The duke knew perfectly well that he had fallen into the hands of as rascally and evil a gang of ruffians as London could produce. He made no answer to the words of the man who had addressed him.
"You will be better off if you listen to Sidney reasonable, dearie," said the horrible old woman. The words dropped from her lips like gouts of oil. "You will be all the better for listening to Sidney! I'm sure nobody wants to do anything unpleasant to you, but folks must live, and you've reely walked in most convenient, as you might sye."
"What do you want?" the duke said at last.
"Well, sir," the man addressed as "Sidney" replied, "we have got you fair. Nobody saw us take you away. You've disappeared from the accident without leaving a trace like." As he spoke, the man's servile, wolfish face was a sheer wedge of greed and cunning. His tongue moistened his lips as if in anticipation of something. "You see, nobody can't possibly know where you've come. They will think you were smashed up, or got up and went away, out of your mind, after the shock. People'll hunt all over Londonfor you, no doubt, but they won't never think of us. Now, we've got your very 'ansom ticker and a few quids, and the gold purse that 'eld them, and there was a matter of forty or fifty pound in notes in the pocket-book when we opened it. It was that, by the wye, as told us who you was. Now, our contention is that them as 'as as much money as you must contribute to them as 'asn't."
He grinned as if pleased with his own wit, and a horrid little uncertain chuckle went round the room, a chuckle with something not quite human in it.
"Now, wot I says," the man continued, "is this. We will return you the ticker because it won't be of much use to us, except the gold case. We'll keep the chain and the quid box and the quids, and we'll also keep the fi-pun notes. Then, my lord, you'll sit down and write a little note to your bankers and enclose a cheque. I see you have got the cheque-book with you, or I've got it at least. Now, the question is what the amount of this 'ere cheque shall be. You, being a rich man, we cannot put it low, and we hold all the cards. Let's say three thousand pounds. In addition to that you'll give us your word of honour as a gentleman to take no proceedings about this 'ere little matter and say nothing about it to nobody. When that's done, by to-morrow morning, mid-day, say, you can go, and I am sure," he concluded, "with an 'eartyhand-shake from yours truly, being a gentleman, as I am sure you will prove, and a lord, too."
The duke considered.
Three thousand pounds is a large sum of money, though to him it meant little or nothing. At the same time his whole manhood rose up within him—the stubbornness of his race steeled him against granting these miscreants their demand. A flood of anger mounted to his brain. His upper lip stiffened and his eyes glinted ominously.
At last he answered the man.
"I'll see you d——d," he said, "before I give you a single halfpenny! And let me tell you this, that, as sure as you stand here now, you are bringing upon yourselves a sure and speedy punishment. You think, because I am wealthy and you know who I am, you have got a big haul. If you were just a little cleverer than you are you would understand that the Duke of Paddington cannot disappear, even for a few hours, without urgent inquiry being made for him. You will infallibly be discovered, and you know what the result of that will be."
"Not quite so fast," said the man called Sidney, in a smooth, quiet voice. "It is all very well to talk like this 'ere, but you don't know what you are a-saying of. You don't know in whose hands you are. People like us don't stick at nothing. As sure as eggs is eggs, unless you do as we are asking, you will never be seen or heard of any more. You think we run a risk? Well,I'll tell you this—I've had a good deal of professional experience—this is one of the easiest jobs to keep out of sight that I've ever 'ad. Now, supposing there 'ad been a little high-class job in the West End—matter of a jeweller's shop, say—or a house in Park Lyne. In that case we should be pretty certain to have some 'tecs nosing round this quarter, finding out where I or some other of my pals had been the night before. We should be watched, and the fences would be watched, until they could prove something against us. But in this case the police won't have a single idea wot will connect us with your disappearance."
"I am not going to argue with you, my man," the duke answered calmly. "I am not accustomed to bandy words with anybody, much less a filthy criminal ruffian like you! You can go to blazes, the whole lot of you! I won't give any of you a farthing!"
Even now the man who was the spokesman of that furtive, evil crew did not lose his temper. He smiled and nodded to himself, as if marking what the duke had said and weighing it over in his mind.
"All right," he answered at length. "That is what you say now. You will say different soon. I am not going to make any bones about it, but I'll tell you the programme, and that is this: To-night we are going to tie you up and take you down into a cellar. There's another one belowthis, and it ain't got no light nor fire, neither. It is simply a hole in the foundations of the house, that is wot it is. And the rats are all-alive-oh down there, I can tell you! Nice, warm, little furry rats with pink 'ands. You will stay down there to-night, and to-morrow morning I'll come and ask you this question again. I should like to get the business settled and over by mid-day. No use wasting time when there's work to be done. I am a business man, I am. Then, if your blooming lordship is fool enough not to agree to our little proposals by that time—well, then, I can only say that—much as I should regret 'aving to do it—we should 'ave to try what a little physical persuasion means—some 'ot sealing-wax upon the bare stomach, or a splinter or two of wood 'ammered between the nail and the finger, or even a good deal worse than that. Well, it'll all depend on you."
There was something so repulsively insolent in the man's voice that the duke's sense of outrage and anger was even greater than his fear.
He could not, did not, believe that these men would do anything of what they had threatened. His whole upbringing and training had made it almost impossible for him to believe that such a thing could happen to him. It was incredible—perfectly astounding and incredible—that he had even met with this misfortune, that he was where he was. But that the results of his capture would be pushed so far as the man said hewas absolutely sceptical. His fierce and lambent sense of anger mastered everything.
"Don't try and frighten me, you scoundrel!" he said. "I won't give you a penny!"
Still in the same even voice the ruffian concluded his address. The circle of the others had come closer and surrounded the duke on every side, while the old woman in the background peered over the shoulders of two men, looking at the bound victim with a curious, detached interest, as a naturalist might watch a cat playing with a mouse.
"Lastly," said the man, "if you go on being silly, after you've enjoyed a day or two with the pleasant little gymes I've told you of, why, I shall just come down into that 'ere cellar one morning, hold up your chin, and cut your throat like a pig! We sha'n't want to have you about if you stick to what you say, and a little cement down in that 'ere forgotten cellar—which, in fact, nobody knows of at all, except me and my pals here—will soon hide you away, my lord! There won't be any stately funeral and ancestral vault for the Duke of Paddington!"
For the first time a chill came into the duke's blood. He felt also a tremendous weariness, and his head throbbed unbearably. Yet there was a toughness within him, a strength of purpose and will which was not easily to be vanquished or weakened.
In a flash he reviewed the chances of thesituation. They were going to put him in a cellar till the morning. Well, he could bear that, no doubt. He might have time to think the whole matter over—to decide whether he should weaken or not, whether he should yield to these menacing demands. At the present his whole soul rose up in revolt against budging an inch from what he had said. His intense pride of birth and station, so deeply ingrained within him, turned with an almost physical nausea against allowing himself to be intimidated by such carrion as these. Should the dirty sweepings of the gaols of England frighten a man in whose veins ran the blood of centuries of rulers?
He ground his teeth together and looked the spokesman full in the face. He even smiled a little.
"I don't believe," he said in a quiet voice, "that you are fool enough to do any of these things with which you have threatened me, but I tell you that if you do you will find me exactly the same as you find me now. You might threaten some people and frighten them successfully. You might torture some people into doing what you say, but you will neither frighten me in the first instance, nor torture me into acquiescence in the second. You have got hold of the wrong person this time, my man, and what you think is going to be such a nice thing for you and your crew of scoundrels will in the end, if you carry out your threats, mean nothing else for allof you but the gallows. You may kill me if you like. I quite realise that at present I am in your power, though I do not think it at all likely I shall be so for very long. But even if you kill me you will get nothing out of me beyond the things you have stolen already. You have a very limited knowledge of life if you imagine that anybody of my rank and breed is going to let himself be altered from his purpose by such filth as you!"
There was a low and ominous murmur from the men as the duke concluded. The evil, snake-like faces grew more evil still.
They clustered together under the lamp, talking and whispering rapidly to each other, and the whimsical thought, even in that moment of extreme peril, came to the duke that there was a chamber of horrors resembling in an extraordinary degree that grisly underground room at the waxwork show in Baker Street, which, out of curiosity, he had once visited. There were the same cold, watchful eyes, the mobile and not unintelligent lips, the abnormally low foreheads, of the waxen monsters in the museum.
There was nothing human about any of them; they were ape-like and foul.
The man called "Sidney" turned round. From a bulging side-pocket of his coat he took out the duke's valuable repeater.
"Ah," he said, "I see that this 'ere little transaction 'as only occupied 'arf an hour from the time when we found you to the present. We cameout, thinking we might pick up a ticker or two or a portmanteau among the wreck. We got something a good deal better. Never mind what you say, we will find means to convince you right enough, but there is no time now. We're going to put you down in that there cellar I spoke of among the rats, and you will wait there till to-morrow morning. Meanwhile me and my pals will all be seen in different parts of London, in a bar or talking innocent-like to each other, and we will take jolly good care we will be seen by some of the 'tecs as knows us. There won't be no connecting us with your lordship's disappearance. Now then, come on!"
His voice, which had been by no means so certain and confident as it was before, suddenly changed into a snarl of fury. The duke heard it without fear and with a sense of exultation. He knew that his serenity had gone home, that his contempt had stung even this wolf-pig man.
As if catching the infection of the note, the unseen ruffian behind the chair, who held his arms, gave them a sharp, painful wrench.
The men crowded round him. His legs were untied from the chair legs and then retied together. His arms were strongly secured behind him, and he was half pushed, half carried to a door at the back of the kitchen.
The leader of the gang went before, carrying a tallow candle in a battered tin holder.
Passing through the door, they came into asmall back cellar-kitchen, in which there was a sink and a tap. A large tub, apparently used for washing, stood in one corner. Deft hands pulled this, half-full of greasy water as it was, away from where it originally stood.
A stone flag with an iron ring let into it was revealed.
A man pulled this up with an effort, revealing a square of yawning darkness, into which a short ladder descended. The leader went down first, and with some difficulty the helpless body of the duke was lowered down after him, though the depth could not have been more than eight feet or so.
When he had been pushed into this noisome hole the duke saw by the light of the candle which "Sidney" carried that he was in an underground chamber, perhaps some ten feet by ten. The walls were damp and oozing with saltpetre. The floor was of clay.
Looking up in the flickering light of the dip he could see where the ancient brick foundations of the house had been built into the ground. He was now, in fact, below the lowest cellar, in an unsuspected and forgotten chamber, left by the builders two hundred years ago.
"Now, this 'ere comfortable little detached residence, dook," said the man, "is where we generally puts our swag when it's convenient to keep it for a bit. Nobody knows of it. Nobody has ever learned of it. We discovered it quiteby chance like. That man wot comes round and collects the rents ain't an idea of its existence. This 'ere is Rat Villa, this is. Now, good-night! 'Ope to see your lordship 'appy and 'ealthy in the morning! You will observe we have left you your right arm free to brush the vermin off."
The duke lay down upon his back, looking up at the sinister ruffian with the candle and the dark stone ceiling of his prison.
Then, with an impudent, derisive chuckle Sidney climbed the ladder, and immediately afterwards the stone slab fell into its place with a soft thud.
The duke was alone in the dark!
The morning was not so foggy as the last three terrible days had been.
Dull it was even yet—the skies were dark and lowering—but the acrid, choking fog had mercifully disappeared.
But Mary Marriott thought nothing of this change in the weather as she drove down in a hansom cab to the house of James Fabian Rose in the little quiet street behind Westminster Abbey. It was half-past twelve. The great expedition to the slums of the West End was now to start.
Since that extraordinary day upon which her prospects had seemed so hopeless and so forlorn Mary had been in a state of suspended expectation. Suddenly, without any indication of what was to happen, she had been caught out of her drab monotony and taken into the very centre of a great, new pulsating movement. The conclusion of the day upon which she had again failed to achieve a theatrical engagement was incredibly splendid, incredibly wonderful!
She had had twenty-four hours to think it over, and during the whole of that quiet time in herlittle Bloomsbury flat, she had lived as if in a dream.
Was it possible, she asked herself over and over again—could it be true that the man with the mustard-coloured beard—the great James Fabian Rose—had indeed called upon her, had found her preparing her simple evening meal, and had taken her away through the fog to the brilliant little house in Westminster?
And was it true that she was really destined to be a leader upon the stage of the great propaganda of the Socialist party? Was it true that she out of all the actresses—the thousands of actresses unknown to fame—had been picked and chosen for this role—to be the star of a huge and organised social movement.
As the cab rolled down the grey streets of London towards Westminster, Mary found that she was asking herself these questions again and again.
When she arrived at Rose's house she knew that that was no delusion. The maid who opened the door ushered her in at once, and Mrs. Rose was waiting in the hall.
"Oh, my dear," Mrs. Rose said; "here you are at last! Do you know, when Fabian captured you the other night in the fog and brought you here we all knew that you were just the very person we wanted. We were so afraid—at least I was, nobody else was—that you would vanish away and we should not see you any more. Now, hereyou are! You have come to fulfil your destiny, and make your first great study in the environment, and among the scenes, of what you will afterwards present to the world with all your tragic power. My dear, they are all upstairs; they are all waiting. Two or three motor-cars will be round in about half an hour to take you right away into Dante's Inferno! Come along! Come along!"
As she concluded Mrs. Rose led Mary up the stairs to the drawing-room and shouted out in her sweet, high-pitched voice: "Fabian! Mr. Goodrick! Peter! She has come! Here she is! Now we're all complete."
Mary followed her hostess into the drawing-room.
There she found her friends of the first wonderful night, augmented by various people whom she did not know.
James Fabian Rose, pallid of face, and with his strange eyes burning with a curious intensity, came forward to greet her. He took her little hand in his and shook it heartily. Aubrey Flood was there also, wearing a grey overcoat, and he also had the intent expression of one who waits.
Peter Conrad, the clergyman, was not in clerical clothes. He wore a lounge suit of pepper-and-salt colour, and held a very heavy blackthorn stick in his right hand. The famous editor of theDaily Wire, Charles Goodrick, was almost incognito beneath the thick tweed overcoat with ahigh collar, from which his insignificant face and straw-coloured moustache looked out with a certain pathetic appeal.
Mary's welcome was extraordinarily cordial. She felt again as she had felt upon that astonishing night when she had first met all these people. She felt as if they all thought that an enormous deal depended upon her, that they were awaiting her with real anxiety.
On that chill mid-day the beautiful drawing-room, with its decorations by William Morris and Walter Crane, had little of its appeal. It seemed bare and colourless to Mary at least. It was a mere ante-room of some imminent experience.
She said as much to Fabian Rose. "Mr. Rose," she said, "I have come, and here I am. Now, what are you going to do with me? Where are you going to take me? What am I going to see? I am all excitement! I am all anxiousness!"
"My dear girl," Rose answered, "it is so charming of you to say that. That is just the attitude in which I want you to be—all excitement and anxiousness!"
They crowded round her, regarding her, as she could not but feel, as the centre of the picture, and her trepidation and excitement grew with the occasion. She was becoming, indeed, rather overstrained, when Mrs. Rose took her by the arm.
"My dear," she said, "don't get excited until it is absolutely necessary. Remember that youare here to-day simply to receive certain impressions, which are to germinate in your brain; seeds to be sown in your temperament, which shall blossom out in your heart. Therefore do not waste nervous force before the occasion arises. I am not going, you will be the only woman upon this expedition."
Mary looked round in a rather helpless way.
"Oh!" she said, "am I to be all alone?"
There came a sudden, sharp cackle of laughter from the famous editor.
"My dear Miss Marriott," he said, "all alone?"
Looking round upon the group of people who were indicated by the sweep of the little man's hand, Mary realised that she would be by no means alone.
Then she noticed, as she had not done before, that in the back recesses of the drawing-room were three or four other men, who, somehow or other, did not seem to belong to the world of her companions.
Rose caught the glance.
"Oh," he said, "I must introduce you to the bodyguard!"
He took her by the arm, and led her to the other end of the drawing-room.
There were four people standing there. One was clean-shaven, and wore a uniform of dark blue, braided with black braid, and held a peaked hat in his hand. Two of the others were bearded, very tall, strong and alert. They were dressedin ordinary dark clothes, and Mary felt—your experienced actress has always an eye for costume, and the necessity of it—that these two also suggested uniform.
The fourth person, who stood a little in the background of the other three, was a man with a heavy black moustache, hair cut short, except for a curious, shining wave over the forehead, and was obviously a strong and lusty constable in plain clothes.
"This is Miss Marriott, gentlemen," Rose said.
The three men in the foreground bowed. The man at the back automatically raised his right arm in military salute.
"These gentlemen, Miss Marriott," Rose said, "are going to take us into the places where we have to go. They are going to protect us. Inspector Brown and Inspector Smith, of Scotland Yard, and Inspector Green, of the County Council."
Mary bowed and smiled.
Then the tallest of the bearded men said: "Excuse me, miss, where we are going it would be quite inadvisable for you to wear the clothes you are wearing now."
He spoke quite politely, but with a certain decision and sharpness, at which Mary wondered.
"I don't quite understand," she said.
"Well, Miss Marriott," the inspector answered, "you see we are going into some very queer places indeed, and as you will be the only lady with us, you had better wear——"
"Oh, I quite forgot," Fabian Rose said. "Of course, you told me that before, Mr. Brown. We have got a nurse's costume for you, Miss Marriott. You see, a nurse can go anywhere in these places where no other woman can go. By the way," he added, as a sort of after-thought, "this must seem rather terrible to you. I hope you are not frightened?"
Mary smiled. She looked round at the group of big men in the drawing-room, and made a pretty little gesture with her hands.
"Frightened!" she said, and smiled.
"Come along," Rose said, "my wife will fit you up."
In half an hour a curious party had left Westminster in two closed motor-cars, and were rolling up Park Lane. When Oxford Street was reached the car in which the party sat went two or three hundred yards eastward. The car in which the other half were bestowed moved as far to the west.
Every one alighted, and the cars disappeared.
In half an hour after that the whole party, by devious routes carefully planned beforehand, met in a centre of the strange network of slums which are in the vicinity of the Great Western Station of Paddington.
These slums the ordinary wayfarer knows nothing of.
A man may ride down some main thoroughfareto reach the great railway gate of the West and realise nothing of the fact that, between some gin palace and large lodging-house, a little alley-entry may conduct the curious or the unwary into an inferno as sordid, as terrible, and even more dangerous than any lost quarter of Stepney or Whitechapel.
London, indeed, West End London, is quite unaware that among its stateliest houses, in the very middle of its thoroughfares, there are modern caves in which the troglodytes still dwell which are sinister and dark as anything can be in modern life.
Inspector Brown took the lead.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am going to take you now through some streets which none of you have probably ever seen before, to a certain district about a quarter of a mile beyond Paddington Station, and where I shall show you exactly what I am instructed to show you. I am sorry to have to make you walk so far, and especially as we have a lady with us, but there is no alternative. We cannot take a cab, or several cabs, to where we are going. A cab has never been seen in the quarter which you are entering with me. Even as we go we shall be known and marked. We shall not be interfered with in any dangerous way because you are with me and my colleagues, but, at the same time, the noise of our arrival will spread through the whole quarter, and I shall only be able to show you the placesomewhat dulled of its activities, and, as it were, frightened by our arrival."
"I see," Aubrey Flood answered. "I see, inspector. What you mean is that the rabbits will all be terrorised by the arrival of the ferret!"
"Well, sir," the inspector answered, "I am sure that is not a bad way of putting it."
"Is that a policeman? Do you mean to say he is a detective?" Mary asked James Fabian Rose. "I thought those people were so illiterate and stupid."
The great Socialist laughed.
"My dear," he answered, "you have so much, so very much to learn. Inspector Brown is one of the most intelligent men you could meet with anywhere. He speaks three languages perfectly. He reads Shakespeare. He understands social economics almost as well as I do myself. If he had had better chances he would have been a leader at the bar or an archdeacon. As it is he protects society withoutréclame, or without acknowledgment, and his emolument for exercising his extreme talents in this direction is, I believe, something under £250 a year."
Mary said nothing. It seemed, indeed, the only thing to do, but very many new thoughts were born within her as she listened to the pleasant, cultured voice of the bearded man, who looked as if he ought to be in uniform, and who led the party with so confident and so blithe a certainty.
They walked through streets of squalor. Theyprogressed through by-ways, ill-smelling and garbage-laden. The very spawn of London squealed and rolled in the gutters, while grey, evil-faced men and women peered at them from doorways and spat a curse as they went by.
They wound in and out of the horrid labyrinth of the West End slums until the great roar of London's traffic died away and became an indistinct hum, until they were all conscious of the fact that they were in another and different sphere.
They had arrived at the underworld.
They were come at last to grip with facts that stank and bit and gripped.
Mary turned a white face to Fabian Rose.
"Mr. Rose," she said, "I had no idea that anything could be quite so sordid and horrible as this. Why! the very air is different!"
"My child," the great Socialist answered, his hand upon her shoulder, the pale face and mustard-coloured beard curiously merged into something very eager, and yet full of pity. "My child, you are as yet only upon the threshold of what we are bringing you to see. We have brought you to-day to these terrible places so that you may drink in all their horrors, all their hideousness, and all their misery, and transform them—through the alchemy of your art—into a great and splendid appeal, which shall convulse the indifferent, the cruel, and the rich."
"Let us go on!" Mary said in a very quiet voice.
They went on.
And now the houses seemed to grow closer together, the fœtid atmosphere became more difficult for unaccustomed lungs to breathe, the roads became more difficult to walk upon, the faces which watched and gibbered round their progress were menacing, more awful, more hopeless.
They walked in a compact body, and then suddenly Inspector Brown turned round to his little battalion.
He addressed Fabian Rose.
"Sir," he said, "I think we have arrived at the starting point. Shall we begin now?"
Mary heard the words, and turned to Fabian Rose.
"Oh, Mr. Rose!" she said, "what terrible places, what dreadful places these are! I had no idea, though I have lived in London all my life, that such places existed. Why, I—oh, I don't know what I mean exactly—but why should such places be?"
"Because, my dear Miss Marriott," Rose answered—and she saw that his face was lit up with excitement and interest—"because of the curse of capitalism, because of the curse of modern life which we are endeavouring to remove."
Mary stamped her little foot upon the ground.
"I see," she said. "Why, I would hang theman who was responsible for all this! Who is he? Tell me!"
Rose looked gravely at her.
"My dear," he answered, "the man who is responsible for all this that immediately surrounds us is the man whom we hope to hold up to the whole of England as a type of menace and danger to the Commonwealth. It is the Duke of Paddington!"
On the afternoon when the Bishop of Carlton, Lord Hayle and Lady Constance Camborne had left the Duke of Paddington's rooms in St. Paul's College, Oxford, they went back to theRandolph Hotel, where the bishop and his daughter were staying.
Lord Hayle accompanied them, and the father, his son and daughter, went up to the private sitting-room which the bishop occupied.
The fog—the nasty, damp river mist, rather, which takes the place of fog in Oxford—was now thicker than ever, but a bright fire burnt upon the hearth of the comfortable sitting-room in the hotel, and one of the servants had drawn down the blinds and made the place cheery and home-like.
The Cambornes had only been three days in Oxford, but Lady Constance had already transformed the somewhat bare sitting-room into something of wont and use; the place was full of flowers, all the little personalia that a cultured and wealthy girl carries about with her, showed it. A piano had been brought in, photographs of friends stood about, and the hugewriting-table, specially put there for the use of the bishop, stood near the fireplace covered with papers.
The three sat down and some tea was brought.
"Well, Connie dear," Lord Hayle said, "and what do you think of John? You have often heard me talk about him. He is the best friend I have got in the world, and he is one of the finest chaps I know. What do you think of him, Connie?"
"I thought he was charming, Gerald," Lady Constance answered, "far more charming than I had expected. Of course, I have known that you and he have been friends all the time you have been up, but I confess I did not expect to see anybody quite so pleasant and sympathetic."
"My dear girl," Lord Hayle answered, "you don't suppose I should be intimate friends with anybody who was not pleasant and sympathetic?"
"Oh, no, I don't mean that, Gerald," the girl replied; "but, after all, the duke is in quite a special position, isn't he?"
"How do you mean?" said Lord Hayle.
"Well, Gerald, he is not quite like all the other young men one meets of our own class. Of course he is, in a way, but what I mean is that one expected a boy who was so stupendously rich and important to be a little more conscious of it than the duke was. He seemed quite nice and natural."
The bishop, who was sipping his tea and stretching out his shapely, gaitered feet to the fire, gave a little chuckle of satisfaction.
"My dear Constance," he said, "the duke is all you say, of course, in the way of importance and so on, but at the same time, he is just the simple gentleman that one would expect to meet. I also thought him a charming fellow, and I congratulate Gerald upon his friendship."
The bishop sipped his tea and said nothing more. He was gazing dreamily into the fire, while his son and daughter talked together. All was going very well. There was no doubt that the two young people had been mutually pleased with each other. Rich as the Earl of Camborne and Bishop of Carlton was, celebrated as he was, sure as he was of the Archbishopric when dear old Doctor Arbuthnot—now very shaky—should be translated to heaven, Lord Camborne was, nevertheless, not insensible of the fact that a marriage between his daughter and the Duke of Paddington would crown a long and distinguished career with a befittingfinis.
His own earldom was as old as the duke's title. There would be nothing incongruous in the match. Yet at the same time it would be a very fine thing indeed. All was well with the world, with the bishop, and the world was still a very pleasant place.
It was now about half-past five.
The bishop, Lady Constance, and Lord Hayle were to dine with Sir Andrew Anderson, a Scotch baronet, who had a seat some eight miles away from Oxford.
The bishop's motor-car was to be ready at half-past six, and they would reach Packington Grange by seven.
"What a blessing it is," the bishop said, breaking in upon the conversation of his son and daughter, "that the automobile has been invented. Here we are, sitting comfortably by the fire at half-past five. There is time to change without hurry or disturbance, and by dinner time we shall be at Packington. In my days, my dear Gerald, if one wanted to dine so far away from Oxford one had to get permission from the dean to stay all night. It would have been impossible for me, as an undergraduate, to go back before college gates were finally shut. You are far more fortunate."
"I don't know about that, father," Lord Hayle replied. "As a matter of fact, I should much prefer to stay the night at Packington, as you and Connie may possibly do so. In fact, I know the dean would give me permission at once, especially as I am with you. However, I quite agree with you about the joys of motoring, as I propose to drive the car back to Oxford myself whether you two return or not."
The bishop smiled. He was proud of his bright, handsome son, who had done him so much credit in his University career, and was already becoming a pronounced favourite of society.
"Well, Gerald," he said, "we look at things from a different point of view. Has the duke any motors, by the way?"
"He has lots of motors," Lord Hayle answered, "but only one up here, which he does not often use. In fact, I use it as much as he does. He is a riding man, you know. He sticks to the horses. Now then, father, I must run back to college and change. I will be back in time to start."
"We had all better change, I think," said the bishop, and smiling at his son he took his daughter by the arm, pinching it playfully, and they left the sitting-room for their respective bedrooms.
As his valet assisted him the bishop thought with a pleasant glow that his daughter had never looked more beautiful.
There was something changed about her. Of that he felt quite certain, and once more he thanked God for all the blessings of his life.
It is a blessed thing, indeed, to be an earl of old lineage, and the bishop of a famous cathedral city, a handsome and portly man, with a beautiful son and daughter, the friend of princes, and designate to the archiepiscopal chair.
Constance, as the maid brushed out that hair like ripe corn, that wonderful hair that so many men had eulogised, so many poets sung of, that hair which was often referred to by the society papers as if it was a national possession, sat thinking over the events of the afternoon.
How charming Gerald's friend was! He seemed so strong and self-contained, yet so simple and so natural. Despite his great position and the enormous figure he made and was to make in thepublic eye, he was yet the pleasantest of boys. He was unspoiled yet, she reflected, by the whirl and artificialva et vientof society. He had not yet taken up his sceptre, as it were, and had none of the manners of princedom.
The whole scene had etched itself upon her memory. The rich and the sober old college-rooms, the quiet, happy meal, the talk, the music, and then the dramatic telegram announcing the anarchistic outrage to Paddington House in Piccadilly.
How well the duke had taken it all. He had heard that the famous Florentine vase had been destroyed beyond hope of repair, that a picture which the nation would gladly have purchased for a fabulous sum had shown its painted glories to the eyes of the world for the last time.
Yet he had not seemed unduly worried. He had taken the whole thing calmly, and Lady Constance thought it imperative that well-bred people should take everything calmly.
And then, and then—well! he had certainly seemed very pleased to see her. He had been extremely attentive and nice. There had been something in his eyes. She smiled a little to herself, and a faint blush crept into her cheeks. She saw the colour as she looked into the glass and heard the soft swish of the ivory brush as it passed over her tresses.
"I am sure," she thought, "that he is good. He is so unlike the men one meets in society.They all seem to have something behind their words, some thought which is not quite simple and spontaneous, which informs all that they say. Nearly all of them are artificial, but the duke was quite natural and ordinary. I am so glad Gerald has such a nice friend, and he seemed quite pleased to come and stay with us when the term ends. What a good idea it was that we proposed it. It seems odd, indeed, that the poor boy, with his great house in London and all the country seats, should stay at theCarltonor theRitzwhen he comes to town. Really, highly placed as he is, he is quite lonely. Well, we'll do all we can to make him happy." Once more she said to herself: "It must be very nice for Gerald to have such a friend!" though even as she thought it she half realised that this was not precisely the sole spring and fountain of her satisfaction with the events of the afternoon.
At half-past six Lady Constance and her father met in the hall. In her long sable robe, and with a fleecy cloud of spun silk from China covering her head, she stood by the side of the earl, splendid in his coat of astrakhan and corded hat. All round them, in the hall of theRandolph, were people who were dressed for dinner standing and talking in groups.
Many heads nodded, and there were many whispers as the two stood there. Every one knew that here was the famous young society beauty, Lady Constance Camborne, and that themajestic old man by her side was her father, the earl, and the Bishop of Carlton.
Then, as the swing doors burst open, and Lord Hayle, in a fur coat and a tweed cap, came bustling in, the onlookers whispered that this was the young viscount who would succeed to everything.
The hall porter, cap in hand, came up to the trio.
The car was waiting for his lordship.
The servants grouped around rushed to the doors. The muttering of the great red motor waiting outside became suddenly redoubled as the earl and his children left the hall. There was a little sigh, and then a buzz of talk, as the three distinguished people disappeared into the night opposite the Museum.
The dinner party at Sir Andrew Anderson's was a somewhat ceremonious function, and was also rather dull.
The Scotch baronet was a "dour laird," who had been a member of the last Government, and the visit was one of those necessary and stately occasions to which people in the bishop's position are subject.
Sir Andrew had no son, and his two daughters were learned girls, who had taken their degree at St. Andrew's University, and looked upon Lady Constance as a mere society butterfly, although they thawed a little when talking to Lord Hayle. It was all over about a quarter-past ten, much earlier than the bishop and Lady Constance had anticipated.
The bishop's suit-case had been put into the car, and Lady Constance also had her luggage. Nothing had been decided as to whether the Cambornes should stay the night or not, though the party had assumed that they would do so. As, however, at a little after ten the conversation languished, and everybody was obviously rather bored with everybody else, the bishop decided to return to Oxford with his son, and before the half-hour struck the great Mercedes car was once more rushing through the wintry Oxfordshire lanes towards the ancient City of Spires.
"Well," Lord Hayle said, "I have never in all my life, father, been to such a dull house, or been so bored. Didn't you feel like that, too, Connie?"
"Indeed, I did, Gerald," the girl answered. "It was perfectly terrible!"
Slowly the bishop replied—
"I know, my dears, that it was not an enlivening entertainment, but Sir Andrew, you must remember, is a very solid man, and is well liked by the country. He will be in the Cabinet when this wretched Radical and Socialistic ministry meets the fate it deserves, and, you know, Hayle, that in our position, it is necessary to endure a good deal sometimes. One must keep in with one's own class. We must be back to back, we must be solid. I have nothing to say against Sir Andrew, except that, of course, he is not a very intellectual man. At the same time, he is liked at court, and is, I believe," the bishop concludedwith a chuckle, "one of the most successful breeders of short-horns in the three kingdoms."
The motor-car brought the party back into civilisation. It rolled up the High, past the age-worn fronts of the colleges, brilliantly illuminated now by the tall electric light standards. They flitted by St. Mary's, where Cranmer made his great renunciation, past the new front of Brazenose, up to the now dismantled Carfax.
As they turned The Corn was almost deserted, in a flash they were abreast of the Martyrs' Memorial, and the car was at rest before the doors of Oxford's great hotel.
The three entered the warm, comfortable hall.
"Good-night, father!" Lady Constance said "Good-night, Gerald, I shall go straight up-stairs!"
She kissed her father and brother, and turned to the right towards the lift.
"I think I will have a final smoke, father," Lord Hayle said, "before I go back to college. There's lots of time yet. Shall we go upstairs, or shall we go into the smoking-room?"
"Oh, well, let us go into the smoking-room," said the bishop. "It's a comfortable place."
They gave their coats to an attendant, and went through the door under the stairs into the smoking-room.
No one else was there, though a great fire burned upon the hearth, and drawing two paddedarmchairs up before it they sat down and lit their cigarettes.
"I think," said the bishop, "that I shall have a glass of Vichy. Will you have anything more, dear boy?"
"No, thanks, father," Lord Hayle answered, "but I will ring the bell for you."
He pressed the button, and the waiter came into the room, shortly afterwards returning with the bishop's aerated water.
Lord Hayle was well known at theRandolph. He sometimes gave dinners there, in preference to using theMitreor theClarendon. He and the duke sometimes dined there together.
As he was sitting with his father, quietly talking over the events of the day, one of the managers of the hotel came hurriedly into the smoking-room and up to the earl and the viscount.
"My lord," he said, and his face was very white and agitated. "I fear I have very sad news for you."
There was something in the man's voice that made both the bishop and his son turn round in alarm.
"What is it?" said Lord Hayle.
"My lord," the manager continued, "a telegram has just reached us that there has been a terrible railway accident to the six o'clock train from here to Paddington. We are informed that the Duke of Paddington, your friend, my lord, was in the train, and it is feared that his grace has been killed."
It really was appalling!
All the others had seen this sort of thing many times, and it did not appeal to them with the same first flush of horror and dismay as it did to Mary Marriott.
She turned to Fabian Rose.
"Oh, Mr. Rose," she said, "it is dreadful, more dreadful than I could ever have thought!"
"There is much worse than this, my dear," he answered in a grave tone, from which all the accustomed mockery had gone. "A painful experience is before you, but you must endure it. At the end of that time——"
Mary looked into the great Socialist's face, and she knew what his unspoken words would have conveyed. She knew well that she was on a trial, a test; that this strange expedition had been devised, not only that her art as an actress might be stimulated to its highest power, but that the very strings of her pity and womanhood should be touched also. Her new friends knew well that when at last she was on the boards of the Park Lane Theatre, acting there for all the rich andfashionable world to see, her work could only accomplish its great mission with success if it came poignantly from her heart.
"Yes," she said in answer to his look, "I am beginning to see, I am beginning to hear the cry of the down-trodden and the oppressed, the wailing of the poor."
Rose nodded gravely.
"Now, Miss Marriott and gentlemen," said Inspector Brown, "we will turn down here, if you please. I should like to show you one or two tenements."
As he spoke he turned to the right, down a narrow alley. Tall, grimy old houses rose up on either side of them, and there was hardly room for two members of the party to walk abreast. The flags upon which they trod were soft with grease and filth. The air was fœtid and chill. It was, indeed, as though they were treading a passage-way to horror!
The whole party came out into a court, a sort of quadrangle some thirty yards by twenty. The space between the houses and the floor of the quadrangle was of beaten earth, though here and there some half-uprooted flagstone showed that it had once been paved. The whole of it was covered with garbage and refuse. Decayed cabbage leaves lay in little pools of greasy water. Old boots and indescribable rags of filthy clothes were piled on heaps of cinders.
As they came into the square Mary shrankback with a little cry; her foot had almost trodden upon a litter of one-day old kittens which had been drowned and flung there.
The houses all round this sinister spot had apparently at one time, though many years ago, been buildings of some substance and importance. Now they wore an indescribable aspect of blindness and misery. There was hardly a whole window in any of the houses. The broken panes were stopped with dirty rags or plastered with newspaper. The doors of the houses stood open, and upon the steps swarms of children—dirty, pale, pallid, and hopeless—squirmed like larvæ. A drunken old woman, her small and ape-like face caked and encrusted with dirt, was reeling from one side of the square to another, singing a hideous song in a cracked gin-ridden voice, which shivered up into the cold, dank air in a forlorn and bestial mockery of music.
"What is this?" Mary said, turning round to the police inspector by her side.
"This, miss," said the bearded man grimly, "is called Taverner's Rents. Every room in these houses is occupied by a family; some rooms are occupied by two families. The people that live here are the poorest of the poor. The boys that sell newspapers, the little shoeless boys and girls who hawk the cheaper kinds of flowers about the streets, the cab-runners, the people who come out at night and pick over the dust-bins for food, those are the people that live here, miss. Andthere's a fairly active criminal population as well."
Mary shuddered. The inspector noticed her involuntary shrinking.
"Miss," he said, "you have only seen a little of it yet. Wait until I take you inside some of these places, then you will see what life in London can be like."
The clergyman, Mr. Conrad, broke in.
"You have come, Miss Marriott," he said, "now to the home of the utterly degraded and the utterly lost. Nothing I or anybody else can say or do is possible to redeem this generation. Their brains have almost gone, through filth and starvation. They live more terribly than any animal lives. Their lives are too feeble and too awful, either for description or for betterment. It is, indeed, difficult for one who, as myself, believes most thoroughly in the fact that each one of us has an immortal soul, that each one of us in the next world will start again, according to what we have done in this, to realise that the poor creatures whom you have seen now are human. Come!"
It was almost with the slowness and solemnity of a funeral procession that the party passed up the broken steps of one of the houses and entered what had once, in happier bygone days, been the hall of a mansion of some substance and fair-seeming.
The broken stairs stretched up above. Thebanisters which guarded them had long since been broken and pulled away. The doors all round were almost falling from their hinges.
"Come in here, gentlemen," said the sanitary inspector of the London County Council, pushing a door open with his foot as he did so.
They all followed into a large front room.
A slight fire was burning in a broken grate, and by it, upon a stool, sat an immensely fat woman of middle-age. Her hair was extremely scanty and caught up at the back of her head in a knot hardly bigger than a Tangerine orange. Through the thin dust-coloured threads the dirty pink scalp showed in patches. The face was inordinately large, bloated, and of a waxen yellow. The eyes were little gimlet holes. The mouth, with its thick lips of pale purple, smiled a horrid toothless smile as they came in.
All round the walls of the room were things which had once been mattresses, but from which damp straw was bursting in every direction. These mattresses were black, sodden, and filthy, and upon them—covered, or hardly covered as the case might be, with scraps of old quilt or discarded clothing—lay young children of from one year to eighteen months old. These little mites were almost motionless. Their heads seemed to be extraordinarily large, their unknowing, unseeing eyes blazed in their faces.
The fat woman, suffering from dropsy, rosefrom her seat and curtsied as she saw the sanitary inspector and his colleagues.
"It is all right, gentlemen," she said in a wee, fawning voice. "There's food on the fire for the little dearies, and they're going to have their meal, bless 'em, as soon as it's boiled up."
She pointed to an iron pot full of something that looked like oatmeal which was simmering upon the few coals.
"That's all right, Mary," the County Council inspector said in a rough but genial voice. "We haven't come to make any trouble to-day. We know you do your best. It is not your fault."
"Thank you, sir," the woman answered, subsiding heavily once more upon her stool. "I have never done away with any children yet, and I am glad you know it. I've never been up before any beak yet, and I does my best. They comes to me when they've got the insurances on the kids, and I ses, 'No,' I ses, 'you take 'em where you know wot you wants will be done. You won't have far to go,' I ses, and so they takes 'em away. 'My bizness,' I ses, 'is open and aboveboard.' I looks arter the kids for a penny a day, and I gives 'm back to their mothers when they comes 'ome, feeding them meanwhile as well as I can."
Mary was standing horror-struck in the middle of the room. She turned to Inspector Brown.
"Oh," she said, "how awful! How terrible! How utterly awful!"
The inspector looked down at her with grave face.
"You may well say so, miss," he answered. "I am a married man myself, and it goes to my heart. But you must know that all this woman says is absolutely true. She is dying of dropsy, and she looks after these children for their mothers while they are at the match factories in Bethnal Green or making shirts in some Jew sweater's den. She is not what you may call a 'baby-farmer.' She is not one of those women who make a profession of killing children by starvation and cold in order that their parents may get the insurance money. As she goes, this woman is honest."
"But look, look!" Mary answered, pointing with quivering finger to the swarming things upon the mattresses.
"I know," the inspector answered, "but, miss, there are worse things than this that you could see in the neighbourhood."
Suddenly Mary's blood, which had been cooled and chilled by the awful spectacle, rose to boiling point in a single second. She felt sick, she said, wheeling round and turning to Fabian Rose—she felt sick that all these terrible things should be. "Why should such things be allowed?"
"My dear," Rose answered very gravely, "it is the fault of our modern system. It is the fault of capitalism. This is one of the reasons why we are Socialists."
"Then," Mary said, her eyes flashing, her breast heaving, "then, Mr. Rose, I am a Socialist, too—from this day, from this hour."
As she spoke she did not see that Aubrey Flood, the actor-manager, was regarding her with a keen, intense scrutiny. He watched her every movement. He listened to every inflection of her voice, and then—even in that den of horror—he turned aside and smiled quietly to himself.
"Yes," he thought, "Fabian was right. Here, indeed, is the one woman who shall make our play a thing which shall beat at the doors of London like a gong."
Inspector Brown spoke to Mary in his calm official voice.
"Now, what should you think, miss," he said, "this woman—Mrs. Church—pays weekly for this room?"
"Pays?" Mary answered. "Pays? Does she pay for such a room as this?"
The fat woman upon the stool answered in a heavy, thick, watery voice: "Pye, miss? I pye eight shillings a week for this ere room."
Mary started; she could not understand it.
"What?" she said with a little stamp of her foot upon the ground.
"It is perfectly true, miss," the County Council inspector interposed. "The rents of these places—these single rooms—are extremely high."
"Then why do they pay them?" Mary asked.
"Because, miss," the inspector answered, "ifthey didn't they would have nowhere to go at all, except to the workhouse. You see, people of this sort cannot move from where they are. They are as much tied to places of this sort as a prisoner in gaol is confined in his cell. It is either this or the streets."
"But for all that money," Mary said, "surely they could give them a decent place to live in?"
"We are doing all we can, miss, on the County Council, of course," the man replied, "and the workmen's dwellings which are springing up all over London are, indeed, a great improvement, but they are taken up at once by the hard-working artisan class, in more or less regular employment. It would be impossible to let any of the County Council tenements to a woman like this. Her income is so precarious, and there are others far more thrifty and deserving who must have first choice."
"Who is the landlord?" Mary asked. She was standing next to the dropsical woman by the fireside as she spoke.
"Oh, missie"—the woman answered her question—"the 'ead-landlord is Colonel Simpson at the big estyte orffice in Oxford Street, but, of course, we don't never see 'im. The collectors comes raund week by week and we pyes them. If we wants anythink then we arsts them, and they ses they'll mention it at 'eadquarters, but, of course, nuthink does get done. I don't suppose Colonel Simpson ever 'ears of nuthink."
"It is perfectly true, miss," said the inspector. "It is only when we absolutely prosecute the estate agency for some flagrant breach of sanitary regulations that anything can be done in houses like this, and even then the lawyers in their employ are so conversant with all the recent enactments, and so shrewd in the science of evading them, that practically we can do nothing at all."
When Mary turned to Fabian Rose he was standing side by side with the Reverend Peter Conrad.
Both men were looking at her gravely and a little curiously.
"Who is this Colonel Simpson?" she asked. "Could not he be exposed in the Press? Could not he be held up to execration? Could not you, Mr. Goodrick," she said, flashing upon the editor, who had hitherto remained in the background and said no word, "could not you tell the world of the wickedness of this Colonel Simpson?"
The little man with the straw-coloured moustache and the keen eyes smiled.
"Miss Marriott," he said, "you realise very little as yet. You do not know what the forces of capitalism and monopoly mean. Day by day we are driving our chisels into the basis of the structure, and some day it will begin to totter; some day, again, it will fall, but not yet, not yet. Mr. Simpson is a mere nobody. He is a machine. His object in life is to get as much money as hecan out of the vast properties which he controls for another. He is an agent, nothing more."
"Then who does this really belong to? Who is really responsible?" Mary asked.
Fabian Rose looked at her very meaningly.
"Once more," he said, "I will pronounce that ill-omened name—the Duke of Paddington."
"Let us go away," Mr. Conrad said suddenly. He noticed that Mary's face was very pale, and that she was swaying a little.
They went out into the hall and stood there for a moment undecided as to what to do.
Mary seemed about to faint.
Suddenly from the back of the hall, steps were heard coming towards them, and in a moment more the face of a clean-shaven man appeared. He was mounting from the stairs that led down into what had once been the kitchens or cellars of the old house.
Just half of his body was visible, when he stopped suddenly, as if turned to stone.
As he did so the bearded Inspector Brown stepped quickly forward and caught him by the shoulder.
"Ah, it is you, is it?" he said. "Come up and let us have a look at you."
The man's face grew absolutely white, then, with a sudden eel-like movement, he twisted away from under the inspector's hand and vanished down the stairs.
In a flash the inspector and his companion were after him.
"Come on!" they shouted to the others, "come on, we shall want you!"
Rose and Conrad dashed after them. Mary could hear them stumbling down the stairs, and then a confused noise of shouting as if from the bowels of the earth.
She was left alone, standing there with Mr. Goodrick, when she suddenly became aware that the staircase leading to the upper part of the house had become crowded with noiseless figures, looking down upon what was toward with motionless, eager faces.
"What shall we do?" Mary said. "What does it all mean?"
"I am sure I don't know," Goodrick answered, "but if you are not afraid, don't you think we had better follow our friends? I suppose the inspector is after some thief or criminal whom he has just recognised."
"I am not afraid," Mary said.
"Come along, then," he answered, and together they went to the end of the hall and stumbled down some greasy steps.
A light was at the bottom, red light through an open door, and they turned into a sort of kitchen.
There was nobody there, but one man who crouched in a corner and a fat, elderly Jewish woman, whose mouth dropped in fear, and whoseeyes were set and fixed in terror, like the eyes of a doll.
Through an open door in a corner of the kitchen beyond there came strange sounds—oaths, curses—sounds which seemed even farther away than the door suggested that they were.
The sounds seemed to rise up from the very bowels of the earth, from some deeper inferno even than this.
Then Mary, for the first time, began to be in real terror. She clung to the imperturbable little editor.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried. "What does it all mean?"
The Jewess turned round with an almost crouching attitude and peered fearfully into the dimly lit gloom through the doorway. Then, quite suddenly, without any warning, she fell back against the wall of the kitchen and began to shriek and wail like a lost soul. As she did so, and through her piercing shrieks, Mary heard the distant noises were becoming louder and louder.
She reeled in the hot and filthy air of this dreadful place and pressed her hand against the wall for support. Even as she did so she saw the two police inspectors stagger into the room, bearing a burden between them, the burden, as it seemed, of a dead man.
Then everything began to sway, the place was filled with a louder and louder noise, the whole room grew fuller and fuller of people, and Mary Marriott fainted dead away.