PROUD in the make-believe that he was a fashionable groom, the loafer holding Morland's horse touched his ragged hat smartly at his temporary master's approach.
“Give him something, Jimmie; I have n't any change,” cried Morland. He mounted and rode away, debonair, with a wave of farewell. Jimmie drew from his pocket the first coin to hand, a florin, and gave it to the loafer, who came down forthwith from his dreams of high estate to commonplace earth, and after the manner of his class adjured the Deity to love the munificent gentleman. The two shillings would bring gladness into the hearts of his sick wife and starving children. Subject to the attestation of the Deity, he put forward as a truth the statement that they had not eaten food for a week. He himself was a hard-working man, but the profession of holding horses in the quiet roads of St. John's Wood was not lucrative.
“You're telling me lies, I'm afraid,” said Jimmie, “but you look miserable enough to say anything. Here!” He gave him two more shillings. The loafer thanked him and made a bee-line for the nearest public-house, while Jimmie, forgetting for the moment the pitiable aspect that poor humanity sometimes wears in the persons of the lowly, watched Morland's well-set-up figure disappear at the turn of the road. There was no sign of black care sitting behind that rider. It perched instead on Jimmie's shoulders, and there stayed for the rest of the day. In spite of his staunch trust in Morland's honour and uprightness, he found it hard to condone the fault. The parallel which Morland had not too ingenuously drawn with the far-away passionate episode in his own life had not seemed just. He had winced, wondered at the failure in tact, rebelled against the desecration of a memory so exquisitely sad. The moment after he had forgiven the blundering friend and opened his heart again to pity. He was no strict moralist, turning his head sanctimoniously aside at the sight of unwedded lovers. His heart was too big and generous. But between the romance of illicit love and the commonplace of vulgar seduction stretched an immeasurable distance. The words of the pathetic note, however, lingering in his mind, brought with them a redeeming fragrance. They conjured up the picture of sweet womanhood. They hinted no reproach; merely a trust which was expected to be fulfilled. To her Morland was the honourable gentleman all knew; he had promised nothing that he had not performed, that he would not perform. All day long, as he sat before his easel, mechanically copying folds of drapery from the lay figure on the platform, Jimmie strove to exonerate his friend from the baser fault, and to raise the poor love affair to a plane touched by diviner rays. But the black care still sat upon his shoulders.
The next morning he rose earlier than usual, and sought Morland at his house in Sussex Gardens. He found him eating an untroubled breakfast. Silver dishes, tray, and service were before him. A great flower-stand filled with Maréchal Niel roses stood in the centre of the table. Fine pictures hung round the walls. Rare china, old oak chairs, and sideboard bright with silver bowls—all the harmonious and soothing luxury of a rich man's dining-room, gave the impression of ease, of a life apart from petty cares, petty vices, petty ambitions. A thick carpet sheltered the ears from the creaking footsteps of indiscretion. Awnings before the open windows screened the too impertinent light of the morning sun. And the face and bearing of the owner of the room were in harmony with its atmosphere. Jimmie reproached himself for the doubts that had caused his visit. Morland laughed at them. Had he not twice or thrice declared himself not a beast? Surely Jimmie must trust his oldest friend to have conducted himself honourably. There was never question of marriage. There had been no seduction. Could n't he understand? They had parted amicably some three months ago, each a little disillusioned. Morland was generous enough to strip a man's vanity from himself and stand confessed as one of whom a superior woman had grown tired. The new development of the affair revealed yesterday had, he repeated, come upon him like an unexpected lash. The irony of it, too, in the first flush of his engagement! Naturally he was remorseful; naturally he would do all that a man of honour could under the circumstances.
“More is not expected and not wanted. On my word of honour,” said Morland.
He had been upset, he continued smilingly. The consequences might be serious—to himself, not so much to Jenny. There were complications in the matter that might be tightened—not by Jenny—into a devil of a tangle. Had he not pleaded special urgency when he had first asked Jimmie to take in the letters under a false name? It might be a devil of a tangle, he repeated.
“But till that happens—and please God it may never happen—we may dismiss the whole thing from our minds,” said Morland, reassuringly. “Jenny will want for nothing, and want nothing. Do you think if there were any melodramatic villainy on my conscience I would go and engage myself to marry Norma Hardacre?”
This was the final argument that sent the black care, desperately clinging with the points of its claws, into infinite space. Jimmie smiled again. Morland waved away the uncongenial topic and called for a small bottle of champagne on ice. A glass apiece, he said, to toast the engagement. Rightly, champagne was the wine of the morning.
“It is the morning sunshine itself distilled,” said Jimmie, lifting up his glass.
He went home on the top of an omnibus greatly cheered, convinced that, whatever had happened, Morland had done no grievous wrong. When Aline went to the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him busy upon the sketch portrait of Norma, and humming a tune—a habit of his when work was proceeding happily under his fingers. She looked over his shoulder critically.
“That's very good,” she condescended to remark. “Now that Miss Hardacre is engaged to Mr. King, why don't you ask her to come and sit?”
“Do you think it's a good likeness?” he asked, leaning back and regarding the picture.
“It is the best likeness you have ever got in a portrait,” replied Aline, truthfully.
“Then, wisest of infants, what reason could I have for asking Miss Hardacre to sit? Besides, I don't want her to know anything about it.”
Aline glowed with inspiration. Why should things the most distantly connected with somebody else's marriage so exhilarate the female heart?
“Is it going to be a wedding present, Jimmie?”
“It is a study in indiscretion, my child,” he replied enigmatically.
“You are perfectly horrid.”
“I suppose I am,” he admitted, looking at the portrait with some wistfulness. “Ugly as sin, and with as much manners as a kangaroo =—does your feminine wisdom think a woman could ever fall in love with me?”
She touched caressingly the top of his head where the hair was thinning, and her feminine wisdom made this astounding answer:
“Why, you are too old, Jimmie dear.”
Too old! He turned and regarded her for a moment in rueful wonder. Absurd though it was, the statement gave him a shock. He was barely forty, and here was this full-grown, demure, smiling young woman telling him he was too old for any of her sex to trouble their heads about him. His forlorn aspect brought a rush of colour to the girl's cheeks. She put her arms round his neck.
“Oh, Jimmie, I have hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm a silly little goose. It's a wonder that every woman on earth is n't in love with you.”
“That is the tone of exaggerated affection, but not of conviction,” he said. “I am the masculine of what in a woman is termedpassée. I might gain the esteem of a person of the opposite sex elderly like myself, but my gallant exterior can no longer inspire a romantic passion. My day is over. No, you have not hurt me. The sword of truth pierces, but it does not hurt.”
Then he broke into his good, sunny laughter, and rose and put his arm with rough tenderness round her shoulder, as he had done ever since she could walk.
“You are the youngest thing I have come across for a long time.”
Aline, as she nestled up against him on their way out of the studio, was thus impressed with a salutary consciousness of her extreme youth. But this in itself magnified Jimmie's age. She loved him with a pure passionate tenderness; no one, she thought, could know him without loving him; but her ideal of the hero of romance for whom fair ladies pined away in despairing secret was far different. She was too young as yet, too little versed in the signs by which the human heart can be read, to suspect what his playful question implied of sadness, hopelessness, renunciation.
On Sunday they lunched with Connie Deering. Morland and Norma and old Colonel Pawley, an ancient acquaintance of every one, were the only other guests. It was almost a family party, cried Connie, gaily; and it had been an inspiration, seeing that the invitations had been sent out before the engagement had taken place. Jimmie and Aline, being the first arrivals, had their hostess to themselves for a few moments.
“They both think it bad form to show a sign of it, but they are awfully gone upon each other,” Connie said. “So you must n't judge Norma by what she says. All girls like to appear cynical nowadays. It's the fashion. But they fall in love in the same silly way, just as they used to.”
“I am glad to hear they are fond of one another,” said Jimmie. “The deeper their love the happier I shall be.”
The little lady looked at him for a second out of the corner of her eye.
“What an odd thing to say!”
“It ought to be a commonplace thing to feel.”
“In the happiness of others there is always something that is pleasing. By giving him the lie like that you will make poor Rochefoucauld turn in his grave.”
“He ought to be kept revolving like Ixion,” said Jimmie. “His maxims are the Beatitudes of Hell.”
He laughed off the too trenchant edge of his epigram, qualifying it in his kind way. After all, you must n't take your cynic too literally. No doubt a kindly heart beats in the ducal bosom.
“I should like to know your real opinion of the devil,” laughed Mrs. Deering.
The opportunity for so doing was lost for the moment. The lovers entered, having driven together from the Park. At the sight of Norma, Aline twitched Jimmie's arm with a little gasp of admiration and Jimmie's breath came faster. He had not seen her hitherto quite so coldly, radiantly beautiful. Perhaps it was the great white hat she wore, a mystery of millinery, chiffon and roses and feathers melting one with the other into an effect of broad simplicity, that formed an unsanctified but alluring halo to a queenly head. Perhaps it was the elaborately simple cream dress, open-worked at neck and arms, that moulded her ripe figure into especial stateliness. Perhaps, thought poor Jimmie, it was the proud loveliness into which love was wont to transfigure princesses.
She received Connie's kiss and outpouring of welcome with her usual mocking smile. “If you offer me congratulations, I shall go away, Connie. I have been smirking for the last hour and a half. We were so exhausted by playing the sentimental idiots that we did n't exchange a word on our way here; though I believe Morland likes it. We saw those dreadful Fry-Robertsons bearing down upon us. He actually dragged me up to meet them, as who should say 'Let us go up and get congratulated.'”
“I don't see why I should hide my luck under a bushel,” laughed Morland.
“Thank you for the compliment,” said Norma. “But if you won at Monte Carlo you would n't pin the banknotes all over your coat and strut about the street. By the way, Connie, we're late. Need we apologise?”
“You're not the last. Colonel Pawley is coming.”
“Oh dear! that old man radiates boredom. How can you stand him, Connie?”
“He's the sweetest thing on earth,” said her hostess.
Norma laughed a little contemptuously and came forward to greet Aline and Jimmie. As she did so, her face softened. Jimmie, drawing her aside, offered his best wishes.
“The happiness of a man whom I have loved like a brother all my life can't be indifferent to me. On that account you must forgive my speaking warmly. May you be very happy.”
“I shall be happy in having such a champion of my husband for a brother-in-law,” said Norma, lightly.
“A loyal friend of your own, if you will,” said Jimmie.
There was a short pause. Norma ran the tip of her gloved finger down the leaf of a plant on a stand. They were by the window. A vibration in his voice vaguely troubled her.
“What do you really mean by 'loyal'?” she said at last, without looking at him.
“The word has but one meaning. If I tried to explain further, I should only appear to be floundering in fatuity.”
“I believe you are the kind that would stick to a woman through thick and thin, through good repute and ill repute. That's what you mean. Only you don't like to hint that I might at any time become disreputable. I may. All things are possible in this world.”
“Not that,” said Jimmie. “Perhaps I was unconsciously pleading for myself. Say you are a queen in your palace. While humbly soliciting a position in your household, I somewhat grandiloquently submit my qualifications.”
“What's all this about?” asked Morland, coming up, having overheard the last sentence.
“I am pleading for a modest position in Her Majesty's Household,” said Jimmie.
“We'll fit him up with cap and bells,” laughed Morland, “and make him chief jester, and give him a bladder to whack us over the head with. He's fond of doing that when we misbehave ourselves. Then he can get us out of our scrapes, like the fellow in Dumas—what's his name—Chicot, was n't it?”
Pleased with his jest, he turned to acquaint Connie with Jimmie's new dignity. Both the jest and the laugh that greeted it jarred upon Norma. Jimmie said to her good-humouredly:
“I might be Chicot, the loyal friend, without the cap and bells. I am a dull dog.”
She looked out of the window and laughed somewhat bitterly.
“I think you are a great deal too good to have anything to do with any of us.”
“It pleases you to talk arrant nonsense,” said he.
Luncheon was announced. At table Jimmie and Norma were neighbours. Aline sat between Morland, who was next to Norma, and old Colonel Pawley. As the latter at first talked to Mrs. Deering, Aline and Morland carried on a frigid conversation. They had never been friends. To Morland, naturally, she was merely a little girl of no account, who had often been annoyingly in the way when he wanted to converse with Jimmie; and Aline, with a little girl's keen intuition, had divined more of his real character than she was aware of, and disliked and distrusted him. Like a well-brought-up young lady she answered “yes” and “no” politely to his remarks, but started no fresh topic. At last, to her relief, Colonel Pawley rescued her from embarrassed silence. To him she had extended her favour. He was a short fat man, with soft hands and a curious soft purring voice, and the air rather of a comfortable old lady than of a warrior who had retired on well-merited laurels. He occupied his plentiful leisure by painting on silk, which he made into fans for innumerable lady acquaintances. In his coat-tail pocket invariably reposed a dainty volume bound in crushed morocco—a copy of little poems of his own composition—and this, when he was in company with a sympathetic feminine soul, he would abstract with apoplectic wheezing and bashfully present. He also played little tunes on the harp. Aline, with the irreverence of youth, treated him as a kind of human toy.
His first word roused the girl's spontaneous gaiety. She bubbled over with banter. The mild old warrior chuckled with her, threw himself unreservedly into the childish play. Connie whispered to Jimmie:
“I should like to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck and turn him loose in a meadow. I am sure he would frisk.”
Morland exchanged casual remarks with Norma. She answered absently. The change in Aline from the unsmiling primness wherewith Morland's society had cloaked her to sunny merriment with Colonel Pawley was too marked to escape her attention. In spite of the ludicrousness of the comparison, she could not help perceiving that the old man who radiated boredom had a quality of charm unpossessed by Morland, and she felt absurdly disappointed with her lover. During the last few days she had made up her mind to like him. Sober forecast of a lifetime spent in the inevitable intimacy of marriage had forced her to several conclusions. One, that it was essential to daily comfort that a woman should find the personality of a husband pleasing rather than antipathetic. With more ingenuousness than the world would have put to her credit, she had set herself deliberately to attain this essential ideal. The natural consequence was a sharply critical attitude and a quickly developing sensitiveness, whereby, as in a balance of great nicety, the minor evidences of his character were continually being estimated. Thus, Morland's jest before luncheon had jarred upon her. His careless air of patronage had betrayed a lack of appreciation of something—the word “spiritual” was not in her vocabulary, or she might have used it—of something, at all events, in his friend which differentiated him from the casual artist and which she herself had, not without discomfort, divined at their first meeting. The remark had appeared to her in bad taste. Still ruffled, she became all the more critical, and noted with displeasure his failure to have won a child's esteem. And yet she felt a touch of resentment against Jimmie for being the innocent cause of her discomposure. It gave rise to a little feline impulse to scratch him and see whether he were not mortal like every one else.
“Do you ever exhibit at the Royal Academy?” she asked suddenly.
“They won't have me,” said he.
“But you send in, don't you?”
“With heart-breaking regularity. They did have me once.” He sighed. “But that was many years ago, when the Academy was young and foolish.”
“I have heard they are exceedingly conservative,” said Norma, with the claws still unsheathed. “Perhaps you work on too original lines.”
But she could draw from him no expression of vanity. He smiled. “I suppose they don't think my pictures good enough,” he said simply.
“Jimmie's work is far too good for that wretched Academy,” said Connie Deering. “The pictures there always give you a headache. Jimmie's never do.”
“I should like to kill the Academy,” Aline broke in sharply, on the brink of tears. A little tragedy of murdered hopes lurked in her tone. Then, seeing that she had caused a startled silence, she reddened and looked at her plate. Jimmie laughed outright.
“Is n't she bloodthirsty? All the seventy of them weltering in their gore! Only the other day she said she would like to slaughter the whole Chinese Empire, because they ate puppies and birds'-nests!”
Connie chimed a frivolous remark in tune with Jimmie. Morland, as befitted a coming statesman, took up the parable of the march westwards of the yellow races. Colonel Pawley, who had been through the Taeping rebellion, was appealed to as an authority on the development of the Chinaman. He almost blushed, wriggled uncomfortably, and as soon as he could brought the conversation to the milder topic of Chinese teacups. Successful, he sighed with relief and told Aline the story of the willow pattern. The Royal Academy was forgotten. But Norma felt guilty and ashamed.
Nor was she set more at ease with herself by a careless remark of Morland's as Connie's front door closed behind them an hour or so later.
“I am afraid you rather rubbed it into poor old Jimmie about the Academy. The little girl looked as if she would like to fly at you. She is a spoiled little cat.”
“I have noticed she does n't seem to like you,” answered Norma, sourly.
The drive as far as Grosvenor Place, where Norma proposed to pay a solitary call, was not as pleasant as he had anticipated. He parted from her somewhat resentful of an irritable mood, and walked back towards Sussex Gardens through the Park, reviling the capriciousness of woman.
AVIOLENT man, pallid and perspiring, with crazy dark eyes and a voice hoarse from the effort to make himself heard above the noise of a hymn-singing group a few yards to the right and of a brazen-throated atheist on the left, was delivering his soul of its message to mankind—a confused, disconnected, oft-delivered message, so inconsequent as to suggest that it had been worn into shreds and tatters of catch-phrases by process of over-delivery, yet uttered with the passion of one inspired with a new and amazing gospel.
“I am speaking to you, the working-men, the proletariat, the downtrodden slaves of the plutocracy, the creators in darkness of the wealth that the idlers enjoy in dazzling halls of brightness. I do not address the bourgeoisie rotting in sloth and apathy. They are the parasites of the rich. They sweat the workers in order to pander to the vices of the rich. They despise the poor and grovel before the rich. They shrink from touching the poor man's hand, but they offer their bodies slavishly to the kick of the rich man's foot. It is not in their hands, but in yours, brother toilers and brother sufferers, that lies the glorious work of the great social revolution whose sun just rising is tipping the mountain-tops with its radiant promise of an immortal day. It is against them and not with them that you have to struggle. In that day of Armageddon you will find all tailordom, all grocerdom, all apothecarydom, all attorneydom arrayed in serried ranks around the accursed standards of plutocracy, of aristocracy, of bureaucracy. Beware of them. Have naught to do with them on peril of your salvation. The great social revolution will come not from above, but from below, from the depths.De profundis clamavi!“From the depths have I cried, O Lord!”
He paused, wiped his forehead, cleared his throat, and went on in the same strain, indifferent to ribald interjections and the Sunday apathy of his casual audience. The mere size of the crowd he was addressing seemed to satisfy him. The number was above the average. A few working-men in the inner ring drank in the wild utterances with pathetic thirst. The majority listened, half amused, half attracted by the personality of the speaker. A great many were captivated by the sonority of the words, the unfaltering roll of the sentences, the vague associations and impressions called up by the successive images. It is astonishing what little account our sociological writers take of the elementary nature of the minds of the masses; how easily they are amused; how readily they are imposed upon; how little they are capable of analytical thought; at the same time, how intellectually vain they are, which is their undoing. The ineptitudes of the music hall which make the judicious grieve—the satirical presentment, for instance, of the modern fop, which does not contain one single salient characteristic of the type, which is the blatant convention of fifty years back—are greeted with roars of unintelligent laughter. Books are written, vulgar, fallacious, with a specious semblance of philosophical profundity, and sell by the hundred thousand. The masses read them without thought, without even common intelligence. It is too great an intellectual effort to grasp the ideas so disingenuously presented; but the readers can understand just enough to perceive vaguely that they are in touch with the deeper questions of philosophy, and through sheer vanity delude themselves into the belief that they are vastly superior people in being able to find pleasure in literature of such high quality. And the word Mesopotamia is still blessed in their ears. Nothing but considerations such as these can explain the popularity of some of the well-known Sunday orators in Hyde Park. The conductors of the various properly organised mission services belong naturally to a different category. It is the socialist, the revivalist, the atheist, the man whose blood and breath seem to have turned into inexhaustible verbiage, that present the problem.
Some such reflections forced themselves into the not uncharitable mind of Jimmie as he stood on the outer fringe of the pallid man's audience and listened wonderingly to the inspired nonsense. He had left a delighted Aline to be taken by Colonel Pawley to the Zoological Gardens, and had strolled down from Bryanston Square to the north side of the Park. To lounge pleasantly on a Sunday afternoon from group to group had always been a favourite Sunday pastime, and the pallid man was a familiar figure. Jimmie had often thought of painting him as the central character of some historical picture—an expectorated Jonah crying to Nineveh, or a Flagellant in the time of the plague, with foaming mouth and bleeding body, calling upon the stricken city to repent. His artist's vision could see the hairy, haggard, muscular anatomy beneath the man's rusty black garments. He could make a capital picture out of him.
The man paused only for a few seconds, and again took up his parable—the battle of the poor and the rich. The flow of words poured forth, platitude on platitude, in turbid flood, sound and fury signifying elusively, sometimes the collectivist doctrine, at others the meresans-culottehatred of the aristocrat. Jimmie, speculating on the impression made by the oratory on the minds of the audience, moved slightly apart from the crowd. His glance wandering away took in Morland on his way home, walking sedately on the path towards the Marble Arch. He ran across the few yards of intervening space and accosted his friend gaily.
“Come and have a lesson in public speaking, and at the same time hear the other side of the political question.”
“What! go and stand among that rabble?” cried Morland, aghast.
“You'll have to stand among worse, so you had better get used to it. Besides, the man is a delightful fellow, with a face like Habakkuk, capable of everything. To hear him one would think he were erupting red-hot lava, whereas really it is molten omelette. Come. Your purple and fine linen will be a red rag to him.”
Laughing, he dragged the protesting Morland within earshot of the speaker. Morland listened superciliously for a few moments.
“What possible amusement can you find in this drivel?” he asked.
“It is so devilish pathetic,” said Jimmie, “so human—the infinite aspiration and the futile accomplishment. Listen.”
The hymn next door had ceased, the atheist was hunting up a reference, and the words of the pallid man's peroration resounded startlingly in the temporary silence:
“In that day when the sovereign people's will is law, when the weakest and the strongest shall share alike in the plenteous bounty of Providence, no longer shall the poor be mangled beneath the Juggernaut car of wealth, no longer shall your daughters be bound to the rich man's chariot-wheels and whirled shrieking into an infamy worse than death, no longer shall the poor man's soul burn with hell fire at the rich man's desecration of the once pure woman that he loves, no more rottenness, foulness, stench, iniquity, but the earth shall rest in purity, securely folded in the angel wings of peace!”
He waved his arms in a gesture of dismissal, turned his back on the crowd, and sat down exhausted on the little wooden bench that had been his platform. The crowd gradually moved away, some laughing idly, others reflectively chewing the cud of their Barmecide meal. Morland pointed a gold-mounted cane at the late speaker.
“Who and what is this particular brand of damned fool?”
Jimmie checked with a glance a working-man who had issued from the inner ring and was passing by, and translated Morland's question into soberer English.
“Him?” replied the working-man. “That's Daniel Stone, sir. Some people say he's cracked, but he always has something good to say and I like listening to him.”
“What does he do when he is n't talking?” asked Jimmie. “Snatches a nap and a mouthful of food, I should say, sir,” said the man, with a laugh. He caught Jimmie's responsive smile, touched his cap, like the downtrodden slave that he was, and went on his way. Jimmie glanced round for Morland and saw him striding off rapidly. He ran after him.
“What is the hurry?”
“That damned man—”
“Which? The one I was talking to? You surely did n't object—?”
“Of course not. The other—Daniel Stone—”
“Well, what of him?”
“He's a dangerous lunatic. I have heard of him. Why the devil did you want me to make an exhibition of myself among this scum?”
Jimmie stared. Morland broke into a laugh and held out his hand. “Never mind. The beast got on my nerves with his chariot wheels and his desecration of maidens and the rest of it. I must be off. Good-bye.”
Jimmie watched him disappear through the gate and turned back towards the groups. The pallid man was still sitting on his bench; a few children hung round and scanned him idly. Presently he rose and tucked his bench under his arm, and walked slowly away from the scene of his oratory. His burning eyes fixed themselves on Jimmie as he passed by. Jimmie accosted him.
“I have been greatly interested in your address.”
“I saw you with another of the enemies of mankind. You are a gentleman, I suppose?”
“I hope so,” said Jimmie, smiling.
“Then I have nothing to do with you,” retorted the man, with an angry gesture. “I hate you and all your class.”
“But what have we done to you?”
“You have turned my blood into gall and my soul into consuming fire.”
“Let us get out of the dust and sit down under a tree and talk it over. We may get to understand each other.”
“I have no wish to understand you,” said the man, coldly. “Good-day to you.”
“Good-day,” said Jimmie, with a smile. “I am sorry you will not let us be better acquainted.”
He turned to the next group, who were listening to a disproof of God's existence. But the atheist was a commonplace thunderer in a bowler hat, whose utterances fell tame on Jimmie's ears after those of the haggard-eyed prophet. He wandered away from the crowd, striking diagonally across the Park, and when he found comparative shade and solitude, cast himself on the grass beneath a tree. The personality of Daniel Stone interested him. He began to speculate on his daily life, his history. Why should he have vowed undying hatred against his social superiors? He reminded Jimmie of a character in fiction, and after some groping the association was recalled. It was the monk in Dumas, the son of Miladi. He wove an idle romance about the man. Perhaps Stone was the disinherited of noble blood, thirsting for a senseless vengeance. Gradually the drowsiness of deep June fell upon him. He went fast asleep, and when he awoke half an hour afterwards and began to walk homewards, he thought no more of Daniel Stone.
But on following Sunday afternoons he frequently stood for a while to listen to the man. It was always the same tale—sound and fury, signifying nothing. On one occasion he caught Jimmie's eye, and denounced him vehemently as an enemy of society. After that, Jimmie, who was of a peaceful disposition, ceased attending his lectures. He sympathised with Morland.
APRETTY quarrel between a princess and a duchess gave rise to circumstances in which the destiny of Jimmie was determined, or in which, to speak with modern metaphor, the germ of his destiny found the necessary conditions for development. Had it not been for this quarrel, Jimmie would not have stayed at the Hardacres' house; and had he not been their guest, the events hereafter to be recorded would not have happened. Such concatenation is there in the scheme of human affairs.
The Duchess of Wiltshire was a mighty personage in the Hardacres' part of the county. She made social laws and abrogated them. She gave and she took away the brevet of county rank. She made and unmade marriages. To fall under the ban of her displeasure was to be disgraced indeed. She held a double sway in that the duke, her husband, had delegated to her his authority in sublunary matters, he being a severe mathematician and a dry astronomer, who looked at the world out of dull eyes, and regarded it with indifference as a mass of indistinguishable atoms forming a nebula, a sort of Milky Way, concerning which philosophic minds had from time to time theorised. He lived icily remote from society; the duchess, on the contrary, was warmly interested in its doings. In the county she reigned absolute; but in London, recognising the fact that there were other duchesses scattered about Mayfair and Belgravia, she was high-minded enough to modify her claims to despotic government. She felt it, however, her duty to decree that her last reception should mark the end of the London season.
To this reception the Hardacres were always invited.
In previous years they had mounted the great staircase of Wiltshire House, their names had been called out, the duchess had given them the tips of her fingers, and the duke, tall, white-haired, ascetic, had let them touch his hand with the air of a man absently watching ants crawl over him; they had passed on, mixed with the crowd, and seen their host and hostess no more. But this year, to Mrs. Hardacre's thrilling delight, the duchess gave her quite a friendly squeeze, smiled her entire approbation of Mrs. Hardacre's existence, and detained her for a moment in conversation.
“Don't forget to come and have a little talk with me later. I have n't seen you since dear Norma's engagement.”
To dear Norma she was equally urbane, called her a lucky girl, and presented her as a bride-elect to the duke, who murmured a vague formula of congratulation which he had remembered from early terrestrial days.
“I can't tell you how proud I am of you, Norma!” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a lump in her throat, as they passed on. “The dear duchess! I wonder if I am sufficiently grateful to Providence.”
Norma, although in her heart pleased by the manifestation of ducal favour, could not let the opportunity for a taunt pass by.
“You can refer to it in your prayers, mother: 'O God, I thank Thee for shedding Her Grace upon me.' Won't that do, father.”
“Eh, what?” asked Mr. Hardacre, very red in the face, trailing half a pace behind his wife and daughter.
Norma repeated her form of Thanksgiving.
“Ha! ha! Devilish good! Tell that in the club,” he said in high good-humour. His wife's glance suddenly withered him.
“I don't approve of blasphemy,” she said.
“Towards whom, mother dear?” asked Norma, suavely. “The Almighty or the duchess?”
“Both,” said Mrs. Hardacre, with a snap.
Mr. Hardacre, seeing in the distance a man to whom he thought he could sell a horse, escaped from the domestic wrangle. Mother and daughter wandered through the crowd, greeted by friends, pausing here and there to exchange a few words, until they came to the door of the music-room, filled to overflowing, where an operatic singer held the assembly in well-bred silence. At the door the crush was ten deep. On the outskirts conversation hummed like an echo of the noise from the suite of rooms behind. There they were joined by Morland. Mrs. Hardacre told him of the duchess's graciousness. He grinned, taking the information with the air of a man to whom the favour of duchesses bestowed upon his betrothed is a tribute to his own excellence. He thought she would be pleased, he said. They must get the old girl to come to the wedding. Mrs. Hardacre was pained, but she granted young love indulgence for the profanity. If they only could, she assented, the success of the ceremony would be assured. Norma turned to Morland with a laugh.
“We shall be married with a vengeance, if it's sanctified by the duchess. Do you think a parson is at all necessary?”
He joined in her mirth. She drew him aside.
“Well, what's the news?”
He accounted, loverwise, for his day.. At last he said:
“I looked in upon Jimmie Padgate this morning. I wanted him to go to Christie's and buy a picture or two for me—for us, I ought to say,” he added, with a little bow. “He knows more about 'em than I do. He's a happy beggar, you know,” he exclaimed, after a short pause.
“What makes you say so?”
“His perfect conviction that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. There he was sitting at lunch over the black scrag end of a boiled mutton bone and a rind of some astonishing-looking yellow cheese—absolutely happy. And he waved his hand towards it as if it had been a feast of Lucullus and asked me to share it.”
“Did you?” asked Norma.
“I had n't time,” said Morland. “I was fearfully busy to-day.”
Norma did not reply. She looked over the heads of the crowd in front of her towards the music-room whence came the full notes of the singer. Then she said to him with a little shiver:
“I am glad you are a rich man, Morland.”
“So am I. Otherwise I should not have got you.”
“That's true enough,” she said. “I pretend to scoff at all this, but I could n't live without it.”
“It has its points,” he assented, turning and regarding the brilliant scene.
Norma turned with him. She was glad it was her birthright and her marriage-right. The vast state ballroom, lit as with full daylight by rows of electric lamps cunningly hidden behind the cornices and the ground-glass panels of the ceiling, stately with its Corinthian pilasters and classic frieze, its walls adorned with priceless pictures, notably four full-length cavaliers of Vandyck, smiling down in their high-bred way upon this assembly of their descendants, its atmosphere glittering with jewels, radiant with colour, contained all the magnificence, all the aristocracy, all the ambitions, all the ideals that she had been trained to worship, to set before her as the lodestars of her life's destiny. Here and there from amid the indistinguishable mass of diamonds, the white flesh of women's shoulders, the black and white chequer and brilliant uniforms of men, flashed out the familiar features of some possessor of an historic name, some woman of world-famed beauty, some great personage whose name was on the lips of Europe. There, by the wall, lonely for the moment, stood the Chinese Ambassador, in loose maroon silk, and horse-tail plumed cap, his yellow, wizened face rendered more sardonic by the thin drooping grey moustache and thin grey imperial, looking through horn spectacles, expressionless, impassive, inhumanly indifferent, at one of the most splendid scenes a despised civilisation could set before him. There, in the centre of a group of envious and unembarrassed ladies, an Indian potentate blazed in diamonds and emeralds, and rolled his dusky eyes on charms which (most oddly to his Oriental conceptions) belonged to other men. Here a Turk's red fez, a Knight of the Garter's broad blue sash, an ambassador's sparkle of stars and orders; and there the sweet, fresh rosebud beauty of a girl caught for a moment and lost in the moving press. And there, at the end of the vast, living hall, a dimly seen haggard woman, with a diamond tiara on her grey hair, surrounded by a little court of the elect, sat Her Serene Highness, the Princess of Herren-Rothbeck, sister to a reigning monarch, and bosom friend, despite the pretty quarrel, of Her Grace the Duchess of Wiltshire.
The song in the music-room coming to an end, the audience for the most part rose and pressed into the ballroom. The Hardacres and Morland were driven forward. There was a long period of desultory conversation with acquaintances. Morland, proud in the possession of Norma's beauty, remained dutifully attendant, and received congratulations with almost blushing gratification. Mrs. Hardacre, preoccupied by anticipation of her promised talk with the duchess, kept casting distracted glances at the door whereby the great lady would enter. The appearance from a group of neighbouring people of a pleasant young fellow with a fair moustache and very thin fair hair, who greeted her cordially, brought her back to the affairs of the moment. This was the Honourable Charlie Sandys, a distant relative of the duchess, and her Grand Vizier, Master of the Horse, Groom of the Chambers, and general right-hand man. He was two and twenty, and had all the amazing wisdom of that ingenuous age. Morland shook hands with him, but being tapped on the arm by the fan of a friendly dowager, left him to converse alone with Mrs. Hardacre and Norma. The youth indicated Morland's retiring figure by a jerk of the head.
“Parliament—Cosford division.”
“We hope so,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
“Must get in. Radical for her constituency would make duchess buy her coffin. The end of the world for her. She has a great idea of King. Going to take him upcon amore. And when she does take anybody up—well—”
His wave of the hand signified the tremendous consequences.
“She does n't merely uproothim,” said Norma, whose mind now and then worked with disconcerting swiftness, “but she takes up also the half-acre where he is planted.”
“Just so,” replied the youth. “Not only him, but his manservant and maidservant, his ox and his ass and everything that is his. Funny woman, you know—one of the best, of course, but quaint. Thinks the Member for Cosford is ordained by Providence to represent her in Parliament.”
He rattled on, highly pleased with himself. Norma cast a malicious glance at her mother, who perceptibly winced. They were shining in the duchess's eyes in a light borrowed from Morland. They were taken up with the ox and the ass and the remainder of Morland's live-stock. That was the reason, then, of the exceptional marks of favour bestowed on them by Her Grace. Mrs. Hardacre kept the muscles of her lips at the smile, but her steely eyes grew hard. Norma, on the contrary, was enjoying herself. Charlie Sandys was unconscious of the little comedy.
“I am glad to see the princess here to-night,” said Mrs. Hardacre, by way of turning the conversation.
The youth made practically the same reply as he had made at least a dozen times to the same remark during the course of the evening. He was an injudicious Groom of the Chambers, being vain of the privileges attached to his post.
“There has been an awful row, you know,” he said confidentially, looking round to see that he was not overheard. “They have scarcely made it up yet.”
“Do tell us about it, Mr. Sandys,” said Norma, smiling upon him.
“It's rather a joke. Let us get out of the way and I'll tell you.”
He piloted them through the crush into a corridor, and found them a vacant seat by some palms.
“It's all about pictures,” he resumed. “Princess wants to have her portrait painted in London. Why she should n't have it made in Germany I don't know. Anyhow she comes to duchess for advice. Duchess has taken up Foljambe, you know—chap that has painted about twenty miles of women full length—”
“We saw the dear duchess at his Private View,” Mrs. Hardacre interjected.
“Yes. She runs him for all she's worth. Told the princess there was only one man possible for her portrait, and that was Foljambe. Princess—she's as hard as nails, you know—inquires his price, knocks him down half. He agrees. Everything is arranged. Princess to sit for the portrait when she stays with duchess at Chiltern Towers in September—”
“Oh, we are going to have the princess down with us?” Mrs. Hardacre grew more alert.
“Yes. Couldn't find time to sit now—going next week to Herren-Rothbeck—coming back in September. Well, it was all settled nicely—you know the duchess's way. On Friday, however, she takes the princess to see Foljambe's show—for the first time. Just like her. The princess looks round, drops her lorgnon, cries out, 'Lieber Gott in Himmel! The man baints as if he was bainting on de bavement!' and utterly refuses to have anything to do with him. I tell you there were ructions!”
He embraced a knee and leant back, laughing boyishly at the memory of the battle royal between the high-born dames.
“Then who is going to paint the portrait?” asked Norma.
“That's what I am supposed to find out,” replied the youth. “But I can't get a man to do it cheap enough. One can't go to a swell R. A. and ask him to paint a portrait of a princess for eighteen pence.”
Norma had an inspiration.
“Can I recommend a friend of mine?”
“Would he do it?”,
“I think so—if I asked him.”
“By Jove, who is he?” asked the youth, pulling down his shirtcuff for the purpose of making memoranda.
“Mr. James Padgate, 10 Friary Grove, N. W. He is Mr. King's most intimate friend.”
“He can paint all right, can't he?” asked the youth.
“Beautifully,” replied Norma. “Friary, not Priory,” she corrected, watching him make the note. She felt the uncommon satisfaction of having performed a virtuous act; one almost of penance for her cruelty to him on Sunday week, the memory of which had teased a not over-sensitive conscience. The scrag end of boiled mutton and the rind of cheese had also affected her, stirred her pity for the poor optimist, although in a revulsion of feeling she had shivered at his lot. She had closed her eyes for a second, and some impish wizardry of the brain had conjured up a picture of herself sitting down to such a meal, with Jimmie at the other side of the table. It was horrible. She had turned to fill her soul with the solid magnificence about her. The pity for Jimmie lingered, however, as a soothing sensation, and she welcomed the opportunity of playing Lady Bountiful. She glanced with some malice from the annotated cuff to her mother's face, expecting to see the glitter of disapproval in her eyes. To her astonishment, Mrs. Hardacre wore an expression of pleased abstraction.
Charlie Sandys pocketed his gold pencil and retired. He was a young man with the weight of many affairs on his shoulders.
“That's a capital idea of yours, Norma,” said Mrs. Hardacre.
“I'm glad you think so,” replied Norma, wonderingly.
“I do. It was most happy. We'll do all we can to help Morland's friend. A most interesting man. And if the princess gives him the commission, we can ask him down to Heddon to stay with us while he is painting the picture.”
Norma was puzzled. Hitherto her mother had turned up the nose of distaste against Mr. Padgate and all his works. Whence this sudden change? Not from sweet charitableness, that was certain. Hardly from desire to please Morland. Various solutions ran in her head. Did an overweening ambition prompt her mother to start forth a rival to the duchess, as a snapper up of unconsidered painters? Scarcely possible. Defiance of the duchess? That way madness could only lie; and she was renowned for the subtle caution of her social enterprises. The little problem of motive interested her keenly. At last the light flashed upon her, and she looked at Mrs. Hardacre almost with admiration.
“What a wonderful brain you have, mother!” she cried, half mockingly, half in earnest. “Fancy your having schemed out all that in three minutes.”
Enjoyment of this display of worldcraft was still in her eyes when she came across Morland a little later; but she only told him of her recommendation of Jimmie to paint the princess's portrait. He professed delight. How had she come to think of it?
“I think I must have caught the disease of altruism from Mr. Padgate,” she said. Then following up an idle train of thought:
“I suppose you often put work—portraits and things—in his way?”
“I can't say that I do.”
“Why not? You know hundreds of wealthy people.”
“Jimmie is not a man to be patronised,” said Morland, sententiously, “and really, you know, I can't go about touting for commissions for him.”
“Of course not,” said Norma; “he is far too insignificant a person to trouble one's head about.”
Morland looked pained.
“I don't like to hear you talk in that way about Jimmie,” he said reproachfully.
The little scornful curl appeared on her lip.
“Don't you?” was all she vouchsafed to say. Unreasonably irritated, she turned aside and caught a passingattacheof the French Embassy. Morland, dismissed, sauntered off, and Norma went down to supper with the young Frenchman, who entertained her for half an hour with a technical description of his motor-car. And the trouble, he said, to keep it in order. It needed all the delicate cares of a baby. It was as variable as a woman.
“I know,” said Norma, stifling a yawn. “La donna e automobile.”
On the drive home in the hired brougham, whose obvious hiredom caused Norma such chafing of spirit, Mrs. Hardacre glowed with triumph, and while her husband dozed dejectedly opposite, she narrated her good fortunes. She had had her little chat with the duchess. They had spoken of Mr. Padgate, Charlie Sandys having run to show her his cuff immediately. The duchess looked favourably on the proposal. A friend of Mr. King's was a recommendation in itself. But the princess, she asseverated with ducal disregard of metaphor, had her own ideas of art and would not buy a pig in a poke. They must inspect Mr. Padgate's work before there was any question of commission. She would send Charlie Sandys to them to-morrow to talk over the necessary arrangements.
“I told her,” said Mrs. Hardacre, “that Mr. Padgate was coming to pay us a visit in any case in September, and suggested that he could drive over to Chiltern Towers every morning while the princess was honouring him with sittings, and paint the picture there. And she quite jumped at the idea.”
“No doubt,” said Norma, drily.
But her dryness had no withering effect on her mother's exuberance. The hard woman saw the goal of a life's ambition within easy reach, and for the exultant moment softened humanly. She chattered like a school-girl.
“And she took me up to the princess,” she said, “and presented me as her nearest country neighbour. Was n't that nice of her? And the princess is such a sweet woman.”
“Dear, dear!” said Norma. “How wicked people are! Every one says she is the most vinegarish old cat in Christendom.”