CHAPTER XIIIIN SOCIETYAs the Archdeacon's carriage rolled westward, June watched the people in the crowded streets, and made some estimate of the task in front of her.Already she and her squire had done much. They had speeded the efforts of the good folk always at work. They had guided the benevolent and beneficent along the wise ways. They had done much--very much, but it was as nothing in comparison with the need. North, south, east and west, she had flown in her peregrinations, only to find much the same problems, similar squalor, selfishness, ugliness and want--unhappy legacies of past carelessness and misdoings--prevalent in all parts. Slums and indifference abounded wherever she flew. It was the indifference which particularly troubled her. She rested her head on the Archdeacon's watch-pocket and wept.The prospect before herself and Bim seemed appalling. Only the gnome and she--two, when what really was wanted was an organized army from Elfland of gentle spirits with magic besoms and enchanted swords.But it was no use sighing for the unavailable. She must go on as well as she could, making the most of her own powers, intentions and Bim.Armingham House stands in a dull respectable square. Two stone armorial beasts keep guard of its ugly gateway. They are legendary monsters, not wyverns, or griffins, or unicorns, or mock-turtle, but something of a combination of all of these. On the arch of the gate is a broken motto, which means something heroic in very bad French. It originated from a martial medieval incident; nobody remembers what. One of the advantages of long descent is a convenient haziness as to certain events and beginnings.The Duke of Armingham possessed every one of the characteristics of extreme aristocracy. His blue blood, high nose, arched eyebrows and slender hands could only be improved on by an idealistic portrait-painter. They were the sure marks of class and culture. He had the gentle voice, deliberate manner, and a habit of waving his pince-nez when he was speaking, which mark authority. Throughout his life, whenever he had spoken, others had to be silent; it was therefore unnecessary for his voice to be raised, or his tones to become strident.His fashions were those of the early seventies. Until that period he had out-dandified the dandies and been glorious in the forefront of his time. Then his style stayed still. Any more recent order of dress than that which Louis Napoleon affected was out of date, he declared. He was, in these later days, a dear old thing, kind and as perfectly happy as a duke can be. He bore the disadvantages of his wealth and position with wonderful lightheartedness, and was able by taking thought to avoid being envious of his inferiors. He feared nothing except lightning, mud in Piccadilly, and his Duchess on a Court day.His wife was even more assuredly an exalted being. Rumour said that in her young days she had been a nursery governess; but those who ought to be authoritative on the subject declared that rumour lied. Anyhow, the gilt and scarlet books which tell the tales of the titled, gave her a colonel for father, so that her blood was likely to be something blue. In her gowns and graces she certainly looked every inch a Duchess, and there were many inches.Her influence in the world was worthy of her station. She had eyes which commanded, and could make presumption feel like a doormat on a rainy day. She never forgot her coronet and was not genial; indeed, she looked on mankind through diminishing lorgnettes, and saw it small. She was one of the two hundred and twenty-three ladies, all the world over, who know they are Supermen.When June and the Archdeacon arrived at Armingham House, the fairy had not quite recovered from the dumps. She had for a little while lost confidence in herself, and felt no longer militant. She clung to the Archdeacon, and was borne by him up the white and blue stairway between footmen with heads of silver. The scene where the guests were welcomed was magnificent. The servants in their yellow livery, the ladies with their jewels, the sparkle, the laughter, and the flowers, made splendid circumstance.The picture, beautiful though it might be to mortal eyes, could not win June from her state of weary self-consciousness. She listened to the talk, and watched the movement listlessly. It was all the matter of dream. In comparison with the wealth and royalty of Fairyland, it was mere shadow, noise, nonsense and tinsel!She was certainly feeling unappreciative and depressed.The Archdeacon passed through the business of greetings, and fell into talk with Lord Geoffrey Season, the Duke of Armingham's third and youngest son.Lord Geoffrey was a golden youth of twenty-seven. Since his sixth birthday he had been destined for Parliament. There was a county constituency waiting for him to accept its suffrages at the next General Election; while family influence and the way he wore his clothes made it certain he would be entrusted with office early. Up to the present he had done little more than always the proper thing. He had the statesman-like quality of never being original, could express the obvious with an air of profundity, and gave promise of not making any mistakes, which, after all, is somewhat less than the heaven-sent destiny. He was moreover--at present--something of a prig.June awakened from her lethargy to take an interest in him. She liked his wavy hair and china blue eyes, but still her energy was sleeping. She would keep her eyes on Geoffrey. She saw in him possibilities.Watching the guests, idly studying their brightness of mind, and evident bodily content, noting the luxury of the surroundings, she, perforce, must come to the building of comparisons and contrasts. Different this from the squalid misery she had witnessed and endured since her entry into London! It was not Paradise Court alone which formed the great contrast, but slums innumerable in all parts of the Metropolis; and, linked with them, those dun habitations of struggling respectability, the hundred thousand ugly houses in dull inglorious streets, occupied by drudges, who, day after day, through the years, toil in shops and offices, selling their God-given lives for a little dross, a little patronage, and some spells of conventional happiness.(This is the Fairies' judgment.)After those years of little-profitable labour--away from Nature, away from the large reality--and after the faithful practising of ritual, according to the gospel of Mrs. Grundy, the poor things become brothers and sisters to the vegetables and die. So drift their lives away!And here--at the very other extreme--was this great ducal casket of luxury and laughter, giving welcome to a limited select circle of people who need, if so they willed, do nothing but be happy and enjoy themselves. Heigho! paradoxes a hundredfold abide in the shadows by every street corner.June remembered the phantoms of Paradise Court, and, in a different manner from the Pharaoh whom Moses chided, hardened her heart. Oberon, or no Oberon, the fairies should come back to London town! For the sake of the so-called rich, as well as for the sake of the very poor, they must re-create Elfdom within the seven square miles, and carry their blessed influence through Suburbia. If this could not be before she must yield up the crown, then it must be after. In any case, it must be. That was certain, flat, absolute. London should be reclaimed.The Archdeacon's table-partner was Mrs. Billie Thyme, a small pink, flaxen lady, whose over-rich elderly husband financed her fads, and in consequence gave her ample opportunity to shine in the personal paragraphs of evening newspapers. Mrs. Billie was not the least bitblasée, although even she was sighing for new excitements to conquer.She was always in an infinite vein of flutter and chatter. Most exalted personages were glad to talk nonsense with her; at bazaars and garden-parties her skirt-dancing drew the crowd. She was a prime favourite of the Duchess, and kept the dinner-circle well entertained with tinkling talk.It was she who began on the fairies. They were seldom left out of the conversation of these times. June was still dreamily inert, throned on a large silver salt-cellar, watching and indifferently wondering, not yet vividly interested enough to use these puppets for the march-forward of her ideas."And what are we to think of this fairy craze?" Mrs. Thyme asked of the company generally.There was no immediate response. The Archdeacon left the question for someone else to answer. In Society he tried habitually to sit on the fence."A nine-day' wonder!" said Lord Geoffrey. "Mere nonsense, as ping-pong and diabolo were.""A folly to-day; forgotten to-morrow; and afterwards a sad reflection"--this from a novelist of the moment--"democracy is a baby which quickly breaks its toys.""It has already lasted nearby nine weeks," answered the Duke quietly. "It is strange; I don't understand it. That Mansion-House fellow, the Lord Mayor, began it. The movement seems spreading. Most movements do spread nowadays. We didn't do that sort of thing in the seventies.""Indeed, no," agreed the Duchess, in her best commanding-officer voice. "When I was a 'gairl,' belief in the fairies lingered amongst the Irish and nowhere else. Those Board Schools and Trade Unions have caused this nonsense, I'm sure.""There is one encouraging fact, Duchess!" cried the novelist, of course an egoist, who called himself Douglas le Dare, though his patronymic was Barlow, and his father had christened him William. "It is that in our literature--the test of our minds--we keep to sane life and the plain truth. Fairy tales are not written nowadays; such originality is futility. We weave our romances round every-day life, we adorn dull truth, and what's the result? I sold fifty thousand copies of my last book.""Did you really?" said Mrs. Thyme, opening her blue eyes to their widest. "I think I will write!""Ha!" he said, as he shook back his iron-grey locks--his hair was an advertisement--"you should write, but deal with facts--facts--the fairies--pah!--they are merely a sort of mental fungi. The public wants prose. Always please the public! That is the root of literary success."June was alive now. Her wings quivered with indignation. The crown on her head blazed with elf-light. She was angry, angry. But she made no movement, only sat upright on the salt-box, keenly attentive to what those clay creatures would say."If you do start author, Katie," said the Duke to Mrs. Thyme, "you must cultivate an eccentricity or two, mustn't she, Mr. le Dare?""Oh, I don't know, Duke!""Oh, must I?" she exclaimed, eagerness alight in her eyes. "Do tell me an eccentricity or two!""Sorry I can't, Mrs. Thyme. All my spare time is occupied with thinking out my own eccentricities, what few I indulge in. No; what you really require is to be earnestly business-like, and to see well after the advertisement of your books."Then a bearded Baronet, who wore a sparkling monocle, and thought it humorous to be interfering, joined in."Talkin' of fairies and the Lord Mayor," he said, "weren't you mixed up in that little business at the Mansion House, Mr. Archdeacon? Eh? What?"Eyes turned to the person addressed, who, finding his theories not promising to be popular in that company, was willing to remain silent while the tide of depreciation flowed. All his life he had been on the side of the cheers. June looked at him. She was eager to see how he endured the test. If he failed and proved faithless, the power of Fairyland would be lessened thereby, for faith is the strength-giver. She did nothing to influence him. Though, in her indignation, magic emanated from her personality, it was not to affect him.He sipped his sherry, and answered with deliberation, while the others hearkened with all their ears."I was there, Sir Claude. It was a wonderful occasion. The place seemed charmed, enchanted. Everyone of the company--City magnates, practical men, merchants, and so on--made resolutions for the good of our fellows. Under that influence of enchantment I made resolutions also. I believe we have all of us kept them."There was a little while of silence only interrupted by the slithering of the knives and forks."Archdeacon, do you really believe in the fairies?" asked Mrs. Thyme, in her tingle-tangle voice.June, piqued by the doubt in the question, wondered whether the colour of Mrs. Billie's hair was born or made."I do, absolutely. I am proud to be positive that they exist.""Tush!" said Douglas le Dare."They exist," the Archdeacon re-affirmed.Victory! June slid from the salt-cellar and began a dance of rejoicing, of triumph--apas-de-seulamong the wine-cups. None of the company could see her; it was loveliness lost to mortal eyes. Only the Archdeacon, who possessed some store of fairy faith, had a glimmering of the gaiety and beauty of the motion-poem then being made. It nerved him to do battle for what he would have called Oberon's cause.The room became filled with magic. Spells of pure joy were woven from the tracery of June's feet, and governed all but one. The butler and his men, waiting with the imperturbability of grenadiers on parade, were inclined to dance in chorus; but discipline and the knowledge that the Duchess's eyes were upon them kept them prim.Still the fairy danced. Here and there she tripped over the damask, flitting airily round the epergnes with their young summer flowers; then up and about the heads of the guests, stimulating their ideas, giving them delightful poetical fancies, poising now and then, with dainty foot and wings outspread, on the brims of the glasses, making all of them glad, all of them glad but--the Duchess.She alone, during that period of enchantment, remained unimpressed and obdurate. Fashion is a petrifying influence. Her Grace, who regarded it as her duty always with stiff lips to overlook the unfashionable, was at present beyond even the softening powers of June. She remained as stone, unsympathetic, uncomprehending. Conversation was dumb during that terpsichorean spell.June rested at length, and flew, well-pleased, to couch among the flowers."Bravo!" cried Lord Geoffrey."Eh?" inquired the Duke, putting on his pince-nez, and peering through them at his son. The word of applause seemed to fit in with his mood exactly, but he did not understand its applicability."I said 'Bravo!' bravo to the Archdeacon, who, with characteristic courage, is going to justify his faith in those essences, the fairies.""Ah yes, of course, of course! Please instruct us; we are attentive, Mr. Archdeacon."It is not easy to make any detailed expression of opinion or justification of faith over well-cooked food. That is an occasion for wit and brevity--epigram was born at a dinner-table. The Archdeacon felt his disadvantage, especially as the eyes of the Duchess, like the orbs of a mild Medusa, were expressing disapprobation."I cannot pretend, your Grace, to be able, under the circumstances, to justify my faith in the fairies," he declared, while thoughtfully cutting hispoussin. "I can only assert that faith, and prove its truth as I live by acting up to its principles and helping to make the world more beautiful and happy.""Ruskin and soda-water! Eh? What?" murmured Sir Claude, glancing round for the laughter which did not come.The Archdeacon, to whom flippancy was more than a venial sin, felt inclined to crush the Baronet; but succeeded in effectually ignoring him, which was worse."Imagination is, without doubt, required to realize the existence of the fairies. They are not tangible, as are, say, bricks. But is that a difficulty? Imagination is requisite before we can appreciate the existence of ether, and several other essences--to use Lord Geoffrey's word--which we know well are about us, and affect us, though we cannot see, smell, taste, handle, or otherwise comprehend them.""But surely, Mr. Archdeacon," the Duke intervened, for no other reason than to give his guest opportunity to continue his meal. "Surely you would not in any way put together the results of scientific inquiry, the fruits of the research of physicists, with--bogies and other dreams?"A murmur of agreement ran round the table. A ducal host is certain of support in any argument he undertakes."I don't see why not, Duke. They are obviously different in kind as you broadly state them; but I believe they are really linked closer than we yet know. The fact is that every certainty is merely a drop in an ocean of uncertainty, an ocean of unplumbable depths. Science is always on the edge of new discoveries, which can only be bridged at first by the imagination. Without imagination Newton would have seen nothing more than an apple falling, when that simple fact--as common as raindrops--brought to him revelation of the all-compelling law of gravitation. Without imagination Watt could not have built his 'Rocket' out of a kettle and a puff of steam. Imagination is a necessity in all departments"--Le Dare sighed audibly--"except perhaps in some modern books.""A kettle! a kettle!" said the Duchess to herself--sotto voce--yet very well heard. "What may a kettle be?"A judge who sat next to her hastened to instruct her, while the ensuing course was served."Even the law of gravitation," the Archdeacon continued, after a period of general conversation, of mixed comments and further challenges, "cannot be absolutely proved, though we all accept it. Nor can the dogma that three times seven are twenty-one be proved, or the assertion that a line is length without breadth, or--to come to a different kind of example--the statements of historians that William of Normandy lived, conquered and died. Nothing can be proved to some people. It is a matter of faith. Why do we believe that William fought with Harold at Senlac? Because we are told so, and our imagination appreciates the details of the narrative. We accept the Saxon Chronicle as essentially a true story, and Matilda's Bayeux tapestry as representing real people and actual scenes. But they wouldn't convince a determined sceptic, or a school-boy faced with the authority of the text-books, if he were sufficiently original, obstinate, incredulous, and without the imaginative gift. They may be regarded by some people as fraudulent tales, or forged representations of the truth, and to any extent as partial and prejudiced stories--(No more wine, thank you)--and who could convince them otherwise? So all these accepted assertions--scientific, historical, personal--may be refused by one who has no imagination. Just in the same way the existence of the fairies may be believed in or disbelieved. I admit it is beyond my capacity for demonstration to prove that they exist. I have never seen a fairy. If you asked me whether it was the size of a needle, a horse, or a haystack, I could not say; and it would not matter. Enough that, though invisible, they are lovely and beneficent, and that their influence--be it illusory or not--tends towards the betterment of human life. I am content to assert that I believe in these essences by results. The facts of the Lord Mayor's feast were beyond ordinary comprehension, yet they actually occurred, and caused some hundreds of prosaic business men--as staid and reliable as any human beings can be--to make resolutions to be less selfish and more socially useful; and actually to keep those resolutions. I am sorry to bore you with such a long discourse, but it was necessary as the subject is so important. I believe in the fairies, and wish their governance was potent to-day.""So do I," said the enthusiastic Mrs. Thyme. June instantly forgave her past offences."Bravo!" cried Lord Geoffrey again."But do you know--I'm not referring to yourself, Mr. Archdeacon--do you know for a fact that they did keep them? Is that fruits of the imagination too? Eh? What?"The doubter was, as usual, the annoying Baronet. June looked at him, a tiny glint of anger in her eyes, and gave him twinges--the promise of gout."Sir Claude, I do! Only to-day I had a visit from a Jew, a City tradesman, who had, throughout his long business life, sweated his people. This man--I need not mention his name--was a guest at the Lord Mayor's banquet. He is now a model employer; tender-hearted, generous and scrupulous. He ascribes his wonderful change entirely to the influence of the fairies."The pause which followed these words was testimony to their effect. June began to dance again. She was as pleased as Punch with her protégé. The Archdeacon had turned up trumps.But the Duchess was not pleased. Her old friend Archdeacon Pryde was becoming dreadfully plebeian. To talk at her table about a kettle, and then about a Jew tradesman, was very like exceeding the social limit, so she gave the hostess's signal, and the ladies withdrew; while June flew to the window and gained strength, inspiration and hope from the brightness of the skies and the young summer moon.CHAPTER XIVCONVERTING A DUCHESSThe fairy found the cigar-smoke abominable; and as the conversation of the men, possibly because of the tobacco, lapsed towards dulness--it was mostly about guns and turnips--she flew out of the dining-room to the salon upstairs, to sit on the great piano and watch the Duchess and her feminine friends enjoying coffee and Chopin, while the more ardently idle of them babbled of nothings.June seemed transported to a languid, lazy world, peopled by disillusioned descendants of the lotus-eaters. Except for the Duchess, who always sat bolt upright--Mrs. Pipchin was, in that respect, her democratic parallel--the ladies lounged in the luxurious chairs, slowly waved fans, and drivelled. During that period of supineness nothing vertebrate was said, with the exception of one pious wish expressed by Mrs. Billie Thyme."I wish those fairies would bring the men along!"At that remark three ladies feebly smiled. The others--with the exception of the Duchess, who never forgot her dignity--lounged lazily, thought sleepily, and, when they spoke, drawled.June yawned. For the first and last time in the history of Fairydom she did so, and knew herself bored utterly.That yawn roused her: it annoyed her. She would endure no more of that overpowering influence of laziness. She flew straight to the Duchess, circled thrice about her chair, and then, standing on the grey coiffure, wantonly disarranged the tiara, dragging it back to put in its place the crown. She dumped the symbol of sovereignty down with a shadowy thump.Her Grace of Armingham blinked. Something had happened. What? Strange thoughts began to bubble. Her brain was a maze of topsy-turvydom. She wanted to laugh aloud and laud the fairies. She fixed her mind on her present amazing irresponsibleness, and tried to banish the demon of discord that prevailed. It was no good. The more she endeavoured to fashion her ideas according to their customary crystallized pattern, the more they resisted. She possessed a burning desire to make a pun. She wrestled stubbornly with the horrid inclination. Setting her brows in a frown, her lips in a thin red line, she determinately withstood the mocking influence that held her.June settled on the top of a large ottoman, whence she could comfortably watch the battle. It was magnificent, and it was war. She determined to bring an expression of light-heartedness to that handsome stubborn face. She bent her powers of mind and magic to the proper subduing of the stately dame, and had by no means the best of it. The crown was potent. It held the best magic of Elfland; but against that particular example of pride, coldness and contempt, it was ineffectual as yet. It was like melting a glacier with lucifer matches.Meanwhile the mind of the Duchess was in a buzz of contradictory humours. She was uncertain of herself. She wanted to express ideas the very opposite of her age-worn convictions. For the first time she saw herself as not quite the most important creature amongst the stars. Beyond all else, above all else, at that phase of the conflict, the insatiable desire to make a pun beset her. Horrible! Horrible! The better half of her mind, the predominant partner of her will, bravely and silently exclaimed against its dreadfulness. But imps seemed playing pranks with her, giving her a thousand opportunities for some infamous punning. The propensity had hold of her like neuralgia; it needed all her firmness and stolid prejudice to counteract the tendency, and prevent the commission of that lowest form of verbal play. During the whole of the battle Strauss and Chopin were supplying their melodies; and June was feeling fiercely unmerciful.Then the men came drifting in. The ladies woke from their languors. Bridge was mentioned.Geoffrey, seeing the frowns and energy in his mother's face, wondered who had offended. He looked sharply at Mrs. Thyme; she was evidently not the culprit. He found her smiling at Sir Claude, and making room for him by her side on a settee. The Baronet had always some entertaining ill-natured tattle at the end of his tongue. He was the Autolycus of tinted gossip. June, in sheer puckishness of spirit, touched the Baronet with a spell. His stories became Sunday tales. They were dilatory and improving. Mrs. Billie frankly told him he bored.It was the Duke who noticed the tiara out of place. He sauntered over to his wife, wondering how this could have happened. He saw new wrinkles about her eyes. Her face had an east-wind expression."Edith," he murmured, "look in the mirror. Your tiara."The pained look went. Her fashionable callousness for a moment melted. She raised her hands to the tiara to mend the mischief. A pun--the only pun possible under the circumstances--was on her lips. It came to the edge of expression; she to the brink of defeat.She rallied her forces desperately. She would not be beaten. But the magic was potent. She had to say it, and did--to herself. Her lips moved mutely. That was the beginning of the fairies' victory.Suddenly June felt pity for thegrande dame, who, in her solitude of station, knew no better. Already with her keen susceptibilities she could see the real aspect of sadness in that golden scene. Paradise Court had its hopelessness, its waste and poverty; so had Armingham House--hopelessness, waste, poverty, as actual, if not worse, though different, very different, from what the poorest know.Nothing in all London had struck her as more pitiable than the barrenness of interests and fetters of wealth which starved and prisoned those unawakened rich. The more she saw of them, the more she felt for them. Their selfishness was mainly the selfishness of ignorance. They needed to know; they needed to do. It was the fairy's function to give them opportunities for knowledge and for helpful deeds. To quicken their atrophied usefulness must be her work. Then Fairyland would have flown closer to the fireplace.June released the Duchess and recrowned herself. Weary of lotus-eaters and emptiness, she crept out through the opened window into the garden to recreate her purposes among the shadows under the stars, but some of her influence lingered behind and was effectual.It was not quite the same Duchess who governed her guests that evening and guided the party along its dull, appointed way. Again and again the Duke, Lord Geoffrey, the Archdeacon, noticed in her touches of unusual geniality. They were only occasional gleams; but those who knew her best saw the difference. The inconsequent pun had shifted a load of stratified self-conceit. Out of irresponsibility sympathy had come.The fairy, when her wearied strength was renewed, for the strain and the atmosphere of London still weighed heavily upon her, revelled in that garden. She sang as she flitted here and there, helping the helpable. The moonlight glimmered on her rapid wings. The stars became still brighter for joy of her eagerness. The flowers, parched and starving for fairy-love, turned towards her, listening to her songs, inviting the gifts of her hands. She lighted their jaded lamps and gave them happiness.Then she felt sad because of the waste and the need. Where were the elves for this garden?She looked towards Fairyland, and wished with all her powers. Was it a waking dream, or was she really aware of mimic voices, far, far away, in the glades of Elfland answering her--promising to break the indifference of Fairyland and to come?--or was the wish foster-mother to the fancy? Had she merely imagined the desired reply?When, returning, from her own world, she re-entered Armingham House, the party was over. Its livelier members had gone to other staircases. The Archdeacon, as became his office, went straight home to bed. Lord Geoffrey, caped and hatted, strolled quietly to "Liberty Hall," the town-house of an Anglicized American, Mr. Barnett Q. Moss, who had fifteen millions and dyspepsia.The very last ball of a lively season was there in full swing. Geoffrey enjoyed watching the plutocracy at play, and sharing their wildness. It was tonic to his well-bred nerves. After three hours of a perfect mother, it meant a bracing change.June went too.Meanwhile Bim had tucked himself up in the throstle's nest and slept like a top--however that may be. He did not stir till the morning was white. Then he rose--a mite refreshed--and came down from his fastness with a run.He found Tim, and listened to him talking in his sleep. The royal tramp in his dreams was addressing legions. Bim awoke him. Tim continued his oratory to the trees. He was Cæsar and Buonaparte--two gentlemen in one. He seemed from his description to be wearing a laurel wreath round his neck, and trousers of imperial purple, ermine-lined. Every woe which wandering mankind suffers from was instantly and absolutely abolished--so far as mere words could abolish them--by autocratic decree. His Majesty Tim!He stood up, wiped his feet on the grass, and looked about at the park. The pride of ownership shone in his eyes. All this belonged to him. His face had a new expression containing something of noble gentleness, a very pale reflex of the divinity that doth hedge a king. He wiped his lips with his sleeve and smiled. He settled his battered hat--his diamonded golden crown--daintily on the forefront of his head, and shambled towards Oxford Street for the tramp-man's breakfast, which, thanks to Bim of Fairyland, would taste henceforth as some delicious repast on a golden dish. His future tasks--poor casual ward businesses--would be noble services performed to aid mankind.Being a king incognito, Tim did not advertise his estate. He and the fairies--they alone--knew of his royalty. There are more such monarchs amongst us than we wot of.Bim was contemplating the tramp's retreating figure when happiness came to him. June would enjoy the delights of victory yet.Her appeal to Elfdom had been answered. Here was one to help. Down from the skies and over the grass a fairy was hurrying. It was Auna of the Violet Valley; her purple wings fluttered wearily. There was no happiness in her mien. The oppressiveness of London was upon her."Gnome!" she asked weakly, "where in this horrid world is June?"So saying, she drooped her limp figure on the wet grass and waited awhile, mute with disillusionment and weariness, stricken with the sorry prospect before her. Auna had no more dignity, then, than a broken butterfly. She had come to the wilderness, sharing the madness of June; and now, knowing its dreariness, remembered the deserted happiness. She was the first recruit to the glorious company of the disobedient.Bim had not time to frame an answer to her question before his delight received another delicious shock. Here actually was one more fairy from Elfland--Laurel of the Golden Uplands--where the broom is in its glory and the brave gorse glows. She, too, had flown thither in obedience to June's appeal, and brought smiles with her. There was bravery in her eyes, but the influence of the elfless Metropolis affected her as it had affected June and Auna. She, also, drooped on the grass.There followed others. Bim's eyes and mouth opened wider and wider as the numbers grew. It was a wonderful morning. One by one the fairies came, until seventeen of all degrees--knights and sweet presences--studded the grass beside him. He was flabbergasted. His wits, through this feast of joyous surprises, were stunned and groping, until, with a long, long pull, he got himself together again.For a full half-hour the fairies rested. Bim felt the flattery of fine company. He forced himself to sit severely upright, as if he were one with them, as indeed he deserved to be, and kept the wand prominently forward. He felt towards them somewhat as a longshoreman does to the week-end tripper. He could speak with uncontradictable authority. He knew London; these, his masters, were novices.The sun rose, swathing every dew-burdened grass-blade with light. An elderly starling and several sparrows gathered about the fairy circle, curious of these new-comers. Bim, seeing the gaping wonder of the drab creatures, "shoo-ed" them; but back they came, and always came, to chatter with many twitterings about these mimic immortals, whose existence in that jerry-built world they had learnt to be ignorant of. More and more sparrows arrived, with a few larger birds--draggled thrushes and shabby blackbirds, but no smaller birds of beauty. The sparrows had taken care of that.It was the chattering of this inquiring concourse which roused the fairies from stupor. One of the knights--Felcine of the Silver Wings--addressed himself to Bim."You are the gnome who accompanied June?""I am," he replied proudly. "I am her servant and companion. What London was before we came--ah!" Bim drew a sweeping line with the wand, in gesture expressive."Then tell us what you have done," Felcine commanded.Bim in his best voice told his tale to the hearers. It was, doubtless, a lame epitome of recent history, but it served to quicken their interest in the new departure, and to intensify their shame for having been so long in coming. He spoke of Paradise Court and Sally, of the want and the sweating; then of the improvements wrought in that colony of the very poor. He enlightened them about the world of commerce, the Lord Mayor's banquet, the Oldsteins' emporium; told of the Archdeacon's efforts; of the visit to Armingham House; of innumerable other episodes and experiences, many of which have necessarily been excluded, even from this chronicle and history. Not a word did he say of the coming of the fairy host to Paradise Court, or of its going again. Bim--tactful fellow!--knew how to dodge the disagreeable.The gnome was not an orator at this period of his career; but his tale, to those hearers, was highly interesting. It brought home to them--as possibly the perorations of a Member of Parliament would not have done--the need for fairy-work, for elf-reform, in the city of cities.They, too, had not forgotten the coming and going of the fairy host."And where is June now?" asked Auna, when his story was ended.Bim turned to point vaguely to westward; and, doing so, saw June herself on the brim of Geoffrey's hat. His lordship was walking homeward through the Park. He was tired and very thoughtful. Fairy influence and the excitements and scenes of the party at Liberty Hall had set him thinking.Of a sudden June saw Felcine and his companions, and gave a glad cry.Bim then knew the meaning of absolute happiness. He turned turtle with a whoop, and balanced himself on his head. That was how he found expression for his feelings.CHAPTER XVLIBERTY HALLAs Geoffrey Season wended his way from Armingham House to Liberty Hall, June kept his thoughts busy. That was an opportunity for profitable self-examination, which she took care should be well employed.Geoffrey was habitually frank with himself and others. It had never been necessary for him to suffer the least degree of self-deception, or to imagine certain human beings were angels, when they were only themselves.So, with June on his hat-brim, and the Archdeacon's homily fresh in his memory, he began to measure established facts with new purposes, and found that in several directions the two did not fit.He felt as he sauntered through the silent streets to his noisy destination something like a pioneer landed on a virgin shore. New possibilities--vague and unformed as yet--loomed before him. These new possibilities at once attracted and repelled him. It was not to be easy for him to get out of the comfortable ruck in which circumstances had placed him.Ordinarily, the way for him to take would be through sober squares--oases of iron-railed respectability--given up at that dull hour to cats, drowsy cabs, and constables. Now the splendid dulness and shuttered dinginess of the great houses under which he walked oppressed him, and the impulse came to wander by more devious ways, through that network of slums which all but touched the back-doors of the rich.Never before in his easy-ordered life had such an impulse come to him. He had--as became his mother's son--instinctively refrained from looking on the unpleasant. Squalor and want existed to be avoided; they were so hopeless and--oh, so ugly! Unconsciously he had cultivated the happy, blind eye, and habitually overlooked the obvious. There was no callousness in his case, but merely ignorance. There are many like him. He was one of a multitude unawake.At last he was ripe to shed his priggishness. June vigorously spurred his purposes. His latent power for real social service was suddenly quickened into life.Marching into an area of meanness, which hitherto had been the Forbidden Land, he was at once face to face with heavy problems.He passed a public-house, as a drunken woman, a baby in her arms, was put out from the portal. A whiff of hot air went with her. The potman who had turned her out--"chucked" is the word--talked to her in dingy scarlet, and then returned to his damp altar of a decadent Bacchus.Geoffrey gazed at the woman curiously.The horror of it! She was undivine, bestial, bloated; the victim--a greedy victim--to gin. She stopped and turned clumsily to stare stupidly at the lighted windows; then angrily, with hoarse voice, returned the potman's compliments. All the while the fragment of humanity was wailing, cradled within her shawl.The threats of this demoralized Venus merged gradually into a pitiful whine--ah, the woes and wrongs she suffered from!--as she staggered hurriedly along the causeway, came to the door of her dwelling, and lurched over the step. There was the home of that English child!June flew after the infant in service bound, leaving Geoffrey weak and numb with indignant horror and helplessness. Here were problems indeed!He awoke of a sudden to a sense of his responsibilities. What had he been living for? A shock of icy coldness swept through him. That was the beginning of burdens. He looked with new eyes at himself.He was wealthy, leisured, destined for a prominent career in Parliament. Till now he had contemplated a life of enjoyment, tempered with a variety of pleasant experiences--sociability, applause and public activities. He had seen himself on platforms, happily eloquent; standing before a green ministerial bench, banging a treasury box, while men of note listened and cheered.That had been the game as expected. Now things were to be different. Realities had challenged him. The drunken mother and the doomed child represented thousands. He was to work for them and for such as they.June rejoined him. The mother and the infant were both asleep. One drop of elixir of fern-seed, a thousand and three years old, made from Merlin's ancient recipe; and the deed was done.Fairy and lordling passed through human rookeries. Geoffrey, eagerly observant of facts on this shady side of life, was indifferent to danger. He was reckless. Again and again a policeman sternly warned him, and frequently accompanied him through the darkest, least savoury parts. He laughed scornfully at the need for caution, turned up his coat-collar, covered his shirt-front, and went on, feeling more and more reckless and angry as he went. This was revelation! He clenched his fists, and writhed at the manifold evidences of past indifference and neglect. But the anger went after a time, or was tempered with wisdom.Children, children everywhere! Always there were children. Wherever he wandered, late as it was, during that westward pilgrimage, he saw them--the innocent, chief sufferers--bearers of the heaviest burdens. They were born to woe; nearly always were to die of it. Where was the justice, where the justification of their pain? Let comfortable sociologists prate; but why had they those hours and days of want and suffering merely to die? They had not offended. They had not broken laws of thrift, duty, love; yet they must endure evil and reap great harvests of the sins their forebears had sowed. It was pitiful, shameful, appalling.He saw little ones weary to death, forgotten, learning iniquities. The infinite waste of young humanity appalled him! Something of the nation's life was decaying there, and so few seemed to care.He came abruptly to the square which had Liberty Hall at its corner. Before proceeding to the enjoyments awaiting him, he must calm and recover himself. He walked slowly along the three sides of the square. He was still agitated by the disclosures that slum-experience had brought him, so he walked again right round the inner circle of railings, and forced himself into the guest-man's mood.He came, at last, to the crowded portal, begged and pushed his way through triple lines of packed spectators--for the most part women who had forgotten the lateness of the hour and their weariness in wonder and curiosity at the costumes of the guests--and joined the procession of the invited up red-carpeted steps.June was troubled. Liberty Hall gave her dismay. Armingham House had been stately, though somewhat oppressive; the loudness and glaring brilliance of this assembly--this over-painted caricature of what is splendid--bewildered her. It reminded her--unjustly--of prosperous public-houses.Geoffrey surrendered his hat and cape to a footman--the livery of the Mosses was moss-green and gold--and passed on to be received. He was welcome. Scions of the aristocracy had master-keys to that house, as also had the over-rich.The lady of Liberty Hall greeted him with heartiness."Very glad to see you, Lord Geoffrey; come right in!"She was tall, thin and bony; frameworkdécolletée. Her face was not happy. It was heavily lined, and bore the marks of ambition and strain. Head, neck, arms, and corsage were ablaze with diamonds. Three fortunes gleamed and sparkled upon her. A picture of the woman of the slums and the neglected infant flashed through Geoffrey's mind. June, to whom always human beings were merely as shadows burlesquing reality, became actually afraid. Her wings were constantly quivering.There was a surging mob beyond this lady of jewels and angles--no less a mob because its members were prosperous and expensively dressed. Already the fairy had a foretaste of the vulgarity within, and feared and trembled with hate of it.Geoffrey said some small smiling nothing, and passed on to a second effusive welcome--from his host, a man of restless eyes and heavy mouth."Barnett Q."--as his cronies called him--had made the best part of his millions out of biscuits, the balance from high finance. In his home-place Barnett Q. was genial and hospitable; but put a deal in his way, and he became on the instant keen, unscrupulous, inexorable, flint-hearted."It's a real good pleasure to see you, Lord Geoffrey. If you don't jolly some, you mustn't blame the wife and me. This house is named Liberty Hall, and I guess it's got to live up to its cognomen."The dancing had started. It was already very like a whirlwind. Young folk, hot and flushed, were romping round like mad to the rhythm of a two-step. Geoffrey was caught in the riot. A demoiselle who giggled and called him Herbert seized his hand and began the gay canter. He threw himself into the spirit of the revel, neither pausing nor thinking till the band with a crashing finale stopped, and his partner had hurried him off to a refreshment-buffet.There was perpetual laughter, peals of it now and then. Humour was cheap; mirth was easily aroused at that party. A man with a false nose was a great favourite, and when he suddenly startled a dowager and caused her wig to shift there were shrieks of delight. The catchwords of the streets were popular and appreciated in Liberty Hall. Champagne and cocktails shed a genial influence over everything. There was no lack of liquid wealth in that bountiful establishment.June, while the dancing lasted, escaped to the gallery where the band was playing, and sat on the matted hair of a flautist, who forthwith went flat. Her thoughts for a while were far away in a night-world of green shadows."Hello, Season!" cried a puffy, sleek young man, clapping Geoffrey familiarly on the shoulder. "See my new mo. yesterday? I'm Harris, you know! Met you at Monty Dizzler's.""No, Mr. Harris, I fear I didn't see the machine.""Don't call me Mister, Season! There's no side between gentlemen, hey? She's a beauty! Light, and as for power and speed--well, I'm no orator! Passed you in Sloane Street by Cadogan Square. You were with a specially nice little piece of frilling--girl with a hat all over her. Gave four-fifty for her--the mo. I mean. Don't laugh. T'other side of Hounslow sent her along like blazes. The bobbies couldn't get ready for me. Rushed past three of them--traps and all--like a greased eel, before they could doctor their watches. Nearly knocked over one cop. Ha! And not more than a mile further on went over a boy's foot. No business playing in the roads, those kids! You should have heard him squeal. Talk of Wagner, and that rot! This is private between you and me, y' know. Fortunately, the mo. made such a dust they couldn't see my number. I--oh, if you don't want to hear any more, you needn't! Shirty dog! Just because he's a duke's son, gives himself airs. What's a duke nowadays? Pauper rats! Hullo, Gertie; come and have some sup. Liberty Hall's a rotter, but his cham's worth drinking! Then I'll take you home, little gell. You must see my new mo.----"Geoffrey did not dance again. The pause had given him an opportunity for recollection. He had since entering Mrs. Moss's hospitable abode somewhat forgotten his better purposes; but was already ashamed of his recent excitement. Though he started from Armingham House with the full intention of getting as much enjoyment at Liberty Hall as possible, he felt he ought to have remembered better the contrast of conditions between this revel and the sordid misery and nakedness of the slums.He stood underneath the gallery watching and beginning to wonder. More than one of his companion-guests chaffed him for his grave face and preoccupied airs. He answered their badinage with repartee good enough.The dancing became still more violent. Certain ladies, flaxen-haired and well-complexioned--footlight favourites--punctuated the step phrases of a barn-dance with high, high kicks.Barnett Q. laughed with happy tolerance at the lace display, winked archly at some elderly cronies, babbled that things were somewhat slower in his young days, and went about murmuring to all and sundry, "Liberty Hall! Liberty Hall!"Geoffrey felt the beginning of an angry shame--of himself first and foremost. Everything jarred on him now. The fairies had hold of him; but June, just then, was doing nothing. She was far away among the happy shadows.The excitement had come to seem feverish, unreal; the laughter rang untrue--a mockery of gaiety. But still they laughed, as if they were fey. Geoffrey had been at such gatherings four or five times before, and had found them, with their colour, movement and irresponsibleness extremely amusing. They had sent him back to his world of ennui refreshed, a restored superior gentleman. But to-night he was restless, tired of the glamour; its gaiety was repulsive.He put it down to the scenes of the slums and the sight of weary children; of course, having no idea that a fairy was perched but a little above him--that his state of dissatisfaction was mainly due to her.He could not help overhearing occasional snatches of conversation from old and young; it was always loud-voiced, and invariably told one of these tales--the pleasures of extravagance, the rounding of idleness, the smart acquisition and showy expenditure of wealth. Braggarts were many. Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair!June, awaking from her dreams and seeing his restlessness, sailed down and throned herself on the silken lappel of his coat--a fairy as a button-hole is a pretty sight, when we can see it. He felt a sudden increase of impatience: he must go. He wandered through the rooms, hunting for the way of escape.He met his hostess. The poor lady looked thinner than ever. Her face had become white with excitement. Her diamonds accentuated the ghastliness."What is the matter?" she asked, with the drawl she sometimes affected. "I hope you're finding enjoyment in this country-cottage, but if your face is telling the truth, your thoughts are pretty near the tombstones. Now that won't do! I reckon I must find some sweet young thing to bring you back to Mother Earth. You're looking just too angelic for anything."Geoffrey, realizing the discourtesy of poor appreciation in a house so overabundant with hospitality, hastened to set her social fears at rest, and returned to the corridor leading back to the dancing room.Suddenly there was tumult beside him. A girl had been imbibing cocktails carelessly. She slipped, and to regain her balance, grabbed at the arm of a man who was conspicuous in kilts. He, too, had been enjoying the flowing tide of champagne, and being a proud MacCoolicky, the chief of that ilk, was apt to be angry in his cups.He steadied himself by clutching at some tapestry, and then, hearing some laughter and seeing a man broadly grinning at him, viciously jabbed him a blow on the arm. There was at once the prospect of a scuffle. The veneer of good manners on some of the guests was generally exceedingly thin. Geoffrey sprang between the scowling combatants; so did two other men. They seized the MacCoolicky's arms, and forced him against the wall. He began to sob, while the girl, the cause of his mishap, restored by the excitement to her true self, amused the crowd by describing his possible ancestors with their tails.The MacCoolicky, for his part sobered too, writhed under the ridicule, and went away furiously muttering elementary Gaelic.Barnett Q. came hurrying up, pushing his way through the crowd like a police-inspector. His little grey eyes glittered, his thin lips were pressed together in a very decided line. The millionaire was a man of flame and granite."You can do every blamed thing you like in this establishment," he said to them generally; "but I'm darned if I'll have any fraycars, and that's plain truth!""It's all right, Barney; only a little high spirits. Boys will be boys!" said a tiny old man from the edge of the crowd. And so the trouble ended.The tumult took place near the door of a large room, which throughout the evening had been a haven of great interest. Geoffrey, parting from his host, entered the room.June flew ahead, curious to see what was doing at the green tables. She noted the faces which fringed the games, and was shocked by their expressions. Greed, cupidity, selfishness, weakness, brutal excitement, sordid delight, mean disappointment were pictured there. Horrible! It was the card-room. The place was packed to stifling. Roulette, baccarat, and bridge were hard a-swing. Gambling was no new sight to Geoffrey Season, but never before had he seen such greedy rabble as that, or such extravagant, reckless stakes.It was an occasion of unscrupulous business. Old and young, men and maidens, crowded round the tables primed with the one desire--to make. Mammon was their king. There was no refinement or enjoyment about that business; it was mere greediness on a very large scale. Eyes, fascinated, followed the running of the ball, the placing of the money, the turn and manipulation of the cards, the sweeps and pushes of bankers croups. The excitement was tense. Now and again hurried murmurs, excited comments, soft hysterical laughter, contradictions and brief disputes, broke the general silence.Heigho! It was a sight for the cynical. If the devil has no humour, he misses a lot of fun.Young girls, hardly old enough for their education to be "finished," were fingering piles of gold, and placing coins with calculation, according to some "system." They had completed their education at Monte Carlo. An elderly man was the lucky one--if luck is really the word. He neither smiled nor frowned, whatever his fortune might be; but calmly paid his losses and as calmly took his gains--his calmness, either way, was absolute.Footmen came and went, carrying trays and glasses, but were not especially welcomed.A young man with waved hair and a pose--a forgotten ballad-writer, his fame had flickered and gone out--happened to be standing beside Geoffrey. His eyes were alight with monetary desire."A sight well worth sinning for, Season," he said, with a nod at the piles of gold and paper scattered about the board.Geoffrey nodded in idle agreement. The wealth displayed represented thousands of pounds. June kissed his cheek."Yet with all that wealth there is actual starvation not an eighth of a mile from here," he said in obedience to her kiss, her command.The poseur turned and stared. He gaped with surprise."Good Lord, Season! You ought to be a curate.""It is, unfortunately, only the truth.""Perhaps so. Why not? Anyhow, it's no good talkin' about it. People who starve have only themselves to blame. Haven't they hands to work? Show me a poor man, and you'll point to a fool. That's truth, too, if it isn't an epigram! Everyone with wits can get a good living if he likes. And if not--well, let those who can't get take; that's my motto. I'm no high-priest of ordinary morality, I can tell you. But--look, Sir Gussie's won again! George! the luck of that fellow! Let me come; I must put a yellow boy onimpair."The yellow boy was not at once put on, for a climax had come. A charge of cheating was shrieked out by an excited woman playing bridge. Chaos came again. Men and women sprang to their feet to look, and crowded to the centre of trouble. There were words of eager accusation, of fierce denial, of hot anger. A table was overturned. Gold tinkled to the floor. Two women--those chiefly concerned--had almost passed beyond words. It seemed, so agitated were they, and so fierce their looks as they glared at each other, as if they would actually be fighting; but cooler counsels urgently intervened, and the disputants were led away, each grasping her stakes or winnings, each still making angry assertions. For a little while the inherent vulgarity of the company had violently broken out; it had set at defiance the thin varnish of conventional politeness most of them wore.Geoffrey turned, and pushed his way out of the room, out of the house.A cold breeze blew on his forehead. The stars were shining."Never again!" was his resolution. "Never, never again!"At that moment the prig in him finally went. He was humble now and burningly sincere.He realized his personal responsibility. In the future it must be his duty, in and out of Parliament, to modify the hideous inequality that had been exemplified that night. To have this waste, idleness, and vulgarity--this undisturbed triumph of Moloch and Mammon--by the side of extreme want and its manifold iniquities, was preposterous, humiliating, intolerable. The matter must be mended, if that could be. He would devote his years to the business.But how to touch those extravagant idlers, the mischievous human butterflies, the Smart Set? Ah, how?Dawn had succeeded night. Its greyness was shrinking under the promise of the sun. The Park gates were being opened as he came to them. He passed in to walk over the grass, preferring to return that way to Armingham House while his brain strove and wrestled with teeming problems.Sudden inexplicable happiness seized him. He felt momentary lightness of heart. His mood of depression went. He felt surprisingly hopeful. There must be a fine ending to all these quandaries. But why was he so hopeful? He could not tell.The reason was sufficiently simple. June, in her hour of deepest gloom, was encouraged by the sight of the fairies; and her joy at seeing them there had permeated--had glorified--him.
CHAPTER XIII
IN SOCIETY
As the Archdeacon's carriage rolled westward, June watched the people in the crowded streets, and made some estimate of the task in front of her.
Already she and her squire had done much. They had speeded the efforts of the good folk always at work. They had guided the benevolent and beneficent along the wise ways. They had done much--very much, but it was as nothing in comparison with the need. North, south, east and west, she had flown in her peregrinations, only to find much the same problems, similar squalor, selfishness, ugliness and want--unhappy legacies of past carelessness and misdoings--prevalent in all parts. Slums and indifference abounded wherever she flew. It was the indifference which particularly troubled her. She rested her head on the Archdeacon's watch-pocket and wept.
The prospect before herself and Bim seemed appalling. Only the gnome and she--two, when what really was wanted was an organized army from Elfland of gentle spirits with magic besoms and enchanted swords.
But it was no use sighing for the unavailable. She must go on as well as she could, making the most of her own powers, intentions and Bim.
Armingham House stands in a dull respectable square. Two stone armorial beasts keep guard of its ugly gateway. They are legendary monsters, not wyverns, or griffins, or unicorns, or mock-turtle, but something of a combination of all of these. On the arch of the gate is a broken motto, which means something heroic in very bad French. It originated from a martial medieval incident; nobody remembers what. One of the advantages of long descent is a convenient haziness as to certain events and beginnings.
The Duke of Armingham possessed every one of the characteristics of extreme aristocracy. His blue blood, high nose, arched eyebrows and slender hands could only be improved on by an idealistic portrait-painter. They were the sure marks of class and culture. He had the gentle voice, deliberate manner, and a habit of waving his pince-nez when he was speaking, which mark authority. Throughout his life, whenever he had spoken, others had to be silent; it was therefore unnecessary for his voice to be raised, or his tones to become strident.
His fashions were those of the early seventies. Until that period he had out-dandified the dandies and been glorious in the forefront of his time. Then his style stayed still. Any more recent order of dress than that which Louis Napoleon affected was out of date, he declared. He was, in these later days, a dear old thing, kind and as perfectly happy as a duke can be. He bore the disadvantages of his wealth and position with wonderful lightheartedness, and was able by taking thought to avoid being envious of his inferiors. He feared nothing except lightning, mud in Piccadilly, and his Duchess on a Court day.
His wife was even more assuredly an exalted being. Rumour said that in her young days she had been a nursery governess; but those who ought to be authoritative on the subject declared that rumour lied. Anyhow, the gilt and scarlet books which tell the tales of the titled, gave her a colonel for father, so that her blood was likely to be something blue. In her gowns and graces she certainly looked every inch a Duchess, and there were many inches.
Her influence in the world was worthy of her station. She had eyes which commanded, and could make presumption feel like a doormat on a rainy day. She never forgot her coronet and was not genial; indeed, she looked on mankind through diminishing lorgnettes, and saw it small. She was one of the two hundred and twenty-three ladies, all the world over, who know they are Supermen.
When June and the Archdeacon arrived at Armingham House, the fairy had not quite recovered from the dumps. She had for a little while lost confidence in herself, and felt no longer militant. She clung to the Archdeacon, and was borne by him up the white and blue stairway between footmen with heads of silver. The scene where the guests were welcomed was magnificent. The servants in their yellow livery, the ladies with their jewels, the sparkle, the laughter, and the flowers, made splendid circumstance.
The picture, beautiful though it might be to mortal eyes, could not win June from her state of weary self-consciousness. She listened to the talk, and watched the movement listlessly. It was all the matter of dream. In comparison with the wealth and royalty of Fairyland, it was mere shadow, noise, nonsense and tinsel!
She was certainly feeling unappreciative and depressed.
The Archdeacon passed through the business of greetings, and fell into talk with Lord Geoffrey Season, the Duke of Armingham's third and youngest son.
Lord Geoffrey was a golden youth of twenty-seven. Since his sixth birthday he had been destined for Parliament. There was a county constituency waiting for him to accept its suffrages at the next General Election; while family influence and the way he wore his clothes made it certain he would be entrusted with office early. Up to the present he had done little more than always the proper thing. He had the statesman-like quality of never being original, could express the obvious with an air of profundity, and gave promise of not making any mistakes, which, after all, is somewhat less than the heaven-sent destiny. He was moreover--at present--something of a prig.
June awakened from her lethargy to take an interest in him. She liked his wavy hair and china blue eyes, but still her energy was sleeping. She would keep her eyes on Geoffrey. She saw in him possibilities.
Watching the guests, idly studying their brightness of mind, and evident bodily content, noting the luxury of the surroundings, she, perforce, must come to the building of comparisons and contrasts. Different this from the squalid misery she had witnessed and endured since her entry into London! It was not Paradise Court alone which formed the great contrast, but slums innumerable in all parts of the Metropolis; and, linked with them, those dun habitations of struggling respectability, the hundred thousand ugly houses in dull inglorious streets, occupied by drudges, who, day after day, through the years, toil in shops and offices, selling their God-given lives for a little dross, a little patronage, and some spells of conventional happiness.
(This is the Fairies' judgment.)
After those years of little-profitable labour--away from Nature, away from the large reality--and after the faithful practising of ritual, according to the gospel of Mrs. Grundy, the poor things become brothers and sisters to the vegetables and die. So drift their lives away!
And here--at the very other extreme--was this great ducal casket of luxury and laughter, giving welcome to a limited select circle of people who need, if so they willed, do nothing but be happy and enjoy themselves. Heigho! paradoxes a hundredfold abide in the shadows by every street corner.
June remembered the phantoms of Paradise Court, and, in a different manner from the Pharaoh whom Moses chided, hardened her heart. Oberon, or no Oberon, the fairies should come back to London town! For the sake of the so-called rich, as well as for the sake of the very poor, they must re-create Elfdom within the seven square miles, and carry their blessed influence through Suburbia. If this could not be before she must yield up the crown, then it must be after. In any case, it must be. That was certain, flat, absolute. London should be reclaimed.
The Archdeacon's table-partner was Mrs. Billie Thyme, a small pink, flaxen lady, whose over-rich elderly husband financed her fads, and in consequence gave her ample opportunity to shine in the personal paragraphs of evening newspapers. Mrs. Billie was not the least bitblasée, although even she was sighing for new excitements to conquer.
She was always in an infinite vein of flutter and chatter. Most exalted personages were glad to talk nonsense with her; at bazaars and garden-parties her skirt-dancing drew the crowd. She was a prime favourite of the Duchess, and kept the dinner-circle well entertained with tinkling talk.
It was she who began on the fairies. They were seldom left out of the conversation of these times. June was still dreamily inert, throned on a large silver salt-cellar, watching and indifferently wondering, not yet vividly interested enough to use these puppets for the march-forward of her ideas.
"And what are we to think of this fairy craze?" Mrs. Thyme asked of the company generally.
There was no immediate response. The Archdeacon left the question for someone else to answer. In Society he tried habitually to sit on the fence.
"A nine-day' wonder!" said Lord Geoffrey. "Mere nonsense, as ping-pong and diabolo were."
"A folly to-day; forgotten to-morrow; and afterwards a sad reflection"--this from a novelist of the moment--"democracy is a baby which quickly breaks its toys."
"It has already lasted nearby nine weeks," answered the Duke quietly. "It is strange; I don't understand it. That Mansion-House fellow, the Lord Mayor, began it. The movement seems spreading. Most movements do spread nowadays. We didn't do that sort of thing in the seventies."
"Indeed, no," agreed the Duchess, in her best commanding-officer voice. "When I was a 'gairl,' belief in the fairies lingered amongst the Irish and nowhere else. Those Board Schools and Trade Unions have caused this nonsense, I'm sure."
"There is one encouraging fact, Duchess!" cried the novelist, of course an egoist, who called himself Douglas le Dare, though his patronymic was Barlow, and his father had christened him William. "It is that in our literature--the test of our minds--we keep to sane life and the plain truth. Fairy tales are not written nowadays; such originality is futility. We weave our romances round every-day life, we adorn dull truth, and what's the result? I sold fifty thousand copies of my last book."
"Did you really?" said Mrs. Thyme, opening her blue eyes to their widest. "I think I will write!"
"Ha!" he said, as he shook back his iron-grey locks--his hair was an advertisement--"you should write, but deal with facts--facts--the fairies--pah!--they are merely a sort of mental fungi. The public wants prose. Always please the public! That is the root of literary success."
June was alive now. Her wings quivered with indignation. The crown on her head blazed with elf-light. She was angry, angry. But she made no movement, only sat upright on the salt-box, keenly attentive to what those clay creatures would say.
"If you do start author, Katie," said the Duke to Mrs. Thyme, "you must cultivate an eccentricity or two, mustn't she, Mr. le Dare?"
"Oh, I don't know, Duke!"
"Oh, must I?" she exclaimed, eagerness alight in her eyes. "Do tell me an eccentricity or two!"
"Sorry I can't, Mrs. Thyme. All my spare time is occupied with thinking out my own eccentricities, what few I indulge in. No; what you really require is to be earnestly business-like, and to see well after the advertisement of your books."
Then a bearded Baronet, who wore a sparkling monocle, and thought it humorous to be interfering, joined in.
"Talkin' of fairies and the Lord Mayor," he said, "weren't you mixed up in that little business at the Mansion House, Mr. Archdeacon? Eh? What?"
Eyes turned to the person addressed, who, finding his theories not promising to be popular in that company, was willing to remain silent while the tide of depreciation flowed. All his life he had been on the side of the cheers. June looked at him. She was eager to see how he endured the test. If he failed and proved faithless, the power of Fairyland would be lessened thereby, for faith is the strength-giver. She did nothing to influence him. Though, in her indignation, magic emanated from her personality, it was not to affect him.
He sipped his sherry, and answered with deliberation, while the others hearkened with all their ears.
"I was there, Sir Claude. It was a wonderful occasion. The place seemed charmed, enchanted. Everyone of the company--City magnates, practical men, merchants, and so on--made resolutions for the good of our fellows. Under that influence of enchantment I made resolutions also. I believe we have all of us kept them."
There was a little while of silence only interrupted by the slithering of the knives and forks.
"Archdeacon, do you really believe in the fairies?" asked Mrs. Thyme, in her tingle-tangle voice.
June, piqued by the doubt in the question, wondered whether the colour of Mrs. Billie's hair was born or made.
"I do, absolutely. I am proud to be positive that they exist."
"Tush!" said Douglas le Dare.
"They exist," the Archdeacon re-affirmed.
Victory! June slid from the salt-cellar and began a dance of rejoicing, of triumph--apas-de-seulamong the wine-cups. None of the company could see her; it was loveliness lost to mortal eyes. Only the Archdeacon, who possessed some store of fairy faith, had a glimmering of the gaiety and beauty of the motion-poem then being made. It nerved him to do battle for what he would have called Oberon's cause.
The room became filled with magic. Spells of pure joy were woven from the tracery of June's feet, and governed all but one. The butler and his men, waiting with the imperturbability of grenadiers on parade, were inclined to dance in chorus; but discipline and the knowledge that the Duchess's eyes were upon them kept them prim.
Still the fairy danced. Here and there she tripped over the damask, flitting airily round the epergnes with their young summer flowers; then up and about the heads of the guests, stimulating their ideas, giving them delightful poetical fancies, poising now and then, with dainty foot and wings outspread, on the brims of the glasses, making all of them glad, all of them glad but--the Duchess.
She alone, during that period of enchantment, remained unimpressed and obdurate. Fashion is a petrifying influence. Her Grace, who regarded it as her duty always with stiff lips to overlook the unfashionable, was at present beyond even the softening powers of June. She remained as stone, unsympathetic, uncomprehending. Conversation was dumb during that terpsichorean spell.
June rested at length, and flew, well-pleased, to couch among the flowers.
"Bravo!" cried Lord Geoffrey.
"Eh?" inquired the Duke, putting on his pince-nez, and peering through them at his son. The word of applause seemed to fit in with his mood exactly, but he did not understand its applicability.
"I said 'Bravo!' bravo to the Archdeacon, who, with characteristic courage, is going to justify his faith in those essences, the fairies."
"Ah yes, of course, of course! Please instruct us; we are attentive, Mr. Archdeacon."
It is not easy to make any detailed expression of opinion or justification of faith over well-cooked food. That is an occasion for wit and brevity--epigram was born at a dinner-table. The Archdeacon felt his disadvantage, especially as the eyes of the Duchess, like the orbs of a mild Medusa, were expressing disapprobation.
"I cannot pretend, your Grace, to be able, under the circumstances, to justify my faith in the fairies," he declared, while thoughtfully cutting hispoussin. "I can only assert that faith, and prove its truth as I live by acting up to its principles and helping to make the world more beautiful and happy."
"Ruskin and soda-water! Eh? What?" murmured Sir Claude, glancing round for the laughter which did not come.
The Archdeacon, to whom flippancy was more than a venial sin, felt inclined to crush the Baronet; but succeeded in effectually ignoring him, which was worse.
"Imagination is, without doubt, required to realize the existence of the fairies. They are not tangible, as are, say, bricks. But is that a difficulty? Imagination is requisite before we can appreciate the existence of ether, and several other essences--to use Lord Geoffrey's word--which we know well are about us, and affect us, though we cannot see, smell, taste, handle, or otherwise comprehend them."
"But surely, Mr. Archdeacon," the Duke intervened, for no other reason than to give his guest opportunity to continue his meal. "Surely you would not in any way put together the results of scientific inquiry, the fruits of the research of physicists, with--bogies and other dreams?"
A murmur of agreement ran round the table. A ducal host is certain of support in any argument he undertakes.
"I don't see why not, Duke. They are obviously different in kind as you broadly state them; but I believe they are really linked closer than we yet know. The fact is that every certainty is merely a drop in an ocean of uncertainty, an ocean of unplumbable depths. Science is always on the edge of new discoveries, which can only be bridged at first by the imagination. Without imagination Newton would have seen nothing more than an apple falling, when that simple fact--as common as raindrops--brought to him revelation of the all-compelling law of gravitation. Without imagination Watt could not have built his 'Rocket' out of a kettle and a puff of steam. Imagination is a necessity in all departments"--Le Dare sighed audibly--"except perhaps in some modern books."
"A kettle! a kettle!" said the Duchess to herself--sotto voce--yet very well heard. "What may a kettle be?"
A judge who sat next to her hastened to instruct her, while the ensuing course was served.
"Even the law of gravitation," the Archdeacon continued, after a period of general conversation, of mixed comments and further challenges, "cannot be absolutely proved, though we all accept it. Nor can the dogma that three times seven are twenty-one be proved, or the assertion that a line is length without breadth, or--to come to a different kind of example--the statements of historians that William of Normandy lived, conquered and died. Nothing can be proved to some people. It is a matter of faith. Why do we believe that William fought with Harold at Senlac? Because we are told so, and our imagination appreciates the details of the narrative. We accept the Saxon Chronicle as essentially a true story, and Matilda's Bayeux tapestry as representing real people and actual scenes. But they wouldn't convince a determined sceptic, or a school-boy faced with the authority of the text-books, if he were sufficiently original, obstinate, incredulous, and without the imaginative gift. They may be regarded by some people as fraudulent tales, or forged representations of the truth, and to any extent as partial and prejudiced stories--(No more wine, thank you)--and who could convince them otherwise? So all these accepted assertions--scientific, historical, personal--may be refused by one who has no imagination. Just in the same way the existence of the fairies may be believed in or disbelieved. I admit it is beyond my capacity for demonstration to prove that they exist. I have never seen a fairy. If you asked me whether it was the size of a needle, a horse, or a haystack, I could not say; and it would not matter. Enough that, though invisible, they are lovely and beneficent, and that their influence--be it illusory or not--tends towards the betterment of human life. I am content to assert that I believe in these essences by results. The facts of the Lord Mayor's feast were beyond ordinary comprehension, yet they actually occurred, and caused some hundreds of prosaic business men--as staid and reliable as any human beings can be--to make resolutions to be less selfish and more socially useful; and actually to keep those resolutions. I am sorry to bore you with such a long discourse, but it was necessary as the subject is so important. I believe in the fairies, and wish their governance was potent to-day."
"So do I," said the enthusiastic Mrs. Thyme. June instantly forgave her past offences.
"Bravo!" cried Lord Geoffrey again.
"But do you know--I'm not referring to yourself, Mr. Archdeacon--do you know for a fact that they did keep them? Is that fruits of the imagination too? Eh? What?"
The doubter was, as usual, the annoying Baronet. June looked at him, a tiny glint of anger in her eyes, and gave him twinges--the promise of gout.
"Sir Claude, I do! Only to-day I had a visit from a Jew, a City tradesman, who had, throughout his long business life, sweated his people. This man--I need not mention his name--was a guest at the Lord Mayor's banquet. He is now a model employer; tender-hearted, generous and scrupulous. He ascribes his wonderful change entirely to the influence of the fairies."
The pause which followed these words was testimony to their effect. June began to dance again. She was as pleased as Punch with her protégé. The Archdeacon had turned up trumps.
But the Duchess was not pleased. Her old friend Archdeacon Pryde was becoming dreadfully plebeian. To talk at her table about a kettle, and then about a Jew tradesman, was very like exceeding the social limit, so she gave the hostess's signal, and the ladies withdrew; while June flew to the window and gained strength, inspiration and hope from the brightness of the skies and the young summer moon.
CHAPTER XIV
CONVERTING A DUCHESS
The fairy found the cigar-smoke abominable; and as the conversation of the men, possibly because of the tobacco, lapsed towards dulness--it was mostly about guns and turnips--she flew out of the dining-room to the salon upstairs, to sit on the great piano and watch the Duchess and her feminine friends enjoying coffee and Chopin, while the more ardently idle of them babbled of nothings.
June seemed transported to a languid, lazy world, peopled by disillusioned descendants of the lotus-eaters. Except for the Duchess, who always sat bolt upright--Mrs. Pipchin was, in that respect, her democratic parallel--the ladies lounged in the luxurious chairs, slowly waved fans, and drivelled. During that period of supineness nothing vertebrate was said, with the exception of one pious wish expressed by Mrs. Billie Thyme.
"I wish those fairies would bring the men along!"
At that remark three ladies feebly smiled. The others--with the exception of the Duchess, who never forgot her dignity--lounged lazily, thought sleepily, and, when they spoke, drawled.
June yawned. For the first and last time in the history of Fairydom she did so, and knew herself bored utterly.
That yawn roused her: it annoyed her. She would endure no more of that overpowering influence of laziness. She flew straight to the Duchess, circled thrice about her chair, and then, standing on the grey coiffure, wantonly disarranged the tiara, dragging it back to put in its place the crown. She dumped the symbol of sovereignty down with a shadowy thump.
Her Grace of Armingham blinked. Something had happened. What? Strange thoughts began to bubble. Her brain was a maze of topsy-turvydom. She wanted to laugh aloud and laud the fairies. She fixed her mind on her present amazing irresponsibleness, and tried to banish the demon of discord that prevailed. It was no good. The more she endeavoured to fashion her ideas according to their customary crystallized pattern, the more they resisted. She possessed a burning desire to make a pun. She wrestled stubbornly with the horrid inclination. Setting her brows in a frown, her lips in a thin red line, she determinately withstood the mocking influence that held her.
June settled on the top of a large ottoman, whence she could comfortably watch the battle. It was magnificent, and it was war. She determined to bring an expression of light-heartedness to that handsome stubborn face. She bent her powers of mind and magic to the proper subduing of the stately dame, and had by no means the best of it. The crown was potent. It held the best magic of Elfland; but against that particular example of pride, coldness and contempt, it was ineffectual as yet. It was like melting a glacier with lucifer matches.
Meanwhile the mind of the Duchess was in a buzz of contradictory humours. She was uncertain of herself. She wanted to express ideas the very opposite of her age-worn convictions. For the first time she saw herself as not quite the most important creature amongst the stars. Beyond all else, above all else, at that phase of the conflict, the insatiable desire to make a pun beset her. Horrible! Horrible! The better half of her mind, the predominant partner of her will, bravely and silently exclaimed against its dreadfulness. But imps seemed playing pranks with her, giving her a thousand opportunities for some infamous punning. The propensity had hold of her like neuralgia; it needed all her firmness and stolid prejudice to counteract the tendency, and prevent the commission of that lowest form of verbal play. During the whole of the battle Strauss and Chopin were supplying their melodies; and June was feeling fiercely unmerciful.
Then the men came drifting in. The ladies woke from their languors. Bridge was mentioned.
Geoffrey, seeing the frowns and energy in his mother's face, wondered who had offended. He looked sharply at Mrs. Thyme; she was evidently not the culprit. He found her smiling at Sir Claude, and making room for him by her side on a settee. The Baronet had always some entertaining ill-natured tattle at the end of his tongue. He was the Autolycus of tinted gossip. June, in sheer puckishness of spirit, touched the Baronet with a spell. His stories became Sunday tales. They were dilatory and improving. Mrs. Billie frankly told him he bored.
It was the Duke who noticed the tiara out of place. He sauntered over to his wife, wondering how this could have happened. He saw new wrinkles about her eyes. Her face had an east-wind expression.
"Edith," he murmured, "look in the mirror. Your tiara."
The pained look went. Her fashionable callousness for a moment melted. She raised her hands to the tiara to mend the mischief. A pun--the only pun possible under the circumstances--was on her lips. It came to the edge of expression; she to the brink of defeat.
She rallied her forces desperately. She would not be beaten. But the magic was potent. She had to say it, and did--to herself. Her lips moved mutely. That was the beginning of the fairies' victory.
Suddenly June felt pity for thegrande dame, who, in her solitude of station, knew no better. Already with her keen susceptibilities she could see the real aspect of sadness in that golden scene. Paradise Court had its hopelessness, its waste and poverty; so had Armingham House--hopelessness, waste, poverty, as actual, if not worse, though different, very different, from what the poorest know.
Nothing in all London had struck her as more pitiable than the barrenness of interests and fetters of wealth which starved and prisoned those unawakened rich. The more she saw of them, the more she felt for them. Their selfishness was mainly the selfishness of ignorance. They needed to know; they needed to do. It was the fairy's function to give them opportunities for knowledge and for helpful deeds. To quicken their atrophied usefulness must be her work. Then Fairyland would have flown closer to the fireplace.
June released the Duchess and recrowned herself. Weary of lotus-eaters and emptiness, she crept out through the opened window into the garden to recreate her purposes among the shadows under the stars, but some of her influence lingered behind and was effectual.
It was not quite the same Duchess who governed her guests that evening and guided the party along its dull, appointed way. Again and again the Duke, Lord Geoffrey, the Archdeacon, noticed in her touches of unusual geniality. They were only occasional gleams; but those who knew her best saw the difference. The inconsequent pun had shifted a load of stratified self-conceit. Out of irresponsibility sympathy had come.
The fairy, when her wearied strength was renewed, for the strain and the atmosphere of London still weighed heavily upon her, revelled in that garden. She sang as she flitted here and there, helping the helpable. The moonlight glimmered on her rapid wings. The stars became still brighter for joy of her eagerness. The flowers, parched and starving for fairy-love, turned towards her, listening to her songs, inviting the gifts of her hands. She lighted their jaded lamps and gave them happiness.
Then she felt sad because of the waste and the need. Where were the elves for this garden?
She looked towards Fairyland, and wished with all her powers. Was it a waking dream, or was she really aware of mimic voices, far, far away, in the glades of Elfland answering her--promising to break the indifference of Fairyland and to come?--or was the wish foster-mother to the fancy? Had she merely imagined the desired reply?
When, returning, from her own world, she re-entered Armingham House, the party was over. Its livelier members had gone to other staircases. The Archdeacon, as became his office, went straight home to bed. Lord Geoffrey, caped and hatted, strolled quietly to "Liberty Hall," the town-house of an Anglicized American, Mr. Barnett Q. Moss, who had fifteen millions and dyspepsia.
The very last ball of a lively season was there in full swing. Geoffrey enjoyed watching the plutocracy at play, and sharing their wildness. It was tonic to his well-bred nerves. After three hours of a perfect mother, it meant a bracing change.
June went too.
Meanwhile Bim had tucked himself up in the throstle's nest and slept like a top--however that may be. He did not stir till the morning was white. Then he rose--a mite refreshed--and came down from his fastness with a run.
He found Tim, and listened to him talking in his sleep. The royal tramp in his dreams was addressing legions. Bim awoke him. Tim continued his oratory to the trees. He was Cæsar and Buonaparte--two gentlemen in one. He seemed from his description to be wearing a laurel wreath round his neck, and trousers of imperial purple, ermine-lined. Every woe which wandering mankind suffers from was instantly and absolutely abolished--so far as mere words could abolish them--by autocratic decree. His Majesty Tim!
He stood up, wiped his feet on the grass, and looked about at the park. The pride of ownership shone in his eyes. All this belonged to him. His face had a new expression containing something of noble gentleness, a very pale reflex of the divinity that doth hedge a king. He wiped his lips with his sleeve and smiled. He settled his battered hat--his diamonded golden crown--daintily on the forefront of his head, and shambled towards Oxford Street for the tramp-man's breakfast, which, thanks to Bim of Fairyland, would taste henceforth as some delicious repast on a golden dish. His future tasks--poor casual ward businesses--would be noble services performed to aid mankind.
Being a king incognito, Tim did not advertise his estate. He and the fairies--they alone--knew of his royalty. There are more such monarchs amongst us than we wot of.
Bim was contemplating the tramp's retreating figure when happiness came to him. June would enjoy the delights of victory yet.
Her appeal to Elfdom had been answered. Here was one to help. Down from the skies and over the grass a fairy was hurrying. It was Auna of the Violet Valley; her purple wings fluttered wearily. There was no happiness in her mien. The oppressiveness of London was upon her.
"Gnome!" she asked weakly, "where in this horrid world is June?"
So saying, she drooped her limp figure on the wet grass and waited awhile, mute with disillusionment and weariness, stricken with the sorry prospect before her. Auna had no more dignity, then, than a broken butterfly. She had come to the wilderness, sharing the madness of June; and now, knowing its dreariness, remembered the deserted happiness. She was the first recruit to the glorious company of the disobedient.
Bim had not time to frame an answer to her question before his delight received another delicious shock. Here actually was one more fairy from Elfland--Laurel of the Golden Uplands--where the broom is in its glory and the brave gorse glows. She, too, had flown thither in obedience to June's appeal, and brought smiles with her. There was bravery in her eyes, but the influence of the elfless Metropolis affected her as it had affected June and Auna. She, also, drooped on the grass.
There followed others. Bim's eyes and mouth opened wider and wider as the numbers grew. It was a wonderful morning. One by one the fairies came, until seventeen of all degrees--knights and sweet presences--studded the grass beside him. He was flabbergasted. His wits, through this feast of joyous surprises, were stunned and groping, until, with a long, long pull, he got himself together again.
For a full half-hour the fairies rested. Bim felt the flattery of fine company. He forced himself to sit severely upright, as if he were one with them, as indeed he deserved to be, and kept the wand prominently forward. He felt towards them somewhat as a longshoreman does to the week-end tripper. He could speak with uncontradictable authority. He knew London; these, his masters, were novices.
The sun rose, swathing every dew-burdened grass-blade with light. An elderly starling and several sparrows gathered about the fairy circle, curious of these new-comers. Bim, seeing the gaping wonder of the drab creatures, "shoo-ed" them; but back they came, and always came, to chatter with many twitterings about these mimic immortals, whose existence in that jerry-built world they had learnt to be ignorant of. More and more sparrows arrived, with a few larger birds--draggled thrushes and shabby blackbirds, but no smaller birds of beauty. The sparrows had taken care of that.
It was the chattering of this inquiring concourse which roused the fairies from stupor. One of the knights--Felcine of the Silver Wings--addressed himself to Bim.
"You are the gnome who accompanied June?"
"I am," he replied proudly. "I am her servant and companion. What London was before we came--ah!" Bim drew a sweeping line with the wand, in gesture expressive.
"Then tell us what you have done," Felcine commanded.
Bim in his best voice told his tale to the hearers. It was, doubtless, a lame epitome of recent history, but it served to quicken their interest in the new departure, and to intensify their shame for having been so long in coming. He spoke of Paradise Court and Sally, of the want and the sweating; then of the improvements wrought in that colony of the very poor. He enlightened them about the world of commerce, the Lord Mayor's banquet, the Oldsteins' emporium; told of the Archdeacon's efforts; of the visit to Armingham House; of innumerable other episodes and experiences, many of which have necessarily been excluded, even from this chronicle and history. Not a word did he say of the coming of the fairy host to Paradise Court, or of its going again. Bim--tactful fellow!--knew how to dodge the disagreeable.
The gnome was not an orator at this period of his career; but his tale, to those hearers, was highly interesting. It brought home to them--as possibly the perorations of a Member of Parliament would not have done--the need for fairy-work, for elf-reform, in the city of cities.
They, too, had not forgotten the coming and going of the fairy host.
"And where is June now?" asked Auna, when his story was ended.
Bim turned to point vaguely to westward; and, doing so, saw June herself on the brim of Geoffrey's hat. His lordship was walking homeward through the Park. He was tired and very thoughtful. Fairy influence and the excitements and scenes of the party at Liberty Hall had set him thinking.
Of a sudden June saw Felcine and his companions, and gave a glad cry.
Bim then knew the meaning of absolute happiness. He turned turtle with a whoop, and balanced himself on his head. That was how he found expression for his feelings.
CHAPTER XV
LIBERTY HALL
As Geoffrey Season wended his way from Armingham House to Liberty Hall, June kept his thoughts busy. That was an opportunity for profitable self-examination, which she took care should be well employed.
Geoffrey was habitually frank with himself and others. It had never been necessary for him to suffer the least degree of self-deception, or to imagine certain human beings were angels, when they were only themselves.
So, with June on his hat-brim, and the Archdeacon's homily fresh in his memory, he began to measure established facts with new purposes, and found that in several directions the two did not fit.
He felt as he sauntered through the silent streets to his noisy destination something like a pioneer landed on a virgin shore. New possibilities--vague and unformed as yet--loomed before him. These new possibilities at once attracted and repelled him. It was not to be easy for him to get out of the comfortable ruck in which circumstances had placed him.
Ordinarily, the way for him to take would be through sober squares--oases of iron-railed respectability--given up at that dull hour to cats, drowsy cabs, and constables. Now the splendid dulness and shuttered dinginess of the great houses under which he walked oppressed him, and the impulse came to wander by more devious ways, through that network of slums which all but touched the back-doors of the rich.
Never before in his easy-ordered life had such an impulse come to him. He had--as became his mother's son--instinctively refrained from looking on the unpleasant. Squalor and want existed to be avoided; they were so hopeless and--oh, so ugly! Unconsciously he had cultivated the happy, blind eye, and habitually overlooked the obvious. There was no callousness in his case, but merely ignorance. There are many like him. He was one of a multitude unawake.
At last he was ripe to shed his priggishness. June vigorously spurred his purposes. His latent power for real social service was suddenly quickened into life.
Marching into an area of meanness, which hitherto had been the Forbidden Land, he was at once face to face with heavy problems.
He passed a public-house, as a drunken woman, a baby in her arms, was put out from the portal. A whiff of hot air went with her. The potman who had turned her out--"chucked" is the word--talked to her in dingy scarlet, and then returned to his damp altar of a decadent Bacchus.
Geoffrey gazed at the woman curiously.
The horror of it! She was undivine, bestial, bloated; the victim--a greedy victim--to gin. She stopped and turned clumsily to stare stupidly at the lighted windows; then angrily, with hoarse voice, returned the potman's compliments. All the while the fragment of humanity was wailing, cradled within her shawl.
The threats of this demoralized Venus merged gradually into a pitiful whine--ah, the woes and wrongs she suffered from!--as she staggered hurriedly along the causeway, came to the door of her dwelling, and lurched over the step. There was the home of that English child!
June flew after the infant in service bound, leaving Geoffrey weak and numb with indignant horror and helplessness. Here were problems indeed!
He awoke of a sudden to a sense of his responsibilities. What had he been living for? A shock of icy coldness swept through him. That was the beginning of burdens. He looked with new eyes at himself.
He was wealthy, leisured, destined for a prominent career in Parliament. Till now he had contemplated a life of enjoyment, tempered with a variety of pleasant experiences--sociability, applause and public activities. He had seen himself on platforms, happily eloquent; standing before a green ministerial bench, banging a treasury box, while men of note listened and cheered.
That had been the game as expected. Now things were to be different. Realities had challenged him. The drunken mother and the doomed child represented thousands. He was to work for them and for such as they.
June rejoined him. The mother and the infant were both asleep. One drop of elixir of fern-seed, a thousand and three years old, made from Merlin's ancient recipe; and the deed was done.
Fairy and lordling passed through human rookeries. Geoffrey, eagerly observant of facts on this shady side of life, was indifferent to danger. He was reckless. Again and again a policeman sternly warned him, and frequently accompanied him through the darkest, least savoury parts. He laughed scornfully at the need for caution, turned up his coat-collar, covered his shirt-front, and went on, feeling more and more reckless and angry as he went. This was revelation! He clenched his fists, and writhed at the manifold evidences of past indifference and neglect. But the anger went after a time, or was tempered with wisdom.
Children, children everywhere! Always there were children. Wherever he wandered, late as it was, during that westward pilgrimage, he saw them--the innocent, chief sufferers--bearers of the heaviest burdens. They were born to woe; nearly always were to die of it. Where was the justice, where the justification of their pain? Let comfortable sociologists prate; but why had they those hours and days of want and suffering merely to die? They had not offended. They had not broken laws of thrift, duty, love; yet they must endure evil and reap great harvests of the sins their forebears had sowed. It was pitiful, shameful, appalling.
He saw little ones weary to death, forgotten, learning iniquities. The infinite waste of young humanity appalled him! Something of the nation's life was decaying there, and so few seemed to care.
He came abruptly to the square which had Liberty Hall at its corner. Before proceeding to the enjoyments awaiting him, he must calm and recover himself. He walked slowly along the three sides of the square. He was still agitated by the disclosures that slum-experience had brought him, so he walked again right round the inner circle of railings, and forced himself into the guest-man's mood.
He came, at last, to the crowded portal, begged and pushed his way through triple lines of packed spectators--for the most part women who had forgotten the lateness of the hour and their weariness in wonder and curiosity at the costumes of the guests--and joined the procession of the invited up red-carpeted steps.
June was troubled. Liberty Hall gave her dismay. Armingham House had been stately, though somewhat oppressive; the loudness and glaring brilliance of this assembly--this over-painted caricature of what is splendid--bewildered her. It reminded her--unjustly--of prosperous public-houses.
Geoffrey surrendered his hat and cape to a footman--the livery of the Mosses was moss-green and gold--and passed on to be received. He was welcome. Scions of the aristocracy had master-keys to that house, as also had the over-rich.
The lady of Liberty Hall greeted him with heartiness.
"Very glad to see you, Lord Geoffrey; come right in!"
She was tall, thin and bony; frameworkdécolletée. Her face was not happy. It was heavily lined, and bore the marks of ambition and strain. Head, neck, arms, and corsage were ablaze with diamonds. Three fortunes gleamed and sparkled upon her. A picture of the woman of the slums and the neglected infant flashed through Geoffrey's mind. June, to whom always human beings were merely as shadows burlesquing reality, became actually afraid. Her wings were constantly quivering.
There was a surging mob beyond this lady of jewels and angles--no less a mob because its members were prosperous and expensively dressed. Already the fairy had a foretaste of the vulgarity within, and feared and trembled with hate of it.
Geoffrey said some small smiling nothing, and passed on to a second effusive welcome--from his host, a man of restless eyes and heavy mouth.
"Barnett Q."--as his cronies called him--had made the best part of his millions out of biscuits, the balance from high finance. In his home-place Barnett Q. was genial and hospitable; but put a deal in his way, and he became on the instant keen, unscrupulous, inexorable, flint-hearted.
"It's a real good pleasure to see you, Lord Geoffrey. If you don't jolly some, you mustn't blame the wife and me. This house is named Liberty Hall, and I guess it's got to live up to its cognomen."
The dancing had started. It was already very like a whirlwind. Young folk, hot and flushed, were romping round like mad to the rhythm of a two-step. Geoffrey was caught in the riot. A demoiselle who giggled and called him Herbert seized his hand and began the gay canter. He threw himself into the spirit of the revel, neither pausing nor thinking till the band with a crashing finale stopped, and his partner had hurried him off to a refreshment-buffet.
There was perpetual laughter, peals of it now and then. Humour was cheap; mirth was easily aroused at that party. A man with a false nose was a great favourite, and when he suddenly startled a dowager and caused her wig to shift there were shrieks of delight. The catchwords of the streets were popular and appreciated in Liberty Hall. Champagne and cocktails shed a genial influence over everything. There was no lack of liquid wealth in that bountiful establishment.
June, while the dancing lasted, escaped to the gallery where the band was playing, and sat on the matted hair of a flautist, who forthwith went flat. Her thoughts for a while were far away in a night-world of green shadows.
"Hello, Season!" cried a puffy, sleek young man, clapping Geoffrey familiarly on the shoulder. "See my new mo. yesterday? I'm Harris, you know! Met you at Monty Dizzler's."
"No, Mr. Harris, I fear I didn't see the machine."
"Don't call me Mister, Season! There's no side between gentlemen, hey? She's a beauty! Light, and as for power and speed--well, I'm no orator! Passed you in Sloane Street by Cadogan Square. You were with a specially nice little piece of frilling--girl with a hat all over her. Gave four-fifty for her--the mo. I mean. Don't laugh. T'other side of Hounslow sent her along like blazes. The bobbies couldn't get ready for me. Rushed past three of them--traps and all--like a greased eel, before they could doctor their watches. Nearly knocked over one cop. Ha! And not more than a mile further on went over a boy's foot. No business playing in the roads, those kids! You should have heard him squeal. Talk of Wagner, and that rot! This is private between you and me, y' know. Fortunately, the mo. made such a dust they couldn't see my number. I--oh, if you don't want to hear any more, you needn't! Shirty dog! Just because he's a duke's son, gives himself airs. What's a duke nowadays? Pauper rats! Hullo, Gertie; come and have some sup. Liberty Hall's a rotter, but his cham's worth drinking! Then I'll take you home, little gell. You must see my new mo.----"
Geoffrey did not dance again. The pause had given him an opportunity for recollection. He had since entering Mrs. Moss's hospitable abode somewhat forgotten his better purposes; but was already ashamed of his recent excitement. Though he started from Armingham House with the full intention of getting as much enjoyment at Liberty Hall as possible, he felt he ought to have remembered better the contrast of conditions between this revel and the sordid misery and nakedness of the slums.
He stood underneath the gallery watching and beginning to wonder. More than one of his companion-guests chaffed him for his grave face and preoccupied airs. He answered their badinage with repartee good enough.
The dancing became still more violent. Certain ladies, flaxen-haired and well-complexioned--footlight favourites--punctuated the step phrases of a barn-dance with high, high kicks.
Barnett Q. laughed with happy tolerance at the lace display, winked archly at some elderly cronies, babbled that things were somewhat slower in his young days, and went about murmuring to all and sundry, "Liberty Hall! Liberty Hall!"
Geoffrey felt the beginning of an angry shame--of himself first and foremost. Everything jarred on him now. The fairies had hold of him; but June, just then, was doing nothing. She was far away among the happy shadows.
The excitement had come to seem feverish, unreal; the laughter rang untrue--a mockery of gaiety. But still they laughed, as if they were fey. Geoffrey had been at such gatherings four or five times before, and had found them, with their colour, movement and irresponsibleness extremely amusing. They had sent him back to his world of ennui refreshed, a restored superior gentleman. But to-night he was restless, tired of the glamour; its gaiety was repulsive.
He put it down to the scenes of the slums and the sight of weary children; of course, having no idea that a fairy was perched but a little above him--that his state of dissatisfaction was mainly due to her.
He could not help overhearing occasional snatches of conversation from old and young; it was always loud-voiced, and invariably told one of these tales--the pleasures of extravagance, the rounding of idleness, the smart acquisition and showy expenditure of wealth. Braggarts were many. Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair!
June, awaking from her dreams and seeing his restlessness, sailed down and throned herself on the silken lappel of his coat--a fairy as a button-hole is a pretty sight, when we can see it. He felt a sudden increase of impatience: he must go. He wandered through the rooms, hunting for the way of escape.
He met his hostess. The poor lady looked thinner than ever. Her face had become white with excitement. Her diamonds accentuated the ghastliness.
"What is the matter?" she asked, with the drawl she sometimes affected. "I hope you're finding enjoyment in this country-cottage, but if your face is telling the truth, your thoughts are pretty near the tombstones. Now that won't do! I reckon I must find some sweet young thing to bring you back to Mother Earth. You're looking just too angelic for anything."
Geoffrey, realizing the discourtesy of poor appreciation in a house so overabundant with hospitality, hastened to set her social fears at rest, and returned to the corridor leading back to the dancing room.
Suddenly there was tumult beside him. A girl had been imbibing cocktails carelessly. She slipped, and to regain her balance, grabbed at the arm of a man who was conspicuous in kilts. He, too, had been enjoying the flowing tide of champagne, and being a proud MacCoolicky, the chief of that ilk, was apt to be angry in his cups.
He steadied himself by clutching at some tapestry, and then, hearing some laughter and seeing a man broadly grinning at him, viciously jabbed him a blow on the arm. There was at once the prospect of a scuffle. The veneer of good manners on some of the guests was generally exceedingly thin. Geoffrey sprang between the scowling combatants; so did two other men. They seized the MacCoolicky's arms, and forced him against the wall. He began to sob, while the girl, the cause of his mishap, restored by the excitement to her true self, amused the crowd by describing his possible ancestors with their tails.
The MacCoolicky, for his part sobered too, writhed under the ridicule, and went away furiously muttering elementary Gaelic.
Barnett Q. came hurrying up, pushing his way through the crowd like a police-inspector. His little grey eyes glittered, his thin lips were pressed together in a very decided line. The millionaire was a man of flame and granite.
"You can do every blamed thing you like in this establishment," he said to them generally; "but I'm darned if I'll have any fraycars, and that's plain truth!"
"It's all right, Barney; only a little high spirits. Boys will be boys!" said a tiny old man from the edge of the crowd. And so the trouble ended.
The tumult took place near the door of a large room, which throughout the evening had been a haven of great interest. Geoffrey, parting from his host, entered the room.
June flew ahead, curious to see what was doing at the green tables. She noted the faces which fringed the games, and was shocked by their expressions. Greed, cupidity, selfishness, weakness, brutal excitement, sordid delight, mean disappointment were pictured there. Horrible! It was the card-room. The place was packed to stifling. Roulette, baccarat, and bridge were hard a-swing. Gambling was no new sight to Geoffrey Season, but never before had he seen such greedy rabble as that, or such extravagant, reckless stakes.
It was an occasion of unscrupulous business. Old and young, men and maidens, crowded round the tables primed with the one desire--to make. Mammon was their king. There was no refinement or enjoyment about that business; it was mere greediness on a very large scale. Eyes, fascinated, followed the running of the ball, the placing of the money, the turn and manipulation of the cards, the sweeps and pushes of bankers croups. The excitement was tense. Now and again hurried murmurs, excited comments, soft hysterical laughter, contradictions and brief disputes, broke the general silence.
Heigho! It was a sight for the cynical. If the devil has no humour, he misses a lot of fun.
Young girls, hardly old enough for their education to be "finished," were fingering piles of gold, and placing coins with calculation, according to some "system." They had completed their education at Monte Carlo. An elderly man was the lucky one--if luck is really the word. He neither smiled nor frowned, whatever his fortune might be; but calmly paid his losses and as calmly took his gains--his calmness, either way, was absolute.
Footmen came and went, carrying trays and glasses, but were not especially welcomed.
A young man with waved hair and a pose--a forgotten ballad-writer, his fame had flickered and gone out--happened to be standing beside Geoffrey. His eyes were alight with monetary desire.
"A sight well worth sinning for, Season," he said, with a nod at the piles of gold and paper scattered about the board.
Geoffrey nodded in idle agreement. The wealth displayed represented thousands of pounds. June kissed his cheek.
"Yet with all that wealth there is actual starvation not an eighth of a mile from here," he said in obedience to her kiss, her command.
The poseur turned and stared. He gaped with surprise.
"Good Lord, Season! You ought to be a curate."
"It is, unfortunately, only the truth."
"Perhaps so. Why not? Anyhow, it's no good talkin' about it. People who starve have only themselves to blame. Haven't they hands to work? Show me a poor man, and you'll point to a fool. That's truth, too, if it isn't an epigram! Everyone with wits can get a good living if he likes. And if not--well, let those who can't get take; that's my motto. I'm no high-priest of ordinary morality, I can tell you. But--look, Sir Gussie's won again! George! the luck of that fellow! Let me come; I must put a yellow boy onimpair."
The yellow boy was not at once put on, for a climax had come. A charge of cheating was shrieked out by an excited woman playing bridge. Chaos came again. Men and women sprang to their feet to look, and crowded to the centre of trouble. There were words of eager accusation, of fierce denial, of hot anger. A table was overturned. Gold tinkled to the floor. Two women--those chiefly concerned--had almost passed beyond words. It seemed, so agitated were they, and so fierce their looks as they glared at each other, as if they would actually be fighting; but cooler counsels urgently intervened, and the disputants were led away, each grasping her stakes or winnings, each still making angry assertions. For a little while the inherent vulgarity of the company had violently broken out; it had set at defiance the thin varnish of conventional politeness most of them wore.
Geoffrey turned, and pushed his way out of the room, out of the house.
A cold breeze blew on his forehead. The stars were shining.
"Never again!" was his resolution. "Never, never again!"
At that moment the prig in him finally went. He was humble now and burningly sincere.
He realized his personal responsibility. In the future it must be his duty, in and out of Parliament, to modify the hideous inequality that had been exemplified that night. To have this waste, idleness, and vulgarity--this undisturbed triumph of Moloch and Mammon--by the side of extreme want and its manifold iniquities, was preposterous, humiliating, intolerable. The matter must be mended, if that could be. He would devote his years to the business.
But how to touch those extravagant idlers, the mischievous human butterflies, the Smart Set? Ah, how?
Dawn had succeeded night. Its greyness was shrinking under the promise of the sun. The Park gates were being opened as he came to them. He passed in to walk over the grass, preferring to return that way to Armingham House while his brain strove and wrestled with teeming problems.
Sudden inexplicable happiness seized him. He felt momentary lightness of heart. His mood of depression went. He felt surprisingly hopeful. There must be a fine ending to all these quandaries. But why was he so hopeful? He could not tell.
The reason was sufficiently simple. June, in her hour of deepest gloom, was encouraged by the sight of the fairies; and her joy at seeing them there had permeated--had glorified--him.