He tore it open with a groan.
"This is the fourth letter. You will have to take notice of my communications, and to act upon them, sooner or later. All this morning Mr. Colquhoun was locked up with your wife in her boudoir. He came at eleven and went away at half-past one. No one was admitted. They talked of many things—of their Scotch secret especially, and how to hide it from you. I shall keep you informed of what they do. At half past two Mrs. Cassilis ordered the carriage and drove to Twickenham. Mr. Colquhoun has got his ward there, Miss Fleming. So that doubtless she went to meet him again. In the evening she came home in a very bad temper, because she had failed to meet him. She had hoped to see him three times at least this very day. Surely, surely even your blind confidence cannot stand a continuation of this kind of thing. All the world knows it except yourself. You may be rich and generous to her, but she doesn't love you. And she doesn't care for her child. She hasn't asked to see it for three days—think of that! There is a pretty mother for you! She ill-treats her maid, who isa most faithful person, and devoted to your interests. She is hated by every servant in the house. She is a cold-hearted, cruel woman. And even if she loves Mr. Colquhoun, it can only be through jealousy, and because she won't let him marry anybody else, even if he wanted to. But things are coming to a crisis. Wait!"
Mr. Mowll came in with a packet of papers, and found his master staring straight before him into space. He spoke to him but received no answer. Then he touched him gently on the arm. Mr. Cassilis started, and looked round hastily. His first movement was to lay his hand upon a letter on the desk.
"What is it, Mowll—what is it? I was thinking—I was thinking. I am not very well to-day, Mowll."
"You have been working too hard, sir," said his secretary.
"Yes—yes. It is nothing. Now, then, let us look at what you have brought."
For two hours Mr. Cassilis worked with his secretary. He had the faculty of rapid and decisive work. And he had the eye of a hawk. They were two hours of good work, and the secretary's notes were voluminous. Suddenly the financier stopped—the work half done. It was as if the machinery of a clock were to go wrong without warning.
"So," he said, with an effort, "I think we will stop for to-day. Put all these matters at work, Mowll. I shall go home and rest."
A thing he had never done before in all his life.
He went back to his house. His wife was at home and alone. They had luncheon together, and drove out in the afternoon. Her calm and stately pride drove the jealous doubts from his troubled mind as the sun chases away the mists of morning.
"An excellent play."
Such things as dinners to Literature were the relaxations of Gilead Beck's serious life. His real business was to find an object worthy of that enormous income of which he found himself the trustee. The most sympathetic man of his acquaintance, although it was difficult to make him regard any subject seriously, was Jack Dunquerque, and to him he confided his anxieties and difficulties.
"I can't fix it," he groaned. "I can't fix it anyhow."
Jack knew what he meant, but waited for further light, like him who readeth an acrostic.
"The more I look at that growin' pile—there's enough now to build the White House over again—the more I misdoubt myself."
"Where have you got it all?"
"In Government Stocks—by the help of Mr. Cassilis. No more of the unholy traffic in shares which you buy to sell again. No, sir. That means makin' the widow weep and the minister swear; an' I don't know which spectacle of those two is the more melancholy for a Christian man. All in stocks—Government Stocks, safe and easy to draw out, with the interest comin' in regular as the chant of the cuckoo-clock."
"Well, can't you let it stay there?"
"No, Mr. Dunquerque, I can't. There's the voice of that blessed Inseck in the box there, night and day in my ears. And it says, plain as speech can make it, 'Do something with the money.'"
"You have bought a few pictures."
"Yes, sir: I have begun the great Gilead P. Beck collection. And when that is finished, I guess there'll be no collection on this airth to show a candle to it. But that's personal vanity. That's not what the Golden Butterfly wants."
"Would he like you to have a yacht? A good deal may be chucked over a yacht. That is, a good deal for what we Englishmen call a rich man."
"When I go home again I mean to build a yacht, and sail her over here and race you people at Cowes—all the same as the America, twenty years ago. But not yet."
"There are a few trifles going about which run away with money. Polo, now. If you play polo hard enough, you may knock up a pony every game. But I suppose that would not be expensive enough for you. You couldn't ride two ponies at once, I suppose, like a circus fellow."
"Selfish luxury, Mr. Dunquerque," said Gilead, with an almost prayerful twang, "is not the platform of the Golden Butterfly. I should like to ride two ponies at once, but it's not to be thought of. And my legs are too long for any but a Kentucky pony."
"Is the Turf selfish luxury, I wonder?" asked Jack. "A good deal of money can be got through on the Turf. Nothing, of course, compared with your pile; but still, you might make a sensible hole in it by judicious backing."
Gilead Beck was as free from ostentation, vanity, and the desire to have his ears tickled as any man. But still he did like to feel that by the act of Providence, he was separated from other men. An income of fifteen hundred pounds a day, which does not depend upon harvests, or on coal, or on iron, or anything to eat and drink, but only on the demand for rock-oil, which increases, as he often said, with the march of civilisation, does certainly separate a man from his fellows. This feeling of division saddened him; it imparted something of the greatness of soul which belongs even to the most unworthy emperors; he felt himself bound to do something for the good of mankind while life and strength were in him. And it was not unpleasant to know that others recognised the vastness of his Luck. Therefore, when Jack Dunquerque spoke as if the Turf were a gulf which might be filled up with his fortune, while it swallowed, without growing sensibly more shallow, all the smaller fortunes yearly shot into it like the rubbish on the future site of a suburban villa, Gilead Beck smiled. Such recognition from this young man was doubly pleasant to him on account of his unbounded affection for him. Jack Dunquerque had saved his life. Jack Dunquerque treated him as an equal and a friend. Jack Dunquerque wanted nothing of him, and, poor as he was, would accept nothing of him. Jack Dunquerque was the first, as he was also the most favourable, specimen he had met of the class which may be poor, but does not seem to care for more money; the class which no longer works for increase of fortune.
"No, sir," said Gilead. "I do not understand the Turf. When I go home I shall rear horses and improve the breed. Maybe I may run a horse in a trotting-match at Saratoga."
In the mornings this American, in search of a Worthy Object, devoted his time to making the round of hospitals, London societies, and charities of all kinds. He asked what they did, and why they did it. He made remarks which were generally unpleasant to the employés of the societies; he went away without offering the smallest donation; and he returned moodily to the Langham Hotel.
"The English," he said, after a fortnight of these investigations, "air the most kind-hearted people in the hull world. We are charitable, and I believe the Germans, when they are not officers in their own army, are a well-disposed folk. But in America, when a man tumbles down the ladder, he falls hard. Here there's every contrivance for makin' him fall soft. A man don't feel handsome when he's on the broad of his back, but it must be a comfort for him to feel that his backbone isn't broke. Lord, Mr. Dunquerque! to look at the hospitals and refuges, one would think the hull Bible had got nothin' but the story of the Prodigal Son, and that every other Englishman was that misbehaved boy. I reckon if the young man had lived in London, he'd have gone home very slow—most as slow as ever he could travel. There'd be the hospitals, comfortable and warm, when his constitootion had broke down with too many drinks: there'd have been the convalescent home for him to enjoy six months of happy meditation by the seaside when he was pickin' up again; and when he got well, would he take to the swine-herdin', or would he tramp it home to the old man? Not he, sir; he would go back to the old courses and become a Roper. Then more hospitals. P'r'aps when he'd got quite tired, and seen the inside of a State prison, and been without his little comforts for a spell, he'd have gone home at last—just as I did, for I was the prodigal son without the riotous livin'—and found the old man gone, leavin' him his blessin'. The elder one would hand him the blessin' cheerfully, and stick to the old man's farm. Then the poor broken down sportsman—he'd tramp it back to London, get into an almshouse, with an allowance from a City charity, and die happy.
"There's another kind o' prodigal," Mr. Beck went on, being in a mood for moralising. "She's of the other sex. Formerly she used to repent when she thought of what was before her. There's a refuge before her now, and kind women to take her by the hand and cry over her. She isn't in any hurry for the cryin' to begin, but it's comfortable to look forward to; and so she goes on until she's ready. Twenty years fling, maybe, with nothing to do for her daily bread; and then to start fair on the same level as the woman who has kept her self-respect and worked.
"I can't see my way clear, Mr. Dunquerque; I can't. It wouldn't do any kind of honour to the Golden Butterfly to lay out all of these dollars in helpin' up them who are bound to fall—bound to fall. There's only two classes of people in this world—those who are goin' up, and those who are goin' down. It's no use tryin' to stop those who are on their way down. Let them go; let them slide; give them a shove down, if you like, and all the better, because they will the sooner get to the bottom, and then go up again till they find their own level."
It was in the evening, at nine o'clock, when Gilead Beck made the oration. He was in his smaller room, which was lit only by the twilight of the May evening and by the gas-lamp in the street below. He walked up and down, talking with his hands in his pockets, and silencing Jack Dunquerque, who had never thought seriously about these or any other things, by his earnestness. Every now and then he went to the window and looked into the street below. The cabs rattled up and down, and on the pavement the customary sight of a West-end street after dark perhaps gave him inspiration.
"Their own level," he repeated it. "Yes, sir, there's a proper level for every one of us somewhere, if only we can find it. At the lowest depth of all, there's the airth to be ploughed, the hogs to be drove, and the corn to be reaped. I read the other day, when I was studying for the great dinner, that formerly, if a man took refuge in a town, he might stay there for a year and a day. If then he could not keep himself, they opened the gates and they ran him out on a plank; same way as I left Clearville City. Back to the soil he went—back to the plough. Let those who are going down hill get down as fast as they can, and go back to the soil.
"I've sometimes thought," he went on, "that there's a kind of work lower than agriculture. It is to wear a black coat and do copying. You take a boy and you make him a machine; tell him to copy, that is all. Why, sir, the rustic who feeds the pigs is a Solomon beside that poor critter. Make your poor helpless paupers into clerks, and make the men who've got arms and legs and no brains into farm labourers. Perhaps I shall build a city and conduct it on those principles."
Then he stopped because he had run himself down, and they began to talk of Phillis.
But it seemed to Jack a new and singular idea. The weak must go to the wall; but they might be helped to find their level. He was glad for once that he had that small four hundred a year of his own, because, as he reflected, his own level might be somewhere on the stage where the manufacture by hand, say, of upper leathers, represents the proper occupation of the class. A good many other fellows, he thought, among his own acquaintance, might find themselves accommodated with boards for the cobbling business near himself. And he looked at Gilead Beck with increased admiration as a man who had struck all this, as well as Ile, out of his own head.
Jack Dunquerque suggested educational endowments. Mr. Beck made deliberate inquiries into the endowments of Oxford and Cambridge, with a view of founding a grand National American University on the old lines, to be endowed in perpetuity with the proceeds of his perennial oil-fountains. But there were things about these ancient seats of learning which did not commend themselves to him. In his unscholastic ignorance he asked what was the good of pitting young men against each other, like the gladiators in the arena, to fight, like them, with weapons of no earthly modern use. And when he was told of fellowships given to men for life as a prize for a single battle, he laughed aloud.
He went down to Eton. He was mean enough to say of the masters that they made their incomes by over-charging the butchers' and the grocers' bills, and he said that ministers, as he called them, ought not to be grocers; and of the boys he said that he thought it unwholesome for them that some should have unlimited pocket-money, and all should have unlimited tick. Also some one told him that Eton boys no longer fight, because they funk one another. So that he came home sorrowful and scornful.
"In my country," he said, "we have got no scholarships, and if the young men can't pay their professors they do without them and educate themselves. And in my country the boys fight. Yes, Mr. Dunquerque, you bet they do fight."
It was after an evening at the Lyceum that Gilead Beck hit upon the grand idea of his life.
The idea struck him as they walked home. It fell upon him like an inspiration, and for the moment stunned him. He was silent until he reached the hotel. Then he called a waiter.
"Get Mr. Dunquerque a key," he said. "He will sleep here. That means, Mr. Dunquerque, that we can talk all night if you please. I want advice."
Jack laughed. He always did laugh.
"It is a great privilege," he said, "advising Fortunatus."
"It is a great privilege, Mr. Dunquerque," returned Fortunatus, "having an adviser who wants nothing for himself. See that pile of letters. Every one a begging-letter, except that blue one on the top, which is from a clergyman. He's a powerful generous man, sir. He offers to conduct my charities at a salary of three hundred pounds a year."
Mr. Beck then proceeded to unfold the great idea which had sprung up, full grown, in his brain.
"That man, sir," he said, meaning Henry Irving, "is a grand actor. And they are using him up. He wants rest."
"I was an actor myself once, and I've loved the boards ever since. I was not a great actor. I am bound to say that I did not act like Mr. Henry Irving. Quite the contrary. Once I was the hind legs of an elephant. Perhaps Mr. Irving himself, when he was a 'prentice, was the fore legs. I was on the boards for a month, when the company busted up. Most things did bust up that I had to do with in those days. I was the lawyer inFlowers of the Forest. I was the demon with the keg to Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle. Once I played Horatio. That was when the Mayor of Constantinople City inaugurated his year of office by playin' Hamlet. He'd always been fond of the stage, that Mayor, but through bein' in the soft-goods line never could find time to go on. So when he got the chance, bein' then a matter of four-and-fifty, of course he took it. And he elected to play Hamlet, just to show the citizens what a whole-souled Mayor they'd got, and the people in general what good play-actin' meant. The corporation attended in a body, and sat in the front row of what you would call the dress circle. All in store clothes and go-to-meetin' gloves. It was a majestic and an imposing spectacle. Behind them was the fire brigade in uniform. The citizens of Constantinople and their wives and daughters crowded out the house.
"Wal, sir, we began. Whether it was they felt jealous or whether they felt envious, that corporation laughed. They laughed at the sentinels, and they laughed at the moon. They laughed at the Ghost, and they laughed at me—Horatio. And then they laughed at Hamlet.
"I watched the Mayor gettin' gradually riz. Any man's dander would. Presently he rose to that height that he went to the footlights, and stood there facin' his own town council like a bull behind a gate.
"They left off laughing for a minute, and then they began again. We are a grave people, Mr. Dunquerque, I am told, and the sight of those town councillors all laughin' together like so many free niggers before the war was most too much for any one.
"The Mayor made a speech that wasn't in the play.
"'Hyar,' he said, lookin' solemn. 'You jest gether up your traps and skin out of this. I've got the say about this house, and I arn't a goin' to have the folks incited to make game of their Mayor. So—you—kin—jist—light.'
"They hesitated.
"The Mayor pointed to the back of the theatre.
"'Git,' he said again.
"One of the town councillors rose and spoke.
"'Mr. Mayor,' he began, 'or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'——
"'Wal, sir,' said the Mayor, 'didn't Nero play in his own theaytre?'
"'Mr. Mayor, or Hamlet, or Nero,' e went on, 'we came here on the presumption that we were paying for our places, and bound to laugh if we were amused at the performance. Now, sir, this performance does amuse us considerable.'
"'You may presump,' said the Mayor, 'what you dam please. But git. Git at once, or I'll turn on the pumps.'
"It was the Ghost who came to the front with the hose in his hands ready to begin.
"The town council disappeared before he had time to play on them and we went on with the tragedy.
"But it was spoiled, sir, completely spoiled. And I have never acted since then.
"So you see Mr. Dunquerque, I know somethin' about actin. 'Tisn't as if I was a raw youngster starting a theatrical idea all at once. I thought of it to-night, while I saw a man actin who has the real stuff in him, and only wants rest. I mean to try an experiment in London, and if it succeeds I shall take it to New York, and make the American Drama the greatest in all the world."
"What will you do?"
"I said to myself in that theatre: 'We want a place where we can have a different piece acted every week; we want to give time for rehearsals and for alteration; we want to bring up the level of the second-rate actors; we want more intelligence; and we want more care.' Now, Mr. Dunquerque, how would you tackle that problem?"
"I cannot say."
"Then I will tell you, sir. You must have three full companies. You must give up expecting that Theatre to pay its expenses; you must find a rich man to pay for that Theatre; and he must pay up pretty handsome."
"Lord de Molleteste took the Royal Hemisphere last year."
"Had he three companies, sir?"
"No; he only had one; and that was a bad one. Wanted to bring out a new actress, and no one went to see her. Cost him a hundred pounds a week till he shut it up."
"Well, we will bring along new actresses too, but in a different fashion. They will have to work their way up from the bottom of the ladder. My Theatre will cost me a good deal more than a hundred pounds a week, I expect. But I am bound to run it. The idea's in my head strong. It's the thing to do. A year or two in London, and then for the States. We shall have a Grand National Drama, and the Ile shall pay for it."
He took paper and pen, and began to write.
"Three companies, all complete, for tragedy and comedy. I've been to every theatre in London, and I'm ready with my list. Now, Mr. Dunquerque, you listen while I write them down.
"I say first company; not that there's any better or worse, but because one must begin with something.
"In the first I will have Mr. Irving, Mr. Henry Neville, Mr. William Farren, Mr. Toole, Mr. Emery, Miss Bateman, and Miss Nelly Farren.
"In the second, Mr. George Rignold—I saw him inHenry V.last winter in the States—Mr. Hare, Mr. Kendal, Mr. Lionel Brough, Mrs. Kendal, and that clever little lady, Miss Angelina Claude.
"In the third I will have Mr. Phelps, Mr. Charles Matthews, Mr. W. J. Hill, Mr. Arthur Cecil, Mr. Kelly, Mr. and Mrs. Bancroft, and Mrs. Scott-Siddons, if you could only get her.
"I should ask Mr. Alfred Wigan to be a stage-manager and general director, and I would give him absolute power.
"Every company will play for a week and rehearse for a fortnight. The principal parts shall not always be played by the best actors. And I will not have any piece run for more than a week at a time."
"And how do you think your teams would run together?"
"Sir, it would be a distinction to belong to that Theatre. And they would be well paid. They will run together just for the very same reason as everybody runs together—for their own interest."
"I believe," said Jack, "that you have at last hit upon a plan for getting rid even of your superfluous cash."
"It will cost a powerful lot, I believe. But Lord, Mr. Dunquerque! what better object can there be than to improve the Stage? Think what it would mean. The House properly managed; no loafin' around behind the scenes; every actor doing his darn best, and taking time for study and rehearsal; people comin' down to a quiet evening, with the best artists to entertain them, and the best pieces to play. The Stage would revive, sir. We should hear no more about the decay of the Drama. The Drama decay! That's bunkum, sir. That's the invention of the priests and the ministers, who go about down-cryin' what they can't have their own fingers in."
"But I don't see how your scheme will encourage authors."
"I shall pay them too, sir. I should say to Mr. Byron: 'Sir, you air a clever and a witty man. Go right away, sir. Sit down for a twelvemonth, and do nothin' at all. Then write me a play; put your own situations in it, not old jokes; put your own situations in it, not old ones. Give me somethin' better.' Then I should say to Mr. Gilbert: 'Your pieces have got the real grit, young gentleman; but you write too fast. Go away too for six months and do nothin'. Then sit down for six months more, and write a piece that will be pretty and sweet, and won't be thin.' And there's more dramatists behind—only give them a chance. They shall have it at my house."
"And what will the other houses do?"
"The other houses, sir, may go on playing pieces for four hundred nights if they like. I leave them plenty of men to stump their boards, and my Theatre won't hold more than a certain number. I shall only take a small house to begin with, such a house as the Lyceum, and we shall gradually get along. But no profit can be made by such a Stage, and I am ready to give half my Ile to keep it goin'. Of course," he added, "when it is a success in London I shall carry it away, company and all, to New York."
He rose in a burst of enthusiasm.
"Gilead P. Beck shall be known for his collection of pictures. He shall be known for his Golden Butterfly, and the Luck it brought him. But he shall be best known, Mr. Dunquerque, because he will be the first man to take the Stage out of the mud of commercial enterprise, and raise it to be the great educator of the people. He shall be known as the founder of the Grand National American Drama. And his bust shall be planted on the top of every American stage."
"In such a cause who would not give? What heartBut leaps at such a name?"
"In such a cause who would not give? What heartBut leaps at such a name?"
"In such a cause who would not give? What heartBut leaps at such a name?"
"In such a cause who would not give? What heart
But leaps at such a name?"
People of rank and position are apt to complain of begging-letters. Surely England must be a happy country since its rich people complain mostly of begging-letters; for they are so easily dropped into the waste-paper basket. A country squire—any man with a handle to his name and place for a permanent address—is the natural prey and victim of the beggars. The lithographed letter comes with every post, trying in vain to look like a written letter. And though in fervid sentences it shows the danger to your immortal soul if you refuse the pleading, most men have the courage to resist. The fact is that the letter is not a nuisance at all, because it is never read. On the other hand, a new and very tangible nuisance is springing up. It is that of the people who go round and call. Sir Roger de Coverly in his secluded village is free from the women who give you the alternative of a day with Moody and Sankey or an eternity of repentance; he never sees the pair of Sisters got up like Roman Catholic nuns, who stand meekly before you, arms crossed, mutely refusing to go without five shillings at least for their Ritualist hot-house. But he who lives in chambers, he who puts up at a great hotel and becomes known, he who has a house in any address from Chester Square to Notting Hill, understands this trouble.
In some mysterious way Gilead Beck had become known. Perhaps this was partly in consequence of his habit of going to institutions, charities, and the like, and wanting to find out everything. In some vague and misty way it became known that there was at the Langham Hotel an American named Gilead P. Beck, who was asking questions philanthropically. Then all the people who live on philanthropists, with all those who work for their pleasure among philanthropists, began to tackle Gilead P. Beck. Letters came in the morning, which he read but did not answer. Circulars were sent to him, of which he perhaps made a note. Telegrams were even delivered to him—people somehowmustread telegrams—asking him for money. Those wonderful people who address the Affluent in theTimesand ask for £300 on the security of an honest man's word; those unhappy ladies whose father was a gentleman and an officer, on the strength of which fact they ask the Benevolent to help them in their undeserved distress, poor things; those disinterested advertisers who want a few hundreds, and who will give fifteen per cent. on the security of a splendid piano, a small gallery of undoubted pictures, and some unique china; those tradesmen who try to stave off bankruptcy by asking the world generally for a loan on the strength of a simple reference to the clergyman of St. Tinpot, Hammersmith; those artful dodgers, Mr. Ally Sloper and his friends, when they have devised a new and ingenious method of screwing money out of the rich,—all these people got hold of our Gilead, and pelted him with letters. Did they know, the ingenious and the needy, how the business is overdone, they would change their tactics and go round calling.
It requires a front of brass, entire absence of self-respect, and an epidermis like that of the rhinoceros for toughness, to undertake this work. Yet ladies do it. You want a temperament off which insults, gibes, sneers, and blank refusals fall like water off a nasturtium-leaf to go the begging-round. Yet women do it. They do it not only for themselves, but also for their cause. From Ritualism down to Atheism, from the fashionable enthusiasm to the nihilism which the British workman is being taught to regard as the hidden knowledge, there are women who will brave anything, dare anything, say anything, and endure anything. They love to be martyred, so long especially as it does not hurt; they are angry with the lukewarm zeal of their male supporters, forgetting that a man sees the two sides of a question, while a woman never sees more than one; they mistake notoriety for fame, and contempt for jealous admiration.
And here, in the very heart of London, was a man who seemed simply born for the Polite Beggar. A man restless because he could not part with his money. Not seeking profitable investments, not asking for ten and twenty per cent.; but anxious to use his money for the best purposes; a man who was a philanthropist in the abstract, who considered himself the trustee of a gigantic gift to the human race, and was desirous of exercising that trust to the best advantage.
In London; and at the same time, in the same city, thousands of people not only representing their individual distresses or their society's wants, but also plans, schemes, and ideas for the promotion of civilisation in the abstract. Do we not all know the projectors? I myself know at this moment six men who want each to establish a daily paper; at least a dozen who would like a weekly; fifty who see a way, by the formation of a new society, to check immorality, kill infidelity once for all, make men sober and women clean, prevent strikes and destroy Republicanism. There is one man who would "save" the Church of England by establishing the preaching order; one who knows how to restore England to her place among the nations without a single additional soldier; one who burns to abolish bishops' aprons, and would make it penal to preach in a black gown. The land teems with idea'd men. They yearn, pray, and sigh daily for the capitalist who will reduce their idea to practice.
And besides the projectors, there are the inventors. I once knew a man who claimed to have invented a means for embarking and setting down passengers and goods on a railway without stopping the trains. Think of the convenience. Why no railways have taken up the invention, I cannot explain. Then there are men who have inventions which will reform the whole system of domestic appliances; there are others who are prepared on encouragement to reform the whole conduct of life by new inventions. There are men by thousands brooding over experiments which they have no money to carry out; there are men longing to carry on experiments whose previous failure they can now account for. All these men are looking for a capitalist as for a Messiah. Had they known—had they but dimly suspected—that such a capitalist was in June of last year staying at the Langham Hotel, they would have sought that hotel with one consent, and besieged its portals. The world in general did not know Mr. Beck's resources. But they were beginning to find him out. The voice of rumour was spreading abroad his reputation. And the people wrote letters, sent circulars, and called.
"Twenty-three of them came yesterday morning," Gilead Beck complained to Jack Dunquerque. "Three-and-twenty, and all with a tale to tell. No, sir,"—his voice rose in indignation—"I did not give one of them so much as a quarter-dollar. The Luck of the Golden Butterfly is not to be squandered among the well-dressed beggars of Great Britain. Three-and-twenty, counting one little boy, who came by himself. His mother was a widow, he said, and he sat on the chair and sniffed. And they all wanted money. There was one man in a white choker who had found out a new channel for doing good—and one man who wished to recommend a list of orphans. The rest were women. And talk? There's no name for it. With little books, and pencils, and bundles of tracts."
While he spoke there was a gentle tap at the door.
"There's another of them," he groaned. "Stand by me, Mr. Dunquerque. See me through with it. Come in, come in! Good Lord!" he whispered, "a brace this time. Will you tackle the young one, Mr. Dunquerque?"
A pair of ladies. One of them a lady tall and thin, stern of aspect, sharp of feature, eager of expression. She wore spectacles: she was apparently careless of her dress, which was of black silk a little rusty. With her was a girl of about eighteen, perhaps her daughter, perhaps her niece; a girl of rather sharp but pretty features, marked by a look of determination, as if she meant to see the bottom of this business, or know the reason why.
"You are Mr. Beck, sir?" the elder lady began.
"I am Gilead P. Beck, madam," he replied.
He was standing before the fireplace, with his long hands thrust into his pocket, one foot on an adjacent chair, and his head thrown a little back—defiantly.
"You have received two letters from me, Mr. Beck, written by my own hand, and—how many circulars, child?'
"Twenty," said the girl.
"And I have had no answer. I am come for your answer, Mr. Beck. We will sit down, if you please, while you consider your answer."
Mr. Beck took up a waste paper basket which stood at his feet, and tossed out the whole contents upon the table.
"Those are the letters of yesterday and to-day," he said. "What was yours, madam? Was it a letter asking for money?"
"It was."
"Yesterday there were seventy-four letters asking for money. To-day there are only fifty-two. May I ask, madam, if you air the widow who wants money to run a mangle?"
"Sir, I am unmarried. A mangle!"
He dug his hand into the pile, and took out one at random.
"You air, perhaps, the young lady who writes to know if I want a housekeeper, and encloses her carte-de-visite? No; that won't do. Is it possible you are the daughter of the Confederate general who lost his life in the cause?"
"Really, sir!"
"Then, madam, we come to the lady who"—here he read from another letter—"who was once a governess, and now is reduced to sell her last remaining garments."
"Sir!"
There was a withering scorn on the lady's lips.
"I represent a Cause, Mr. Beck. I am not a beggar for myself. My cause is the sacred one of Womanhood. You, sir, in your free and happy Republic——"
Mr. Beck bowed.
"Have seen woman partially restored to her proper place—on a level with man."
"A higher level," murmured the girl, who had far-off eyes and a sweet voice. "The higher level reached by the purer heart."
"Only partially restored at present. But the good work goes on. Here we are only beginning. Mr. Beck, the Cause wants help—your help."
He said nothing and she went on.
"We want our rights; we want suffrage; we want to be elected for the Houses of Parliament; we insist on equality in following the professions and in enjoying the endowments of Education. We shall prove that we are no whit inferior to men. We want no privileges. Let us stand by ourselves."
"Wal, madam, their air helpers who shove up, and I guess there air helpers who shove down."
She did not understand him, and went on with increasing volubility.
"The subjection of the Sex is the most monstrous injustice of all those which blot the fair fame of manhood. What is there in man's physical strength that he should use it to lord over the weaker half of humanity? Why has not our sex produced a Shakespeare?"
"It has, madam," said Mr. Beck gravely. "It has produced all our greatest men."
She was staggered.
"Your answer, if you please, Mr. Beck."
"I have no answer, madam."
"I have written you two letters, and sent you twenty circulars, urging upon you the claims of the Woman's Rights Association. I have the right to ask for a reply. I expect one. You will be kind enough sir, to give categorically your answer to the several heads. This you will do of your courtesy to a lady. We can wait here while you write it. I shall probably, I ought to tell you, publish it."
"We can wait," said the young lady.
They sat with folded hands in silence.
Mr. Beck shifted his foot from the chair to the carpet. Then he took his hands out of his pockets and stroked his chin. Then he gazed at the ladies steadily.
Jack Dunquerque sat in the background, and rendered no help whatever.
"Did you ever, ladies," asked Mr. Beck, after a few moments of reflection, "hear of Paul Deroon of Memphis? He was the wickedest man in that city. Which was allowed. He kept a bar where the whisky was straight and the language was free, and where Paul would tell stories, once you set him on, calculated to raise on end the hair of your best sofa. When the Crusade began—I mean the Whisky Crusade—the ladies naturally began with Paul Deroon's saloon."
"This is very tedious, my dear," said the elder lady in a loud whisper.
"How did Paul Deroon behave? Some barkeepers came out and cursed while the Whisky War went on; some gave in and poured away the Bourbon: some shut up shop and took to preachin.' Paul just did nothing. You couldn't tell from Paul's face that he even knew of the forty women around him prayin' all together. If he stepped outside he walked through as if they weren't there, and they made a lane for him. If he'd been blind and deaf and dumb, Paul Deroon couldn't have taken less notice."
"We shall not keep our appointment, I fear," the younger lady remarked.
"They prayed, preached, and sang hymns for a whole week. On Sunday they sang eighty strong. And on the seventh day Paul took no more notice than on the first. Once they asked him if he heard the singin.' He said he did: and it was very soothin' and pleasant. Said, too, that he liked music to his drink. Then they asked him if he heard the prayers. He said he did; said, too, that it was cool work sittin' in the shade and listenin'; also that it kinder seemed as if it was bound to do somebody or other good some day. Then they told him that the ladies were waitin' to see him converted. He said it was very kind of them, and, for his own part, he didn't mind meetin' their wishes half way, and would wait as long as they did."
The ladies rose. Said the elder lady viciously: "You are unworthy, sir, to represent your great country. You are a common scoffer."
"General Schenck represents my country, madam."
"You are unworthy of being associated with a great Cause. We have wasted our time upon you."
Their departure was less dignified than their entry.
As they left the room another visitor arrived. It was a tall and handsome man, with a full flowing beard and a genial presence.
He had a loud voice and a commanding manner.
"Mr. Beck? I thought so. I wrote to you yesterday, Mr. Beck. And I am come in person—in person, sir—for your reply."
"You air the gentleman, sir, interested in the orphan children of a colonial bishop?"
"No, sir, I am not. Nothing of the kind."
"Then you air perhaps the gentleman who wrote to say that unless I sent him a ten-pound note by return of post he would blow out his brains?"
"I am Major Borington. I wrote to you, sir, on behalf of the Grand National Movement for erecting International Statues."
"What is that movement, sir?"
"A series of monuments to all our great men, Mr. Beck. America and England, have ancestors in common. We have our Shakespeare, sir, our Milton."
"Yes, sir, so I have heard. I did not know those ancestors myself, having been born too late, and therefore I do not take that interest in their stone figures you do."
"Positively, Mr. Beck, you must join us."
"It is your idea, Colonel, is it?"
"Mine, Mr. Beck. I am proud to say it is my own."
"I knew a man once, Colonel, in my country, who wanted to be a great man. He had that ambition, sir. He wasn't particular how he got his greatness. But he scorned to die and be forgotten, and he yearned to go down to posterity. His name, sir, was Hiram Turtle. First of all, he ambitioned military greatness. We went into Bull's Run together. And we came out of it together. We came away from that field side by side. We left our guns there, too. If we had had shields, we should have left them as well. Hiram concluded, sir, after that experience, to leave military greatness to others."
Major Borington interposed a gesture.
"One moment, Brigadier. The connection is coming. Hiram Turtle thought the ministry opened up a field. So he became a preacher. Yes; he preached once. But he forgot that a preacher must have something to say, and so the elders concluded not to ask Hiram Turtle any more. Then he became clerk in a store while he looked about him. For a year or two he wrote poetry. But the papers in America, he found, were in a league against genius. So he gave up that lay. Politics was his next move; and he went for stump-orating with the Presidency in his eye. Stumpin' offers amusement as well as gentle exercise, but it doesn't pay unless you get more than one brace of niggers and a bubbly-jock to listen. Wal, sir, how do you think Hiram Turtle made his greatness? He figured around, sir, with a List, and his own name a-top, for a Grand National Monument to the memory of the great men who fell in the Civil War. They air still subscribing, and Hiram Turtle is the great Patriot. Now, General, you see the connection."
"If you mean, sir," cried Major Borington, "to imply that my motives are interested——"
"Not at all, sir," said Mr. Beck; "I have told you a little story. Hiram Turtle's was a remarkable case. Perhaps you might ponder on it."
"Your language is insulting, sir!"
"Colonel, this is not a country where men have to take care what they say. But if you should ever pay a visit out West, and if you should happen to be about where tar and feathers are cheap, you would really be astonished at the consideration you would receive. No, sir, I shall not subscribe to your Grand National Association. But go on, Captain, go on. This is a charitable country, and the people haven't all heard the story of Hiram Turtle. And what'll you take, Major?"
But Major Borington, clapping on his hat, stalked out of the room.
The visits of the strong-minded female and Major Borington which were typical, took place on the day which was the first and only occasion on which Phillis went to the theatre. Gilead Beck took the box, and they went—Jack Dunquerque being himself the fourth, as they say in Greek exercise-books—to the Lyceum, and saw Henry Irving play Hamlet.
Phillis brought to the play none of the reverence with which English people habitually approach Shakespeare, insomuch that while we make superhuman efforts to understand him we have lost the power of criticism. To her, George III.'s remark that there was a great deal of rubbish in Shakspeare would have seemed a perfectly legitimate conclusion. But she knew nothing about the great dramatist.
The house, with its decorations, lights, and crowd, pleased her. She liked the overture, and she waited with patience for the first scene. She was going to see a representation of life done in show. So much she understood. Instead of telling a story the players would act the story.
The Ghost—perhaps because the Lyceum Ghost was so palpably flesh and blood—inspired her with no terror at all. But gradually the story grew into her, and she watched the unfortunate Prince of Denmark torn by his conflicting emotions, distraught with the horror of the deed that had been done and the deed that was to do, with a beating heart and trembling lip. When Hamlet with that wild cry threw himself upon his uncle's throne, she gasped and caught Agatha by the hand. When the play upon the stage showed the King how much of the truth was known, she trembled, and looked to see him immediately confess his crime and go out to be hanged. She was indignant with Hamlet for the slaughter of Polonius; she was contemptuous of Ophelia, whom she did not understand; and she was impatient when the two Gravediggers came to the front, resolute to spare the audience none of their somewhat musty old jokes and to abate nothing of the stage-business.
When they left the theatre Phillis moved and spoke as in a dream. War, battle, conspiracy, murder, crime—all these things, of which her guardian had told her, she saw presented before her on the stage. She had too much to think of; she had to fit all these new surroundings in her mind with the stories of the past. As for the actors, she had no power whatever of distinguishing between them and the parts they played. Irving was Hamlet; Miss Bateman was Ophelia; and they were all like the figures of a dream, because she did not understand how they could be anything but Hamlet, Ophelia, and the Court of Denmark.
And this, too, was part of her education.