mechanical movements will be wholly subject to naturalness and beauty. I have been in great difficulty to find a worthy model for my Pallas-Athena. Until to-day I was in despair."
There appeared nothing unpleasantly marked or emphatic in Leigh's manner; but Hanbury knew he meant the model for the donor of the olive had been found in Dora. Good Heavens! this creature had dared to select as model for some imperfectly draped figure in this raree-show of charlatan mechanism the girl to whomhe, John Hanbury, was engaged!
Mrs. Ashton understood the implication in the speech by an almost imperceptible reverence of the poor blighted deformed body to her beautiful, shapely, well-born daughter. A look of amusement and tenderness came into her thin, mobile, sympathetic face. "And you have been so fortunate as to find a model for your goddess?"
"Yes, and no. I did not find so much a model for my goddess as a goddess who had strayed down from the heights of Greek myth."
"This must be a lucky day with you, Mr. Leigh," Mrs. Ashton said pleasantly, and speaking as though his words referred to no one in whom she took interest. She was curious to see how he would extricate himself from a direct question. That would test his adroitness. "And when did you meet your divinity?"
"In the afternoon. I saw her in the afternoon." He looked angrily at Hanbury. The latter thought, "He is under obligation not to say anything of the Welbeck Place event; he, the traitorous wretch, will content himself with referring to it, so that Dora and I may know what he means. The false sneak!" He felt his face burn and blaze.
Other people came in, and Hanbury moved off a little and looked at Leigh and swayed his head slightly, beckoning him away.
Dora turned pale. She knew nothing of what had passed between the two men since she saw them last, and felt faint when she thought of John Hanbury's rage if the little man referred to their earlier meeting. Yet she could not believe he was going to speak of that. Why had John brought him here? She had no need to guess who the goddess was. She herself was the deity meant by him. That was plain enough.
"Mr. Hanbury was with me at the time," said Leigh, disregarding the signal made by the other.
Hanbury fixed his eyes on the mechanist with threatening deliberateness. Dora grew cold and paler and faint. She felt there was certain to be a scene, a most unpleasant scene. Mrs. Ashton saw nothing, understood nothing.
"Had we not better move aside, Mr. Leigh? I am afraid we are blocking the way." He thought: "This beast has saved up his poison till now. He will strike here."
"No, no," said Mrs. Ashton energetically. "I shall hear of nothing better all day than a goddess--it is not to be expected I can hear of anything better. Where did you meet this Pallas-Athena?"
"In Grimsby Street," answered Leigh with a bow to Miss Ashton and a look of malignant triumph at Hanbury.
The latter started and looked round him with as much surprise as if he suddenly found himself unexpectedly in a strange place. This man was too subtle and lithe for him. Who could have expected this wriggle?
Dora glanced up with an expression of relief. The colour came back quickly to her face, and the aspect of alarmed expectancy vanished.
Mrs. Ashton turned from one to another with quick, enquiring, puzzled eyes. She saw now there was something unusual beneath the surface in all this. "What is the mystery? You will tell me, Mr. Leigh?"
"No mystery at all," answered Leigh, in a quick, light, off-hand way. "I happened to come across Mr. Hanbury accidentally and we met the lady of whom I speak."
"Oh, then she is a lady. She is not a professional model."
"Hah! No. She is not a professional model. She is a lady, of a Derbyshire family."
"I wonder do I know her. May I hear her name?"
"Mr. Hanbury will, I have no doubt tell you," said Leigh, moving off with a smile. "He was introduced to her at the meeting, I was not. He was as much struck by the likeness as I."
"The likeness! The likeness to Pallas-Athena?" said Mrs. Ashton in perplexity.
"Yes," said the dwarf with another smile, as he made room for two men who were coming up the room to Mrs. Ashton.