'Oh, indeed, by Jove! I shall do nothing of the kind!' Rivers replied, as with a shudder. 'I think, of all the humbugs of London society, slumming is about the worst.'
'I was not speaking of that,' Lord Courtreeve said, with a slight flush on his mild face. 'Perhaps I do not think very differently from you about some of it—some of it—although, Heaven be praised, not about all; but what I mean and was going to say when I was interrupted'—and he looked with a certain modified air of reproach at Rivers—'what I was going to say when I was interrupted,' he repeated, as if to make sure that he was not going to be interrupted this time—'was, that if you would go down to the East End with me, I could show you in one day plenty of proofs that the heart of the English people is as sound and true as ever it was——'
'Very likely,' Rivers interposed saucily. 'I never said it wasn't.'
Lord Courtreevo gaped with astonishment.
'I don't quite grasp your meaning,' he stammered.
'I never said,' Soame Rivers replied deliberately, 'that the heart of the English people was not just as sound and true now as ever it was—I dare say it is just about the same—même jeu, don't you know?' and he took a languid puff at his cigarette.
'Am I to be glad or sorry of your answer?' Lord Courtreeve asked, with a stare.
'How can I tell? It depends on what you want me to say.'
'Well, if you mean to praise the great heart of the English people now, and at other times——'
'Oh dear, no; I mean nothing of the kind.'
'I say, Rivers, this is all bosh, you know,' Sir Rupert struck in.
'I think we are all shams and frauds in our set—in our class,' Rivers said, composedly; 'and we are well brought up and educated and all that, don't you know? I really can't see why some cads who clean windows, or drive omnibuses, or sell vegetables in a donkey-cart, or carry bricks up a ladder, should be any better than we. Not a bit of it—if we are bad, they are worse, you may put your money on that.'
'Well I think I have had my answer,' the Dictator said, with a smile.
'And what is your interpretation of the Oracle's answer?' Rivers asked.
'I should have to interpret the Oracle itself before I could be clear as to the meaning of its answer,' Ericson said composedly.
Soame Rivers knew pretty well by the words and by the tone that if he did not like the Dictator, neither did the Dictator very much like him.
'You must not mind Rivers and his cynicism,' Sir Rupert said, intervening somewhat hurriedly; 'he doesn't mean half he says.'
'Or say half he means,' Rivers added.
'But, as I was telling you, about the police organisation of Siam,' Sir Lionel broke out anew. And this time the others went back without resistance to a few moments more of Siam.
Captain Oisin Sarrasin came one morning to see the Dictator by appointment.
Captain Oisin Sarrasin had described himself in his letter to the Dictator as a soldier of fortune. So he was indeed, but there are soldiers and soldiers of fortune. Ho was not the least in the world like the Orlando the Fearless, who is described in Lord Lytton's 'Rienzi,' and who cared only for his steed and his sword and his lady the peerless. Or, rather, he was like him in one respect—he did care for his lady the peerless. But otherwise Captain Oisin Sarrasin resembled in no wise the traditional soldier of fortune, the Dugald Dalgetty, the Condottiere, the 'Heaven's Swiss' even. Captain Sarrasin was terribly in earnest, and would not lend the aid of his bright sword to any cause which he did not believe to be the righteous cause, and, owing to the nervous peculiarities of his organisation, it was generally the way of Captain Sarrasin to regard the weaker cause as the righteous cause. That was his ruling inclination. When he entered as a volunteer the Federal ranks in the great American war, he knew very well that he was entering on the side of the stronger. He was not blinded in the least, as so many Englishmen were, by the fact that in the first instance the Southerners won some battles. He knew the country from end to end, and he knew perfectly well what must be the outcome of such a struggle. But then he went in to fight for the emancipation of the negroes, and he knew that they were the weakest of all the parties engaged in the controversy, and so he struck in for them.
He was a man of about forty-eight years of age, and some six feet in height. He was handsome, strong, and sinewy—all muscles and flesh, and no fat. He had a deep olive complexion and dark-brown hair and eyes—eyes that in certain lights looked almost black.
He was a silent man habitually, but given anything to talk about in which he felt any interest and he could talk on for ever.
Unlike the ordinary soldier of fortune, he was not in the least thrasonical. He hardly ever talked of himself—he hardly ever told people of where he had been and what campaigns he had fought in. He looked soldierly; but the soldier in him did not really very much overbear the demeanour of the quiet, ordinary gentleman. At the moment he is a leader-writer on foreign subjects for a daily newspaper in London, and is also retained on the staff in order that he may give advice as to the meaning of names and places and allusions in late foreign telegrams. There is a revolution, say, in Burmah or Patagonia, and a late telegram comes in and announces in some broken-kneed words the bare fact of the crisis. Then the editor summons Captain Sarrasin, and Sarrasin quietly explains:—'Oh, yes, of course; I knew that was coming this long time. The man at the head of affairs was totally incompetent. I gave him my advice many a time. Yes, it's all right. I'll write a few sentences of explanation, and we shall have fuller news to-morrow.' And he would write his few sentences of explanation, and the paper he wrote for would come out next morning with the only intelligible account of what had happened in the far-off country.
The Dictator did not know it at the time, but it was certain that Captain Sarrasin's description of the rising in Gloria and the expulsion of Gloria's former chief had done much to secure a favourable reception of Ericson in London. The night when the news of the struggle and the defeat came to town no newspaper man knew anything in the world about it but Oisin Sarrasin. The tendency of the English Press is always to go in for foreign revolutions. It saves trouble, for one thing. Therefore, all the London Press except the one paper to which Oisin Sarrasin contributed assumed, as a matter of course, that the revolution in Gloria was a revolution against tyranny, or priestcraft, or corruption, or what not—and Oisin Sarrasin alone explained that it was a revolution against reforms too enlightened and too advanced—a revolution of corruption against healthy civilisation and purity—of stagnation against progress—of the system comfortable to corrupt judges and to wealthy suitors, and against judicial integrity. It was pointed out in Captain Sarrasin's paper that this was the sort of revolution which had succeeded for the moment in turning out the Englishman Ericson—and the other papers, when they came to look into the matter, found that Captain Sarrasin's version of the story was about right—and in a few days all the papers when they came out were glorifying the heroic Englishman who had endeavoured so nobly to reorganise the Republic of Gloria on the exalted principles of the British Constitution, and had for the time lost his place and his power in the generous effort. Then the whole Press of London rallied round the Dictator, and the Dictator became a splendid social success.
Oisin Sarrasin had been called to the English bar and to the American bar. He seemed to have done almost everything that a man could do, and to have been almost everywhere that a man could be. Yet, as we have said, he seldom talked of where he had been or what he had done. He did not parade himself—he was found out. He never paraded his intimate knowledge of Russia, but he happened at Constantinople one day to sit next to Sir Mackenzie Wallace at a dinner party, and to get into talk with him, and Sir Mackenzie went about everywhere the next day telling everybody that Captain Sarrasin knew more about the inner life of Russia than any other Englishman he had ever met. It was the same with Stanley and Africa—the same with Lesseps and Egypt—the same with South America and the late Emperor of Brazil, to whom Captain Sarrasin was presented at Cannes. There was a story to the effect that he had lived for some time among the Indian tribes of the Wild West—and Sarrasin had been questioned on the subject, and only smiled, and said he had lived a great many lives in his time—and people did not believe the story. But it was certain that at the time when the Wild West Show first opened in London, Oisin Sarrasin went to see it, and that Red Shirt, the fighting chief of the Sioux nations, galloping round the barrier, happened to see Sarrasin, suddenly wheeled his horse, and drew up and greeted Sarrasin in the Sioux dialect, and hailed him as his dear old comrade, and talked of past adventures, and that Sarrasin responded, and that they had for a few minutes an eager conversation. It was certain, too, that Colonel Cody (Buffalo Bill), noticing the conversation, brought his horse up to the barrier, and, greeting Sarrasin with the friendly way of an old comrade, said in a tone heard by all who were near, 'Why, Captain, you don't come out our way in the West as often as you used to do.' Sarrasin could talk various languages, and his incredulous friends sometimes laid traps for him. They brought him into contact with Richard Burton, or Professor Palmer, hoping in their merry moods to enjoy some disastrous results. But Burton only said in the end, 'By Jupiter, what a knowledge of Asiatic languages that fellow has!' And Palmer declared that Sarrasin ought to be paid by the State to teach our British officers all the dialects of some of the East Indian provinces. In a chance mood of talkativeness, Sarrasin had mentioned the fact that he spoke modern Greek. A good-natured friend invited him to a dinner party with M. Gennadius, the Greek Minister in London, and presented him as one who was understood to be acquainted with modern Greek. The two had much conversation together after dinner was over, and great curiosity was felt by the sceptical friends as to the result. M. Gennadius being questioned, said, 'Oh, well, of course he speaks Greek perfectly, but I should have known by his accent here and there that he was not a born Greek.'
The truth was that Oisin Sarrasin had seen too much in life—seen too much of life—of places, and peoples, and situations, and so had got his mind's picture painted out. He had started in life too soon, and overclouded himself with impressions. His nature had grown languorous under their too rich variety. His own extraordinary experiences seemed commonplace to him; he seemed to assume that all men had gone through just the like. He had seen too much, read too much, been too much. Life could hardly present him with anything which had not already been a familiar object or thought to him. Yet he was always on the quiet look-out for some new principle, some new cause, to stir him into activity. He had nothing in him of the used-up man—he was curiously the reverse of the type of the used-up man. He was quietly delighted with all he had seen and done, and he still longed to add new sights and doings to his experiences, but he could not easily discover where to find them. He did not crave merely for new sensations. He was on the whole a very self-sufficing man—devoted to his wife as she was devoted to him. He could perfectly well have done without new sensations. But he had a kind of general idea that he ought to be always doing something for some cause or somebody, and for a certain time he had not seen any field on which to develop his Don Quixote instincts. The coming of Ericson to London reminded him of the Republic of Gloria, and of the great reforms that were only too great, and, as we have said, he wrote Ericson up in his newspaper.
Captain Sarrasin had a home in the far southern suburbs, but he had lately taken a bedroom in Paulo's Hotel. The moment Captain Sarrasin entered the room the Dictator remembered that he had seen him before. The Dictator never forgot faces, but he could not always put names to them, and he was a little surprised to find that he and the soldier of fortune had met already.
He advanced to meet his visitor with the smile of singular sweetness which was so attractive to all those on whom it beamed. The Dictator's sweet smile was as much a part of his success in life—and of his failure, too, perhaps—as any other quality about him—as his nerve, or his courage, or his good temper, or his commander-in-chief sort of genius.
'We have met before, Captain Sarrasin,' he said. 'I remember seeing you in Gloria—I am not mistaken, surely?'
'I was in Gloria,' Captain Sarrasin answered, 'but I left long before the outbreak of the revolution. I remained there a little time. I think I saw even then what was coming. I am on your side altogether.'
'Yes, so you were good enough to tell me. Well, have you heard any late news? You know how my heart is bound up with the fortunes of Gloria?'
'I know very well, and I think I do bring you some news. It is all going to pieces in Gloria without you.'
'Going to pieces—how can that be?'
'The Republic is torn asunder by faction, and she is going to be annexed by her big neighbour.'
'The new Republic of Orizaba?'
This was a vast South American state which had started into political existence as an empire and had shaken off its emperor—sent him home to Europe—and had set up as a republic of a somewhat aggressive order.
'Yes, Orizaba, of course.'
'But do you really believe, Captain Sarrasin, that Orizaba has any actual intentions of that kind?'
'I happen to know it for certain,' Captain Sarrasin grimly replied.
'How do you know it, may I ask?'
'Because I have had letters offering me a command in the expedition to cross the frontier of Gloria.'
The Dictator looked straight into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin. They were mild, blue, fearless eyes. Ericson read nothing there that he might not have read in the eyes of Sarrasin's quiet, scholarly, untravelled brother.
'Captain Sarrasin,' he said, 'I am an odd sort of person, and always have been—can't help myself in fact. Do you mind my feeling your pulse?'
'Not in the least,' Sarrasin gravely answered, with as little expression of surprise about him as if Ericson had asked him whether he did not think the weather was very fine. He held out a strong sinewy and white wrist. Ericson laid his finger on the pulse.
'Your pulse as mine,' he said, 'doth temperately keep time, and makes as healthful music.'
Captain Sarrasin's face lighted.
'You are a Shakespearian?' he said eagerly. 'I am so glad. I am an old-fashioned person, and I love Shakespeare; that is only another reason why——'
'Go on, Captain Sarrasin.'
'Why I want to go along with you.'
'But do you want to go along with me, and where?'
'To Gloria, of course. You have not asked me why I refused to give my services to Orizaba.'
'No; I assumed that you did not care to be the mercenary of an invasion.'
'Mercenary? No, it wasn't quite that. I have been a mercenary in many parts of the world, although I never in my life fought on what I did not believe to be the right side. That's how it comes in here—in your case. I told the Orizaba people who wrote to me that I firmly believed you were certain to come back to Gloria, and that if the sword of Oisin Sarrasin could help you that sword was at your disposal.'
'Captain Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, 'give me your hand.'
Captain Sarrasin was a pretty strong man, but the grip of the Dictator almost made him wince.
'When you make up your mind to go back,' Captain Sarrasin said, 'let me know. I'll go with you.'
'If this is really going on,' the Dictator said meditatively—'if Orizaba is actually going to make war on Gloria—well, Imustgo back. I think Gloria would welcome me under such conditions—at such a crisis. I do not see that there is any other man——'
'There is no other man,' Sarrasin said. 'Of course one doesn't know what the scoundrels who are in office now might do. They might arrest you and shoot you the moment you landed—they are quite capable of it.'
'They are, I dare say,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'But I shouldn't mind that—I should take my chance,' And then the sudden thought went to his heart that he should dislike death now much more than he would have done a few weeks ago. But he hastened to repeat, 'I should take my chance.'
'Of course, of course,' said Sarrasin, quite accepting the Dictator's remark as a commonplace and self-evident matter of fact. 'I'll takemychance too. I'll go along with you, and so will my wife.'
'Your wife?'
'Oh, yes, my wife. She goes everywhere with me.'
The face of the Dictator looked rather blank. He did not quite see the appropriateness of petticoats in actual warfare—unless, perhaps, the short petticoats of avivandière; and he hoped that Captain Sarrasin's wife was not avivandière.
'You see,' Sarrasin said cheerily, 'my wife and I are very fond of each other, and our one little child is long since dead, and we have nobody else to care much about. And she is a tall woman, nearly as tall as I am, and she dresses up as myaide-de-camp; and she has gone with me into all my fights. And we find it so convenient that if ever I should get killed, then, of course, she would manage to get killed too, andvice versâ—vice versâ, of course. And that would be so convenient, don't you see? We are so used to each other, one of us couldn't get on alone.'
The Dictator felt his eyes growing a little moist at this curious revelation of conjugal affection.
'May I have the honour soon,' he asked, 'of being presented to Mrs. Sarrasin?'
'Mrs. Sarrasin, sir,' said her husband, 'will come whenever she is asked or sent for. Mrs. Sarrasin will regard it as the highest honour of her life to be allowed to serve upon your staff with me.'
'Has she been with you in all your campaigns?' Ericson asked.
'In all what I may call my irregular warfare, certainly,' Captain Sarrasin answered. 'When first we married I was in the British service, sir; and of course they wouldn't allow anything of the kind there. But after that I gave up the English army—there wasn't much chance of any real fighting going on—and I served in all sorts of odd irregular campaignings, and Mrs. Sarrasin found out that she preferred to be with me—and so from that time we fought, as I may say, side by side. She has been wounded more than once—but she doesn't mind. She is not the woman to care about that sort of thing. She is a very remarkable woman.'
'She must be,' the Dictator said earnestly. 'When shall I have the chance of seeing her? When may I call on her?'
'I hardly venture to ask it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'but would you honour us by dining with us—any day you have to spare?'
'I shall be delighted,' the Dictator replied. 'Let us find a day. May I send for my secretary?'
Mr. Hamilton was sent for and entered, bland and graceful as usual, but with a deep sore at his heart.
'Hamilton, how soon have I a free day for dining with Captain Sarrasin, who is kind enough to ask me?'
Hamilton referred to his engagement-book.
'Saturday week is free. That is, it is not filled up. You have seven invitations, but none of them has yet been accepted.'
'Refuse them all, please; I shall dine with Captain Sarrasin.'
'If Mr. Hamilton will also do me the pleasure——' the kindly captain began.
'No, I am afraid I cannot allow him,' the Dictator answered. 'He is sure to have been included in some of these invitations, and we must diffuse ourselves as much as we can. He must represent me somewhere. You see, Captain Sarrasin, it is only in obedience to Hamilton's policy that I have consented to go to any of these smart dinner parties at all, and he must really bear his share of the burden which he insists on imposing upon me.'
'All right; I'm game,' Hamilton said.
'He likes it, I dare say,' Ericson said. 'He is young and fresh and energetic, and he is fond of mashing on to young and pretty women—and so the dinner parties give him pleasure. It will give me sincere pleasure to dine with Mrs. Sarrasin and you, and we'll leave Hamilton to his countesses and marchionesses. But don't think too badly of him, Captain Sarrasin, for all that: he is so young. If there is a fight to go on in Gloria he'll be there with you and me—you may depend on that.'
'But is there any chance of a fight going on?' Hamilton asked, looking up from his papers with flushing face and sparkling eyes.
'Captain Sarrasin thinks that there is a good chance of something of the kind, and he offers to be with us. He has certain information that there is a scheme on foot in Orizaba for the invasion and annexation of Gloria.'
Hamilton leaped up in delight.
'By Jove!' he exclaimed, 'that would be the one chance to rally all that is left of the national and the patriotic in Gloria! Hip, hip, hurrah!—one cheer more—hurrah!' And the usually demure Hamilton actually danced then and there, in his exultation, some steps of a music-hall breakdown. His face was aflame with delight. The Dictator and Sarrasin both looked at him with an expression of sympathy and admiration. But there were different feelings in the breasts of the two sympathising men. Sarrasin was admiring the manly courage and spirit of the young man, and in his admiration there was that admixture of melancholy, of something like compassion, with which middle-age regards the enthusiasm of youth.
With the Dictator's admiration was blended the full knowledge that, amid all Hamilton's sincere delight in the prospect of again striking a blow for Gloria, there was a suffused delight in the sense of sudden lightening of pain—the sense that while fighting for Gloria he would be able, in some degree, to shake off the burden of his unsuccessful love. In the wild excitement of the coming struggle he might have a chance of now and then forgetting how much he loved Helena Langley and how she did not love him.
Love, according to the Greek proverb quoted by Plutarch, is the offspring of the rainbow and the west wind, that delicious west wind, so full of hope and youth in all its breathings—that rainbow that we may, if we will, pursue for ever, and which we shall never overtake. Helena Langley, although she was a fairly well-read girl, had probably never heard of the proverb, but there was something in her mood of mind at present that might seem to have sprung from the conjunction of the rainbow and the west wind. She was exalted out of herself by her feelings—the west wind breathed lovingly on her—and yet she saw that the rainbow was very far off. She was beginning to admit to herself that she was in love with the Dictator—at all events, that she was growing more and more into love with him; but she could not see that he was at all likely to be in love with her. She was a spoilt child; she had all the virtues and no doubt some of the defects of the spoilt child. She had always been given to understand that she would be a great match—that anybody would be delighted to marry her—that she might marry anyone she pleased provided she did not take a fancy to a royal prince, and that she must be very careful not to let herself be married for her money alone. She knew that she was a handsome girl, and she knew, too, that she had got credit for being clever and a little eccentric—for being a girl who was privileged to be unconventional, and to say what she pleased and whatever came into her head. She enjoyed the knowledge of the fact that she was allowed to speak out her mind, and that people would put up with things from her which they would not put up with from other girls. The knowledge did not make her feel cynical—it only made her feel secure. She was not a reasoning girl; she loved to follow her own impulses, and had the pleased conviction that they generally led her right.
Now, however, it seemed to her that things had not been going right with her, and that she had her own impulses all to blame. She had taken a great liking to Mr. Hamilton, and she had petted him and made much of him, and probably got talked of with him, and all the time she never had the faintest idea that he was likely to misunderstand her feelings towards him. She thought he would know well enough that she admired him and was friendly and free with him because he was the devoted follower of the Dictator. And at first she regarded the Dictator himself only as the chief of a cause which she had persuaded herself to recognise and talked herself into regarding ashercause. Therefore it had not occurred to her to think that Hamilton would not be quite satisfied with the friendliness which she showed to him as the devoted follower of their common leader. She went on the assumption that they were sworn and natural comrades, Hamilton and herself, bound together by the common bond of servitude to the Dictator. All this dream had been suddenly shattered by the visit of Ericson, and the curious mission on which he had come. Helena felt her cheeks flushing up again and again as she thought of it. It had told her everything. It had shown her what a mistake she had made when she lavished so much of her friendly attentions on Hamilton—and what a mistake she had made when she failed to understand her own feelings about the Dictator. The moment he spoke to her of Hamilton's offer she knew at a flash how it was with her. The burst of disappointment and anger with which she found that he had come there to recommend to her the love of another man was a revelation that almost dazzled her by its light. What had she said, what had she done? she now kept asking herself. Had she betrayed her secret to him, just at the very moment when it had first betrayed itself to her? Had she allowed him to guess that she loved him? Her cheeks kept reddening again and again at the terrible suspicion. What must he think of her? Would he pity her? Would he wonder at her—would he feel shocked and sorry, or only gently mirthful? Did he regard her only as a more or less precocious child? What had she said—how had she looked—had her eyes revealed her, or her trembling lips, or her anger, or the tone of her voice? A young man accustomed to ways of abstinence is tempted one sudden night into drinking more champagne than is good for him, and in a place where there are girls, where there is one girl in whose eyes above all others he wishes to seem an admirable and heroic figure. He gets home all right—he is apparently in possession of all his senses; but he has an agonised doubt as to what he may have said or done while the first flush of the too much champagne was still in his spirits and his brain. He remembers talking with her. He tries to remember whether she looked at all amazed or shocked. He does not think she did; he cannot recall any of her words, or his words; but he may have said something to convince her that he had taken too much champagne, and for her even to think anything of the kind about him would have seemed to him eternal and utter degradation in her eyes. Very much like this were the feelings of Helena Langley about the words which she might have spoken, the looks which she might have given, to the Dictator. All she knew was that she was not quite herself at the time: the rest was mere doubt and misery. And Helena Langley passed in society for being a girl who never cared in the least what she said or what she did, so long as she was not conventional.
To add to her concern, the Duchess of Deptford was announced. Now Helena was very fond of the beautiful and bright little Duchess, with her kindly heart, her utter absence of affectation, and her penetrating eyes. She gathered herself up and went to meet her friend.
'My! but you are looking bad, child!' the genial Duchess said. She may have been a year and a half or so older than Helena. 'What's the matter with you, anyway? Why have you got those blue semicircles round your eyes? Ain't you well?'
'Oh, yes, quite well,' Helena hastened to explain. 'Nothing is ever the matter withme, Duchess. My father says Nature meant to make me a boy and made a mistake at the last moment. I am the only girl he knows—so he tells me—that never is out of sorts.'
'Well, then, my dear, that only proves the more certainly that Nature distinctly meant you for a girl when she made you a girl.'
'Dear Duchess, howdoyou explain that?'
'Because you have got the art of concealing your feelings, which men have not got, anyhow,' the Duchess said, composedly. 'If you ain't out of sorts about something—and with these blue semicircles under your lovely eyes—well, then, a semicircle is not a semicircle, nor a girl a girl. That's so.'
'Dear Duchess, never mind me. I am really in the rudest health——'
'And no troubles—brain, or heart, or anything?'
'Oh, no; none but those common to all human creatures.'
'Well, well, have it your own way,' the Duchess said, good-humouredly. 'You have got a kind father to look after you, anyway. How is dear Sir Rupert?'
Helena explained that her father was very well, thank you, and the conversation drifted away from those present to some of those absent.
'Seen Mr. Ericson lately?' the Duchess asked.
'Oh, yes, quite lately.' Helena did not explain how very lately it was that she had seen him.
'I like him very much,' said the Duchess. 'He is real sweet, I think.'
'He is very charming,' Helena said.
'And his secretary, young—what is his name?'
'Mr. Hamilton?'
'Yes, yes, Mr. Hamilton. Don't you think he is just a lovely young man?'
'I like him immensely.'
'But so handsome, don't you think? Handsomer than Mr. Ericson, I think.'
'One doesn't think much about Mr. Ericson's personal appearance,' Helena said, in a tone which distinctly implied that, according to her view of things, Mr. Ericson was quite above personal appearance.
'Well, of course, he is a great man, and he did wonderful things; and he was a Dictator——'
'And will be again,' said Helena.
'What troubles me is this,' said the Duchess, 'I don't see much of the Dictator in him. Do you?'
'How do you mean, Duchess?' Helena asked evasively.
'Well, he don't seem to me to have much of a ruler of men about him. He is a charming man, and a brainy man, I dare say; but the sort of man that takes hold at once and manages things and puts things straight all of his own strength—well, he don't seem to be quite that sort of man—now, does he?'
'We haven't seen him tried,' Helena said.
'No, of course; we haven't had a chance that way, but it seems to me as if you could get some kind of notion about a man's being a great commander-in-chief without actually seeing him directing a field of battle. Now I don't appear to get that impression from Mr. Ericson.'
'Mr. Ericson wouldn't care to show off probably. He likes to keep himself in the background,' Helena said warmly.
'Dear child, I am not finding any fault with your hero, or saying that he isn't a hero; I am only saying that, so far, I have not discovered any of the magnetic force of the hero—isn't magnetic force the word? He is ever so nice and quiet and intellectual, and I dare say, as an all-round man, he's first-class, but I have not yet struck the Dictatorship quality in him.'
The Duchess rose to go away.
'You see, there's nothing in particular for him to do in this country,' Helena said, still lingering on the subject which the Duchess seemed quite willing to put away.
'Is he going back to his own country?' the Duchess asked, languidly.
'His own country, Duchess? Why,thisis his own country.' Wrapped as she was in the fortunes of Gloria, Helena, like a genuine English girl, could not help resenting the idea of any Englishman acknowledging any country but England. Especially she would not admit that her particular hero could be any sort of foreigner.
'Well—his adopted country I mean—the country where he was Dictator. Is he going back there?'
'When the people call him, he will go,' Helena answered proudly.
'Oh, my dear, if he wants to get back he had better go before the people call him. People forget so soon nowadays. We have all sorts of exiles over in the States, and it don't seem to me as if anybody ever called them back. Some of them have gone without being called, and then I think they mostly got shot. But I hope your hero won't do that. Good-bye, dear; come and see me soon, or I shall think you as mean as ever you can be.' And the beautiful Duchess, bending her graceful head, departed, and left Helena to her own reflections.
Somehow these were not altogether pleasant reflections. Helena did not like the manner in which the Dictator had been discussed by the Duchess. The Duchess talked of him as if he were just some ordinary adventurer, who would be forgotten in his old domain if he did not keep knocking at the door and demanding readmittance even at the risk of being shot for his pains. This grated harshly on her ears. In truth, it is very hard to talk of the loved one to loving ears without producing a sound that grates on them. Too much praise may grate—criticism of any kind grates—cool indifferent comment, even though perfectly free from ill-nature, is sure to grate. The loved one, in fact, is not to be spoken of as other beings of earth may lawfully and properly be spoken of. On the whole, the loving one is probably happiest when the name of the loved one is not mentioned at all by profane or commonplace lips. But there was something more than this in Helena's case. The very thought which the Duchess had given out so freely and so carelessly had long been a lurking thought in Helena's own mind. Whenever it made its appearance too boldly she tried to shut it down and clap the hatches over it, and keep it there, suppressed and shut below. But it would come up again and again. The thought was, Where is the Dictator? She could recognise the bright talker, the intellectual thinker, the clever man of the world, the polished, grave, and graceful gentleman, but where were the elements of Dictatorship? It was quite true, as she herself had said, had pleaded even, that some men never carry their great public qualities into civil life; and Helena raked together in her mind all manner of famous historical examples of men who had led great armies to victory, or had discovered new worlds for civilisation to conquer, and who appeared to be nothing in a drawing- or a dining-room but ordinary, well-behaved, undemonstrative gentlemen. Why should not the Dictator be one of these? Why, indeed? She was sure he must be one of these, but was it not to be her lot to see him in his true light—in his true self? Then the meeting of that other day gave her a keen pang. She did not like the idea of the Dictator coming to her to make love by deputy for another man. It was not like him, she thought, to undertake a task such as that. It was done, of course, out of kindness and affection for Mr. Hamilton—and that was, in its way, a noble and a generous act—but still, it jarred upon her feelings. The truth was that it jarred upon her feelings because it showed her, as she thought, how little serious consideration of her was in the Dictator's mind, and how sincere and genuine had been his words when he told her again and again that to him she seemed little more than a child. It was not that feeling which had brought up the wish that she could see the Dictator prove himself a man born to dictate. But that wish, or that doubt, or that questioning—whatever it might be—which was already in her mind was stirred to painful activity now by the consciousness which she strove to exclude, and could not help admitting, that she, after all, was nothing to the Dictator.
That night, like most nights when she did not herself entertain, Helena went with her father to a dinner party. She showed herself to be in radiant spirits the moment she entered the room. She was dressed bewitchingly, and everyone said she was looking more charming than ever. The fashion of lighting drawing-rooms and dining-rooms gives ample opportunity for a harmless deception in these days, and the blue half-circles were not seen round Helena's eyes, nor would any of the company in the drawing-room have guessed that the heart under that silken bodice was bleeding.
Mr. Paulo was perplexed. And as Mr. Paulo was a cool-headed, clear-sighted man, perplexity was an unusual thing with him, and it annoyed him. The cause of his perplexity was connected almost entirely with the ex-Dictator of Gloria. Ericson had still kept his rooms in the hotel; he had said, and Hamilton agreed with him, that in remaining there they seemed more like birds of passage, more determined to regard return to Gloria as not merely a possible but a probable event, and an event in the near future. To take a house in London, the Dictator thought, and, of course, Hamilton thought with him, would be to admit the possibility of a lengthy sojourn in London, and that was a possibility which neither of the two men wished to entertain. 'It wouldn't look well in the papers,' Hamilton said, shaking his head solemnly. So they remained on at Paulo's, and Paulo kept the green and yellow flag of Gloria flying as if the guest beneath his roof were still a ruling potentate.
But it was not the stay of the Dictator that in any way perplexed Mr. Paulo. Paulo was honestly proud of the presence of Ericson in his house. Paulo's father was a Spaniard who had gone out to Gloria as a waiter in acafé, and who had entered the service of a young Englishman in the Legation, and had followed him to England and married an English wife. Mr. Paulo—George Paulo—was the son of this international union. His father had been a 'gentleman's gentleman,' and Paulo followed his father's business and became a gentleman's gentleman too. George Paulo was almost entirely English in his nature, thanks to a strong-minded mother, who ruled the late Manuel Paulo with a kindly severity. The only thing Spanish about him was his face—smooth-shaven with small, black side whiskers—a face which might have seemed more appropriately placed in the bull rings of Madrid or Seville. George Paulo, in his turn, married an Englishwoman, a lady's-maid, with some economies and more ideas. They had determined, soon after their marriage, to make a start in life for themselves. They had kept a lodging-house in Sloane Street, which soon became popular with well-to-do young gentlemen, smart soldiers, and budding diplomatists, for both Paulo and his wife understood perfectly the art of making these young gentlemen comfortable.
Things went well with Paulo and his wife; their small economies were made into small investments; the investments, being judicious, prospered. A daring purchase of house property proved one stroke of success, and led to another. When he was fifty years of age Paulo was a rich man, and then he built Paulo's Hotel, and his fortune swelled yearly. He was a very happy man, for he adored his wife and he idolised his daughter, the handsome, stately, dark-eyed girl whom, for some sentimental reason, her mother had insisted upon calling Dolores. Dolores was, or at least seemed to be, that rarest creature among women—an unconscious beauty. She could pass a mirror without even a glance at it.
Dolores Paulo had everything she wanted. She was well taught; she knew several languages, including, first of all, that Spanish of which her father, for all his bull-fighter face, knew not a single syllable; she could play, and sing, and dance; and, above all things, she could ride. No one in the Park rode better than Miss Paulo; no one in the Park had better animals to ride. George Paulo was a judge of horseflesh, and he bought the best horses in London for Dolores; and when Dolores rode in the Row, as she did every morning, with a smart groom behind her, everyone looked in admiration at the handsome girl who was so perfectly mounted. The Paulos were a curious family. They had not the least desire to be above what George Paulo called their station in life. He and his wife were people of humble origin, who had honestly become rich; but they had not the least desire to force themselves upon a society which might have accepted them for their money, and laughed at them for their ambition. They lived in a suite of rooms in their own hotel, and they managed the hotel themselves. They gave all their time to it, and it took all their time, and they were proud of it. It was their business and their pleasure, and they worked for it with an artistic conscientiousness which was highly admirable. Dolores had inherited the sense and the business-like qualities of her parents, and she insisted on taking her part in the great work of keeping the hotel going. Paulo, proud of his hotel, was still prouder of the interest taken in it by his daughter.
Dolores came in from her ride one afternoon, and was hurrying to her room to change her dress, when she was met by her father in the public corridor.
'Dolores, my little girl'—he always called the splendidly? proportioned young woman 'my little girl'—'I'm puzzled. I don't mind telling you, in confidence, that I am extremely puzzled.'
'Have you told mother?'
'Oh, yes, of course I've told mother, but she don't seem to think there is anything in it.'
'Then you may be sure there is nothing in it.' Mrs., or Madame, Paulo was the recognised sense-carrier of the household.
'Yes, I know. Nobody knows better than I what a womanyourmother is.' He laid a kindly emphasis on the word 'your' as if to carry to the credit of Dolores some considerable part of the compliment that he was paying to her parent. 'But still, I thought I should like to talk to you, too, little girl. If two heads are better than one, three heads, I take it, are better than two.'
'All right, dear; go ahead.'
'Well, its about this Captain Sarrasin—in number forty-seven—you know.'
'Of course I know, dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house for a long time.'
'Old gentleman,' Paulo said, with a smile. 'I fancy how much he would like to be described in that sort of way, and by a handsome girl, too! He don't think he is an old gentleman, you may be sure.'
'Why, father, he is almost as old as you; he must be fifty years old at least—more than that.'
'So you consider me quite an old party?' Paulo said, with a smile.
'I consider you an old darling,' his daughter answered, giving him a fervent embrace—they were alone in the corridor—and Paulo seemed quite contented.
'But now,' he said, releasing himself from the prolonged osculation, 'about this Captain Sarrasin?'
'Yes, dear, about him. Only what about him?'
'Well, that's exactly what I want to know. I don't quite see what he's up to. What does he have a room in this hotel for?'
'I suppose because he thinks it is a very nice hotel—and so it is, dear, thanks to you.'
'Yes, that's all right enough,' Paulo said, a little dissatisfied; the personal compliment did not charm away his discomfort in this instance, as the embrace had done in the other.
'I don't see where your trouble comes in, dear.'
'Well, you see, I have ascertained that this Captain Sarrasin is a married man, and that he has a house where he and his wife live down Clapham way,' and Paulo made a jerk with his hand as if to designate to his daughter the precise geographical situation of Captain Sarrasin's abode. 'But he sleeps here many nights, and he is here most of the day, and he gets his letters here, and all sorts of people come to see him here.'
'I suppose, dear, he has business to do, and it wouldn't be quite convenient for people to go out and see him in Clapham.'
'Why, my little girl, if it comes to that, it would be almost as convenient for people—City people for instance—to go to Clapham as to come here.'
'Dear, that depends on what part of Clapham he lives in. You see we are just next to a station here, and in parts of Clapham they are two miles off anything of the kind. Besides, all people don't come from the City, do they?'
'Business people do,' Mr. Paulo replied sententiously.
'But the people I see coming after Captain Sarrasin are not one little bit like City people.'
'Precisely,' her father caught her up; 'there you have got it, little girl. That's what has set me thinking. What are your ideas about the people who come to see him? You know the looks of people pretty well by this time. You have a good eye for them. How do you figure them up?'
The girl reflected.
'Well, I should say foreign refugees generally, and explorers, and all that kind; Mr. Hiram Borringer comes with his South Pole expeditions, and I see men who were in Africa with Stanley—and all that kind of thing.'
'Yes, but some of that may be a blind, don't you know. Have you ever, tell me, in all your recollection, seen a downright, unmistakable, solid City man go into Captain Sarrasin's room?'
'No, no,' said the girl, after a moment's thought; 'I can't quite say that I have. But I don't see what that matters to us. There are good people, I suppose, who don't come from the City?'
'I don't like it, somehow,' Paulo said. 'I have been thinking it over—and I tell you I don't like it!'
'What I can't make out,' the girl said, not impatiently but very gently, 'is what you don't like in the matter. Is there anything wrong with this Captain Sarrasin? He seems an old dear.'
'This is how it strikes me. He never came to this house until after his Excellency the Dictator made up his mind to settle here.'
'Oh!' Dolores started and turned pale. 'Tell me what you mean, dear—you frighten one.'
Paulo smiled.
'You are not over-easily frightened,' he said, 'and so I'll tell you all my suspicions.'
'Suspicions?' she said, with a drawing in of the breath that seemed as emphatic as a shudder. 'What is there to suspect?'
'Well, there is nothing more than suspicion at present. But here it is. I have it on the best authority that this Captain Sarrasin was out in Gloria. Now, he never toldmethat.'
'No? Well, go on.'
'He came back here to England long before his Excellency came, but he never took a room in this house until his Excellency had made up his mind to settle down here for all his time with Mr. Hamilton. Now, what do you think his settling down here, and not taking a house, like General Boulanger—what do you think his staying on here means?'
'I suppose,' the girl said, slowly, 'it means that he has not given up the idea of recovering his position in Gloria.' She spoke in a low tone, and with eyes that sparkled.
'Right you are, girl. Of course, that's what it does mean. Mr. Hamilton as good as told me himself; but I didn't want him to tell me. Now, again, if this Captain Sarrasin has been out in Gloria, and if he is on the right side, why didn't he call on his Excellency and prove himself a friend?'
'Dear, he has called on him.'
'Yesterday, yes; but not before.'
'Yes, but don't you see, dear,' Dolores said eagerly, 'that would cut both ways. You think that he is not a friend, but an enemy?'
'I begin to fear so, Dolores.'
'But, don't you see, an enemy might be for that very reason all the more anxious to pass himself off as a friend?'
'Yes, there's something in that, little girl; there's something in that, to be sure. But now you just hear me out before you let your mind come to any conclusion one way or the other.'
'I'll hear you out,' said Dolores; 'you need not be afraid about that.'
Dolores knew her father to be a cool-headed and sensible man; but still, even that fact would hardly in itself account for the interest she took in suspicions which appeared to have only the slightest possible foundation. She was evidently listening with breathless anxiety.
'Now, of course, I never allow revolutionary plotting in this house,' Paulo went on to say. 'I may havemysympathies and you may haveyoursympathies, and so on; but business is business, and we can't have any plans of campaign carried on in Paulo's Hotel. Kings are as good customers to me when they're on a throne as when they're off it—better maybe.'
'Yes, dear, I know all about that.'
'Still, one must assume that a man like his Excellency will see his friends in private, in his own rooms, and talk over things. I don't suppose he and Mr. Hamilton are talking about nothing but the play and the opera and Hurlingham, and all that.'
'No, no, of course not. Well?'
'It would get out that they were planning a return to Gloria. Now I know—and I dare say you know—that a return to Gloria by his Excellency would mean the stopping of the supplies to hundreds of rascals there, who are living on public plunder, and who are always living on it as long as he is not there, and who never will be allowed to live upon it as long as he is there—don't you see?'
'Oh yes, dear; I see very plainly.'
'It's all true what I say, isn't it?'
'Quite true—quite—quite true.'
'Well, now, I dare say you begin to take my idea. You know how little that gang of scoundrels care about the life of any man.'
'Oh, father, please don't!' She had her riding-whip in her hand, and she made a quick movement with it, expressively suggesting how she should like to deal with such scoundrels.
'My child, my child, it has to be talked about. You don't seem quite in your usual form to-day——'
'Oh, yes; I'm all right. But it sounds so dreadful. You don't really think people are plotting to kill—him?'
'I don't say that they are; but from what I know of the scoundrels out there who are opposed to him, it wouldn't one bit surprise me.'
'Oh!' The girl shuddered, and again the riding-whip flashed.
'But it may not be quite that, you know, little girl; there are shabby tricks to be done short of that—there's spying and eavesdropping, to find out, in advance, all he is going to do, and to thwart it——'
'Yes, yes, there might be that,' Dolores said, in a tone of relief—the tone of one who, still fearing for the worst, is glad to be reminded that there may, after all, be something not so bad as the very worst.
'I don't want his Excellency spied on in Paulo's Hotel,' Mr. Paulo proudly said. 'It has not been the way of this hotel, and I do not mean that it ever should be the way.'
'Not likely,' Dolores said, with a scornful toss of her head. 'The idea, indeed, of Paulo's Hotel being a resort ofmouchardsand spies, to find out the secrets of illustrious exiles who were sheltered as guests!'
'Well, that's what I say. Now I have my suspicions of this Captain Sarrasin. I don't know what he wants here, and why, if he is on the side of his Excellency, he don't boldly attend him every day.'
'I think you are wrong about him, dear,' Dolores quietly said. 'You may be right enough in your general suspicions and alarms and all that, and I dare say youarequite right; but I am sure you are wrong about him. Anyhow, you keep a sharp look-out everywhere else, and leave me to find out all abouthim.'
'Little girl, how can you find out all about him?'
'Leave that to me. I'll talk to him, and I'll make him talk to me. I never saw a man yet whose character I couldn't read like a printed book after I have had a little direct and confidential talk with him.' Miss Dolores tossed her head with the air of one who would say, 'Ask me no questions about the secret of my art; enough for you to know that the art is there.'
'Well, some of you women have wonderful gifts, I know,' her father said, half admiringly, half reflectively, proud of his daughter, and wondering how women came to have such gifts.
While they were speaking, Hamilton and Sir Rupert Langley came out of the Dictator's rooms together. Dolores knew that the Dictator had been out of the hotel for some hours. Mr. Paulo disappeared. Dolores knew Sir Rupert perfectly well by sight, and knew who he was, and all about him. She had spoken now and again to Hamilton. He took off his hat in passing, and she, acting on a sudden impulse, asked if he could speak to her for a moment.
Hamilton, of course, cheerfully assented, and asked Sir Rupert to wait a few seconds for him. Sir Rupert passed along the corridor and stood at the head of the stairs.
'Only a word, Mr. Hamilton. Excuse me for having stopped you so unceremoniously.'
'Oh, Miss Paulo, please don't talk of excuses.'
'Well, it's only this. Do you know anything about a Captain Sarrasin, who stays here a good deal of late?'
'Captain Sarrasin? Yes, I know a little about him; not very much, certainly; why do you ask?'
'Do you think he is a man to be trusted?'
She spoke in a low tone; her manner was very grave, and she fixed her deep, dark eyes on Hamilton. Hamilton read earnestness in them. He was almost startled.
'From all I know,' he answered slowly, 'I believe him to be a brave soldier and a man of honour.'
'So do I!' the girl said emphatically, and with relief sparkling in her eyes.
'But why do you ask?'
'I have heard something,' she said; 'I don't believe it; but I'll soon find out about his being here as a spy.'
'A spy on whom?'
'On his Excellency, of course.'
'I don't believe it, but I thank you for telling me.'
'I'll find out and tell you more,' she said hurriedly. 'Thank you very much for speaking to me; don't keep Sir Rupert waiting any longer. Good-morning, Mr. Hamilton,' and with quite a princess-like air she dismissed him.
Hamilton hastily rejoined Sir Rupert, and was thinking whether he ought to mention what Dolores had been saying or not. The subject, however, at once came up without him giving it a start.
'See here, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said as he was standing on the hotel steps, about to take his leave, 'I don't think that, if I were you, I would have Ericson going about the streets at nights all alone in his careless sort of fashion. It isn't common sense, you know. There are all sorts of rowdies—and spies, I fancy—and very likely hired assassins—here from all manner of South American places; and it can't be safe for a marked man like him to go about alone in that free and easy way.'
'Do you know of any danger?' Hamilton asked eagerly.
'How do you mean?'
'Well, I mean have you had any information of any definite danger—at the Foreign Office?'
'No; we shouldn't be likely to get any information of that kind at the Foreign Office. It would go, if there were any, to the Home Office?'
'Have you had any information from the Home Office?'
'Well, I may have had a hint—I don't know what ground there was for it—but I believe there was a hint given at the Home Office to be on the look-out for some fellows of a suspicious order from Gloria.'
Hamilton started. The words concurred exactly with the kind of warning he had just received from Dolores Paulo.
'I wonder who gave the hint,' he said meditatively. 'It would immensely add to the value of the information if I were to know who gave the hint.'
'Oh! So, then, you have had some information of your own?'
'Yes, I may tell you that I have; and I should be glad to know if both hints came from the same man.'
'Would it make the information more serious if they did?'
'To my mind, much more serious.'
'Well, I may tell you in confidence—I mean, not to get into the confounded papers, that's all—the Home Secretary in fact, made no particular mystery about it. He said the hint was given at the office by an odd sort of person who called himself Captain Oisin Sarrasin.'
'That's the man,' Hamilton exclaimed.
'Well, what do you make of that and of him?'
'I believe he is an honest fellow and a brave soldier,' Hamilton said. 'But I have heard that some others have thought differently, and were inclined to suspect that he himself was over here in the interests of his Excellency's enemies. I don't believe a word of it myself.'
'Well, he will be looked after, of course,' Sir Rupert said decisively. 'But in the meantime I wouldn't let Ericson go about in that sort of way—at night especially. He never ought to be alone. Will you see to it?'
'If I can; but he's very hard to manage.'
'Have you tried to manage him on that point?' 'I have—yes—quite lately.'
'What did he say?'
'Wouldn't listen to anything of the kind. Said he proposed to go about where he liked. Said it was all nonsense. Said if people want to kill a man they can do it, in spite of any precautions he takes. Said that if anyone attacks him in front he can take pretty good care of himself, and that if fellows come behind no man can take care of himself.'
'But if someone walks behind him—to take care of him——'
'Oh, police protection?' Hamilton asked.
'Yes; certainly. Why not?'
'Out of the question. His Excellency never would stand it. He would say, "I don't choose to run life on that principle," and he would smile a benign smile on you, and you couldn't get him to say another word on the subject.'
'But we can put it on him, whether he likes it or not. Good heavens! Hamilton, you must see that it isn't only a question of him; it is a question of the credit and the honour of England, and of the London police system.'
'That's a little different from a question of the honour of England, is it not?' Hamilton asked with a smile.
'I don't see it,' Sir Rupert answered, almost angrily. 'I take it that one test of the civilisation of a society is the efficiency of its police system. I take it that if a metropolis like London cannot secure the personal safety of an honoured and distinguished guest like Ericson—himself an Englishman, too—by Jove! it forfeits in so far its claim to be considered a capital of civilisation. I really think you might put this to Ericson.'
'I think you had better put it to him yourself, Sir Rupert. He will take it better from you than he would from me. You know I have some of his own feeling about it, and if I were he I fancy I should feel as he feels. I wouldn't accept police protection against those fellows.'
'Why don't you go about with him yourself? You two would be quite enough, I dare say.Hewouldn't be on his guard, butyouwould, forhim.'
'Oh, if he would letme, that would be all right enough. I am always pretty well armed, and I have learned, from his very self, the way to use weapons. I think I could take pretty good care of him. But then, he won't always let me go with him, and he will persist in walking home from dinner parties and studying, as he says, the effect of London by night.'
'As if he were a painter or a poet,' Sir Rupert said in a tone which did not seem to imply that he considered painting and poetry among the grandest occupations of humanity.
'Why, only the other night,' Hamilton said, 'I was dining with some fellows from the United States at the Buckingham Palace Hotel, and I walked across St. James's Park on my way to look in at the Voyagers' Club, and as I was crossing the bridge I saw a man leaning on it and looking at the pond, and the sky, and the moon—and when I came nearer I saw it was his Excellency—and not a policeman or any other human being but myself within a quarter of a mile of him. It was before I had had any warning about him; but, by Jove! it made my blood run cold.'
'Did you make any remonstrance with him?'
'Of course I did. But he only smiled and turned it off with a joke—said he didn't believe in all that subterranean conspiracy, and asked whether I thought that on a bright moonlight night like that he shouldn't notice a band of masked and cloaked conspirators closing in upon him with daggers in their hands. No, it's no use,' Hamilton wound up despondingly.
'Perhaps I might try,' Sir Rupert said.
'Yes, I think you had better. At all events, he will take it from you. I don't think he would take it from me. I have worried him too much about it, and you know he can shut one up if he wants to.'
'I tell you what,' Sir Rupert suddenly said, as if a new idea had dawned upon him. 'I think I'll get my daughter to try what she can do with him.'
'Oh—yes—how is that?' Hamilton asked, with a throb at his heart and a trembling of his lips.
'Well, somehow I think my daughter has a certain influence over him—I think he likes her—of course, it's only the influence of a clever child and all that sort of thing—but still I fancy that something might be made to come of it. You know she professes such open homage for him, and she is all devoted to his cause—and he is so kind to her and puts up so nicely with all her homage, which, of course, although sheismy daughter and I adore her, must, I should say, bore a man of his time of life a good deal when he is occupied with quite different ideas—don't you think so, Hamilton?'
'I can't imagine a man at any time of life or with any ideas being bored by Miss Langley,' poor Hamilton sadly replied.
'That's very nice of you, Hamilton, and I am sure you mean it, and don't say it merely to please me—and she likes you ever so much, that I know, for she has often told me—but I think I could make some use of her influence over him. Don't you think so? If she were to ask him as a personal favour—to her and to me, of course—leaving the Government altogether out of the question—as a personal favour to her and to me to take some care of himself—don't you think he could be induced? He is so chivalric in his nature that I don't think he would refuse anything to a young woman like her.'
'What is there that I could refuse to her;' poor Hamilton thought sadly within himself. 'But she will not care to plead to me that I should take care of my life. She thinks my poor, worthless life is safe enough—as indeed it is—who cares to attack me?—and even if it were not safe, what would that be to her?' He thought at the moment that it would be sweetness and happiness to him to have his life threatened by all the assassins and dynamiters in the world if only the danger could once induce Helena Langley to ask him to take a little better care of his existence.
'What do you think of my idea?' Sir Rupert asked. He seemed to find Hamilton's silence discouraging. Perhaps Hamilton knew that the Dictator would not like being interfered with by any young woman. For the fondest of fathers can never quite understand why the daughter, whom he himself adores, might not, nevertheless, seem sometimes a little of a bore to a man who is not her father.
Hamilton pulled himself together.
'I think it is an excellent idea, Sir Rupert—in fact, I don't know of any other idea that is worth thinking about.'
'Glad to hear you say so, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said, greatly cheered. 'I'll put it in operation at once. Good-bye.'