



Produced by Mark C. Orton, Martin Pettit and the Online
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_By GUY THORNE_


When It Was Dark

The Story of a Great Conspiracy

12^o. (By mail, $1.35) _Net_, $1.20

A Lost Cause

12^o $1.50


G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

_New York and London_




THE SOCIALIST

BY

GUY THORNE

AUTHOR OF "WHEN IT WAS DARK," ETC

[Illustration: Decoration]

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

The Knickerbocker Press

1909


COPYRIGHT, 1909

BY

WARD, LOCK AND COMPANY

The Knickerbocker Press, New York


TO

JOHN GILBERT BOHUN LYNCH

SOUVENIR OF FEBRUARY 8TH, 1909




CONTENTS

                                            PAGE
CHAPTER I

CONCERNING HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF PADDINGTON    1

CHAPTER II

"HAIR LIKE RIPE CORN"                         18

CHAPTER III

A MOST SURPRISING DAY                         28

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN WITH THE MUSTARD-COLOURED BEARD       43

CHAPTER V

"TO INAUGURATE A REVOLUTION!"                 56

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT NEW PLAN                            68

CHAPTER VII

KIDNAPPING UPON SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES         80

CHAPTER VIII

"IN CELLAR COOL!"                             92

CHAPTER IX

MARY MARRIOTT'S INITIATION                   103

CHAPTER X

NEWS ARRIVES AT OXFORD                       115

CHAPTER XI

THE DISCOVERY                                126

CHAPTER XII

AT THE BISHOP'S TOWN HOUSE                   139

CHAPTER XIII

NEW FRIENDS: NEW IDEAS                       149

CHAPTER XIV

AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE                     169

CHAPTER XV

THE MANUSCRIPT IN THE LIBRARY                190

CHAPTER XVI

ARTHUR BURNSIDE'S VIEWS                      201

CHAPTER XVII

THE COMING OF LOVE                           212

CHAPTER XVIII

A LOVER, AND NEWS OF LOVERS                  234

CHAPTER XIX

TROUBLED WATERS                              256

CHAPTER XX

THE DUKE KNOWS AT LAST                       269

CHAPTER XXI

IN THE STAGE BOX AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE    279

CHAPTER XXII

THE SUPPER ON THE STAGE                      291

CHAPTER XXIII

POINTS OF VIEW FROM A DUKE, A BISHOP,
A VISCOUNT, AND THE DAUGHTER OF AN EARL      304

CHAPTER XXIV

"LOVE CROWNS THE DEED"                       315

CHAPTER XXV

EPILOGUE                                     326




THE SOCIALIST




CHAPTER I

CONCERNING HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF PADDINGTON


There are as many social degrees in the peerage as there are in the
middle and lower classes.

There are barons who are greater noblemen than earls, viscounts who are
welcomed in a society that some marquises can never hope to enter--it is
a question not of wealth or celebrity, but of family relationships and
date of creation.

When, however, a man is a duke in England, his state is so lofty, he is
so inevitably apart from every one else that these remarks hardly apply
at all. Yet even in dukedoms one recognises there are degrees. There are
royal dukes, stately figureheads moving in the brilliant light which
pours from the throne, and generally a little obscured by its
refulgence. These have their own serene place and being.

There are the political dukes, Cabinet-made, who are solemnly
caricatured through two generations of _Punch_, massive, Olympian, and
generally asleep on the front benches of the House of Lords.

And every now and then it happens that there are the young dukes.

The fathers of the young dukes have lived to a great age and married
late in life. They have died when their sons were little children. For
years it seems to the outside public as if certain historic houses are
in abeyance. Nothing much is heard of these names, and only Londoners
who pay enormous ground rents to this or that Ducal estate office
realise what a long minority means.

From time to time paragraphs find their way into the society papers
telling of the progress of this or that young dukeling at Eton. The
paragraphs become more in evidence when the lad goes to Oxford, and
then, like a suddenly-lit lamp, the prince attains his majority.

Paragraphs in weekly papers expand into columns in all the dailies. The
public suddenly realises that the Duke of ----, a young man of
twenty-one, owns a great slice of London, has an income of from one to
two hundred thousand pounds a year, and by the fact of his position is a
force in public affairs. For a week every one talks about the darling of
fortune. His pictures are in all the journals. His castle in Kent, his
palace in Park Lane, his castle in Scotland, his villa at Monte Carlo,
are, as it were, thrown open to the inspection of the world. The
hereditary jewels are disinterred by popular rumour from the vaults at
Coutts' Bank. The Mysore Nagar emerald that the third duke brought from
India glitters once more in the fierce light of day. The famous diamond
tiara that the second duke bought for his duchess (in the year when his
horse "Strawberry Leaf" won the Derby and His Grace eighty thousand
pounds) sparkles as never before. Photographers seek, and obtain,
permission to visit the famous picture galleries at Duke Dale, and
American millionaires gasp with envy as they read of the Velasquez, the
three Murillos, the priceless series of Rembrandt genre pictures, and
the "Prince in Sable" of Vandyck, owned by a youth who has in all
probability never seen any one of them.

The man in the street has his passing throb of envy, and then, being a
generous-minded fellow in the main, and deeply imbued with loyalty to
all existing and splendid institutions, wishes his lordship luck and
promptly forgets all about him.

What the man _on_ the street--a very different sort of person--says, is
merely a matter which polite people do not hear, for who heeds a few
growls in cellars or curses in a cul-de-sac?

Women are even more generous, as is their dear mission to the world. If
your dukeling is a pretty lad, presentable and straight as caught by the
obsequious camera, they give him kind thoughts and wonder who the
fortunate girl will be. Who shall share the throne of Prince
Fortunatus? On whose white and slender neck shall that great Indian
emerald give out its sinful Asiatic fire? On whose shining coronet of
hair shall rise that crown of diamonds that the brave horse won for the
"bad old duke" on Epsom Downs?

And then all the stir and bother is over. Some newer thing engages the
public mind. Another stone is thrown into another pool; the ripples upon
the first die away, and the waters are tranquil once more.

Prince Fortunatus has ascended his throne, and the echoes of the
ceremonial trumpets are over and gone.

       *       *       *       *       *

John Augustus Basil FitzTracy was the fifth Duke of Paddington, Earl of
Fakenham in Norfolk, and a baronet of the United Kingdom.

His seats were Fakenham Hall, at Fakenham, Castle Trink, N. B., and the
old Welsh stronghold, near Conway, known as Carleon, which had come to
him from his mother's aunt, old Lady Carleon of Lys.

In regard to his houses, there was, first and foremost, the great square
pile in Piccadilly, which was almost as big as the Duke of Devonshire's
palace, and was known as Paddington House. There was an old Saxon house
near Chipping Norton, in Gloucestershire, which was used as a
hunting-box--the late duke always having ridden with the Heythrop. There
was also a big blue, pink-and-white villa upon the Promenade des
Anglais at Nice--the late duke liked to spend February among the palms
and roses of the Riviera, though it was said that the duchess never
accompanied him upon these expeditions to the sun-lit shores of the
Mediterranean.

The Duke of Paddington was not a great country nobleman. Fakenham was
some three thousand acres, and though the shooting was excellent, as is
the shooting of all the big houses which surround Sandringham Hall, the
place in itself was not particularly noteworthy. Nor did the duke own
coal mines, while no railways had enriched him by passing through any of
his properties.

The duke's enormous revenues were drawn from London. He and their graces
of Westminster and Bedford might well have contended for a new
title--Duke of London. If extent of possessions and magnitude of fortune
could alone decide such an issue the Duke of Paddington would have won.

A huge slice of the outer West End--anywhere north of Oxford
Street--belonged to him.

His income was variously stated, but the only truth about it, upon which
every one was agreed, was that it was incredibly large.

There was a certain modest, massive stone building in the Edgware Road
where the duke's affairs were conducted. It was known as the FitzTracy
Estate Office, forty clerks were regularly employed there, and only old
Colonel Simpson, late of the Army Service Corps, and now chief agent to
the duke, knew what the actual income was.

Possessor of all this,--and it is but the barest epitome,--the duke was
twenty-three years of age, had no near relations, and was just finishing
his university career at Oxford.

Everything that the human mind can wish for was his; there was hardly
anything in the world, worthy or unworthy, that he could not have by
asking for it.

The duke was an undergraduate of St. Paul's College, Oxford. Much
smaller than Christ Church, Magdalen, or New College, St. Paul's is,
nevertheless, the richest and most aristocratic foundation in the
university. It was a preserve of the peerage; no poor men could afford
to enter at Paul's, and it was even more difficult for the sons of rich
vulgarians to do so.

On one dull, cold morning at the end of the October term the duke came
out of his bedroom into the smaller of his two sitting rooms. It was
about ten o'clock. He had cut both early chapel or its alternative
roll-call--necessities from which even dukes are not exempt if they wish
to keep their terms.

The duke wore an old Norfolk jacket and a pair of grey flannel trousers.
His feet were thrust into a pair of red leather bath slippers. He was
about five feet ten in height, somewhat sturdily built, and deliberate
in his movements. His head was thickly covered with very dark red hair.
The eyes were grey, and with a certain calm and impassivity about
them--the calm of one so highly placed that nothing can easily affect
him; one sees it in the eyes of kings and queens. The nose was aquiline,
and thin at the nostrils, the nose of an aristocrat; the mouth was
large, and pleasant in expression, though by no means always genial.
There was, in short, something Olympian about this young man, an air, a
manner, an aroma of slight aloofness, a consciousness of his position.
It was not aggressive or pronounced, but it was indubitably there.

In the majority of colleges at Oxford undergraduates have only two
rooms. In Paul's, more particularly in what were known as the new
buildings, men had three, a bedroom, a dining-room or small
sitting-room, in which breakfast and lunch were taken, and a larger
sitting-room.

The duke came out of his bedroom into the smaller room. It was panelled
in white throughout. Let into the panels here and there were first
impressions of famous coloured mezzotints by Raphael Smith, Valentine
Green, and other masters. They had been brought from the portfolios at
Paddington House, and each one was worth three hundred pounds.

The chairs of this room were upholstered in red leather--a true
vermilion, and not the ordinary crimson--which went admirably with the
white walls and the Persian carpet, brick-dust and peacock blue colour,
from Teheran. A glowing fire of cedar logs sent a cheerful warmth into
the room, and the flames were reflected in the china and silver of a
small round table prepared for breakfast.

Although it was November, there was a great silver dish of fruit,
nectarines, and strawberries, grapes and peaches, all produced in the
new electric forcing houses which had been installed at the duke's place
at Fakenham. There was no apparatus for tea or coffee. In some things
the duke was a little unusual. He never drank tea or coffee, but took a
glass of thin white wine from Valperga. The tall yellow bottle stood on
the table now, and by its side was a fragile glass of gold and purple,
blown in Venice three hundred years ago.

The duke crossed the room and the larger one that opened out of it. He
pushed open the swing door--the heavy outer "oak" lay flat against the
wall--and shouted down the staircase for his "scout."

Despite the ineradicable belief of some popular novelists, there are no
bells at Oxford, and duke or commoner must summon his servant in the
good old mediaeval way.

In a minute the man appeared with breakfast. He had previously brought
his master a printed list from the kitchens when he called him.
Gardener was an elderly, grey-haired man, clean-shaven, and
confidential of manner. He had served many young noblemen on staircase
number one, and each and all had found him invaluable. He had feathered
his nest well during the years, and was worth every penny of ten
thousand pounds. A type produced nowhere in such completeness and
perfection as at Oxford or Cambridge, he represented a certain definite
social class, a class more hated by the working man than perhaps any
other--the polite parasite!

"Beastly weather, Gardener," said the duke in a voice which every one
found musical and pleasant, a contented, full-blooded voice.

"It is indeed, sir," said Gardener, as he arranged two silver dishes
upon the table--"very dull and cold. I was told that there would be
skating on Port Meadow as I came into college this morning."

"Well, I don't think it will tempt me," said the duke. "You understand
thoroughly about lunch?"

"Thoroughly, sir, thank you. Do you wish anything else now, sir?"

"Nothing more, Gardener. You can go."

"I thank your grace," said the scout, and left the room. Gardener had
brought the art of politeness to a high point. Indeed, he had elevated
it to a science. He always made a distinction, thoroughly understood and
appreciated by his masters, between himself and the ordinary flunkey or
house servant. He called a duke or a marquis "sir" in general address,
reserving the title for the moment of leaving the room, thus showing
that he did not forget the claims of rank, while he was too well-bred to
weary his hearer by undue repetition.

The duke began his breakfast--a chop and a poached egg. The young man
was by no means of a luxurious turn of mind as far as his personal
tastes were concerned. Simplicity was the keynote of many of his
actions. But he was very punctilious that everything about him should be
"just so," and had he dined on a dish of lentils he would have liked
them cooked by Escoffier.

There was a pile of letters by his plate. He opened them one by one,
throwing most of them on to an adjacent chair for his secretary--who
called every day at eleven--to answer.

One of the letters bore the cardinal's hat, which is the crest of Christ
Church College, and was from the duke's greatest friend in the
university, Viscount Hayle.

This was the letter:


     "MY DEAR JOHN,--My father and sister arrived to-night, and, as I
     supposed, they will be delighted to lunch to-morrow. You said at
     one, didn't you? I have been dining with them at the _Randolph_,
     but I have come back to college, as I must read for a couple of
     hours before I go to bed.

     "Yours,

     "GERALD."


Gerald, Viscount Hayle, was the only son of the Earl of Camborne, who
was a spiritual as well as a temporal peer inasmuch as he was the Bishop
of Carlton, the great northern manufacturing centre.

Lord Hayle and the Duke of Paddington had gone up to Oxford in the same
term. They were of equal ages, and many of their tastes and opinions
were identical, while the remaining differences of temperament and
thought only served to accentuate their strong friendship and to give it
a wholesome tonic quality.

The duke had met Lord Camborne once only. He had never stayed at the
palace, though often pressed to do so by Lord Hayle. Something or other
had always intervened to prevent it. The two young men had not known
each other during their school days--the duke had been at Eton, his
friend at Winchester--and their association had been simply at the
university.

Now the bishop, who was a widower, was coming to Oxford for a few days,
to be present at a reception to be given to Herr Schmoelder, the famous
German Biblical scholar, and was bringing his daughter, Lady Constance
Camborne, with him.

As he ate his nectarine the duke wondered what sort of a girl Lady
Constance was. That she was very lovely he knew from general report, and
Gerald also was extremely good-looking. But he wondered if she was like
all the other girls he knew, accomplished, charming, sometimes
beautiful and always smart, but--stereotyped.

That was just what all society girls were; they always struck him as
having been made in exactly the same mould. They said the same sort of
things in the same sort of voice. Their thoughts ran in grooves, not
necessarily narrow or limited grooves, but identical ones.

Before he had finished breakfast the duke's valet entered. The man was
his own private servant, and of course lived out of college, while there
was a perpetual feud between him and old Gardener, the scout.

The man carried two large boxes of thin wood in his hands.

"The orchids have come, your grace," he said. "They were sent down from
the shop in Piccadilly by an early train in answer to my telegram. I
went to the station this morning to get them."

"Oh, very well, Proctor," said the duke. "Thank you. Just open the boxes
and I will look at them. Then you can arrange them in the other room. I
sha'n't have any flowers on the table at lunch."

In a minute Proctor had opened the boxes and displayed the wealth of
strange, spotted blooms within--monstrous exotic flowers, beautiful with
a morbid and almost unhealthy beauty.

The duke was a connoisseur of orchids. "Yes, these will do very well,"
he said. "Now you can take them out."

The man, a slim, clean-shaven young fellow, with dark eyes and a
resolute jaw, hesitated a moment as if about to speak.

The duke, who had found a certain pleasure in thinking of his friend's
sister and wondering if she would be like her brother, had been lost in
a vague but pleasing reverie in fact, looked up sharply. He wanted to be
alone again. He wanted to catch up the thread of his thoughts. "Well?"
he said. "I think I told you to go, Proctor?"

The valet flushed at his master's tone. Then he seemed to make an
effort. "I beg your grace's pardon," he said. "I wish to give you my
notice."

The duke stared at his valet. "Why, what on earth do you mean?" he said.
"You've only been with me for nine months, and I have found you
satisfactory in every way. You have just learnt all my habits and
exactly how I like things done. And now you want to leave me! Are you
aware, Proctor, that you enjoy a situation that many men would give
their ears for?"

"Indeed, your grace, I know that I am fortunate, and that there are many
that would envy me."

"Then don't talk any more nonsense. What do I pay you? A hundred and
twenty pounds a year, isn't it? Well, then, take another twenty pounds.
Now go and arrange the orchids."

"I am very sorry, your grace," Proctor said. "But I do not seek any
increase of wages. I respectfully ask you to accept my month's notice."

A certain firmness and determination had come into the valet's voice. It
irritated the duke. It was a note to which he was not accustomed. But he
tried to keep his temper.

"What are your reasons for wishing to leave me?" he said, asking the
direct question for the first time.

"I have been successful with a small invention, your grace. I occupy my
spare time with mechanics. It is an improved lock and key, and a firm
have taken it up."

"Have they paid you?" said the duke.

"A certain sum down, your grace, and a royalty is to follow on future
sales."

"I congratulate you, I'm sure," the duke said, with an unconsciously
contemptuous smile, for he shared the not uncommon opinion among certain
people that there is something ludicrous in the originality of a
servant. "No idea you were such a clever fellow. But I don't see why you
should want to leave me. Because you are my servant it won't interfere
with you collecting your royalties or whatever they are."

The duke was a kind-hearted young man enough. He did not mean to wound
his valet, but he had never been accustomed to think of such people as
quite human--human in the sense that he himself was human--and his tone
was far more unpleasant than he had any idea of.

The valet flushed up. Then he did an extraordinary thing. He took two
five-pound notes from his pocket and placed them upon the table.

"That is a month's wages, your grace," he said, "instead of a month's
notice. I am no longer your servant, nor any man's."

As he spoke the whole aspect of the valet changed. He seemed to stand
more upright, his eyes had a curious light in them, his lips were parted
as one who inhales pure air after being long in a close room.

The duke's face grew pale with anger. "What do you mean by this?" he
said in a voice which was a strange mixture of passion and astonishment.

"Exactly what I say, sir," Proctor answered. "That I am no longer in
your service. I have done all that is legally necessary to discharge
myself. And I have a word to say to you. You are not likely to hear such
words addressed to you again, until your class and all it means is swept
away for ever. You sneer at me because I have dared to invent something,
to produce something, to add something to the world's wealth and the
world's comfort. What have you ever done? What have you ever contributed
to society? I am a better man than you are, and worth more to society,
because I've worked for my living and earned my daily bread, even
though fortune made me your body servant. But I'm free now, and, mark
what I say, read the signs of the times, if one in your position can
have any insight into truth at all! Read the signs of the times, and be
sure that before you and I are old men we shall be equal in the eyes of
the world as we are unequal now! There aren't going to be any more
drones in the hive. Men aren't going to have huge stores of private
property any more. You won't be allowed to own land which is the
property of every one."

He stopped suddenly in the flood of high-pitched, agitated speech,
quivering with excitement, a man transformed and carried away. Was this
the suave, quiet fellow who had brushed the clothes and put studs into
the shirts? With an involuntary gesture the duke passed his hand before
his eyes. He was astounded at this sudden volcanic outburst. Nothing, as
Balzac said, is more alarming than the rebellion of a sheep.

But as Proctor's voice died away his excitement seemed to go with it, or
at any rate long habit and training checked and mastered it. The man
bowed, not without dignity, and when he spoke again his voice was once
more the old respectful one. "I beg your grace's pardon," he said, "if I
have been disrespectful. There are times when a man loses control of
himself, and what is beneath the surface will out. Your grace will find
everything in perfect order." He withdrew without another word and
passed out of his master's life.

The duke was left staring at the masses of orchids which lay before him
on the table.

When Gardener, the scout, entered he found the duke still in the same
position--lost in a sort of day-dream.




CHAPTER II

"HAIR LIKE RIPE CORN"


The duke was reciting his adventure with the valet to his three guests,
but he glanced most often at Lady Constance Camborne.

No, the society journals and society talk hadn't exaggerated her beauty
a bit--she was far and away the loveliest girl he had ever seen. He knew
it directly she came into the room with Lord Hayle and the bishop, the
influence of such extraordinary beauty was felt like a physical blow.
The girl was of a Saxon type, but with all the colouring accentuated.
The hair which crowned the small, patrician head in shining masses was
golden. But it was not pale gold, metallic gold, or flaxen. It was a
deep, rich gold, an "old gold," and the duke, with a somewhat
unaccustomed flight of fancy, compared it in his mind to ripe corn. Her
eyebrows were very dark brown, almost black, and the great eyes, with
their long black lashes, were dark as a southern night. Under their
great coronet of yellow hair, and set in a face whose contour was a pure
and perfect oval, with a skin like the inside of a seashell, the
contrast was extraordinarily effective. Her beautiful lips had the rare
lines of the unbroken Greek bow, and their colour was like wine. She was
tall in figure, even as though some marble goddess had stepped down from
her pedestal in the Louvre and assumed the garments of the daughters of
men. Some people said that, beautiful as she was in every way, her
crowning beauty was her hands. She had sat to Pozzi, at Milan, at the
great sculptor's earnest request, so that he might perpetuate the glory
of her hands for ever. Mr. Swinburne had written a sonnet, shown only to
a favoured few and never published, about her hands.

The duke talked on. Outwardly he was calm enough, within his brain was
in a turmoil entirely fresh to it, entirely new and unexpected. He heard
his own voice mechanically relating the incident of Proctor's rebellion,
but he gave hardly a thought to what he said. For all he knew he might
have been talking the most absolute nonsense.

He was lost in wonder that one living, moving human being could be so
fair!

He felt a sort of unreasoning anger with his friend, Lord Hayle. Why
hadn't Gerald introduced him to his sister before? Why had all this time
been wasted?--quite forgetting the repeated invitations he had received
to stay with the Cambornes.

"Well, what did you do in the end, John?" said Lord Hayle. "Did you kick
the fellow out? I should have pitched him down the staircase, by Jove!"

"As a matter of fact, I did nothing at all," said the duke. "I was too
surprised. I just sat still and let him talk; I was quite tongue-tied."

"More's the pity," said the young viscount, a lean, sinewy lad, who
rowed three in the 'Varsity boat. "I should have made very short work of
him."

"Don't be such a savage, Gerald," Lady Constance answered. "It was very
rude, of course; but from what the duke says, the man was not exactly
what you would call impudent, and he apologised at the end. And nowadays
every one has a right to his own opinions. We don't live in the middle
ages any longer."

Her voice was like a silver bell, the duke thought, as the girl voiced
these somewhat republican sentiments. A silver bell, was it? No, it was
like water falling into water, like a flute playing in a wood at a great
distance.

"My daughter is quite a Radical, Paddington," said Lord Camborne, with a
smile. "She'll grow out of it when she gets a little older. But I found
her reading the _Fabian Essays_ the other day; actually the _Fabian
Essays_!"--the bishop said it with a shudder. "And she met John Burns at
a ministerial reception, and said he was charming!"

"It's all very well for Constance," said Lord Hayle; "a girl plays at
that sort of thing, and if it amuses her it hurts nobody else. However
much Connie talks about equality, and all that, she'd never sit down to
dinner with the butler. But it's quite another thing when all these
chaps are getting elected to Parliament and making all these new laws.
If it isn't stopped, no one will be safe. It's getting quite alarming.
For my part, I wish a chap like Lord Kitchener could be made Dictator of
England for a month. He'd have all the Socialists up against a wall and
shoot them in no time. Then things would be right again."

Lord Hayle concluded in his best college debating society manner, and
drank a glass of hock and seltzer in a bloodthirsty and determined
manner.

The bishop, a tall, portly man, with a singularly fine face and extreme
graciousness of manner--he was most popular at Court, and it was said
would certainly go to Canterbury when Dr. ---- died,--laughed a little
at his son's vehemence.

"That would hardly solve the problem," he said. "But it will solve
itself. I am quite sure that there is no real reason for alarm. The
country is beginning to wake up to the real character of the Socialist
leaders. It will no longer listen to them. Men of sense are beginning to
perceive that the great fact of inequality as between man and man is
everywhere stamped in ineffaceable characters. Men are not equal, and
they never will be while talent, and talent alone, produces wealth.
Democracy is nothing but a piece of humbug from beginning to end--a
transparent attempt to flatter a mass of stupid mediocrity which is too
dull to appreciate the language of its hypocritical and time-serving
admirers. These contemptible courtiers of the mob no more believe in
equality than the ruin-bringing demagogues of ancient Athens did. One
only has to watch them to see how eager they are to feather their nests
at the expense of all the geese that will stand plucking. Observe how
they scheme and contrive to secure official positions so that they may
lord it over the general herd of common workers. They have their own
little game to play, and beyond their own self-interest they do not care
a straw. Knowing that they are unfit to succeed either in commercial or
industrial pursuits, they try to extend the sphere of governmental
regulation. What for? To supply themselves with congenial jobs where
they won't be subject to the keen test of industrial and commercial
competition, and will be less likely to be found out for the worthless
wind-bags that they are!"

The bishop paused. He had spoken as one having authority; quite in the
grand manner, bland, serene, and a little pompous. He half-opened his
mouth to continue, looked round to recognise that his audience was a
young one, and thought better of it. He drank half a glass of port
instead.

The conversation changed to less serious matters, and in another minute
or so Gardener entered to say that coffee was ready in the other room.

The "sitter," to use the Oxford slang word, was very large. It was,
indeed, one of the finest rooms in the whole of Paul's. Three tall oriel
windows lighted it, it was panelled in dark oak, and there was a large
open fire-place. It was a man's room. Luxurious as it was in all its
furniture appointments and colouring, all was nevertheless strongly
masculine. The rows of briar pipes, in their racks, a pile of hunting
crops and riding switches in one corner, a tandem horn, the pictures of
dogs and horses upon the walls, and three or four gun-cases behind the
little black Bord piano, spoke eloquently of male tastes.

Though it is often said, it is generally quite untrue to say, that a
man's rooms are an index to his personality. Few people can express
themselves in their furniture. The conscious attempt to do so results in
over-emphasis and strain. The ideal is either canonised or vulgarised,
and the vision within is distorted and lost. At Oxford, especially, very
few men succeed in doing more than attaining a convention.

But the duke's rooms really did reflect himself to some extent. They
showed a certain freshness of idea and a liking for what was considered
and choice. But there was no effeminacy, no over-refinement. They showed
simplicity of temperament, and were not complex. Nor was the duke
complex.

Lady Constance was peculiarly susceptible to the influences of material
and external things. She was extremely quick to gather and weigh
impressions--the room interested her, her brother's friend interested
her already. She found something in his personality which was
attractive.

The whole atmosphere of these ancient Oxford rooms pleased and
stimulated her, and she talked brightly and well, revealing a mind with
real originality and a gentle and sympathetic wit most rare in girls of
her age.

"And what are you going to do in the vacation?" the bishop asked the
duke.

"For the first three or four weeks I shall be in town; then I'm going
down to Norfolk. I sha'n't stay at Fakenham, Lord Leicester is putting
me up; but we are going to shoot over Fakenham. I can't stay all alone
in that great place, you know, though I did think of having some men
down. However, that was before the Leicesters asked me. Then I am to be
at Sandringham for three days for the theatricals. It is the first time
I have been there, you know."

"You'll find it delightful," said the bishop. "The King is the best host
in England. On the three occasions when I have had the honour of an
invitation I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. Where are you staying when
you are in town--at Paddington House?"

"Oh, no! That would be worse than Fakenham! Paddington House was let,
always, during my minority, but for two years now there have just been a
few servants there, but no one living in the house. My agent looks after
all that. No, I am engaging some rooms at the _Carlton_. It's near
everywhere. I have a lot of parties to go to, and Claridge's is always
so full of German grand dukes!"

"But why not come to us in Grosvenor Street?" said the bishop. "You've
never been able to accept any of Gerald's invitations yet. Here is an
opportunity. I have to be in town for three or four weeks, at the House
of Lords and the Westminster conference of the bishops. You'd much
better come to us. We'll do our best to make you comfortable."

"Oh, do come, John!" said Lord Hayle.

"Yes, please come, duke," said Lady Constance.

"It's awfully good of you, Lord Camborne," said the duke; "I shall be
delighted to come."

It was a dark and gloomy afternoon--indeed, the electric bulbs in their
silver candelabra were all turned on. But suddenly it seemed to the duke
that the sun was shining and there was bird music in the air. He looked
at Lady Constance. "I shall be delighted to come," he said again.

They chatted on, and presently the duke found himself standing by one of
the tall windows talking to his friend's sister. Lord Hayle, himself an
enthusiastic amateur of art, was showing his father some of the
treasures upon the walls.

"How dreary it is to-day--the weather, I mean,"--said the girl. "There
has been a dense fog in town for the last three days, I see by the
papers. And through it all the poor unemployed men have been tramping
and holding demonstrations without anything to eat. I can't help
thinking of the poor things."

The duke had not thought about the unemployed before, but now he made a
mental vow to send a big cheque to the Lord Mayor's fund.

"It must be very hard for them," he said vaguely. "I remember meeting
one of their processions once when I was walking down Piccadilly."

"The street of your palace!" she answered more brightly. "Devonshire
House, Paddington House, and Apsley House, and all the clubs in between!
It must be interesting to have a palace in London. I suppose Paddington
House is very splendid inside, isn't it? I have never seen more of it
than the upper windows and the huge wall in front."

"Well, it is rather gorgeous," he said; "though I never go there, or, at
least, hardly ever. But I have a book of photographs here. I will show
them to you, Lady Constance, if I may. So far we've succeeded in keeping
them out of the illustrated magazines."

"Oh, please do!" she said. "Father, the duke is going to show me some
pictures of the rooms of his mysterious great place in Piccadilly."

As she spoke there was a knock upon the door, and the scout came in with
a telegram upon a tray.

"I thought I had better bring it at once, sir," he said; "it's marked
'urgent' upon the envelope."

With an apology, the duke opened the flimsy orange-coloured wrapping.

Then he started, his face grew rather paler, and he gave a sudden
exclamation. "Good heavens!" he said, "listen to this:


     "'Large portion front west wing Paddington House destroyed by
     explosion an hour ago. Bomb filled with picric acid discovered
     intact near gateway. The smaller Gainsborough and the Florence vase
     destroyed. Please come up town immediately.

     "'SIMPSON.'"


There was a dead silence in the room.




CHAPTER III

A MOST SURPRISING DAY


Lord Camborne, Lord Hayle, and Lady Constance stared at the duke in
amazement as he read the extraordinary telegram from Colonel Simpson.
Lady Constance was the first to speak. "And you were just getting the
book of photographs!" she said in a bewildered voice, "the photographs
of Paddington House, and now----"

"Read the wire again, John," said Lord Hayle.

The duke did so; it was quite clear:


     "'Large portion front west wing Paddington House destroyed by
     explosion an hour ago. Bomb filled with picric acid discovered
     intact near gateway. The smaller Gainsborough and the Florence vase
     destroyed. Please come up town immediately.

     "'SIMPSON.'"


"The smaller Gainsborough--that's the famous portrait of Lady Honoria
FitzTracy," said Lord Hayle suddenly. "Why, it's the finest example of
Gainsborough in existence!"

He grew pale with sympathy as he looked at his friend.

"It isn't in existence any more, apparently," said the duke. "I wish the
Florence vase had been saved. My father gave ten thousand pounds for
it--not that the money matters--but, you see, it was the only one in the
world, except the smaller example in the Vatican."

The bishop broke in with a slight trace of impatience in his voice. "My
dear young men," he said, "surely the great question is: Who has
perpetrated this abominable outrage? What does it all mean? What steps
are being----"

He stopped short. Gardener had entered with another telegram.


     "Man arrested on suspicion, known to belong to advanced socialist
     or anarchist group. Can you catch the fast train up? There is one
     at six. I will meet you with car.

     "SIMPSON."


"Well, here is a sort of answer," said the duke, handing the telegram to
the bishop. "It appears that the thing is another of those kindly and
amiable protests which the lower classes make against their betters from
time to time."

"Just what I was saying," young Lord Hayle broke in eagerly, "just what
I was saying a few minutes ago. It's all the result of educating the
lower classes sufficiently to make them discontented and to put these
scoundrelly socialists and blackguards into Parliament. They'll be
trying Buckingham Palace or Marlborough House next! Probably this is the
work of those unemployed gentry whom I heard Constance defending just
now."

"It's a bad business," said Lord Camborne gravely; "a very black, bad
business indeed. Paddington, you have my sincerest sympathy. I am afraid
that in the shock of the news we may have been a little remiss in
expressing our grief, but you know, my dear boy, how we all feel for
you."

He went up to the duke as he spoke, a grand and stately old man, and
shook him warmly by the hand.

"Yes, John," said Lord Hayle, "we really are awfully sorry, old chap."

Lady Constance said nothing, but she looked at her host, and it was
enough. He forgot the news, he forgot everything save only the
friendship and kindliness in her eyes.

"I suppose you will go up to town by the six o'clock train?" Lord Hayle
said.

"I suppose I must, Gerald," the duke replied. "I must go and get leave
from the dean later on. I expect I shall have to stay the night. It's
not an inviting day for London, is it?"

"Do you know, duke, that I think you are taking it remarkably well,"
Lady Constance said with a sudden dazzling smile. "I should have been
terribly frightened, and then cried my eyes out about the vase and the
picture. And as for Hayle--well, I think I can imagine the way Hayle
would have behaved."

"Well, of course, I'm horribly angry," the duke said, "and such a thing
means a great deal more to society in general than its mere personal
aspect to me. But I can't somehow feel it very nearly; it seems remote.
I should realize it far more if any one were to steal or break anything
in these rooms here--things I constantly touch and see, things I live
with. I have so many houses and pictures and things that I never see;
they don't seem part of one."

"I can quite understand that," said the bishop; "but that will all be
changed some day, please God, before very long. You are only on the
threshold of life as yet, you know."

He smiled paternally at the young man, and there was a good deal of
meaning in his smile. The duke, not ordinarily sensitive about such
things, blushed a little now. He was quite aware to what Lord Camborne
referred.

The bishop, astute courtier and diplomatist that he was, marked the
blush, pretended not to notice it, and was secretly well pleased. He
himself was earl as well as bishop, he was wealthy, he was certain of
the Primacy. His daughter, whom he loved and admired more than any other
living thing, was a match for any one with her rank and wealth and
loveliness. He longed to see her happily married also. At the same
time, good man as he was, he was by his very nature and training a
worldly man.

If, therefore, the two young people fell in love with each other--well,
it would be a very charming arrangement, to say the least of it, Lord
Camborne thought. For, far and away above all other fortunate young
noblemen, the duke was the greatest _parti_ of the day; he stood alone.

"I've got three hours or more before the train goes," said the duke,
"and I can dine on board; there's a car, I know. Now, do let's forget
this troublesome business. I'm so sorry, Lady Constance, that it should
have happened while you were here. Let's shut out this horrid
afternoon."

He spoke with light-hearted emphasis, with gaiety even. Despite what had
happened he felt thoroughly happy, his blood ran swiftly in his veins,
his pulses throbbed to exhilarating measures. Oh, how beautiful she was!
How gracious and lovely!

He went to the windows and pulled the heavy crimson curtains over them,
shutting out the wan, grey light of the November afternoon.

He made Gardener bring candles--innumerable candles--to supplement the
glow of the electric lights. More logs were cast upon the fire--logs of
sawn cedar wood which gave flames of rose-pink and amethyst. The noble
room was illuminated as if for a feast.

Lord Hayle entered into the spirit of the thing, _con amore_. His
spirits rose with those of his friend, and his sister also caught the
note, while Lord Camborne, smoking a cigar by the fire, watched the
three young people with a benevolent smile.

Lady Constance had been sitting by the piano. "Do you play, Lady
Constance?" the duke asked.

"She's one of the best amateur pianists I've ever heard," said Lord
Hayle.

"Do play something, Lady Constance. What will you give us?"

"It depends on the sort of music you like. Do you like Chopin?"

"I am very fond of Chopin indeed."

"I'll tell you what to play, Connie," said Lord Hayle eagerly. "Play
that wonderful nocturne, I forget the number, where the bell comes in.
The one with the story about it."

"A story?" said the duke.

"Yes; don't you know it, John? Chopin had just come back from his villa
at Majorca--come back to Paris at a time when Georges Sand would have
nothing more to do with him. He was living close to Notre Dame. He had a
supper by appointment, but began to write his nocturne and forgot all
about the time. He was nearing the end when the big bell of the
cathedral began to toll midnight. He realised how late it was, and
forced himself to finish the thing in a hurry. He wove the twelve great
'clangs' into the theme. It's marvellously romantic and Gothic. One
seems to see Victor Hugo's dwarf, Quasimodo, upon the tower, drinking in
the midnight air."

Lady Constance sat down at the piano and began the nocturne. The
beautiful hands flashed over the keys, whiter than the ivory on which
they pressed, her face was grave with the joy of what she was doing.

And as the duke listened the time and place faded utterly away.

The passionate and yet fantastic music pealed out into the room and
destroyed its material appeal to the senses. His brain seemed suddenly
aware of a larger and more fully-coloured life than he had ever known
before, ever thought possible before. He stood upon the threshold of it;
it held strange secrets, wonderful chances; there were passionate
moments for young blood awaiting!

Here was the agony that lurked in pleasure, the immedicable pain which
allured--lights gleamed behind swaying veils.

Clang!

The deep resonance of the iron bell tolled into the dream.

Clang!

The twin towers of Notre Dame were stark and black up in the sky.

Clang!

The dark sky grew rosy, he saw her hands, he saw the light upon her
face. It was dark no longer--the bell had tolled away the old day, dawn
was at hand, the new day was coming; the dawn of love was rosy in the
sky.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was four o'clock when the duke's guests went away.

He went with them through the two quadrangles of Paul's to the massive
gateway, and saw the three tall figures disappear in the mist with a
sense of desolation and loss.

But as he was returning to his rooms to get cap and gown in which to
visit the dean of his college, he comforted himself with the reflection
that term was almost over.

In a week or so he would be in London, staying in the same house with
her! The very thought set his heart beating like a drum!

He was nearly at the door of his staircase when he saw a man coming
towards him, evidently about to speak to him. It was a man he
recognised, though he had never spoken to him, a man called Burnside.

St. Paul's, as it has been said, was a college in which nearly all the
undergraduates were rich men. A man of moderate means could not afford
to join it. At the same time, as in the case of all colleges, there were
half-a-dozen scholarships open to any one. As these scholarships were
large in amount they naturally attracted very poor men. At the present
moment there were some six or seven scholars of Paul's, who lived almost
entirely upon their scholarships and such tutorial work as they could
secure in the vacations. But these men lived a life absolutely apart
from the other men of the college. They could afford to subscribe to
none of the college clubs, they could not dress like other men, they
could not entertain. That they were all certain to get first-classes and
develop into distinguished men mattered nothing to the young aristocrats
of the college. For them the scholars simply did not exist.

Burnside, the duke had heard somewhere or other, was one of the most
promising scholars of his year, but he wore rather shabby black clothes,
very thick boots, and a made-up tie; he was quite an unimportant person!

He came up to the duke now, his pale intelligent face flushing a little
and a very obvious nervousness animating him.

"Might I speak to you a moment?" he said.

The duke looked at him with that peculiar Oxford stare, which is
possibly the most insolent expression known to the physiognomist, a
cultivated rudeness which the Oxford "blood" learns to discard very
quickly indeed when he "goes down" and enters upon the realities of
life.

The duke did not mean anything by his stare, however; it was habit, that
was all, and seeing the nervousness of his vis-a-vis was growing
painful, his face relaxed. "Oh, all right," he said. "What is
it--anything I can do? At any rate, come up to my rooms, it's so
confoundedly dismal out here this afternoon."

The two men went up the stairs together and entered the huge luxurious
sitting-room, with its brilliant lights, its glowing fire, its pictures
and flowers. Burnside looked swiftly around him; he had never dreamed of
such luxury, and then he began--

"I hope you won't think me impertinent," he said, "but I have just
received a telegram from the _Daily Wire_. I occasionally do some work
for them. They tell me that part of your town house has been destroyed
by an explosion, and that some famous art treasures have been
destroyed."

"That's quite true, unfortunately," said the duke.

"And they ask me to obtain an interview with you for to-morrow's paper
in order that you may make some statement about your loss." He spoke
with an eagerness that almost outweighed, at any rate, alleviated his
nervousness.

"Most certainly not!" said the duke sharply. "I wonder that you should
permit yourself to make me such a request. I will wish you
good-afternoon!"

The other muttered something that sounded like an apology and then
turned to go. His face was quite changed. The eagerness passed out of it
as though the whole expression had suddenly been wiped off by a sponge.
An extraordinary dejection, piteous in the completeness of its
disappointment, took its place. The duke had never seen anything so
sudden and so profound before; it startled him.

The man was already half-way to the door when the duke spoke again.

"Excuse me," he said, and from mere habit his voice was still cold,
"would you mind telling me why you seem so strangely disappointed
because I have not granted your request?"

A surprise awaited him. Burnside swung round on his feet, and his voice
was tense as he answered.

"Oh, yes, I'll tell you," he said, "though, indeed, how should you
understand? The editor of the _Daily Wire_ offered me fifteen pounds in
his telegram if I could get a column interview with you. I am reading
history for my degree, and there are certain German monographs which I
can't get a sight of in Oxford or London. The only way is to buy them.
Of course, I could not afford to do that, and then suddenly this
opportunity came. But you can't understand. Good-afternoon!"

For the second time that day the duke was mildly surprised, but he
understood.

"My dear sir," he said in a very different tone, "how was I to guess? I
am very sorry, but I really am so--so ignorant of all these things. Come
and sit down and interview me to your heart's content. What does it
matter, after all? Will you have a whisky and soda, or, perhaps, some
tea? I'll call my scout."

In five minutes Burnside was making notes and asking questions with a
swift and practical ability that compelled his host's interest and
admiration. The duke had never met any one of his own age so
business-like and alert. His own friends and contemporaries were so
utterly different. He became quite confidential, and found that he was
really enjoying the conversation.

After the interview was over the two young men remained talking frankly
to each other for a few minutes, and, wide as the poles asunder in rank,
birth, and fortune, they were mutually pleased. For both of them it was
a new and stimulating experience, and the peer realised how narrow his
views of Oxford must necessarily be. Suddenly a thought struck him.

"Wait a minute," he said. "I think I have something here that will
interest you."

He went to his writing-table, and, after some search, found a letter. It
was a long business document from his chief agent, Colonel Simpson.

"I want to read you this paragraph from my agent's last letter," he
said.


     "' ... There is another matter to which I wish to draw your grace's
     attention. As you are aware, the libraries, both at Fakenham and
     Paddington House, are of extreme value and interest, but since the
     death of the late librarian, Mr. Fox, no steps have been taken to
     fill his position. When he died Mr. Fox was half-way through the
     work of compiling a comprehensive and scholarly catalogue of your
     grace's literary treasures. Would it not be as well to have this
     catalogue completed by a competent person in view of the fact that
     sooner or later your grace will be probably throwing open the two
     houses again?'


"Now, wouldn't that suit you, Mr. Burnside, as work in the vacation,
don't you know? It would last a couple of years or so probably, and you
need not give all your time to it, even if you take your degree
meanwhile and read for the Bar, as you tell me you mean to. I would pay
you, say, four hundred a year, if you think that is enough," he added
hastily, wondering if he ought to have offered more.

The young man's stammering gratitude soon undeceived him, and as
Burnside left him his last words sent a glow of satisfaction through
him--"I won't say any more than just this, your splendid offer has
removed all obstacles from my path. The career I have mapped out for
myself is now absolutely assured."

For half an hour longer the duke remained alone, thinking of the events
of the day, thinking especially of Lady Constance Camborne. He did not
give a thought to the smaller Gainsborough or the Florentine vase, and
he was entirely ignorant that he had just done something which was to
have a marked and definite influence upon his future life.

By six o'clock he had wired to Colonel Simpson, had obtained the
necessary exeat from the dean, and was entering a first-class carriage
in the fast train from Oxford to London.

The fog was thick all along the line, and more than once the express was
stopped for some minutes when the muffled report of fog signals, like
guns fired under a blanket, could be heard in the dark.

One such stop occurred when, judging by the time and such blurred
indications of gaunt housebacks as he could discern, the duke felt that
they must be just outside Paddington Station.

He had the carriage to himself, brightly lit, warm, and comfortable. He
sat there, wrapped in his heavy, sable-lined coat, a little drowsy and
tired, though with a pleasant sense of well-being, despite the errand
which was bringing him to London.

The noise of the train died away and the engine stopped. Voices could be
heard talking in the silence, voices which seemed very far away.

Then there was the roar of an advancing train somewhere in the distance,
a roar which grew louder and louder, one or two sudden shouts, and then
a frightful crash as if a thunderbolt had burst, a shrill multiple cry
of fear, and finally the long, rending noise of timber and iron
breaking into splinters.

The duke heard all this, and even as his brain realised what it meant,
he was thrown violently up into the air--so it seemed to him--he caught
sight of the light in the roof of the carriage for the thousandth part
of a second, and then everything flashed away into darkness and silence.




CHAPTER IV

THE MAN WITH THE MUSTARD-COLOURED BEARD


It was the morning of the day on which part of the facade of Paddington
House, Piccadilly, was destroyed by the explosion of a bomb.

London was a city of darkness and gloom, a veritable "city of dreadful
night."

The fog was everywhere, it was bitter cold, and all the lights in the
shops and the lamps in the streets were lit. As yet the fog was some few
yards above the house-tops. It had not descended, as it did later on in
the day, into the actual streets themselves. It lay, a terrible leaden
pall, a little above them.

In no part of London did the fog seem more dreary than in Bloomsbury.
The gaunt squares, the wide, old-fashioned streets, were like gashes cut
into a face of despair.

At half-past nine o'clock Mary Marriott came out of her tiny bedroom
into her tiny sitting-room and lit the gas. She lived on the topmost
floor of a great Georgian house in a narrow street just off Bedford
Square. In the old days, before there were fogs, and when trees were
still green in the heart of London, a great man had lived in this house.
The neighbourhood was fashionable then, and all the world had not moved
westwards. The staircase at No. 102 was guarded by carved balusters, the
ceilings of the lower rooms were worked in the ornate plaster of Adams,
the doors were high, and the lintels delicately fluted. Now 102 was let
out in lodgings, some furnished, some unfurnished. Mary Marriott had two
tiny rooms under the roof. On the little landing outside was a small
gas-stove and some shelves, upon which were a few pots and pans. A
curtain screened this off from the stairhead. This was the kitchen. The
furniture, what there was of it, was Mary's own, and, in short, she
might, had she been so disposed, have called her dwelling almost a flat.
Moreover, she paid her rent quarterly--five pounds every three
months--and was quite an independent householder.

Mary was an actress, a hard-working member of the rank and file. She had
never yet secured even the smallest engagement in London, and most of
her life was spent on tour in the provinces. When she was away she
locked up her rooms.

She was without any relations, except a sister, who was married to a
curate in Birmingham. Her private income was exactly thirty pounds a
year, the interest upon a thousand pounds safely invested. This paid the
rent of the rooms which were all she had to call "home," and left her
ten pounds over. Every penny in addition to this she must earn by the
exercise of her art.

She had been lucky during her four years of stage life in rarely being
out of an engagement. She had never played a leading part, even in the
provinces, but her second parts had generally been good. If she had come
nowhere near success she had been able to keep herself and save a
little, a very little, money for a rainy day. It is astonishing on how
little two careful girls, chumming together, can live on tour. Managing
in this way it was an extravagant week when Mary spent thirty shillings
upon her share of the week's bill, and as she never earned less than
three pounds she felt herself fortunate. She knew piteous things of
girls who were less fortunate than she.

She came into the room and lit the gas. It was not a beautiful room,
some people would have called it a two-penny-halfpenny room, but it was
comfortable, there was a gracious feminine touch about all its simple
appointments, and to Mary Marriott it represented home.

The chairs were of wicker-work, with cretonne cushions--sixteen-and-six
each in the Tottenham Court Road. The pictures were chiefly photographs
of theatrical friends, the curtains were a cheap art-green rep, the
carpet plain Indian matting--so easy to clean! But the colours were all
harmonious, and a shelf holding nearly two hundred books gave a
finishing note of pleasant habitableness.

The girl moved with that grace which is not languid but alert. There was
a spring and balance in her walk that made one think of a handsome boy;
for though the lithe and beautiful figure was girlish enough, few girls
learn to move from the hips, erect and unswayed, as she moved, or often
suggest the temper and resilience of a foil. The simple grey tweed coat
and the slim skirts that hung so superbly gave every movement its full
value.

She had not yet put on her hat, but her coat would keep her warm while
she ate her frugal breakfast and save the necessity of lighting the
fire, as she was shortly going out.

Her hair was dead-black with the blackness of bog-oak root or of basalt.
She did not wear it in any of the modes of the moment, but gathered up
in a great coiled knot at the back of her head.

In shape, Mary Marriott's face was one of those semi-ovals which one has
forgotten in the Greek rooms of the Louvre and remembered in some early
Victorian miniatures. It was grave, and the corners of the almost
perfect mouth were slightly depressed, like the Greek bow reversed.

The violet eyes were not hard, but they did not seem quite happy. It was
almost a petulance with environment which seemed written there, and, in
the words of a great master of English prose, "the eyelids were a little
weary." All her face, indeed,--in the general impression it
gave,--seemed to have that constant preoccupation that hints at the
pursuit of something not yet won.

She might have been four or five-and-twenty. Her face was not the face
of a young, unknowing girl--no early morning fruit in a basket with its
bloom untouched. Yet it was still possible to imagine that her
indifferent loveliness could wake suddenly to all the caresses and
surrenders of spring. But the ordained day must dawn for that. Like a
sundial, one might have said of her that her message was told only under
the serenest skies, and that even then it must come with shadow.

She lit the stove on the landing to boil some water for her cocoa and
egg. Then she took the necessary crockery from a cupboard, together with
the loaf and butter she had bought last night.

While the simple meal was in progress her low forehead was wrinkled with
thought. A long tour was just over in the fairly prosperous repertoire
company with which she had been associated for eighteen months. Usually
at this season of the year the company played right through till the
spring at those provincial theatres where no pantomimes were produced.
This year, however, it had been disbanded until March, when Mary was at
liberty to rejoin if she had not meanwhile found another engagement.

This was what she was trying to do, at present with no success at all.
She was tired to death of the monotonous touring business. She felt that
she had better work within her had she only a chance to show it. But it
was horribly difficult to get that chance. She had no influence with
London managers whatever. Her name was not known in any way, and as the
days went by the hopelessness of her ambition seemed to become more and
more apparent.

This morning the heavy pall which lay over London seemed to crush her
spirits. She was so alone, life was drab and cheerless.

With a sigh she strove to banish black thoughts. "I won't give up!" she
said aloud, stamping a little foot upon the floor. "I know I've got
something in me, and I won't give up!"

When breakfast was over, she swept up the crumbs from the tablecloth,
opened the window, and scattered them upon the leads for the birds--her
invariable custom. Then she went into her bedroom, made the bed, and
tidied everything, for she did all her own housework when she was "at
home," though a charwoman came once a week to "turn out" the rooms.

When she had put on her hat and gloves and returned to the sitting-room
she found two or three cheeky little London sparrows were chirping over
their meal on the parapet, and she stood motionless to watch them. As
she did so she saw a new arrival. A robin, with bright, hungry eyes, in
his warm scarlet waistcoat, had joined the feathered group. Nearly all
the crumbs were disposed of by this time, and, greatly daring, the
little creature hopped on to the window-sill, looked timidly round him
for a moment, and then flew right over to the table where the
bread-latter still stood. With an odd little chirp of satisfaction the
bird seized a morsel of bread as big as a nut in his tiny beak and
flashed out through the window again, this time flying right away into
the fog.

"Oh, you dear!--you perfect dear!" Mary said, clapping her hands. "Why
didn't you stay longer?" And as she went down the several staircases to
the hall the little incident remained with her and cheered her. "I shall
have some luck to-day," she thought. "I feel quite certain I shall have
some luck. One of the agents will have heard of something that will suit
me; I am confident of it." And all the time that she walked briskly
towards the theatrical quarter of London the sense of impending good
fortune remained with her, despite the increasing gloom of the day.

It was with almost a certainty of it that she turned into the district
around Covent Garden and crossed the frontier as it were of the world of
mimes.

It is a well-defined country, this patch of stage-land in the middle of
London. The man who knows could take a map of the metropolis and pencil
off an area that would contain it with the precision of a gazetteer.
Wellington Street on the east, St. Martin's Lane on the west, Long Acre
on the north, and the Strand on the south--these are its boundaries.

Yet to the ordinary passer-by it is a _terra incognita_, its very
existence is unsuspected, and he might hurry through the very centre of
it without knowing that he was there at all.

Mary made straight for Virgin Lane, a long, narrow street leading from
Bedford Street to Covent Garden Market--the street where all the
theatrical agents have their offices. The noise of traffic sank to a
distant hum as she entered it. Instead, the broken sound of innumerable
conversations met her ear, for the pavements, and the road itself, were
crowded with men and women who were standing about just as the jobbers
and brokers do after closing time outside the Stock Exchange.

The men were nearly all clean-shaven, and they were alike in a marked
fashion. Dress varied and features differed, but every face bore a
definite stamp and impress. Perhaps colour had something to do with it.
Nearly every face had the look of a somewhat faded chalk drawing. They
shared a certain opaqueness of skin in common. What colour there was
seemed streaky--the pastel drawing seemed at close quarters. There was
an odd sketchiness about these faces, no one of them quite expressed
what it hinted at. The men were a rather seedy-looking lot, but the
women were mostly well dressed--some of them over-dressed. But they
seemed to wear their frocks as costumes, not as clothes, and to have
that peculiar consciousness people have when they wear what we call
"fancy dress."

Mary entered an open door with a brass-plate at the side, on which
"Seaton's Dramatic and Musical Agency" was inscribed. She walked up some
uncarpeted stairs and entered two large rooms opening into each other.
The walls were covered with theatrical portraits, and both rooms were
already half-full of people, men and women. A clerk sat at a
writing-table in the outer room taking the names of each person as he or
she came, writing them down on slips of paper, and sending them into a
third inner room, which was the private sanctum of Mr. Seaton, the agent
himself.

Mary sent in her name and sat down. Now and again some girl or man whom
she knew would come in and do the same, generally coming up to her for a
few words of conversation--for she was a popular girl. But most people's
eyes were resolutely fixed upon the door of the agent's room, in the
hope that he would appear and that a word might be obtained with him.
Now and then this actually happened. Seaton, a tall man, with a cavalry
moustache, would pop his head out, instead of sending his secretary, and
call for this or that person. As often as not there was a hurried rush
of all the others and a chorus of agitated appeals: "Just one moment,
Mr. Seaton," "I sha'n't keep you a moment, dear boy," "I've something
of the utmost importance to tell you."

And all the time the page-boy kept returning with the slips of paper
upon which the actors and actresses had written their names upon
entering, and finding out particular individuals. Some few were
fortunate. "Mr. Seaton would like to see you at twelve, miss. He has
something he thinks might suit you"; but by far the more usual formula
was, "Mr. Seaton is very sorry, there is nothing suitable to-day; but
would you mind calling again to-morrow."

At last it was Mary's turn. She was talking to a Miss Dorothy French, a
girl who had been with her on the recent tour, when the boy came up to
her. "Mr. Seaton is very sorry that there is nothing suitable to-day,
miss; but would you mind calling again to-morrow."

Mary sighed. "I've been here for two hours," she said, "and now there is
nothing after all. And, somehow or other, I felt sure I should get
something to-day."

She was continuing to bewail her lot when a very singular-looking man
indeed entered the room and went up to the clerk.

He was tall and dressed in loose, light tweeds, a flopping terra-cotta
tie, a hat of soft felt, and a turn-down collar. His hair, beard, and
moustache were a curious and unusual yellow--mustard colour, in fact.
His eyes were coal black and very bright, while his face was as pale as
linen.

Directly the clerk saw him he rose at once with a most deferential
manner and almost ran to the agent's private room. In a second more he
was back and obsequiously conducting the man with the mustard-coloured
beard into the sanctum.

Mary and her friend left the office together and went out into the
choking fog, which was now much lower and thicker. Both were members of
the Actors Association, the club of ordinary members of their
profession, and they planned to take their simple lunch there, read the
_Stage_ and the _Era_, and see if they could hear of anything going.

As they went down the stairs Mary said, "You saw that odd-looking man
with the yellow beard--evidently some one of importance? Well, do you
know, Dolly, I can't help thinking that I've seen him before somewhere.
I can't remember where, but I'm almost sure of it."

The other girl started.

"What a strange thing, dear," she said. "I had exactly the same sort of
feeling, but I thought it must be a mistake. I wonder who he can be?"

"He is a most unusual-looking person, though certainly
distinguished---- Now I remember, Dolly!"

"Where?"

"Why, at Swindon, of course, on the last week of the tour, and, if I
don't forget, on the last night, too--the Saturday night. He was in
evening things, in a box, with another man, a clergyman. He stayed for
the first two acts, but when I came on in the third act he was gone!"

"So it was! You're quite right. Now I remember perfectly. What a curious
coincidence!"

They discussed the incident for the remainder of their short walk to St.
Martin's Lane, and then, lunch being imminent, and both of them very
hungry, they forgot all about it.

Miss French had an appointment after lunch and went away early, leaving
Mary alone. There was nobody in the clubrooms that she knew, and she sat
down by a glowing fire to read the afternoon papers, fresh editions of
which had just been brought in.

She read of the growing distress of the unemployed all over London. She
saw that another Socialist had been elected to Parliament at a
by-election--neither of which items of news interested her very much.
Then she read with rather more interest, and a little shudder, that
there had been a bomb explosion in Piccadilly only an hour or two ago,
and that part of a great mansion belonging to the Duke of Paddington had
been destroyed.

At five o'clock she went out again. The fog was worse than ever, but she
knew her London well and was not afraid. She did some modest shopping,
and then let herself into the house with her latch-key and went
up-stairs.

Another day was over!

Another fruitless day was over, and the robin had not brought her luck
after all!

As she opened her own door and felt for the little enamelled matchbox
which always stood on a shelf beside it, her foot trod on something
which crackled faintly.

Directly the gas was lit she saw that it was a telegram.

She opened it. It had been despatched from the Bedford Street office at
two o'clock that afternoon--while she had been at the Actors'
Association. It was from Seaton, the agent, and contained these words:


     "Gentleman calling personally on you six to-night with important
     offer."


In wild excitement Mary looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to six.
She lit the fire hurriedly, and urged it into flame with the bellows.
Then she lit two candles on the mantlepiece to supplement the single gas
jet, and drew the curtain over the window.

At six o'clock precisely she heard rapid steps, light, springy steps,
coming up the stairs. There was a momentary hesitation, and then came
two loud, firm knocks at her door. She opened it almost immediately, and
then started in uncontrollable surprise.

The man who stood before her was the tall man with the mustard-coloured
beard and the face pale as linen.




CHAPTER V

"TO INAUGURATE A REVOLUTION!"


The strange-looking man bowed.

"Miss Mary Marriott, I think!" he said.

"Yes," Mary answered. "Please come in. I have had a telegram from Mr.
Seaton, the agent."

"Yes, he sent me here," said the tall man in a singularly fluid and
musical voice.

"I had better tell you my name." He entered the room, closed the door,
opened a silver cigarette case, and took a card from it which he handed
to Mary. "There I am," he said with a smile that showed a set of
gleaming white teeth and lit up the pallid face into an extraordinary
vivacity.

Mary looked at the card. Then she knew who she was entertaining. On the
card were these words: JAMES FABIAN ROSE. The customary "Mr." was
omitted, and there was no address in the corner.

Mary was a self-possessed girl enough, but she was unused to meeting
famous people. She looked at the card, gave a little gasp, half of
wonder and half of dismay, and then recollected herself.

"Please do sit down, Mr. Rose," she said, "and take off your
overcoat--oh, and smoke, please, if you want to--I had no idea."

The tall man smiled. He seemed singularly pleased with the effect he had
produced, almost childishly pleased. With a series of agile movements
that had no break in them and seemed to be part of the continuous and
automatic movement of a machine, he put his soft felt hat on the table,
shed, rather than took off his overcoat, produced a box of wooden
matches from somewhere, lit a cigarette, and sat down by the fire. He
rubbed his hands together and said, "Yes, it is I, what a nice fire
you've got"--all in one breath and in his rich, musical voice.

Mary sat down on the other side of the hearth, feeling rather as if she
were in some fantastic dream. She said nothing, but looked at the man
opposite, remembering all that she had heard of him.

About five-and-forty years of age, James Fabian Rose was one of the most
noteworthy personalities of the day. He filled an immense place in the
public eye, and it was almost impossible to open a newspaper without
finding a paragraph or two about him on any given day. He was so well
known that his whole name was seldom or never given in headlines. He was
simply referred to as "J. F. R." and every one knew at once who was
referred to.

His activities were enormous, and the three chief ones were Socialist
leader, dramatist, and novelist. His socialistic lectures were always
thronged by all classes of society. His problem plays--in which he
always endeavoured to inculcate one or another of his odd but fervent
beliefs--were huge successes with cultured people. His novels were only
read by literary people, and then merely for their cleverness.

He was a man whom very few understood. He was, for one reason, far too
clever to be credible with the popular mind; for, another, far too aware
of his cleverness and far too fond of displaying it at inopportune
moments. Fantastic paradox was his chief weapon, and many people did not
realise his own point of view, which defined paradox as simply truth
standing on its head to attract attention.

When he referred to his own novels, which he often did, he always rated
them high above Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray, and Sir Walter Scott. When
he spoke in public of his plays--no infrequent occurrence--it was
generally with a word of pity for Shakespeare. He was the head of a
large and enthusiastic following of intellectual people, and the
anathema of all slow thinkers. Apropos of this last, he would quote
Swift's saying that the appearance of a man of genius in the world may
always be known by the virulence of dunces.

Beneath all his extravagances and pose--and their name was legion--his
whole life and earnestness were devoted to the cause in which he
believed. One of the most unconventional, and, at the same time, one of
the most prominent men of his day, he had two real passions.

One was to shock the obese-brained of this world, the other to do all he
could to leave the world better than he found it.

This was the extraordinary person, genius and buffoon, reformer and wit,
who sat laughing on one side of Mary Marriott's little fire.

"I've surprised you, Miss Marriott!" said Mr. James Fabian Rose.

"I saw you at the agent's this morning," she answered, and then--"I
think I am not mistaken--I saw you at the theatre at Swindon a few weeks
ago."

"Yes, I was there with Peter Conrad, the parson," said Mr. Rose. "I'd
been addressing a meeting of the Great Western Railway Company's men in
the afternoon--the younger men--trying to teach them that the youth of a
nation are the trustees of posterity, and in the evening I came to the
theatre. That's why I'm here."

Mary said nothing. She waited for him to speak again, but her heart
began to beat violently.

"I took away the programme," Rose went on, "and I put a mark against
your name. I was quite delighted with your work, really delighted. I was
in a fury at the crass stupidity of the play, and as for the rest of the
company they bore about the same relation to real artists as the
pawnbroker does to the banker. But you, my dear child, were very good
indeed. I kept you in mind for a certain project of mine which was then
maturing. It is now settled, and this morning I called at one or two
agents to find out where you were. You were not on Blackdale's books,
but I found you, or, rather, heard of you, at Seaton's, and so here I
am."

"You want me to----"

"To act, of course. To become a leading lady in a West End theatre, in a
new play. That's all!"

For a moment or two Mary could not speak. "But such a thing never
happened before," she answered at length in a faltering voice. "It
is----"

He cut her short. "My experience of the stage is at least twenty times
more profound than yours," he said, "and I have known the thing happen
six times within my own experience. Who found Dolores Rainforth? I did.
Who found Beatrice Whittingham?--little wretch, she's deserted art and
is making a squalid fortune in drawing-room comedy--I did! I could give
you many more names. However, that's neither here nor there. I want you
for a certain purpose. I know that if I searched the provinces all over
I should not find any one who so exactly fits the leading part--my own
conception of it!--in my new play as you do. Therefore you are coming to
me. And the amusing part of it is that I have actually stormed the
citadel of rank and fashion itself. I have gained a stronghold in the
hostile country of the capitalists--in short, I and my friends have
secured a lease of the Park Lane Theatre!"

Mary leant back in her chair. Her face had suddenly grown white. She was
overwhelmed by all this. And, though she forgot this, her lunch had
consisted of a cheap and not very succulent luxury known as a "Vienna
steak," a not very nutritious mass of compressed mince-meat, but cheap,
very cheap. It was now seven o'clock.

There were those who said that James Fabian Rose was a dreamer. People
who knew him intimately were aware that if he was an idealist, he was
also practical in the ordinary affairs of life.

"Now, I sha'n't tell you a word more," he said. "They're all waiting for
you, and I promised to bring you for dinner. My wife was most insistent
about it, and, besides, there are half a dozen people anxious to meet
you. In absolute contradiction to all true socialistic principles I've
been paying rent for a cab which has been standing outside your front
door for ever so long. Put on your hat and come at once."

Mary sat up. "But I can't come like this," she said helplessly, "to
dinner!"

Mr. Rose made a gesture of impatience. "The old stupid heresy of
Carlyle," he said, "complicated by the fact that if a woman looks nice
in one sort of costume she can't realise that she looks nice on
whatever occasion she wears it. You must grow superior to such nonsense
if we are to enlist you among us! But, come, you'll soon understand,
and, besides, I know you are not really the ordinary fluffy little
duffer one meets in the stage world."

She fell in with his humour and quickly pinned on her hat. She knew that
she was on the threshold of stimulating experiences, that her chance had
come, no matter how strange and fantastic the herald of its advent.

As Rose had said, a hansom was waiting. They got into it and trotted
slowly away into the fog towards the great man's house at Westminster.

They arrived at last, though it was a somewhat perilous journey. More
than once the driver descended from his seat, took one of the lamps from
its bracket, and led his horse through this or that misty welter of
traffic. Parliament Street was a broad hurry of confusion, but when they
had passed the Abbey on the right and turned into the small network of
quiet streets behind the Norman tomb of ancient kings, the house of the
Socialist in Great College Street--that quiet and memorable backwater of
London--was easily found.

Rose opened a big green door with his latch-key, and at once a genial
yellow glow poured out and painted itself upon the curtain of the fog.
Mary stood on the steps as a young woman of middle height, pretty and
vivacious, came hurrying to the door. "My dear girl!" she cried, "so
here you are! Fabian swore that he would find you and bring you. Come in
quick out of the cold."

Then she stopped, still holding the door open--something was going on
outside, the not infrequent altercation with the London cabman, Mary
thought.

This is what she heard. "Don't be so foolish, my friend"--it was Rose's
voice.

"Foolish!" said the cabman. "Bit of oil right ter call me foolish, I
don't fink! Nah, I don't tyke no money from you, J. F. R., stryke me
Turnham Green, if I do! I've 'eard you speak, I read your harticles, hi
do, and it's a fair exchynge. In the dyes ter come no one won't pye
anyfink for anyfink. The Styte'll do it all. I've your word for it. I'm
a practical Socialist, I am. So long, and keep 'ammering awye at them as
keeps the land from the rightful howners, wich is heverybody."

He cracked his whip and disappeared into the fog.

Mr. Rose came into the hall, shut the door, and looked at the half
sovereign in his hand with a sigh. His manner seemed a little subdued.

"A little in advance of the future," he said in a meditative voice;
"dear, good fellow! And now, Lucia, take Miss Marriott upstairs."

When her hostess took her into the drawing-room Mary found several
people there. All of them seemed to expect her, she had the sense of
that at once. Her welcome was singularly cordial, she was in some subtle
way made to feel that she was somebody. She did not quite realise this
at the moment because the whole thing was too sudden and exciting. She
perceived it afterwards when she thought everything over.

The drawing-room on the first floor was large, low-ceilinged, and
singularly beautiful. Mary had never seen such a room before. She had a
sort of idea that Socialists liked to live in places like the hall of a
workhouse, or the class-room of a board school--drab and whitewash
places. She did not know till some time afterwards that the room she was
in had been arranged and designed for the Roses by William Morris and
Walter Crane themselves.

It was, in truth, a lovely room.

The walls were covered with brown paper for two-thirds of their height.
A wooden beading painted white divided the warm and sober brown from a
plain white frieze. All along one side of the room were shelves covered
with gleaming pewter--an unusually fine collection. Here was a
seventeenth-century benitier from Flanders, there a set of "Tappit
hens," found in a Scotch ale-house. There was a gleaming row of massive
English plates of the Caroline period stamped with the crowned rose. The
dull gleam, set thus against the brown background, was curiously
effective, and the old Davenport and Mason china upon the white frieze
above--deep blues, golds, and old cardinal reds,--the drawings by Walter
Crane upon the walls, the tawny orange and reds of the Teheran carpets,
and the open brick fire-place, all blended and refined themselves into a
delightful harmony.

Besides the host and hostess three other people were present.

One of them was the Reverend Peter Conrad, the clergyman who had been
with Rose in the box at the Swindon Theatre. Mary recognised him at
once.

He was tall and thin with a clear-cut and somewhat ascetic face and a
singularly humorous mouth. She had heard vaguely of him as a leader
among that branch of the party which called itself, "Christian
Socialistic," a large and growing group of earnest people, of all sects
and shades of Christian opinion, representing every school of thought,
but which, nevertheless, united in the endeavour to adapt the literal
Socialistic teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to modern life. Christ,
they said, was the Master Socialist, and all their aspirations and
teachings were founded upon this axiom.

Sitting next to Mr. Conrad was a small, pale-faced man with a rather
heavy light moustache and wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. He would have
been almost insignificant in appearance had it not been for the
high-domed forehead and fine cranial development. This was Charles
Goodrick, the editor-in-chief of the great Radical daily paper--the most
"advanced" of all the London journals,--and a man with great political
influence.

The third man, Aubrey Flood, Mary recognised at once. He was a young and
enthusiastic actor-manager, possessed of large private means, who was in
the forefront of the modern movement for the reformation of the stage.
He was at the head of the band of enthusiasts who were sworn foes of
musical comedy and futile melodrama, and he enjoyed a definite place and
_cachet_ in society.

When they all went in to dinner, which they did almost at once, Mary
found that he was seated at her left. On her right was Mr. Rose himself.

The meal was quite simple, but exquisitely served and cooked. The
consomme would not have disgraced Vatel or Careme, the omelette was
light as a feather, and, above all, hot! The wild ducks had been
properly basted with port wine and stuffed with minced chestnuts and
ham. To poor Mary it was a banquet for the gods!

"You see, Miss Marriott," said Rose, with a queer little twinkle in his
eye, "we don't eat out of a common trough, though we are Socialists, nor
are we vegetarians, as poor, dear Bernard Shaw would like us all to be."

Mary laughed. "I don't think I ever imagined Socialists were like that,"
she said. "In fact, though it may seem very terrible, I must confess
that my mind has hitherto been quite a blank upon the subject."

"Then it will be all the easier to write the truth upon it," Rose
answered.

"Then Miss Marriott doesn't quite know what we want her for yet?" Aubrey
Flood asked.

"She only knows that she is going to play lead at the Park Lane Theatre
in a new play of mine."

"And that is overwhelming, simply," Mary said with a blush. "It's
impossible to believe. But, all the same, I am longing to hear all there
is for me to know."

"So you shall after dinner," said Rose, "you shall have full details.
Meanwhile, to sum the whole thing up, you are not only going to take a
part in a play, but you are going to inaugurate a Revolution!"




CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT NEW PLAN


"J. F. R." had spoken with unusual seriousness, and his manner was
reflected in the faces of the other guests as they looked towards Mary
Marriott.

The girl's brain reeled at the words. A Revolution! What could they
mean--what did it all mean? Was she not in truth asleep in her dingy
little attic sitting-room? Wouldn't she wake up soon to find the old
familiar things around her--all these new surroundings but a dream, a
phantom of the imagination?

Mrs. Rose was watching her, and guessed something of what was passing in
the girl's mind. "My dear," she said, with a bright and friendly smile,
"it's all right; you really are wide awake, and you shall hear all about
it from Fabian in a few minutes. And you haven't come into a den of
anarchists, so don't be afraid. Only your chance has come at last, and
you are to have the opportunity of doing a great, artistic thing--as
great, perhaps, as any actress has ever done--and also of helping
England. You may make history! Who knows?"

"Who knows, indeed?" said Charles Goodrick, the editor of the _Daily
Wire_. "I hope it will be my privilege to record it in the columns of my
paper."

The dinner was nearly over, but the remainder of it seemed interminably
long to the waiting girl. In a swift moment, as it were, her whole life
was changed. That morning she was a poor and almost friendless actress
of the rank and file. Now she sat at dinner with a group of influential
people whose names were known far and wide, whose influence was a real
force in public affairs. And, somehow or other, they wanted her. She was
an honoured guest. She was made to feel, and in a half-frightened way
she did feel, that much depended upon her. What it was she did not know
and could not guess; but the fact remained, and the consciousness of it
was a strange mingling of exaltation, wonder, and fear.

At last Mrs. Rose smiled and nodded at Mary and rose from her seat.

"Don't be more than five minutes, Fabian," the hostess said, as she and
Mary left the room.

When they were alone together she drew the girl to a big couch, covered
with blue linen, and kissed her.

"We are to be friends," she said, "I am quite certain of it." And the
lonely girl's heart went out to this winning and gracious young matron.

The four men came into the room, a maid brought coffee, cigarettes were
lighted--Mrs. Rose smoked, but Mary did not--and the playwright took up
a commanding position upon the hearth-rug.

Then he began. The mockery which was so frequent a feature of his talk
was gone. He permitted himself neither pose nor paradox--he was in
deadly earnest.

"For more than a year," he said, "I have searched in vain for an actress
who could fill the chief woman's part in my new play. None of the ladies
who have acted in my other plays would do. They were admirable in those
plays, but this is quite different. I have never written anything like
it before. I sincerely believe, and so do those who are associated with
me in its production"--he looked over at Aubrey Flood--"that the play is
a great work of art. But it is designed to be more, far more than that.
It is designed to be a lever, a huge force in helping on the cause in
which I believe and to which I have devoted my life--the cause of
Socialism. I could not find any one capable of playing Helena Hardy, the
heroine of the play. The play stands alone; yet is like no other play;
no actress trained in the usual way, and however clever an artist, had
the right personality. Then I saw you play. I knew at once, Miss
Marriott, that I had found the lady for whom I was searching. Chance or
Fate had thrown you in my way. In every detail you visualized my Helena
Hardy for me. I am never mistaken. I was, and am, quite certain of it.

"You tell me you know nothing of Socialism. Before you have been
associated with us very long you will know a great deal about it. I am
sure, if I read you rightly, that when the time comes for you to play
Helena you will be convinced of the truth of the words you utter, of the
Cause for the service of which we enlist your art. It is the cause of
humanity, of brotherhood, of freedom.

"We cannot go on as we are. These things have not touched your young
life as yet, they are about to do so. Realise, to begin with, that
England cannot continue as she is at present. Nemesis is one of the grim
realities not sufficiently taken into account in the great game of life.
Leaden-footed she may be, and often is, but that is only her merciful
way of giving the sinner time to repent. There is nothing more certain
in the universe than that an injustice done to an individual or to a
class, to a nation or to a sex, will sooner or later bring destruction
upon the doer. At the present moment England is reproducing every cause
which led to the downfall of the great nations of the past--Imperialism,
taking tribute from conquered races, the accumulation of great fortunes,
the development of a huge population which owns no property and is
always in poverty. Land has gone out of cultivation, and physical
deterioration is an alarming fact. And so we Socialists say that the
system which is producing these results must not be allowed to continue.
A system which has robbed Religion of its message, destroyed
handicraft, which awards the prizes and successes of life to the
unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women into the streets and
upright men into mean-spirited time-servers, must not continue.

"I'm not going to give you a lecture on Socialism now. But it is
absolutely necessary that I should explain to you, at the very beginning
of your work, how we look at these things.

"At the present moment three quarters at least of the whole population
are called 'workers.' How do these people live? By the wear of hands and
bodies, by the sweat of their faces. A 'worker' eats food which is
rough, cheap, and harmful in many instances. His clothes are of shoddy,
with a tendency to raggedness. He lodges in tiny, ill-ventilated rooms.
He works from eight to sixteen hours each day, just so long as his
strength is effective. And not only the worker himself--that is the man
who is head and support of his family--but his wife and sisters and
daughters share the burden of toil. He works among perils and dangers
unceasing, accidents with machinery, explosions in mills and mines,
dreadful diseases come to him from dangerous trades--unwholesome
conditions, vitiated air, poisonous processes, and improper housing.
Hardly any of those fortunate ones who impose these tasks upon him take
any care to shield him from these evils. He is not so valuable as a
horse. He is cheap, there are millions of him to be had, why go to the
expense of protecting him? A horse has to be bought, he costs an initial
sum down, the worker costs nothing but his wretched keep.

"You, Miss Marriott, are cultured. You are an artist, you live for your
art, and you care for it. You can understand the peculiar horror, I
should say one peculiar horror, of the life of the worker which he is
himself generally too blind and ignorant to understand. For he has no
leisure to look about him, no heart to speculate as to what things might
be. Over all his misery and misfortune towers one supreme misery and
misfortune--the want of all that makes the pleasure and interest of life
to the free man. No genius tells stories, makes music, paints pictures,
writes or acts, plays, builds palaces for the worker. Genius itself
would starve at such work, as things are at present constituted. The
workers' chief concern is to buy bread. He must let art, that sweetens
life, go by. The Graces and the Muses are never shown to him in such a
way that he may know and love them for their own sakes."

He stopped suddenly. Colour had come into the pallid face, the rich,
musical voice had a vibrant organ note in it, every one in the room was
leaning forward, strained to attention, Mary among the rest.

"So much for that," he went on. "I have been saying necessary but
obvious things. Now let me point out what we are doing, we Socialists.
Our party is growing enormously day by day. Innumerable adherents, great
power, fill our ranks and give us weapons.

"We have an influential press. Monthly reviews and weekly papers preach
our message. And one great daily journal, controlled by our brother,
Charles Goodrick, reaches every class of society, and hammers in the
truth day by day.

"Our political organization is an engine of great power. We have a large
pledged party in the House of Commons. Our lecturers are everywhere, our
books and pamphlets are being sown broadcast over the kingdom.

"We have a great Religious movement. Mr. Conrad here, together with some
half a dozen others, controls the increasing band of Christian
Socialists. Men and women of all the churches flock to his banner,
differences of opinion are forgotten and lost under the one
comprehensive watchword--that Christianity, the faith in Jesus Christ,
is a socialistic religion.

"We have two great needs, however. Able as our writers are, they are
nearly all essayists or journalists. As yet no great popular novelist
has joined us--one of those supreme preachers who wield the magic wand
of fiction and reach where no others can reach.

"And lastly, we have never had as yet a socialistic stage! That
tremendous weapon, the theatre, has laid ready to our hand, but we have
not availed ourselves of it. We are about to do so now. You know, I
know, we are both experts, and it is our business to know, that there
are hundreds of thousands of people who never read a book or pamphlet,
and who are yet profoundly influenced and impressed by the mimic
representations of life which they see upon the stage.

"You are a provincial actress. You have toured in ordinary melodrama.
When, after some important act or scene, the characters are called
before the curtain, what do you find? You find that some stick of a girl
who has walked through the part of the heroine in a simper and a yellow
wig is rapturously applauded--not for herself, the public thinks nothing
of her acting one way or the other, but for the virtues of which she is
the silly and inartistic symbol. The bad woman of the piece, always and
invariably the finer player and more experienced artist, is hissed with
genuine virulence.

"What is this but the very strongest proof--and there are dozens of
other proofs if such were wanting--of the influence, the real and deep
influence of the theatre upon the ordinary man and woman?

"It is to inaugurate the new use to which the theatre is going to be put
by us that I have invited you to join us. But do not mistake me. We have
taken the Park Lane Theatre by design. We are going to begin by showing
the idle classes themselves the truth about themselves and their poorer
brethren. They will come out of curiosity in the first instance, and
afterwards because what we are going to give them is so unique, so
extraordinary, and so artistically fine that they will be absolutely
unable to neglect it. Then the movement will spread. We shall rouse the
workers by this play, and others like it, in theatres which they can
afford to attend. We shall have companies on tour--I may tell you that
already a vast and detailed scheme is prepared, though I need not go
into any of the details of that on this first night.

"And now, finally, let me tell you, quite briefly and without going into
the scope of the plot, something about the first play of all at the Park
Lane Theatre--your play, the play in which you are to create Helena
Hardy. It is called, at present, _The Socialist_, and it is destined to
be the first of a series. Its primary effort, in the
carefully-thought-out scheme of theatre propaganda, is to draw a lurid
picture of the extreme and awful contrast between the lives of the poor
and the rich.

"We are going to do what has never been really done before--we are going
to be extraordinarily and mercilessly realistic. It will be called
brutal. And our studies are going to be made at first hand. In attacking
one class, we are also going to allow it to be known that all our actual
scenes have been taken from life. The slums to the north of Oxford
Street, all round Paddington, are hideous and dreadful. They all belong
to one man, the young Duke of Paddington, a boy at Oxford; incredibly
rich. The theatre itself is on his land. Well, we are going to go for
this young man tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, because he is typical
of the class we wish to destroy. We are going to let it be generally
known that this is our object. It will be published abroad that the slum
scenes in the play are literal reproductions of actual scenes on the
duke's property. Our scene painters are even now at work taking notes.
One by one all the members of the cast are going to be taken to see
these actual slums, to converse with their inhabitants, to imbibe the
frightful atmosphere of these modern infernos. We want every one to play
with absolute conviction. I have arranged that a party shall leave this
house in two days' time, a county council inspector and a couple of
police inspectors are coming with us, in order to do this. You, I beg,
Miss Marriott, will come, too."

He had been speaking for a considerable time with enormous earnestness
and vivacity. Now he stopped suddenly and sank into a chair. His face
became pale again, he was manifestly tired.

Some one passed him a box of cigarettes. He lit one, inhaled the smoke
in a few deep breaths, and then turned to Mary.

"Well?" he said.

She answered him as simply, and many words would not have made her
answer more satisfying or sincere.

"Yes," she said.

"Very well, then, that's settled," Rose replied in his ordinary voice.
"Salary and that sort of thing we will arrange to-morrow through Mr.
Seaton. I will merely assure you that we regard the labourer as worthy
of his hire, and that we shall not disagree upon that sort of thing."

As he spoke a maid entered the room. "Mr. Goodrick is being rung up from
the offices of the _Daily Wire_," she said.

"Then there is something important," said the journalist, as he hurried
to the telephone in an adjacent room. "When I left at five I said that I
should not return to-night unless it was anything big. I left Bennett in
sole charge."

He was away some minutes, and the conversation in the drawing-room
became general, the high note being dropped by mutual consent.

"By the way," Mr. Conrad said suddenly, "what an odd thing it is that
part of Paddington House was blown down this morning!"

"The poor boy will have to take arms against a sea of troubles," said
Mrs. Rose sympathetically. "At any rate, we are law-abiding
conspirators. It seems dreadful to think that there are people who will
go these lengths. I'm sorry for the poor young duke. It isn't his fault
that he's who and what he is."

"Of course," Rose replied. "I hate and deprecate this violence. It is,
of course, a menace from the unemployed. But my heart bleeds for them.
Think of them crouching in doorways, with no shirts below their ragged
coats, with no food in their stomachs, on a night like this!"

He shuddered, and Mary saw, with surprise, another and almost neurotic
facet of this extraordinary character.

Charles Goodrick hurried into the room. "I must say good-night," he
said, in a voice which trembled with excitement. "A very big piece of
news has come in. One of our men has all the details. It will be our
particular scoop. No other paper to-morrow morning will have all that we
shall."

"But what is it?" Rose asked.

"A big railway accident, but with an extraordinary complication, and--by
Jove, what a coincidence!--it concerns the young Duke of Paddington!"

"Is he killed?"

"No. He was stunned for a time. The accident happened in the fog just
outside Paddington Station. He was stunned, but soon recovered.

"Then what?" said the journalist.

"Why, the extraordinary thing is that he has totally disappeared!"




CHAPTER VII

KIDNAPPING UPON SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES


The Duke of Paddington lay stunned and unconscious beneath the wreck of
the first-class carriage.

There had been the period of waiting outside Paddington Station--his own
great-grandfather had sold the ground on which it stood to the
company--in the black fog of the winter's night.

Then there had come the lengthening roar of the approaching train, the
shouts, the horrid crash of impact, the long tearing, ripping, grinding
noise--and oblivion.

How long he had been unconscious the duke did not in the least know. He
came back to life with that curious growing, widening sensation that a
diver has when he is once more springing up through the water towards
the surface, air, and light.

Then quite suddenly full consciousness returned--rather, he arrived at
full consciousness. Everything was dark, pitch dark. His ears were full
of a horrid clamour. A heavy, suffocating weight was pressing upon him.

He lay perfectly still for some moments endeavouring to recollect where
he was and what had happened. Finally he remembered and realised that
he was actually--he himself--a victim of one of those terrible railway
accidents of which he had read so often in the newspapers with a
careless word of pity, or perhaps, no emotion at all.

Another train had crashed into the Oxford express in the fog.

The duke moved his right arm, and found he could do so freely, except
above his body, where the heavy something which was lying upon him
prevented its passage. He strove to dislodge the weight, but was utterly
unable to do so. He was, in fact, pinned beneath a mass of woodwork,
which, while not pressing on him with more than a little of its weight,
nevertheless kept him rigid upon his back without possibility of
movement. His left arm he could not move at all. Curiously enough, the
sensation of fear was entirely absent.

"I am in a deuce of a tight place," he thought of himself, and thought
about himself in a strangely detached fashion as if he was thinking of
another person.

"I am in a deuce of a tight place. What is to be done?"

He tried once more to move the crushing roof. He might as well have
tried to push down the Bank of England with an umbrella.

Next there came to him a sudden thought, a realisation that at least one
thing was in his favour. As far as he knew he was perfectly unhurt. He
felt fairly certain that no limbs were broken, and that he had no severe
internal injury. He was cut and bruised, doubtless, and still giddy from
the blow of the impact, but, save for this, there could be no doubt that
he had been most mercifully preserved.

The air was full of confused noises, shouts, the roaring of escaped
steam, cries of agony. The duke added his clamour to the rest. His voice
was full and strong, and echoed and re-echoed in his ears.

Nothing happened, and now for the first time a sickening feeling of fear
came to him and his cries sank into silence.

Almost immediately afterwards he heard a noise much nearer than before,
much more distinct and individual. It was a crashing, regular noise,
some one was working at the debris.

Once more he shouted, and this time an answering hail came to him.

"Is anyone there?"

"Yes," the duke called out. "I am pinned down here by a heavy mass of
timber."

"Are you badly injured?"

"I don't think I'm much hurt, only it is impossible for me to move."

"Cheer up!" came back the voice. "We will soon have you out." And then
the crashing, tearing noise went on with renewed vigour.

In a few minutes the duke found the pressure on his chest was much
relieved and the noise grew infinitely louder. It was as though he was
lying shut up in a box, at the sides of which half a dozen stalwart
navvies were kicking. He thought that the drums of his ears were
bursting. Then there was a chorus of shouts, a last tremble and heaving
of the confining mass, a breath of cold reviving air, and strong hands
withdrew him from his prison.

He was carried swiftly to the side of the line and laid down upon a pile
of sacking. Immediately he became aware that soft, dexterous hands were
feeling him all over, hands which seemed to be definite and separate
organisms, so light and purposeful were they.

He realised that a doctor was examining him, and the light of a lantern
which some one else was holding showed him that the surmise was correct.
A tall young man with a pointed beard, in a long mackintosh, was bending
over him.

"You are all right, thank goodness!" said the doctor. "You are not hurt
a bit, only you have been stunned, and of course you are suffering from
the shock. Now, you just lie here until I come to you again. You must
stay still for half an hour. Drink this."

He held a little cup of brandy to the duke's mouth. The fiery liquid
sent new life into the young man's veins. Everything became more real
and actual to him. Before everything had been a little blurred, as the
first image upon the lenses of field-glasses is blurred. Now, the duke
seemed to have got the right focus.

"Now, mind, you are not to move at all till I come back," the doctor
said. "You have got a warm coat, and I will put some of these sacks over
you. You are not hurt, but if you move now until you are rested a little
you may get a shock to the nerves, which will remain with you for a long
time. Now I must go to attend to some of the poor chaps who want me far
more than you do."

"Is it a bad smash?" the duke asked. They were the first words he had
spoken.

"One of the worst smashes for many years," answered the doctor over his
shoulder as he was hurrying away. "You may thank your Maker that you
have been so mercifully preserved."

The duke lay where he was.

The brandy had revived him, and, to his surprise, he realised that,
except for a more or less violent headache, he really felt as well as he
had been when he first got into the train. He was not even aware of any
bruises or contusions, save only that his left hand had been rather
badly cut, and was covered with congealed blood.

He wondered exactly where he was, and he looked around him. The fog was
still impenetrably dense, though it was illuminated here and there by
glowing fires and moving torches--a strange Dantesque vision of moving
forms and red light, dim and distorted, like some mysterious tragedy of
the underworld.

Now and then some sharp and almost animal like cry of agony came to his
ears, cutting through the gloom like a knife, horribly distressing to
hear.

Nobody was immediately near him. He was outside the radius of the chief
activities of the breakdown gang and the doctors. There was nothing for
him to do but to wait where he was. The doctor would be certain not to
forget him, and, besides, he had not the faintest notion in what
direction to move in order to get away from all this horror.

So he lay still.

Presently the brandy, to which he was unaccustomed, began to work within
him, and induced a languor and drowsiness. His heavy sable coat, all
torn and soiled now, though it had cost him six hundred guineas less
than a month before, kept his body warm, and, in addition to it, he was
covered by sacking.

His mind wandered a little, and he was almost on the point of dropping
to sleep when there was a sound as of approaching footsteps upon gravel
or cinders. He heard a muttered and strangely husky conversation,
apparently between two people, a quick, furtive ripple of talk, and then
something descended upon his mouth, something warm and firm--a man's
hand.

In the dark he could see two figures about him. A man had stooped down
and brought his hand silently down upon his mouth, so that he could not
cry out. Another was bending towards him on the other side, and soon he
felt that deft hands were going through his pockets. When the doctor had
touched him he had felt nothing but surprise and wonder at the
prehensile intelligence of the touch. Now he shuddered.

He began to struggle, but found himself by no means so strong as he had
imagined that he was a quarter of an hour ago.

A harsh voice hissed in his ear: "Now, stow that, or I'll make you!"

In all his life the Duke of Paddington had never been spoken to in such
a way, and, ill as he was, the imperious blood leapt to his brain, and
he redoubled his exertions.

Suddenly he stopped with a low gurgle of anguish.

His ear had been seized between two bony knuckles and twisted round with
a sharp jerk until the pain was frightful.

Then he lay still once more.

He realised what was happening. The accident to the train had occurred
on that part of the line some little way out of the station, upon which
all sorts of more or less slum houses debouch. Two of those modern
brigands who infest London had come, attracted to this scene of
suffering and tragedy by the hope of plunder--even as in the old days,
after a battlefield, obscene and terrible creatures appeared in the
night and nameless deeds were done.

They had his watch. Sir John Bennett had made it specially for him. It
was one of those repeating watches with all sorts of costly additional
improvements, which can do almost anything but talk.

He heard the man about him say: "This 'ere's a rich bloke, Sidney; but
the ticker's no blooming use except for the case. The--fence wouldn't
look at it. Too easy to identify. Ah, this 'ere's better!"

He had found the duke's sovereign purse.

Swiftly, and with the skill born of long practice, the man went through
every pocket. When he found the little case of green crocodile skin, in
which the duke carried paper money, his cards, and a letter or two, he
gave a low whistle of delight.

The duke could hear the little crackle close to his ear as the man
counted the five-pound notes.

Almost immediately after this there was a gasp of astonishment.

"Look 'ere!" the other man said, "it's the bloomin' Duke of Paddington
himself!"

The duke started, and obviously his captors imagined that he was about
to recommence his struggles, for there was a sharp tweak of his ear once
more. After that he heard nothing.

The two men had joined heads over his body and were whispering eagerly
to each other. It seemed an eternity while he was lying there with the
heavy hand upon his mouth, breathing with difficulty through his
nostrils, though, in actual point of fact, from first to last, the whole
thing was of less than two minutes' duration.

The men seemed to have come to some sort of agreement.

They acted with neatness and precision. A filthy and evil-smelling
handkerchief was suddenly rammed into the duke's mouth. Another bandaged
his eyes before he realised what was happening, and two pair of stalwart
arms had him up upon his feet, locked in the London policeman's grip,
and half carried, half hustled right away from where he had been lying
almost before he realised what was happening.

He heard the click of a gate or door. His feet had left the gravel or
cinder upon which they had been walking and were now apparently
shuffling over flagstones. Then, by an added chill to the cold air, and
a certain echo in the footsteps, he knew that he was being pushed down
some sort of alley or cul de sac.

He was twisted from left to right and from right to left with the
greatest rapidity, and half the extraordinary journey was not completed
before he had utterly lost all idea of his whereabouts.

The noise of the distant rescuers at the scene of the accident sank into
a low hum and then died completely away.

He seemed to be rushing along some maze or city of the dead, for no
human sound save the noise of his and his captors' movements reached his
ears.

In four or five minutes he was rudely stopped. He heard a knock upon a
door, a peculiar and obviously signal knock. There was a sound of a
window opening, a low whistle, and he was pushed forward up a few steps
and into a house, the door of which was immediately closed behind him.

He was hustled along an evil-smelling passage, down a flight of uneven
stone stairs and into a room, a room much warmer than the cold passages
which he had traversed, a room in which there were several people, and
where a fire was burning.

The cruel grip which had held him like a vice in its strength and
ingenuity was a little relaxed.

He was pushed down upon a chair. The air of the room was stifling, his
body was wet with perspiration, owing to the sudden transition from cold
to heat, the restricted breathing, and the extreme rapidity of his
progress.

A hand rested on his cheek for a moment and then plucked the filthy
handkerchief from his mouth.

The duke took a deep breath. Foul as the air was in this place it seemed
at this moment balmy as those breezes laden with cassia and nard which
blow through the Gardens of the Hesperides.

Then a voice spoke: "You will be all right, guv'nor. Sorry to 'ave 'ad
to treat you a bit rough like, but, 'pon my sivvey, we wasn't goin' to
lose a bit-of-orl-right like this. Just for precaution's sake, as you
might sye, we'll----"

The sentence was not concluded, but the duke felt his legs were being
tied to the legs of the chair. His arms were suddenly caught up and
pressed behind him. He was perfectly helpless.

Then the bandage was removed from his eyes.

He found himself in a place which, in his experience, was utterly unlike
anything that he had seen before, or even imagined. As a matter of fact,
he was sitting trussed upon a windsor chair in an underground thieves'
cellar-kitchen.

A large fire of coal and coke glowed in the white-washed fire-place.
There were shelves with crockery and other utensils on each side of the
fire. An ancient armchair, covered with torn and dirty chintz, was drawn
to the fire, and in it sat a very large fat woman of middle age. She
wore heavy gold earrings, bracelets were upon her wrists, and a glinting
flash from her fat and dirty fingers showed that the diamonds in her
rings were real. No one could have mistaken her for an instant for
anything else than a Jewess.

There were five or six men in the room.

As the duke became accustomed to the light of the big paraffin lamp
which hung from the ceiling he saw that all these men were singularly
alike. They were all clean shaven, for one thing, and they all seemed to
have the same expression. Their mouths were one and all intelligent and
slightly deferential. Their eyes flickered a good deal hither and
thither and were curiously and quietly watchful. There was a precision
about their movements.

"Could they all be brothers?" he wondered idly, for his brain was still
weakened by shock, "and could that fat woman with the filthy clothes and
the rings be their mother?"

"Now, then, guv'nor," said one of the men with perfect politeness, but
with a curious under-note of menace in his voice, "we know who your
lordship is. It is a fair cop. We've got you 'ere, and of course you are
not going away from 'ere unless you makes it nice and heasy for all
parties."

The man spoke in a hoarse voice, but, again, a singularly quiet voice.
Menace was there, it is true, but there was something cringing also.

Who could these men be? the duke thought idly and as if in a dream. They
looked like actors. Yes, they were very much like actors. Was it that he
had----

The true explanation burst in upon him. He remembered a certain magazine
article he had once read with a curious mixture of disgust and pity, a
magazine article which was illustrated by many photographs. These men
were alike for a very sufficient reason. A terrible discipline had
pressed them into its irremediable mould.

They were all old convicts. They were men who had "done time."




CHAPTER VIII

"IN CELLAR COOL!"


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 London for 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 'earty hand-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 below this,
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 he was
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 the situation. 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 all of 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
came out, 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 a small 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 quite by 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!




CHAPTER IX

MARY MARRIOTT'S INITIATION


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 her little 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, here you 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 the _Daily Wire_, Charles
Goodrick, was almost incognito beneath the thick tweed overcoat with a
high 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 you are 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 dressed in 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 thoroughfare to 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 place somewhat 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 without _reclame_, or without
acknowledgment, and his emolument for exercising his extreme talents in
this direction is, I believe, something under L250 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. They progressed 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 foetid
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 the man 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!"




CHAPTER X

NEWS ARRIVES AT OXFORD


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 the _Randolph 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
huge writing-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 befitting _finis_.

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 the public eye, he
was yet the pleasantest of boys. He was unspoiled yet, she reflected, by
the whirl and artificial _va et vient_ of 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 the _Carlton_ or the _Ritz_ when 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 the
_Randolph_, 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 the majestic 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 concluded with 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 padded armchairs 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 the _Randolph_. He sometimes gave dinners
there, in preference to using the _Mitre_ or the _Clarendon_. 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."




CHAPTER XI

THE DISCOVERY


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 and fashionable 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 foetid 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 shrank back 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 larvae. 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. And
there'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. The banisters 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, rose from 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, "if they 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 he can 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 whose eyes 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.




CHAPTER XII

AT THE BISHOP'S TOWN HOUSE


The library was a noble one for a London house. The late sun of the
summer afternoon in town poured into the place and touched all the
golden and crimson-laden shelves in glory. From floor to roof the great
tomes winked and glittered in the light.

Here the sun fell upon the glazed-fronted cabinets, which held the
priceless first editions of modern authors. There it illuminated those
cabinets which confined and guarded the old black-letter editions of the
bishop's famous collection of medieval missals. It was a dignified home
of lettered culture and ease.

Lord Camborne was sitting in a great armchair of green leather. In his
own house he smoked a pipe, and a well-seasoned briar was gripped in his
left hand as he leaned forward and looked at his son. On the opposite
side of the glowing fireplace, on each side of which stood pots of great
Osmunda ferns, which glistened in the firelight as if they had been
cunningly japanned, Lord Hayle was sitting. His face was quite white,
his attitude one of strained attention, as he listened to the wordy and
didactic utterances of the earl.

"I don't know what to make of it, my dear Gerald," the bishop said.
"Upon my soul, I don't know what to make of it! Such a thing has never
happened before in all my experience. Indeed, I don't suppose that such
an occurrence has ever been known."

"You are quite right, father," Lord Hayle replied; "but that is not the
question. The question is: Where is my poor friend? Where is John?"

The bishop threw out two shapely hands with a curious gesture of
indecision and bewilderment. "Gerald," he said, "if I could answer that
question I should satisfy the press of Europe and put society at rest."

"But it is the most extraordinary thing, father," Lord Hayle said. "Here
is John involved in this terrible railway accident. As far as we
know--as far as we can know, indeed--he was rescued from the debris of
the broken carriage perfectly unhurt. That young Doctor Jenkins was
perfectly certain that the man whom he rescued and told to lie down for
half an hour, to avoid the nervous effects of the shock, must have been
the Duke of Paddington. He has assured me, he has assured Colonel
Simpson, he has assured everybody in short that it was certainly the
duke! In three-quarters of an hour he goes back to find his patient,
and, meanwhile meeting Colonel Simpson, who had come down the line in
frightful anxiety about the duke, there--where John had been--was nobody
at all! Do you suppose that, as the _Pall Mall Gazette_ has hinted, that
John was temporarily deranged by the shock and walked away and lost
himself? There seems to be no other explanation."

"But that is impossible," the bishop replied. "If he had done so would
he not have been found in an hour or two?"

"I suppose he would," Lord Hayle answered. "I suppose he would, father."

"Then, all I can say," the bishop said, with an air of finality, "all I
can say is that the thing is as black and mysterious as anything I have
ever known in the whole course of my experience. There we were, you and
myself and your sister, lunching at Paul's with the duke, when the news
came of the outrage in Piccadilly. The duke went up to town by the six
o'clock train. The accident occurred, and now the whole of society is
trembling in suspense to know what has happened to your friend. I cannot
tell you, Gerald, how it has distressed me; and," the bishop continued,
with a slight hesitation in his voice, "your sister also is very much
upset."

"Well, naturally, Connie would be," Lord Hayle returned. "But think what
it must be to me, father! It is worse for me than for anybody. You have
met the duke, Connie has met him; but I have been his intimate friend
for the whole of the time we have been up at Oxford together, and I am
at a loose end, I am simply heart-broken."

"My dear Gerald," said the splendid old gentleman from the armchair,
with some unctiousness, "God ordains these things, these trials, for all
of us; but be sure that, in His own good time, all will come right. We
must be patient and trust in the Divine Will."

The young man looked at his father with a curious expression upon his
face. He was very fond of his distinguished parent, and had a reverence
for his abilities, but somehow or other at that moment the bishop's
adjuration did not seem to ring quite true. Youth is often intolerant of
the pious complacency of late middle-age!

It was about seven o'clock. At nine o'clock there was a small dinner
party. The Home Secretary was to be there.

"I wonder," Lord Hayle said, at length, "if Sir Anthony will have any
news?"

"I am sure I hope so," the bishop answered. "I saw him this morning in
Whitehall, and he told me that everything that could possibly be done
was being done. The whole of Scotland Yard, in fact, is bending its
attention to the discovery of the whereabouts of your friend."

"I wish," Lord Hayle returned grimly, "I wish we could have a Johnnie
like Sherlock Holmes on John's trek. There don't seem to be any of that
sort of people outside the magazines."

At that moment the door of the library opened, and the butler came in.
He carried a pile of evening papers upon a tray.

"These are the latest editions, my lord," he said, bringing them up to
the bishop.

The father and son took the papers and opened them hurriedly.

Huge head-lines greeted their eyes. "Where is the duke?" "Has the duke
disappeared with intention?" "Last news of the missing duke." "Rumours
that the Duke of Paddington has taken a berth on the _Lucania_ under the
name of John Smith." "If the duke does not return, what will this mean
to the ground-rents of London?" and so forth, and so forth, and so
forth.

The bishop put down the papers with a weary sigh.

"The same thing," he said, "my dear Gerald, the same sort of thing."

Lord Hayle looked up at his father.

"Yes," he answered, "what fools these journalists are!"

"No, my dear boy, they are not fools. When they have anything to write
about, they write about it rather well. When they haven't, of course
they must manufacture."

"A confounded swindle, I call it!" said Lord Hayle.

The bishop did not answer. He remembered how much he owed to the press
of London and the provinces for his advancement in the Church.

"Well," Lord Hayle said, "I shall go up-stairs, father, to my own room
and have a tub and a pipe, and think the whole thing over. I suppose we
may hear something from Sir Anthony at dinner to-night."

"My dear boy," the bishop replied, "I'm sure I hope so."

Lord Hayle had already risen from his seat, and was walking towards the
door of the library when the butler entered once more. He bore a silver
salver, upon which was a card, and went straight up to Lord Camborne.

"My lord," he said, "there is a gentleman waiting in the morning-room.
He desires to see you upon a most important matter. I told the gentleman
that your lordship was probably engaged, but he would not be denied."

"I cannot see anybody," the bishop replied, rather irritably. "Take the
card to the chaplain."

"I beg your lordship's pardon," said the butler, "but I think this is a
gentleman whom your lordship would wish to see."

The bishop pulled out his single eye-glass--he was the only prelate upon
the bench who wore one--and looked at the card upon the tray.

"Good gracious!" he said, with a sudden sharpness in his voice. "This
fellow! How dare----"

"Who has come to see you?" Lord Hayle asked.

The bishop's face was flushed. There was indignation in his voice,
contempt in his eyes, and angry irritation in his pose.

"Look here, Gerald!" he said, taking the card and holding it out to his
son in answer. "Who do you suppose has come to see me? Look!"

Lord Hayle took up the card.

"By Jove!" he said. "James Fabian Rose! Why, that's the great Socialist
Johnny, isn't it, father? The man who writes plays and lectures, and is
on the County Council and all that. I think we had him down at Oxford
once, and I am not sure that we did not drive him out of the town."

"That is the man," the bishop answered; "one of the most brilliant
intellects and unscrupulous characters in London to-day. It is not too
much to say, Gerald, that this man is a perfect danger and menace to
society, and to our--our order."

"Then what has he come to see you for, father?"

"Goodness only knows!" said the bishop. "I certainly shall not see him."

The butler was an old and privileged family servant. He had said nothing
while this dialogue was in progress. Now he turned to his master.

"If you will allow me to say so, my lord," he said, "I think the
gentleman should be seen. I don't think that it is an ordinary visit at
all. It bears no indication of being an ordinary visit at all."

The bishop snapped his fingers once or twice.

"Oh, well, Parker," he said, "show him in, show him in; but explain that
I have only three minutes, and that I am very busy. Gerald, you might
as well wait. It might be interesting for you to see this creature."

In half a minute the butler opened the door and showed in the man with
the face as white as linen, the mustard-coloured beard and moustache,
and the keen lamp-like eyes.

Rose was dressed in his usual lounge suit, cut with about as much regard
to convention as a ham sandwich. His tall figure bent forwards in
eagerness, and he was certainly a disreputable note in this stronghold
of aristocracy. Yet, nevertheless, his personality blazed out in the
room as if some one had lit a Roman candle in the library.

The bishop rose, stately, portly, splendid.

"Mr. Rose," he said, "to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? I am
rather pressed for time."

"Something very important, indeed, my lord," the Socialist answered, in
quick, incisive accents. "I should not have intruded upon you unless I
had something most special to say."

"I understand that, Mr. Rose," the bishop replied, though the courteous
smile with which he said it robbed his remark of something of its sting.
"You and I, Mr. Rose, represent two quite different points of view, do
we not?"

"I suppose we do," said the great Socialist, with a sudden vigour and
amusement in his eyes; "but that is not what I have come here for
to-night. May I ask, my lord," he said, looking towards Lord Camborne's
son, "may I ask if this is Lord Hayle?"

"That is my name, Mr. Rose," the young man replied, rather startled at
the sudden question.

"Oh, thank you," Rose said. "I have come here specially to see you
to-night."

There was a moment's pause.

"Your business, Mr. Rose?" said the bishop once more.

"Is this," Rose rejoined. "The Duke of Paddington has sent me with a
very special message to his friend, Lord Hayle. If Lord Hayle was not in
London, his grace asked me to see Lord Camborne."

The bishop started violently. "My dear Mr. Rose," he said, in a deep
voice, "what is all this? What is all this? The Duke of Paddington! Do
you mean to say----"

"The Duke of Paddington, my lord," Rose answered, a subtle mockery
becoming somewhat apparent in his voice, "the Duke of Paddington has
been discovered!"

"Good Lord!" Lord Hayle shouted out suddenly, in the high-pitched voice
of almost uncontrollable excitement. "You have found dear old John!
Where is John, Mr. Rose?"

There was something so spontaneous and sincere in the young man's voice
that the Socialist turned with a certain brightness and pleasure to the
young man.

"Oh, sir!" he said, "the duke is lying at my house in Westminster. He
has been kidnapped by criminal ruffians, and, I am sorry to say, has
been tortured in order that large sums of money might be extorted from
him. The doctors are with him now, and no serious injury has been done,
but he is especially anxious to see you. I have a cab waiting, if you
care to come at once."

"I'll have my coat on in a moment," Lord Hayle replied, and left the
room.

The bishop went up to James Fabian Rose.

"Sir," he said, "our difference of opinion in social economics and
political affairs shall not prevent me from gripping you very heartily
by the hand."




CHAPTER XIII

NEW FRIENDS: NEW IDEAS


It was three days after the strange and dramatic rescue of the Duke of
Paddington, and he lay in a bright, cheerful bedroom in James Fabian
Rose's house in Westminster. Providence had guided Rose and his
companions to the underground cellar in the nick of time. The relentless
ruffians who had captured the duke had been as good as their word. They
had treated him with indescribable ferocity, though into the details of
the horrors in the foundation of the old house it is not necessary to
go.

When the police inspectors had brought him up from the deepest hole of
all, he was unconscious, and had immediately been taken away to Rose's
own house in a horse ambulance which had been summoned from the police
headquarters of the district.

The actual discovery had been very simple. Directly the Inspector of
Police recognised the man known as "Sidney," he had rushed after him,
followed by the others. As it happened, for some time the police had
been very anxious to discover the exact whereabouts of this particular
ex-convict, to track him to his lair. It was obvious that when the man
turned and bolted down the stairs there was something he wished to
conceal, and, though there was no actual charge against him at the
moment, the policeman had experience enough to know that something
illegal was afoot. They had dashed into the kitchen to find it tenanted
only by the old Jewish woman, but the door leading into the smaller
kitchen was open, and Sidney was leaning over the trap-door in the floor
pulling up another member of the gang who had been down in the pit with
the victim.

The man's design had obviously been to get his comrade up, close the
trap-door, and push the tub over it before the policemen could enter the
kitchen. In all probability there would then have been no discovery at
all, though the ruffian himself was by no means sure that the party were
not in some way or other upon the track of the actual offence he had
committed in kidnapping the duke. His guilty conscience had betrayed
him.

When the scoundrel had been caught and handcuffed, and the duke had been
discovered and carried up into the kitchen the man relapsed into a
sullen silence. He had gathered at once from the remarks made by his
captors that they were quite unaware of the identity of the prisoner. It
did not, in fact, occur to any of the party, even to the police, to
connect this insensible figure, half-clothed--the face covered with
grime and dirt--with the missing peer.

"We will get the poor fellow off to the hospital at once, sir,"
Inspector Green had said to Rose. "These devils have been working some
horrible thing upon him. I expect he is one of their pals who has given
them away. I have seen some black things, but this is about as bad as
any of them. I should not wonder"--he turned round with his face like a
flint, and a voice that cut like a whip--"I should not wonder if this
was a swinging job for you, Sidney O'Connor!"

"He certainly shall not go to the hospital," said Rose. "Not that they
won't look after him thoroughly there; but I could not allow anybody
whom I discovered myself in such a plight as this to do so. He must go
to my house, and my wife and Miss Marriott will nurse him."

"Well, sir," said the officer, "it is only a very little distance
farther to your house from here than to Charing Cross Hospital, and I
will send the ambulance there if you really wish it. It's very kind of
you, Mr. Rose."

"Certainly I do," Rose answered. "It is a duty, of course."

"And I," said Mary Marriott, "will drive back at once if a cab can be
found for me, to tell Mrs. Rose that they are bringing this poor man."

"That will be very kind of you, Miss Marriott," Rose answered. "I am
sorry that our expedition has come to so unpleasant and dramatic an end,
for I do not suppose any of us would care to go on now?"

"No, indeed," said both the clergyman and the journalist in answer, and
in a few minutes Mary's first experience of the dark under-currents of
London life was at an end.

When the duke was comfortably installed in Rose's house the doctor
pronounced him suffering from shocks and extreme weakness.

"He will be all right in a few days," he said. "He must now have
absolute rest and nourishment. The actual harm inflicted upon him by the
scoundrels with whom he was found is very slight. There are the merest
superficial burns, and the cuts are trivial. It is the weakness and
shock that are the most serious. The young man has a splendid
constitution. He's as strong as an ox."

The doctor went away, leaving minute directions for the treatment of the
patient.

The duke was in a semi-conscious condition. He realised dimly that he
was out of the horrible place where he had lain for, so it seemed to
him, an eternity. He knew that, somehow or other, he had been rescued,
that he was now lying in a comfortable bed. A new life seemed slowly
coming back into his veins as the meat jelly dissolved in his mouth. The
horror was ended at last!

He had fallen at length into a deep slumber.

The party assembled in the drawing-room, discussing the extraordinary
events of the morning, and Mrs. Rose was told every detail. The police
and the County Council inspector were not there, but the chief inspector
had promised to report later as to anything that should be learned of
the truth of the mystery.

"Well," said Mr. Goodrick, with a little chuckle, "I went out this
morning because I wanted to watch Miss Marriott, and because I am
interested in the great experiment we are making with her. I had seen
all that sort of thing before I knew Miss Marriott; in fact, I began my
journalistic career by writing of such places as we have been among; but
I never expected that I was going to get a journalistic scoop. This will
make a fine column in to-morrow's paper. The junior members of my staff
will be jealous of their editor-in-chief going out and bringing in copy!
They will regard it as an infringement of their rights!" He chuckled
once more, and rubbed his hands together, all the true pressman's
delight at exclusive news glowing in his eyes.

"Yes," he went on, "it will be quite a big thing, especially as you were
present, Rose--a real sensation! The _Wire_ will solve the mystery that
is agitating the mind of the public in a most startling fashion!"

A maid came into the room. "If you please, sir," she said to Rose,
"Inspector Green is here, and wishes to see you immediately on a matter
of great importance."

"Show him up, Annie," said the Socialist, and in a second or two more
the inspector burst into the room, his usual calm and imperturbable
manner strangely altered. He seemed to be labouring under some deep
emotion.

"What is it, inspector?" Rose said, and instinctively all the people in
the room rose up.

"The man," the inspector gasped, "the man we found in the cellar, ladies
and gentlemen--it is--it is his Grace the Duke of Paddington himself!"

There was a dead silence. The faces of every one went pale with
excitement.

"The Duke of Paddington?" Rose said in a startled and incredulous voice.

"His Grace himself, sir. As you know, his Grace's disappearance has been
agitating the whole of Europe for the last day or two. It seems what
happened was this. The duke was lying down on the side of the line after
the railway accident. He was almost uninjured, but the doctor who
rescued him ordered him to rest for half an hour. The gang of men in the
slum hard by, attracted by the accident in the fog and the possibility
of plunder, had come through a doorway in the wall which leads upon the
line. They rifled the duke's pockets, and from their contents found out
who he was.

"The leader of the gang, Sidney O'Connor, is one of the most dangerous
and desperate criminals in the country, and, moreover, a man of great
daring and resource. He it was who thought it would be an infinitely
better stroke of business if he could kidnap the duke and hold him to
ransom. Owing to the fog and the proximity of their den--it is one of
the duke's own houses, by the way, you will remember--the kidnapping was
easily affected, the duke being too weak and stunned by the accident to
offer any resistance. It is by the mercy of Providence that we found him
when we did. The old Jewish woman who keeps the den has confessed
everything. How is his Grace, Mr. Rose?"

"Much better," said Mrs. Rose, "much better, inspector. The doctor has
been here, and says he will be all right in a few days. He is suffering
from extreme weakness and shock. He is now sleeping peacefully, and a
nurse from the Westminster Hospital is with him."

Mr. Goodrick went up to the inspector. "Now look here, inspector," he
said, "promise me one thing, that neither you nor your companions will
give any of the details of this affair to the press. I shall see that it
is well worth your while, all of you, to be silent until to-morrow
morning. Can you answer for your colleague and the plain-clothes man who
was with us?"

"Certainly I can, Mr. Goodrick," the inspector answered.

"Well, it will be worth five pounds each to them. And what about the
County Council inspector?"

"He has gone back to Spring Gardens now, sir," Green replied, "but I can
easily send a message up to him from Scotland Yard to that effect."

"I shall be most obliged if you will do so," said Mr. Goodrick, and
then once more he gave a loud chuckle of triumph and rubbed his hands
together. "Sensation!" he said in an ecstasy, "why, the _Wire_ will have
one of the biggest scoops of recent years to-morrow. Oh, what luck! Oh,
what splendid luck! No other paper will have anything except the mere
statement of the fact that the duke has been discovered under mysterious
circumstances. Mrs. Rose, I must say good-bye; I must hurry off. Don't
forget, inspector! Absolute secrecy!"

He made a comprehensive bow, which included all of them, patted Fabian
genially upon the back, and rushed away.

"What do you suppose we had better do, inspector?" Rose asked.

"Well, sir, I don't quite know what there is to be done, except,
perhaps, to telegraph to the head of the young gentleman's college at
Oxford, and to Colonel Simpson, his agent. You see, the duke has no very
near relatives, though he is connected with half the peerage. I shall
take care, also, that the news is at once conveyed to Buckingham Palace.
His Majesty has been most anxious during the last day or two, and
inquiries are constantly reaching us. For the rest, I think it will be
better that you should wait until his Grace regains consciousness and
can say what he would like to be done."

The inspector had disappeared, and Rose, his wife, Mary, and Mr.
Conrad, were left alone, looking at each other in amazement. Then
suddenly Rose sat down and burst into laughter. The old elfin, mocking
expression had returned to his face. The keen eyes twinkled with
sardonic humour, the mustard-coloured beard and moustache wagged up and
down, as the great man leant back in an ecstasy of mirth.

"All's well that ends well," he said at length, spluttering out his
words. "Good heavens! what a marvellous day it has been! We go to the
Duke of Paddington's property, so that Miss Marriott can get ideas for
the part of the heroine in the play which is to draw all England to the
iniquity of great landlords like the duke, who do nothing, and allow
their agents to draw rents for rat-holes. Then we find the duke himself
trussed up like a chicken in a gloomy cellar of one of his own filthy
properties! What extraordinary tricks Fate does play sometimes! Who
would have thought that such a thing could possibly happen? And, what is
better still--what is more quaintly humorous than ever--here is the
young gentleman with his hundred and fifty thousand a year and his great
name and title, here! sleeping in my best bedroom--in the very
headquarters of the party which is labouring to destroy monopolies such
as his. I wonder what he will say when he wakes up and finds out where
he is, poor fellow!"

"If he is a gentleman, as I suppose he is," said Mrs. Rose, "he will say
'Thank you'--not once, but several times, because, you know, Fabian
dear, not only did you save his life, in the first instance by chance,
but you brought him here instead of sending him to a hospital when you
had no idea who he was."

"And that," Mary broke in, "is what I call practical socialism. Don't
you allow, Mr. Rose, that the duke is a brother?"

"Oh, yes," the Socialist replied, "but no more and no less a brother
because of his dukedom."

There was a tap at the door. The nurse had sent down a message that the
gentleman upstairs was awake, had learned where he was, and would like
to see Mr. Rose.

       *       *       *       *       *

This was what had occurred. For three days the duke had lain in bed,
gradually growing stronger. Lord Hayle had visited him constantly, and
when he was well enough to be moved he was to go straight to the
Camborne's house in Grosvenor Street.

The sun poured into the bedroom--a cold, wintry sun, but still grateful
enough after the fog and gloom of the last week. A fire crackled upon
the hearth, and the duke lay propped up with pillows, smoking a
cigarette. On a chair at the side of the bed sat Fabian Rose, and on a
chair on the other side was Mr. Conrad, the clergyman. An animated
conversation was in progress.

For the first time in his life the duke had met types to which he was
utterly unaccustomed. He had known of Fabian Rose, of course; there was
no one in England who did not know the great Socialist's name, and few
people of the upper classes who had not, at some time or other,
witnessed one of his immensely clever plays. But now the duke was
finding that all his ideas were being rudely upset. They were in a
process of transition. The man with the white face and the
mustard-coloured beard, with the lambent humour, had captivated him. He
felt drawn to Rose, though his predominant sensation when talking to his
host was one of wild amazement, and as for the clergyman, the duke liked
him also, though he was a type that he had never met before.

It was an odd situation indeed. Here was the great capitalist captured
and cornered by two of the most militant Socialists of the day--and
here--he was rather enjoying it!

"Well," he said, "I seem fated nowadays to be carried off into the camp
of the enemy; but I like this captivity better than the first. All the
same, I cannot in the least agree with you, Mr. Conrad, in what you say,
that the law of England, as it stands at present, is simply in the
interests of the classes with property. Poor people have just as much
justice, I have always understood, as any others."

"It is not so," replied Mr. Conrad, shaking his head. "I wish it were.
As I see it, as Rose sees it, as we Socialists see it, the law works
wholly to protect property and the propertied, and to do whatever
injustices the propertied people who control the State require of it.

"When a hungry man helps himself to the food he cannot pay for, a man in
blue introduces him to a man on a bench, and the result of the interview
is that the hungry one is put away and locked up for a lengthened time.
When the people meet to discuss their miseries and to demand relief men
in scarlet as well as in blue beat and cut them to death. The law of
England, as it stands at present, is entirely built up upon what John
Kenworthy has so aptly described as 'that Devil's Bible, the Codex
Romanorum.' Rome built up a property system which asserted and
maintained the rights of the selfish and cunning over those whom they
cheated and robbed, and we have done precisely the same with similar
results. It is just the same in England to-day as it is in Russia,
though the English people are not able to assert themselves as their
brethren in Russia are doing. Count Tolstoi has said that in both
countries--in almost all countries, in fact, authority is in the hands
of men who, like all the rest, are ever ready to sacrifice the
commonweal if their own personal interests are at stake. These men
encounter no resistance from the oppressed, and are wholly subject to
the corrupting influence of authority itself. And yet we call ourselves
a Christian nation!"

"And so we are, Mr. Conrad," the duke replied. "England is ruled and
guided entirely by the Christian faith. If it were not so society would
fall to pieces in a day."

"It is not so, believe me, duke," the clergyman answered; "and if
society could but fall to pieces in a day, then indeed there would be a
glorious opportunity to reconstruct it on really Christian lines! Jesus
left no doubt as to the nature of His mission. He pictured Dives, the
rich man, plunged into torment for nothing else than for being rich when
another was poor--not, you will observe, only for being rich. He
pictures Lazarus, who had not anything, poor and afflicted, as comforted
and consoled. For that those evangelical nonconformists the Pharisees,
derided the Great Teacher of mankind. Again, by the force of His
personality, for it was not the scourge that He held in His hands alone,
Jesus drove the usurers out of their business quarters in the Temple and
named them thieves. 'Woe,' He said, 'to those who lay up treasures upon
earth. Blessed,' He said, 'are the poor!' It is," he concluded, "to
reconstruct real Christianity that the Socialists are labouring to-day."

The duke did not answer. He lay back upon his pillows, thinking deeply.

"These are very new thoughts to me," he said, "and you must forgive me
if I cannot immediately assimilate them."

"Quite so," Fabian Rose broke in, "but perhaps some day your Grace will
get more light upon these subjects. It is impossible for you and us to
think alike in any particular. Our whole lives and environment have been
entirely different. Some men upon a mountain survey a landscape; others
see nothing but a map. I agree with Mr. Conrad to a certain extent, but
he would be the very last person to call me an orthodox Christian all
the same. As one looks round it really does often seem that when Christ
died the religion of Christ died too. Instead of that we have only the
'Christian religion' nowadays. But we must not tire you, you must get up
all your strength to-day, for your removal to Lord Camborne's house
to-morrow--for your removal out of our lives," he concluded, with an
unusual sadness in his voice, "for our ways lie very far apart."

"If you will allow me, Mr. Rose," the duke answered, "our ways will not
lie very far apart. Thinking differently as we do, looking upon these
problems through different pairs of spectacles, nevertheless it would be
a grief to me if I thought that we were not to meet sometimes and to
remain friends. What you have done for me is more than I can say, and I
should be indeed ungrateful if the fact that we were in opposite camps
prevented a hand-grasp now and then."

"Well, well," Rose answered, "I am sure it is very kind of you to say
so, and we shall see what the future brings forth. At the same time it
is only fair to tell you what I have not told you before--that I am
organising an active campaign against you in the first instance, as a
type of the class we desire to destroy, and for which we wish to
substitute another."

"Dear me!" said the duke, smiling. "That sounds very dreadful, Mr. Rose.
Do tell me what is going to happen. Are you going to blow up some more
of my house in Piccadilly?"

"Oh, no," Rose replied, laughing. "Those are not our methods, and
although they have not found out, I understand, who threw the bomb and
destroyed the Florentine Vase, I am sure it was no member of the
Socialistic party, to which I belong. We accomplish our ends by more
peaceful methods, though infinitely stronger. No, duke, I will tell you
frankly what is on the cards."

Mr. Rose paused for a moment, and then in a few sentences told his guest
exactly, and in detail, all his plan for educating society to
socialistic ideals by means of the theatre.

"And here," he concluded with a smile, as Mrs. Rose knocked at the door
and entered with Mary Marriott, who was carrying a bunch of
chrysanthemums in her hand, "and here is the girl who is to be the arch
offender against your rights! Here is the heroine of the play! The
artist whose influence shall be more powerful and far-reaching than a
thousand lectures!"

The duke smiled. He was glad to see the beautiful girl whom he had got
to know and like during the two or three times he had met her.

"Well," he said, "if privilege is to be destroyed it could be at no more
kindly hands I am sure!"

"I brought you some chrysanthemums, your Grace," Mary said, flushing a
little, "a sort of peace offering, because Mr. Rose told me yesterday
that he was going to tell you all that we propose to do. I hope your
Grace will accept them?"

They left the duke alone after a few minutes further chat, and for the
rest of the day he saw no one but the doctor and a new valet who had
been engaged for him.

The flowers which Mary Marriott had given him stood upon a table by the
bed, and, as he regarded their delicate, fantastic beauty, so instinct
with the decorative spirit of the Land of the Rising Sun, he thought a
good deal of the giver. To the duke an actress had hitherto always meant
some dull wench in a burlesque. On one occasion only had he been to a
supper party given to some of these ornaments of the illustrated papers,
and he had been so insufferably bored that he resolved the experience
should be his last. He had known vaguely, of course, that ladies went on
the stage nowadays, but the fact had never been brought home to him
before he met Mary Marriott. How graceful she was! As graceful in every
movement as any famous society beauty.

Her face was very lovely in its way, he thought, and though of quite a
different type, it was almost as lovely as that of Lady Constance
Camborne. What a pair they would make! What a bouquet of girls! It would
be splendid to see them together, the dark girl and the fair.

He had much to occupy his mind as he lay alone. The novel which they had
brought him lay unheeded upon the counterpane. He had stepped into a new
world, of that there was no doubt at all, and had begun to realise how
his great possessions and high rank had hitherto set him apart and
barred him from much that was vivid and interesting, pulsating with
life. He had always been exclusive; it was in his blood to be so, and
his training had fostered the instinct. But he saw now that he would
never be quite the same again. His curiosity was aroused, and his
interest in classes of society of which he had never thought before. He
determined to investigate. He would keep friends with Fabian Rose and
his circle. If they were going to write a socialistic play, well, let
them. It would be amusing to watch it, and, besides, it could not hurt
him. He would get to know this Miss Marriott better, and he would ask
her about her art, which seemed to be so dominant a purpose in her life.
There were many things that he resolved he would do in the future. Then
again, there was that young Arthur Burnside. The duke remembered how,
during the afternoon before the accident, he had talked with Burnside
in St. Paul's College, and had been able to give him the vacant
librarianship at Paddington House, which had meant a total change in the
young man's prospects. Yes! he would go to Paddington House one day,
when he was staying with the Cambornes, and he would see how Burnside
was getting on, and have a talk with him. Oh, yes, there were many
things that he would do!

On the morning of the next day, a bright winter's morning, the duke left
the hospitable house in Westminster. It was with real regret and with a
sense of parting from old friends that he said "Good-bye." Mary Marriott
was there. She was now in constant confabulation with Rose every
morning, and she formed one of the little group who assembled on the
steps of the house in the quiet street behind the Abbey.

A huge motor brougham, with Lord Camborne's coronet upon the panels, was
waiting there. A groom in motoring livery stood by the door. The
chauffeur took off his hat as the duke came out. It was not often that
such splendour was seen in that quarter. Then the brougham rolled
swiftly away, and another page in the young man's life was turned over.

He did not drive straight to Lord Camborne's house, but told the
chauffeur to stop at Gerrard's in Regent Street, the florist's, and went
into the shop, where the great masses of hothouse flowers made the air
all Arabia for him and all comers. His purchase of lilies and roses was
so stupendous that even the imperturbable young ladies in that floral
temple showed more than their usual interest.

Indeed, the house of the Socialist would be gay that afternoon, and Mrs.
Rose would be surrounded by a perfect garden of the flowers whose name
she bore--a delicate thankoffering.

In a few minutes more the duke arrived at Lord Camborne's house in
Grosvenor Street.

Both his host and Lord Hayle were out, but Lady Constance received him.

"Now, you are going to be very quiet, and not talk much," she said. "We
are going to be most careful of you, after what you have gone through. I
cannot tell you, duke, how agitated we have all been about you. Poor
Gerald has been nearly mad with anxiety. He is so fond of you, you know.
What terrible things you have been through--first the accident, and then
that awful horror!" She shuddered.

She was very fair as she stood there, in her simple morning gown, with
all the beauty of sympathy added to her supreme loveliness. As the duke
was shown to his own rooms he felt once more that throbbing pulsation,
that sudden exhilaration, which he had known when Lady Constance had
come to lunch at Paul's and he had seen her for the first time. She did
not know, nor could he tell her, how star-like she had been in his
thoughts during the long, dark hours of his captivity, and how it was
the radiant vision of her, etched into his memory, which had given
strength to his obstinacy and power to resist the demands of his
tormentors.




CHAPTER XIV

AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE


The Park Lane Theatre in Oxford Street, about two hundred yards east of
the Marble Arch, was one of the most successful houses of those many
theatres which have sprung up in London during the last few years. Its
reputation was thoroughly high-class, and more particularly that of a
theatre patronised by Society. It was in fact, the St. James's of that
quarter of London. Here was no pit, and the gallery seats were
half-a-crown for example.

The long and successful run of a play at the Park Lane had just
concluded, and the theatrical journalists were hazarding this or that
surmise as to what would be next produced. For some reason or other
there seemed to be a sort of mystery. The syndicate which owned the
theatre would make no announcements through their manager, save only
that the theatre had been let.

Inquiries elicited nothing. This or that well-known _entrepreneur_, when
asked the question had denied that he was interested in any forthcoming
production at the theatre. There was a good deal of speculation on the
point, and the play-going public itself was beginning to be interested.

Then, one morning, there appeared in the _Daily Wire_ a paragraph,
displayed in a prominent position, which stated that the theatre had
been leased to Mr. Aubrey Flood, the well-known actor-manager, and the
paragraph--obviously inspired--went on to hint at a most sensational
development, of which the public might shortly expect news in the
columns of the great Radical daily.

A few days after the public had been informed of the Duke of
Paddington's extraordinary and terrible experiences, Mr. Aubrey Flood
sat in his private room at the theatre. It was twelve o'clock noon, and
he was dictating some letters to his secretary. The room was large and
comfortable, and was reached by a short passage at the back of the dress
circle. The walls were hung with framed photographs, many of them of
great size, and signed by names which were famous in the dramatic world.
There was a curious likeness to each other in all these photographs,
when one regarded them closely. Men and women of entirely different
faces and figures had all, nevertheless, the same curiously _conscious_
look lurking in the eyes and pose. They seemed well aware, in their
beauty of face and figure or splendour of costume, that they were there
for one purpose--to be looked at.

Here and there the photographs were diversified by valuable old
play-bills in gold frames, and close to the door was a page torn out of
a ledger, the writing now faded and brown with years. It was a salary
list of some forgotten provincial theatre, and the names of famous
actors--at the time it was written utterly unknown to fame--were set
down there in a thin, old-fashioned script. Heading the list one saw
"Henry Irving, L1 10s. 0d.," the weekly salary at that date of, perhaps,
the greatest actor England has ever known.

A huge writing-table was covered with papers, and there were two
telephones, one hanging upon the wall, the other resting on its plated
stand upon the table. Upon another table, much higher than the ordinary,
and standing at one side of the room was a complete model theatre.
Carefully executed studies of scenery half a yard square lay by the side
of the model, and a complete miniature tableau had been built up upon
the tiny stage, while the characters of the toy drama were represented
by the little oblong cubes of wood, variously coloured.

To complete the picture, it should be stated that, by the side of Mr.
Aubrey Flood, nearer, indeed, to him than the telephone, stood a square
bottle of cut-glass, a tumbler, and a syphon of soda-water.

There was a knock at the door, and the stage door-keeper entered with a
card.

"Mr. Lionel C. Westwood, to see you, sir," he said.

"Ask him to come in at once," Flood answered.

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood had, more or less, created his own profession,
which was that of a very special sort of theatrical journalist. He had
been tried for dramatic criticism on more than one paper, but had
abandoned this form of writing for what he speedily found to be the more
lucrative one of collecting early dramatic intelligence. He wrote, too,
the column of Green Room Gossip in more than one important paper, and
was, indeed, of extreme use to managers who wished to contradict a
rumour or to start one.

He came hurriedly into the room--a short, easy, alert young man, wearing
a voluminous frock-coat, and with a mixed aspect of extreme hurry and
cordiality.

"Oh, my dear Aubrey," he said, shaking the manager's hand with effusive
geniality, "so here you are! Directly I saw the paragraph in the _Wire_
I wrote to you, asking for fuller information. Now, you won't mind
telling me all there is to know, will you?"

"Sit down, Lionel," said the actor. "Will you have a drink?"

"No, thank you," replied the little man, "I never take anything in the
morning. Now, what is all this? What are you going to do? What are you
going to produce? That's what I want to know. All London is wondering!"
He rapped with his fingers upon the table, and his face suddenly
assumed a curiously ferret-like look "What is it, Aubrey, dear boy?" he
concluded.

Flood leant back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

"It is a very big thing indeed, Lionel," he said, "and I don't know,
dear boy, that I should be justified in letting you into it just yet.
Why, we only read the play to the company this afternoon!"

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood's ears seemed positively to twitch as he elicited
this first piece of information.

"Oh!" he said, with a sudden gleam of satisfaction. "Well, that is
something, at any rate. That is an item, Aubrey."

"I am afraid that is as far as I shall be able to go," the shrewd
manager replied.

This little comedy progressed for some twenty minutes, until at last Mr.
Lionel C. Westwood was worked up into the right state of frantic
curiosity and excitement. Then Aubrey Flood explained dimly the purpose
and scope of the new play, hinted reluctantly at the achievement of a
new star, a young actress of wonderful power and extreme beauty, who had
hitherto been quite unknown in the provinces, and finally, with a gush
of friendship, "Well, as it is you, Lionel, dear boy, though I would not
do it for anybody else," promised the journalist that he might come to
the theatre again that afternoon and form one of the privileged few, in
addition to the company itself, who would be present at the reading of
the play by its author, Mr. James Fabian Rose.

Mr. Lionel C. Westwood went away more than contented, and Aubrey Flood
resumed his correspondence. The train was laid and the match was applied
to it. The _Daily Wire_, of course, was at the disposal of the
syndicate, and would further its objects in every way through Mr.
Goodrick. At the same time, the editor was quite shrewd enough to know
that his paper was more particularly read by the middle-classes, and
content to sacrifice items of excessive interest concerning the play in
order that it might be widely advertised.

For they were all very greatly in earnest, these people. Even Aubrey
Flood himself, while he was business man enough to regard this
speculation as an excellent one, and believe that he would make a great
deal of money over it, was nevertheless about to produce this
epoch-making play from a real and earnest adherence to the doctrines it
was to inculcate.

There is a general opinion that your actor-manager and your actor are
persons consumed by two inherent thirsts--applause and money. In a
sense--perhaps in a very general sense--this is true, but there are
still those actors and actresses whose life is not entirely occupied
with their own personality and chances of success. In the most
egotistical of all occupations there are yet men and women who are
animated by the spirit of altruism, and the hope of helping a great
movement. Aubrey Flood was one of these men. He was as convinced a
Socialist as Fabian Rose himself. He was enlisted under that banner, and
he was prepared to go to any length to uphold it in the forefront of the
great battle which was imminent. At the same time, Mr. Aubrey Flood saw
no reason why propaganda should not pay!

He was dictating his letters, when once more the stage door-keeper came
into the room with another card. It was that of Miss Mary Marriott.

Flood started.

"Show Miss Marriott in at once," he said, and his face changed a little,
while a new light of interest came into his eyes.

Your theatrical manager is not, as a rule, a person very susceptible to
the charms of the ladies with whom he is constantly associated, though
perhaps that is not quite the best way to put it. He is susceptible, but
in a somewhat cynical and contemptuous way. The conquests in the world
of the limelight are not always too difficult, and a man who pursues
them out of habit and inclination very often learns to put a low figure
upon achievement. But in the case of Mary Marriott, Aubrey Flood, who
was no better or no worse than his colleagues, had felt differently. It
does not necessarily mean that when a manager makes love to his leading
lady, or to any lady in his company, he necessarily has the slightest
real emotion in doing so. It is, indeed, part of the day's work, and
half of the day's necessity. That is all.

But Flood had never met any one like Mary Marriott before. He was
impressed by her beauty; he recognised her talent; he believed
absolutely in her artistic capacities. At the same time he found himself
feeling for this girl something to which he had long been a stranger--a
feeling of reverence, or perhaps chivalry, would more easily describe
it.

Yes, when he was with her he remembered his younger days when, as a
boyish undergraduate from Oxford, he had played tennis with the
daughters of the squire on the lawns of his father's rectory. Then all
women passably fair and passably young had been mysterious goddesses.
Mary Marriott sometimes brought the hardened and cynical man of the
world, whose only real passion was for the cause of Socialism, back to
the ideals of his youth, and he counted himself fortunate that fate had
thrown her in his way.

Mary came into the room. He rose and shook her heartily by the hand.

"My dear Miss Marriott," he said--an intimate of his would have noticed
a slight change in his way of addressing her, for to most lady members
of his company he would have said "my dear," "to what do I owe this
call? I thought we were all going to meet at half-past two to hear the
play read! Do sit down."

Mary smiled at him. She liked Mr. Flood. She knew the sickening
familiarities of the men who had controlled some of the companies in
which she had been.

At first it had been horrible, then she had become a little accustomed
and blunted to it. She had endured without any signs of outrage the
familiar touch upon the arm, the bold intimacy of voice and manner. It
was refreshing now to meet a man who behaved to her as a gentleman
behaves to a lady in a society where the footlights are not.

In fact, everything was refreshing, new, and exhilarating to Mary now,
since that day, that terrible day of fog and gloom, when, after her long
and perilous search for an engagement she had sat in her little attic
flat in Bloomsbury and the mustard-bearded man had knocked at the door
with all the suddenness of wonder of the fairy godmother herself to
Cinderella.

She sat down, and there was a moment's pause.

"Well, do you know, Mr. Flood," she said at length, hesitating a little,
and feeling embarrassed, "I have come to ask you a most extraordinary
favour."

All sorts of ideas crossed the swift, cinematographic mind of the
manager. It could not be that she wanted an advance of salary, because
all the company were to be paid for rehearsals, and directly the
contract had been signed with him and Fabian Rose, Mary Marriott's
half-salary had begun. It could not be that she wanted more "fat" in the
part, because she realised the rigidity of Rose's censorship in such a
matter; and, besides, she was too much an artist to want the centre of
the stage all the time. What could it be? His face showed nothing of his
thoughts. All he said was, "Miss Marriott, I am sure you will not ask me
anything that I shall not be able to grant."

"But I think on this occasion you might have some difficulty, Mr.
Flood," Mary answered, with half a smile--the man thought he had never
seen such charm and such self-possession.

Her voice was like a silver bell, heard far away on a mountain side. No,
it wasn't, it was like water falling into water--like a tiny waterfall,
falling into a deep, translucent pool in a wood!

"Go on, Miss Marriott," he replied, with a smile.

"I want to bring some one to the reading of the play this afternoon,"
she said.

"That is all right," he answered; "but provided, of course, that your
friend will not divulge anything about the play more than we allow him
to do. Why, I have just given little Lionel C. Westwood permission to
come and hear the play read. Of course, Mr. Rose must have a say in the
matter. But who do you want to bring?"

"I have asked Mr. Rose," Mary replied. "I saw him this morning, and he
raised no objections, provided only that you gave your consent."

"Well, then, it is a foregone conclusion," Flood returned; "but who is
it?"

"Well," Mary answered, "it is the Duke of Paddington."

Aubrey Flood looked at her for a moment, his eyes wide with amazement.

"The man himself! By Jove!" he said, "the very man! Do you think this is
wise?"

"He has given me his promise," Mary answered, "that he comes merely as
an interested spectator."

"Oh, well, then," Flood answered, "if that is the case, by all means let
him come, Miss Marriott. Of course, if Rose does not mind, I am sure I
don't; but when you first mentioned his name I had a flitting vision
that he was coming for--not at all in a friendly way--in fact, to gather
material for a libel action in case his personality is indicated too
plainly in the play."

"But it is not, Mr. Flood, is it?" Mary asked.

"Oh, no," the actor answered; "his personality is not indicated at all.
We don't caricature people, we indicate types. He is---- Well, perhaps I
should hardly even have used the word indicate at all--he is merely used
as a peg upon which to hang our theories. I have read the play and you
have not, and I am sure that what I say is quite correct. At the same
time, you know, Miss Marriott, all London will guess at whom we are
hitting in the first instance--not so much because he happens to be an
individual enemy of the Cause as that he is representative of the army
of monopolists we are endeavouring to destroy."

"I am sure he won't mind at all," Mary Marriott said, and Flood noticed
with an odd uneasiness that she flushed a little. "I have had the
privilege of seeing something of the duke lately, and he really seems to
be taking an interest in the socialistic movement, though of course from
quite a different point of view to ours."

"I see," Flood replied slowly. "Miss Marriott, you are trying----" And
then he stopped, he thought it better to leave his thought unspoken.

"Very well, then," he replied, "so be it. Bring him, by all means."

"May I telephone?" Mary said, "or, rather would you have a message
telephoned to Grosvenor Street, Mr. Flood? The duke is staying with Lord
Camborne, and I promised that if it was possible for him to hear the
reading of the play I would let him know. If you telephone to him that
there is no objection he will arrive here at half-past two o'clock."

"By all means," Flood answered, "I will do it myself. I have had a good
many interesting experiences in my lifetime, but this will be the first
time that I have talked to a duke over the telephone." He laughed a
little sardonically as Mary rose.

"By the way, what are you going to do now?" he said.

"It is nearly one o'clock. I am going home to my flat for lunch," Mary
answered.

"No, you are not, Miss Marriott," he answered. "You are coming out to
lunch with me, if you please."

Mary hesitated for a moment, then smiled radiantly, and thanked him. "It
is very kind of you," she said. "Of course I will, since you ask me."

Together, a few minutes afterwards, they left the theatre and drove down
to Frascati's.

The lunch was bright and merry. Upon the stage the usual convenances are
not observed, because, indeed, it would be impossible that they should
be. Apart from them any abuses of stage life, and the danger which
belongs to the meeting of youngish men and women without the usual
restraints of society, without the usual restraints which society
imposes, there is, nevertheless, in many instances a real and true
_camaraderie_ of the sexes which is as charming as it is without
offence.

The girl lunched with the actor-manager, gaily and happily. The simple
_omelette_, _fines herbes_, the red mullet and the grilled kidneys were
perfectly cooked, and the bottle of Beaune--well, it was Moulin a Vent,
and what more can be said?

They talked over the play from various points of view. First of all it
was from the aspect of its probable success. They agreed that this
seemed assured. Then they talked eagerly, keenly of the artistic
possibilities of it. Mary had read a scene or two--Fabian Rose had given
her the typewritten manuscript--but of the play as a whole she had no
more than a vague idea. This, to both of them, was the most interesting
part of their talk.

Aubrey was an artist in every way. He was a successful artist and had
combined commercial success with his real work, otherwise he would not
have been a "successful artist." But he cared very much, nevertheless,
for the splendour of what he believed to be the greatest art in the
world. He was sincere, as Mary was also, in his belief in the high
mission of the stage.

Finally, over their coffee, they talked of what the play--already
assumed successful and important--would mean to Socialism.

Mary was but a new convert. Her ideas about the cause to which, in her
young enthusiasm, she had pledged herself were nebulous. She had much to
learn. She was learning much. Yet her heart warmed up as Aubrey Flood
let his words go, and told her of his ambitions that this play should
indeed be a great thing for the Cause. He was a clever and well-known
actor, a successful manager, under a new aspect altogether. She had met
people like Aubrey Flood before, but no single one of them had ever
shown her that beneath his life of the theatre lay any deep and
underlying motive, and it uplifted her, she felt that strange sense of
brotherhood which those who are united against the world always know.
She recognised that Aubrey Flood, beneath his exterior, was as keen and
convinced a Socialist as Fabian Rose, or Mr. Conrad. The fact
substantiated her own new theories and induced in her the throbbing
sense of being an officer in a great army.

"I wish I had known before," she said to him as they were preparing to
leave the restaurant. "I wish I had known before, then, indeed, I might
have had an ethical motive in my life, which I now see and feel has been
lacking for a long time."

"You are now," he answered, "catching something of our own enthusiasm,
and it is by the most extraordinary chain of events that Rose and you,
Conrad and myself have come into touch with the Duke of Paddington
himself. Conrad, of course, would tell you that Providence had designed
it. I cannot go so far as that. I simply say that it is chance. All the
same, it is a most marvellous thing. We are going to startle England."

Mary looked at him for a moment. They had just got into the hansom which
was to drive them back to the theatre.

"I don't see, Mr. Flood," she said in a quiet voice, "why it is any more
easy to believe that something you call 'chance' brings things about
than it is difficult to believe that something Mr. Conrad calls
'Providence' should effect the same results."

Flood looked at her in his turn. Here was a most strange young lady of
the stage, indeed. He tried to think of something to say, but could
not. The simple logic of her answer forbade retort.

Indeed, why should any one want to gather up "coincidences," call the
controlling power of them "chance," and not admit that Providence itself
had ordered them?

He could not think beyond that, and he was silent. He remembered his old
father at the country rectory. He remembered the simple faith of his
father and mother and his sisters, and he realised with a sudden shock
of pain that the reason why he strove to call the strange Directorship
of the affairs of life by a name which had no especial meaning was
because he was not prepared to submit to the teachings and the order of
the Faith.

Mary also seemed to realise that her words had struck home to a heart
which was not yet entirely atrophied by the rush of life in the world of
the stage.

She turned to him and smiled slightly, rather sadly, indeed.

"Mr. Flood," she said, "you and I were both born in the same country but
perhaps you have been over the frontier for a long time."

"And perhaps," he answered, and while he did so his voice sounded in his
own ears strange and unfamiliar, "and perhaps even a theatrical manager
may some day ask for his passport to return."

They drew up at the stage door of the Park Lane Theatre.

Mary did not go back to Mr. Flood's room. She went straight on to the
stage. The curtain was up. The house was swathed in brown holland, and
only a faint light came down from the glass dome in the roof, showing
the whole place melancholy and bizarre. The stage itself was a great
expanse of dirty boards, stretching right away to a brick wall at the
back, in which was a huge slit, with two dingily-painted doors covering
it, by which scenery was brought into the scene-dock a little behind.

Two or three chairs were set down by the unlighted footlights, and there
was a tiny table by one of them. The limits of the scene which would be
set one day were marked off by chalk lines upon the boards. Two or three
nondescript men in soft felt hats wandered about in the wings, and on
the prompt side, up a ladder and standing on the platform above where is
the switchboard which controls the stage lights, the electrician--in a
dirty white linen coat--was twisting wires from one plug to another, and
noisily whistling the last popular song.

It was a scene of drab materialism, and the two or three little groups
of people who stood here and there neither added to it nor gave it any
animation.

As Mary went "on" the actors and actresses who were waiting there looked
at her with curious eyes. One or two she knew--they were often at the
Actors' Association. Who her colleagues as principals were she had not
been told, and as yet had no idea, save only of course that she was to
act with Aubrey Flood himself.

She saw, however, with a little thrill of pleasure that Dorothy French
was there. She herself had obtained a small part for her little friend
from Fabian Rose. Dolly came hurrying up to her, the girl's high-heeled
shoes echoing strangely upon the boards and sending out a muffled
drum-like note into the dim, shrouded auditorium beyond.

"Oh, Mary dear," Dolly whispered, "I am so glad to see you! I have not
seen you for such a long time, and it's been so awfully good of you to
find a shop for me. But what an extraordinary business it all is! None
of us seem to know anything about it. The whole thing is a perfect
mystery, and is it really true?" she continued, with a touch of envy,
"is it really true, Mary dear, that you are going to play lead?"

Mary sighed a little. "Well," she said, "I suppose it is."

"Then you know all about it?" Dolly answered quickly. "Now, do tell me,
Mary, what it is all about. The papers are full of rumours."

Mary realised what she had often realised before in her stage career,
that friendships last for a tour, and are spoiled by the first hintings
of success. She had always been fond of little Dolly French, pretty
little Dolly French; but here at the very first intimation of her own
promotion, was Dolly, with a changed voice and a different look in her
eyes, wearing an eager, questioning envious look.

"I know very little, Dolly," she answered rather shortly, "and what I do
know I must not tell. Everybody will know soon, of course."

Dorothy looked at her for a moment in silence. Then she said: "Oh, Mary!
I see that you are already feeling the responsibilities of being Lead."
She tittered rather bitterly, turned away, and rejoined the group from
which she had come.

Every one seemed to watch Mary for a few moments--she was standing quite
by herself--when there was a noise of footsteps and a group of people
came through the pass-door and down the three or four steps which led to
the stage itself.

Aubrey Flood was the first, without a hat and in an ordinary lounge
suit. James Fabian Rose, carrying a roll of brown paper in his hand, and
wearing a tweed overcoat and soft felt hat, followed him.

Behind the two was another man, who walked close to the pioneers, and
looked round him with an air of unfamiliarity.

He was a tallish, clean-shaven young man who wore a heavy fur coat.

Mary turned round and went up to the group.

"Yes," Aubrey Flood said; "yes, Miss Marriott, here indeed is his
Grace, who has come to hear how we are going to attack him."

The duke looked at Flood with a half smile, there seemed to be something
condescending in it, then he turned eagerly to Mary. "Oh, Miss
Marriott," he said, "you cannot think how interesting all this is to me,
and how grateful I am to you for enabling me to see it all."

He looked up and round, and there was something in his voice that showed
he was alert and aware--aware and curious.

"We shall be about half an hour before we begin to read the play, your
Grace," Aubrey Flood said. "Would you like to be shown over the
theatre--that is, have you ever been over a theatre from the
'behind-the-scenes' point of view, as it were?"

"No, I have not," the duke answered, "and I should like to very much."

At the same moment the stage manager came hurrying up to Aubrey Flood.
The actor turned to the duke and to Mary Marriott.

"Miss Marriott," he said, "would you show the duke something of the
theatre? I must talk to Mr. Howard."

Mary and the duke moved away together.

"I don't quite know what to show you," she said, "and will you really be
interested in the way we present our illusions?"

"Miss Marriott," the duke answered, "I want to know all sorts of things
which I have never known before. I've always been boxed up, so to say.
Life has been rather a monotonous procession for me up to the present.
Now I am simply greedy and eager for new sensations."

"Then, come along," the girl answered; "come along, and I will show you
the mechanism by which we produce our effects."

"Oh, no," the duke answered, "you cannot show me that, Miss Marriott, at
all. You can show me a mere mechanism which surrounds and assists art.
That is all you can show me. It will be in the future that you will show
me art itself."

She looked at him with a quiet, considering eye, forgetting for a moment
who he was: "Do you know," she said, "I think you must be an artist."

The duke looked at her rather strangely.




CHAPTER XV

THE MANUSCRIPT IN THE LIBRARY


The high wall which shields the great palace of the Dukes of Paddington
from the gaze of the ordinary passer-by is broken in its centre by the
treble ornamental gates of ironwork. They are gates with a history, but
they are gates which very few Londoners of the present generation have
ever seen opened. But about fifty feet to the right of the central
entrance there is a little green door set in the thickness of the high
brick wall, with a shining bell-push in the lintel. It is through this
door that people who have business with the ducal house, now so void and
empty of living interest, enter and make acquaintance with the great
courtyard in front of the facade.

The big gates during the last few days had been open for several hours
each morning and afternoon, while a policeman had been stationed by
them. Carts full of building materials had been driven in, while the gap
in the wall, which had been made by the bomb, was built up and repaired.

Therefore, Arthur Burnside, in his black bowler hat and unfashionable
overcoat, did not trouble to ring the electric bell, which brought the
ducal porter to the little door in the wall, but turned in at the main
entrance.

The policeman knew him, and, vaguely recognising him as a henchman of
the _entourage_, saluted as the young scholar of Paul's went by. The
great front door of the house was closed. Six people lived in the empty
palace and kept its solitariness warm, but there was a side entrance
which they used, and which Burnside, since Colonel Simpson had confirmed
the dukes' appointment, used also.

He went in, walking briskly through the keen air, rang the bell, was
admitted by an under-steward, and hung up his coat and hat in a small
lobby. Then he traversed a longish corridor, pushed open a green baize
door at the end of it, and came into the great central hall of the
house. As he did so he looked round him, stopped, and sighed.

There was a great marble staircase before him, a staircase of white
marble from Carrara, which mounted to a wonderful marble balcony, which
ran round the central square of the famous house. Statues, each one of
which was known and priced minutely in the catalogues of the
connoisseurs, were standing in their cold beauty on the stairway. The
celebrated purple carpet from Teheran ran up to the gallery above. All
round in the hall were huge doors of mahogany, leading to this or that
marvellous _salon_. Another and older carpet of purple, extraordinarily
large and woven in Persia for the late duke many years ago, covered the
tesselated pavement. There were chairs set about, examples of priceless
Chippendale, and little glass-topped tables held collections of
miniatures, which were as well known as they were priceless.

The three pictures which hung in the lower part of the great hall
beneath the gallery, and surrounding the door which led to the library,
were three Gainsboroughs of riant beauty and incomparable value.

But it was all a dead house, a house where nobody lived, a museum of
priceless treasures which nobody ever saw.

As the young man stepped across the heavy carpet, walking upon it as one
walks upon a well-trimmed tennis lawn, he shuddered a little to think
that all this collection of beauty was crammed together in a dead
profusion which appealed to nobody. He said to himself: "How terrible it
all is! How terrible it is to think of this huge palace of art, set in
the very centre of London, closed and shuttered with no appeal to the
world. No one can come and see these lovely and famous things, and I
myself, who appreciate each and every one of them, am oppressed, not
only by the silence and seclusion of it all, but also by the fact that
in this one house there are stored treasures of art so thickly that one
has no time to think about _this_ before the adjacent _other one_ comes
and obscures one's comprehension."

He pushed open the vast panelled door which led to the library and
entered. The library was a huge place, as big as the central room in the
town hall of any flourishing provincial town. The ceiling was designed
by Adams, and the supreme genius of that master of plaster-work seemed
to burgeon out and down into the place, reminding one always that the
great artist had been here. The books, in their glass-fronted cabinets,
reached only to a half-height of the walls. On the top of the shelves
stood the late duke's well-known collection of Chinese porcelain of the
Ming dynasty.

There were three great fires in the place, and each one of them was
glowing now, as the solitary young scholar of Paul's entered and closed
the heavy twelve-foot door behind him.

He went up to the largest fireplace of all, where logs were hissing in
the hot enveloping flame. He turned his back upon it and surveyed the
vast expanse before him. The books in the room were probably worth three
hundred thousand pounds. There were the first four folios of
Shakespeare, there was a great case which held the Vinegar Bible, the
Breeches Bible, and the very earliest black-letter copy of the
Scriptures, printed by Schwartz and Pannheim upon the heights of the
Apennines in fear of their death should it become known.... It was
simply beyond statement, thirty or forty great collections were
comprised in this one room. The young scholar's love of books and
appreciation of their history thrilled at the sight of all this wealth,
thrilled to know that fortune had given him the temporary control of it
all.

Upon a great red leather-covered writing-table, set by the principal
fireside, lay his papers and the calf-bound volumes in which, with
scrupulous care and accurate knowledge, he was completing the work of
cataloguing which the death of his predecessor had left unfinished. He
went towards the table, looked at the records of his first fortnight's
work for a moment or two, sighed a little, and then sat down and
concentrated his mind upon what he had to do.

For several hours he worked steadily--it had been through his great
capacity for steady, uninterrupted and concentrated work that this young
man had risen from the ordinary Board school to the higher-grade school,
and had won the most difficult and brilliant scholarship that the
aristocratic college of St. Paul's at Oxford had in its gift.

Here was a young man determined to get on; nothing could stop him,
nothing could stand in his way. In temperament he was like a steel drill
that, driven by tireless energy, goes lower and lower through the
granite rock, and through the quartz, until at last the desired strata
is reached and won.

He worked the whole morning with hardly a pause. At one o'clock he took
a paper of sandwiches from his pocket and made his simple meal. Then he
worked onwards till three. At that time, feeling that he had done his
duty, or rather more, by his employer the duke, whom, by the way, he had
never seen since his appointment as librarian nor subsequently during
the extraordinary ferment that his Grace's disappearance, reappearance,
and return to health had occasioned in the Press, he put away the
catalogue upon which he was engaged.

Then he opened a drawer in the great writing-table, a locked drawer, and
pulled out a pile of manuscript. He turned it over until the last few
pages were displayed. Then, with a puckered forehead and a mouth which
was undecided only because it was critical, the shabby young man in the
black clothes, surrounded by evidence of incalculable wealth read
steadily at what he designed to be a key which should open modern
political life to him.

He read on and on, now and again making an annotation with his fountain
pen, sometimes waiting for two or three minutes before he scored through
a passage or added a few words. Then at last a clock, a great clock
which had been brought from Versailles, beat out the hour of four with
deep sonorous notes like the voice of an old man.

Burnside pulled his nickel watch from his pocket, saw that it
synchronised with the stately time given by the guardian of the library,
and hurried away.

He crossed the hall, went down the passage which led to the side door,
put on his hat and coat, and disappeared into Piccadilly, quite
forgetting that he had left the last pages of his manuscript upon the
writing-table.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a fortnight since the duke had been allowed to listen to the
reading of the play at the Park Lane Theatre.

When he had heard James Fabian Rose read the work to the company who sat
and stood around upon the grey and empty stage the duke had not been
very much impressed. He had not been impressed--that is to say--with the
actual achievement of Rose's work. He had listened with some
bewilderment to the tags, stage directions, and so forth, and now and
then he had been caught up into a mental reverie by some biting,
stinging paradox or epigram.

As he sat there the duke had been frankly watching Mary Marriott's face
as she listened to the author's words. He saw her eyes light up and
become intent, or flicker down into a strange gloom. He marked the
sudden rigidity of her pose, the relaxation of it when something was
afoot in which she was not particularly concerned, the whole careful
attention and sympathetic watching of the girl. What all this play
meant, he, sitting on a chair on the O.P. side of the stage, could
hardly gather. He realised, nevertheless, by watching Mary, and by
surveying the other members of the company, that the play was obviously
something rather important and out of the usual run of such things.

To him it conveyed little or nothing, but he had become sufficiently
mobile in mind to realise that probably this happening in the grey light
of the afternoon and the shabby surroundings of the stage were yet
instinct with potentiality, and would become--in their full
fruition--something charged with purpose and an appeal to the general
world.

After it was all over he had thanked Rose, Aubrey Flood, and Mary
Marriott, had got into a cab and been driven back to Grosvenor Street.
He was conscious himself at the moment that he had been a little
unresponsive and chilly in his manner, but for the life of him he hadn't
been able to express himself more pleasantly.

"Thank you so much, Miss Marriott," he had said, "for letting me come
here this afternoon. Indeed, Mr. Rose, I think it is most sporting of
you to ask me. For my part, I frankly confess I don't realise what it's
all about! It's all so new to me, you know, to hear something read in
this way, and I cannot grasp it as a whole. At the same time," he
concluded with a weary smile, "at the same time, if this is your attack
upon me, or, rather, upon people like me, then, my dear Mr. Rose, I
think you ought to sharpen your sword."

As he had said this both Aubrey Flood and the great Socialist had
chuckled, while the former remarked, "Wait and see, your Grace. Wait and
see what we can eventually spin out of such dull ritual on such a grey
afternoon as this."

"I will, Mr. Rose," the duke had answered rather shortly, and gone back
to the cheery house in Grosvenor Street.

He had told Lord Hayle and Lady Constance all about his experience of
the afternoon. Neither of them had been very interested, and Lady
Constance remarked that all "excursions into _les coulisses_ must surely
be rather disappointing."

In fact, the Camborne family regarded the whole thing as a rather too
amiable weakness on the part of their guest. The bishop, who was always
running backwards and forwards at this time from his palace at Carlton
to his house in Grosvenor Street, often made a genial jest upon the
subject to the young man. "My dear Paddington," he would say, "how is
the attack going? Ha, ha! Every day, when I open my newspapers, I find
that the general public is being worked up to a perfect froth of
excitement about this forthcoming theatrical enterprise. A peer in the
pillory! The duke in the dock! How amusing it all is!"

Thus the bishop scoffed on more than one occasion, and his witticisms
had no very exhilarating effect upon the duke.

His life in Grosvenor Street was happier with the younger members of the
family. His dear friend Gerald was still as sympathetic and vivid as
ever. Lord Hayle had passed the test of intimate human association, and
come out of it very well. Lady Constance was as ever--beautiful, sweet,
and sympathetic--but the duke was finding that in the very splendour of
the girl's nature and appearance there was something a trifle cloying.
He was deeply in love with her; he knew also that she cared for him, but
for the first time in his guarded, shielded life he saw before him times
of indecision and of trouble. Life, which had seemed so smooth and
stately, so well ordered a thing, was not quite what it had been. The
serene repose of his mind was disturbed by all he had gone through.

Sometimes he went and took tea with Mrs. Rose, and often her husband,
Mr. Conrad, and Mary Marriott were there. He never attempted to argue
with any of them. He took their shafts of wit with a quiet complaisance,
but if they thought that their epigrams had not gone home they were very
deeply mistaken.

One afternoon, tired and troubled, the duke bethought himself of his
great house in Piccadilly. He walked there from Grosvenor Street,
astonished the servants by ringing the bell, and, entering, he moodily
surveyed some of his famous possessions.

Then he turned into the library. The three great fires were burning
down. It was about six o'clock. He switched on the electric light
himself and wandered through the maze of his treasures.

He came up to a table--a huge writing-table, covered with red
leather--and saw upon it five or six sheets of manuscript in careful
handwriting. Forgetting exactly what he was doing, thinking nothing of
the man he had appointed to be librarian, the duke sat down and began to
read.




CHAPTER XVI

ARTHUR BURNSIDE'S VIEWS


This was the document that the duke read with amazement and growing
interest in the great empty library of his palace. It was obviously the
peroration of an important work--


     "Are we already in the position of ancient Rome? Are we moribund?
     No barbarians, indeed, stand with menace of conquering at our
     gates, but it was not the barbarians who overthrew the greatness of
     the Roman Empire. The greatness had already departed long before
     the Huns and Goths swept down upon its walls. In her early strength
     Rome, the capital of the world, would have rolled back her
     invaders, as a rock resists the onslaught of an angry wave; but
     Rome, when she fell, was no longer as she had been in her earlier
     days.

     "And we must ask ourselves now whether our own civilisation, with
     all its wonders, is not tending to a like end? Are we not
     reproducing in faithful detail every cause which led to the
     downfall of the civilisations of other days? We are Imperialists,
     that is to say, we take tribute from conquered races. Great
     fortunes are constantly accumulated, to the defeat of individuals
     in our midst. An enormous population is with us, which owns no
     property, and lives always in grinding poverty. A great portion of
     the land of the country has gone out of cultivation. The physical
     deterioration of Englishmen is a well known and most alarming fact,
     which can be proved over and over again by the statistics of the
     medical schools. I am not concerned here to prove any statements I
     make in the last few lines of this book. They have been proved in
     the earlier portions. This is a summing up.

     "And it is for these reasons that we who are socialists say that
     the system which is producing such appalling results shall not be
     allowed to continue. It is a system which has taken from religion
     much of its natural appeal and consoling power over the hearts and
     souls of the majority. It is a system which has destroyed,
     handicapped, and turned the protection of the useful and necessary
     things of life into a soulless progress of mechanism controlled by
     slaves. It is a system which awards the palm of success to the
     unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on to the
     streets, and transforms upright men into mean-spirited
     time-servers.

     "It cannot continue.

     "In the end it is bound to work its own overthrow.

     "Socialism, with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for
     humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races
     of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must in the end
     prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; Socialism
     throbs with the life of the days that are to be. Socialism has
     claimed its martyrs in the past, and to-day, also, it has claimed
     them. But before long the martyrs in the cause of humanity all will
     see--let us hope and believe from another and better ordered
     life--that their efforts have not been in vain.

     "I write, perhaps, in these last words, from a somewhat academic
     standpoint. I do not think, however, that my readers who have
     followed me so far will accuse me of pure theorising in the earlier
     portions of this work. At the same time, experience is merely the
     lesson learnt by event, and I do not think I shall be unduly
     ponderous if I again, and finally, draw attention to those
     stupendous teachings which the student of history draws from the
     past and applies to the amelioration of the present.

     "It cannot be too loudly proclaimed! Academic evolution necessarily
     goes hand-in-hand with a moral development strictly related to it.
     Nowadays, broken into the individualistic system, we regard with
     astonishment the fierce patriotism which inflamed the little cities
     and republics of antiquity, the States of Greece, the Kingdoms of
     Italy, and even the larger and less civilised hordes of the North.
     Yet, if we regard it for a moment, we shall see that this sentiment
     was merely inspired by the eradicable instinct of
     self-preservation. In the bosom of the clans, in the heart of the
     families, interests were consolidated and the fact was realised.
     And in those days, also, defeat might not only bring ruin and a
     total loss of comfort and worldly possession, but it would also
     mean slavery.

     "In those days, indeed, the conqueror, whether barbarian or not,
     could not fail to appear. He intervened always wherever great
     wealth was amassed in the hands of a population incapable of
     defending it. And, taking these lessons of history to ourselves, we
     can see that, though the whole conditions of society have changed,
     a conqueror must still appear and throw down the existing system
     with all its horrors and anachronisms.

     "Once more let me point out that England at present is dominated by
     certain economic facts.

     "Although there is plenty of food, clothing, and shelter available
     in the country, an enormous population of these islands do not
     obtain enough of any of them to support life properly, or even in
     the simplest way possible, to secure ordinary health and ordinary
     enjoyment of existence.

     "Again, then, the statistics quoted in the earlier part of this
     work inevitably show, with all the rigour of hard facts and
     unassailable statistics, that each year many people die from
     overwork or want.

     "The producers of wealth are poor, miserable, and enslaved, while
     those who enjoy the wealth thus produced in misery are idle,
     corrupt, and enervated by their riches. There are more than a
     million men needing work and wages in England at the present
     moment, while, at the same time, we keep the land of the country
     less than one-quarter tilled.

     "As Mr. John Kenworthy has written, in words which re-echo and
     reverberate in the ears of modern men: 'These accusations are facts
     as palpable and clear as heaven and earth above us and beneath us;
     not to be disputed by any person of ordinary sense. Surely we have
     enough of stupidity and wrong here to certify ourselves a nation
     not only "mostly fools" but largely knaves also.'

     "In truth nobody disputes this state of affairs. You may prove the
     extremest horrors straight from Government Blue Books. Recently
     some very full particulars concerning mining industries were put
     into one of those Government coffins for burying disagreeable
     truths. One might expect that, after having such particulars of
     overwork underpaid and murderous housing thrust into their notice,
     a Parliament which served humanity and not the brood of Mammon
     would sit night and day until the law had done what law can do to
     right these wrongs. But no, the six hundred gentlemen of Parliament
     who play with the mouse-like people in a gentle, cat-like fashion,
     did--just nothing, as usual! No doubt members of Parliament are
     filled with good resolutions to do something for the people; but
     the intentions always go down before the hard fact that doing
     anything for the people is found to mean, in practice, giving up
     some right of property.

     "Upon this one issue, the right of property, the whole social
     question centres. The man who has discovered what the right of
     property means now, and what it ought to mean, and would mean among
     good and honest people, may claim to have solved the problem of
     misery which baffles the nations of the world."


The duke put the manuscript down upon the huge, leather-covered table
and looked at it thoughtfully. He saw the neat, careful writing--the
writing of a man who had been accustomed to write Greek. He smiled to
himself with a dreamy appreciation of the well-known fact that no
scholar writes like an ordinary man, and that always the hand which, in
youth at a public school, has been inured to the careful tracing of
Greek script, betrays itself when writing English by a meticulous care
in the forming of each individual word.

Then, quite suddenly, the duke sat down and leaned back in a
high-cushioned chair. He had not been in his famous library for a very
long time. He felt forlorn and alone in it, and he looked round upon its
glories with a sort of wonder. "Does all this belong to me?" he
thought. "Of course it does, and yet how little I see of it; how little
I know of it! I pay a man merely to catalogue the treasures here."

The electric lights glowed softly all over the vast place and the young
man looked round him with a sigh of perplexity. It did not interest him
very much to know that on all sides were books and manuscripts that were
absolutely priceless. He felt, as he sat there, that the world was a
most perplexing place.

The great mahogany door at the end of the library opened, and the
trusted servant in charge of the staff still maintained in the ducal
house hurried in.

"Your Grace," he said, as he came up to the duke, "can I bring you
anything? Can I do anything?"

The duke had not an idea of the man's name--all these details were
arranged by Colonel Simpson for the young man.

"No, no," he said; "I thank you very much but I don't want anything. I
shall be leaving the house very soon."

"But, your Grace," the man went on, "you will please allow me to make up
the fires?"

"Oh, yes," the duke answered; "you may as well do that, and then you can
leave me alone. I will let myself out."

"I thank your Grace," said the man. And, with noiseless footsteps he
went away.

In two minutes three men were in the library and the dying fires were
revived, until, as the dark came over London, a great red blaze threw
odd contrasts of red light and shadow into the rich place.

The men went away, and when they had gone the duke walked up and down
the room for a minute or two, and then discovered, near the door which
led into the hall, the switches which controlled the electric lights.

He switched off the whole illumination, save only the one standard lamp
upon the writing-table. Then he went back to his seat.

He sat down and looked about him. The ruddy, cheerful light was all
around. Below his eyes upon the table the shaded electric-light lamp
threw a brilliant circle of light upon the manuscripts which he had been
reading. Beyond everything was mysterious.

The duke sighed, and once more took up the manuscript.

"Yes," he said to himself, "if every one was good. That is the whole
point. Now I must finish this. But how extraordinary! I meet a man in my
own college and make him librarian here, and he, too, turns out to be a
Socialist, and to be writing a book upon Socialism. A book which, if I
am not very much mistaken, will simply become the bible of all of them.
Fabian Rose never told me that he knew Burnside! Of course, that is not
very extraordinary, because it would not be in his way to tell me. It
would not have occurred to him. But how strange it is! On all sides, on
all occasions, Fate or Providence seems to have brought me among the
ranks of the Socialists. Well, I'll just finish this."

The duke took up the manuscript once more. There was no rancour in his
heart against the young man who, surrounded by the pomp and luxury of
his employer's property, was nevertheless, and at the same moment,
writing against people such as the duke was.

The duke did not take the attacks very seriously. The forthcoming play
had seemed to him rather futile. All that Rose, Mr. Conrad, and the
group of their friends who met at the house in Westminster, had said
certainly had opened the young man's mind; but nevertheless he had not
felt any of the real force of the attack as yet.

He took up the manuscript and read the remaining pages.

There was a cross-heading upon one, and it was this--


     "THE REAL SOLUTION"

     "The real solution, let me finally say, is indubitably this: I have
     hinted at it throughout the pages of this work. I have tried to
     lead the mind of the reader up towards the discovery of my own
     conviction. Now I state it.

     "If human nature was naturally good, as Jean Jacques Rousseau
     believed it to be, then there would be no social problem. Human
     nature is not temperamentally good. It is temperamentally bad.
     Therefore, before we can reorganise Society we must reorganise
     character.

     "And in what way is it possible to do this? Can it be done by Act
     of Parliament? Can it be done by articles in newspapers and
     reviews? Can it be done by the teaching of altruism at the hands of
     university settlements and propagandists? It cannot be done by any
     of these means.

     "There is only one way in which the individual mind can be reached,
     touched, and influenced so strangely and so completely that the
     influence will be permanent, and the life of the individual will be
     changed.

     "And that way is the Christian way.

     "We must do again, if we are to realise the ideals which burn in
     our hearts, what the Christian Church did in the old days of the
     Roman Empire, and was meant to do in all ages, by means of the Old
     Faith 'once and for all delivered to the saints.' In those dim,
     far-off days the historian knows that Christianity succeeded
     actually in creating a new middle-class--just what was needed--of
     poor men made richer, and rich men made poorer in one common
     brotherhood. Its motto was: For all who want work, work! For those
     who won't work, hunger! But for the old and infirm, provision. And
     this the Church of Christ actually achieved, neither by denouncing
     nor inculcating dogma, but by insisting on and carrying out in
     practice its own remarkable dogmas. It is not the denial of the
     Real Presence at the altar, it is not its affirmation, it is not
     the question of the validity of the apostolic succession nor the
     denial of it, which will make it possible for an English world to
     save itself from the horrors of the present.

     "It will be simply this: That those who believe in Christ as the
     most inspired Teacher the world has ever seen, as God-made-Man,
     come into this world on a great mission of regeneration, that we
     shall see our opportunity.

     "Christianity and Socialism are inextricably entwined. Separate one
     from the other, as so many Socialists of nowadays are endeavouring
     to do, and one or the other--perhaps both--will fail of their high
     ideal, their splendid mission.

     "Combine them, and success is real and assured. We shall all, in
     that happy day, begin to realise the kingdom of heaven; to re-echo
     in this world the dim echo of the heavenly harmonies which may then
     reach us from the new Jerusalem."


The duke put down the manuscript, and with slow, grave steps left his
great library, crossed the famous marble hall, and went up through the
enclosure of his gardens into the roar and surge of Piccadilly.

His face was curiously set and intent, as he walked to Lord Camborne's,
in Grosvenor Street.




CHAPTER XVII

THE COMING OF LOVE


They were dining quite alone at the Cambornes'--the duke, the bishop,
Lord Hayle, and Lady Constance.

When he had changed and came down-stairs the duke went into the
drawing-room. There were still a few minutes before dinner would be
served. He found himself alone, and walked up and down the beautiful
room with a curious physical, as well as mental, restlessness. He felt
out of tune, as it were. The tremendous upheaval in his life which he
had lately experienced was not likely to be forgotten easily. He
realised that, and he realised also--more poignantly perhaps at this
moment than ever before--how rude a shock his life had experienced. All
his ideas must be reconstructed, and the process was not a pleasant one.
From the bottom of his heart he caught himself wishing that nothing had
happened, that he was still without experience of the new sides of life,
to which he had been introduced by such an extraordinary series of
accidents.

"I was happier before," he said to himself aloud. And then, even as he
did so, in a sudden flash he realised that, after all, these new
experiences, disquieting as they were, were exceedingly stimulating. Was
it not better that a man should wake and live, even though it was
disturbing, than remain always in a sleep and a dream, uninfluenced by
actualities?

Some men, he knew, held Nirvana to be the highest good. And there were
many who would drink of the Waters of Lethe, could they but find them.
But these were old or world-weary men. They were men who had sinned and
suffered, and so desired peace. Or they were men whose bodies tormented
them. He was young, strong, rich, and fortunate. He knew that, however
much his newly-awakened brain might fret and perturb him, it was better
to live than to stagnate even in the most gorgeous palace in the
Sleeping Wood.

The simile pleased him as it came to him. As a little boy _Grimm's Fairy
Tales_ had been a wondrous treasure-house, as they have been to nearly
all the upper-class children of England. He saw the whole series of
pictures in the eye of memory. The happiness was not won until the last
scene, when everybody woke up!

In his reverie his thoughts changed unconsciously, and dwelt with an
unaccustomed effort of memory and appreciation upon the old Fairy
Palace, which he had loved so in his youth. He remembered also that, one
day, when of mature age, he had run over to Nice; he had gone with the
Grand Duke Alexis and a few other young men to a cinematograph, for fun,
after a dinner at the _Hotel des Anglais_.

"Le Bois Dormant!" How it had all come back! And also, what a wonderful
thing a cinematograph was! He remembered the flickering beauty of the
girl in the strange mimic representation of the Enchanted Castle!
Certainly, then, he had watched the movement of the pictures with the
interest and amusement of childhood. It was odd, also, that the whole
thing should recur to him now. Was not he also awakening from a sleep,
long enchanted for him by the circumstances of his great wealth and
rank? And then--the Beauty!

He stopped in his walk up and down the great room, and his eyes fell
upon a photograph in a heavy silver frame studded with uncut turquoises,
which stood upon a little table. It was one of Madame Lallie Charles's
pictures, in soft grey platinotype, and it represented Lady Constance
Camborne. The lovely profile, in its supreme and unflawed beauty, came
into his mood as the conception of the fantasy.

Here, here indeed, was the Beauty! and no dream story, etched deep into
the imagination, was ever fairer than this.

He looked long and earnestly at the portrait, thinking deeply, now, of
something which would mean more to his life than anything else.

Since he had been staying at the Bishop's house he had seen much of the
beautiful and radiant society girl. And all he had seen only confirmed
him in his admiration for her beauty and her charm.

Curiously enough, though, he remembered that he had found, as he stood
there reviewing his experiences, that on some occasions his feelings
towards his friend's sister were singularly more passionate than at
others. There were times when his blood pulsed through his veins, and
his whole being rose up in desire to call this lovely girl his own.
There were others when, on the contrary, he admired her from a
standpoint which might even be called detached. Why was this? The
alterations of feeling were quite plainly marked in his memory. Was
it--and a sudden light seemed to flash in his mind--was it that when he
had been with Mary Marriott his passion for Lady Constance had cooled
for a time? He dismissed the thought impatiently, not liking it, angry
that it should have come to him.

Mary was as beautiful in her way as Lady Constance. Her charm was not so
explicit, but perhaps it was as great. But, then, Mary Marriott was just
an actress, and nobody.

He crushed down the unwelcome thought, for, despite all his new
knowledge and experience, the old traditions of his breed and training
were strong within him. He was the Duke of Paddington, and his mind must
not stray into strange paths!

He was standing in the middle of the room, looking down, and frowning
to himself. The subtle scent of the hot-house flowers which were massed
in great silver bowls here and there mingled strangely with the sense of
warmth from the great fires which had a strangely drowsy influence upon
him.

Once more he was within the precincts of the Chateau dans le Bois
Dormant.

"A penny for your thoughts, duke!" cut into his reverie.

He started and looked up.

Lady Constance stood before him, with her radiant smile and wonderful
appeal. She swung a little fan of white feathers from one wrist. She
wore a long, flowing black crepe de chine Empire gown, scintillating
here and there with rich passementerie embroideries and jet
ornamentations. The dress was rich in its simplicity, graceful and
flowing, it possessed the art that concealed art, and showed off to
wonderful advantage the wearer's youthful beauty and glorious hair, the
whiteness of her neck and arms against the shimmer of the black. It had
been made by Worth, and only made more explicit the wonderful coronet of
corn-ripe hair, surmounting a face as lovely as ever Raphael or Michael
Angelo dreamt of and set down upon their canvases. She made an
_ensemble_ so sudden in its appearance, so absolutely overwhelming in
its appeal, that for one of the first times in his life the duke was
taken aback and blushed and stammered like a boy.

"I really do not know," he said at length. "I was in a sort of brown
study, Lady Constance!"

"Well," she replied, "the offer of a penny, or should it be twopence? is
still open; but if you are not going to deal, as the Americans say,
explain to me the meaning of the words 'brown study.'"

"I am afraid that is beyond me, Lady Constance," he returned, smiling,
and feeling at ease again.

Just as he spoke Lord Hayle and the bishop entered, and they all went
down to dinner.

They sat at a small oval table, and every one was in excellent spirits.
The duke's troubles seemed to have left him. He felt exhilarated and
stimulated, and a half-formed purpose in his mind grew clearer and
clearer as the meal went on.

He would ask the radiant girl opposite him to be his wife.

He would ask her that very night if an opportunity presented itself. She
was utterly, overwhelmingly charming. There was nobody like her in
society. She was as unique among the high-born girls of the day as Ellen
Terry was in the height of her charm and beauty upon the stage, when
Charles Reade wrote the famous passage about her.

Yes, nothing could be better. She was like champagne to him--she was the
most beautiful thing in the world--at the moment she was the most
desirable. The ready influence of her talk and laughter stole into his
brain. He was captured and enthralled. He thought that this at last was
Love.

For he did not know, being a young man with great possessions, but few
experiences, that Love does not come upon the wings of light and
laughter, but wears a sable mantle, shot through with fires from heaven.
He had never loved, and so he did not know that, when the divine
blessing of love is vouchsafed, there is a catch in the throat and the
tears start into the eyes.

He talked well and brilliantly, relating his experiences of that
afternoon.

"So you see," he said, "I went into my great lonely house by a side
door--the butler's door, I believe it is called as a matter of fact, and
I found the library very warm and comfortable, and with the man I had
appointed to be librarian gone. He apparently had just finished his
day's work of cataloguing. He is a scholar of my own college and a very
decent chap I have found him. He wanted some paid work during the
vacations to help him on towards his career at the bar--he is going to
be called as soon as he possibly can. I understand that he is certain
for a double first. Already he has got his first in mods. and he will
get a first in history, too."

"I know the man," Lord Hayle said. "Poor chap! He does not look too well
provided with this world's goods."

"But I thought every one at Paul's," Lady Constance said, "was
well-to-do. Is it not quite the nicest college in Oxford?"

"Oh, yes, Connie," Lord Hayle replied, "but don't you see, there are
some scholarships upon the Foundation which make it possible for quite
poor men to live at Paul's. They are very much out of it, naturally.
They cannot live with the other men, and so they form a little society
of themselves. Still, it is a jolly good thing for them, I suppose," he
concluded rather vaguely, and with the young patrician's slight contempt
for, and lack of interest in people, of the class to which Arthur
Burnside belonged.

"Well, I like the man well enough--what I have seen of him," the duke
continued. "But I made an extraordinary discovery to-day. Upon the
writing-table where he had been working was some manuscript. It was
obviously the last chapter of a book, and, by Jove! it was a book of the
rankest Socialism!"

"Socialism?" said the bishop. "My dear Paddington get rid of the young
man at once. Such people ought not to be encouraged!"

"Such people are very charming sometimes, bishop," the duke replied.
"You know that I probably owe my life to the chief Socialist of them
all--Fabian Rose."

"Well, well," the bishop replied, "I suppose it would be unfair to
deprive this young Mr. Burnside of his opportunity. At the same time, I
must say it is extraordinary how these pernicious socialistic doctrines
are getting abroad. Fabian Rose, and his friends, however personally
charming and intellectual they may be--and, of course, I do not deny
that some of them are very clever fellows--are doing an amount of harm
to the country that is incalculable."

"They are clever," the duke returned, in a somewhat meditative voice;
"they are, indeed, clever. This manuscript that I read was certainly a
brilliant piece of special pleading, and, as a matter of fact, I don't
quite understand what the answer to it can be."

"It does seem hard," Lady Constance said with a little sigh, "that we
should have everything, and so many other people have nothing. After
all, father, in the sight of God we are all equal, are we not?"

The bishop smiled. "In the sight of God, my dear," he answered, "we are
certainly all equal. The soul of one man is as precious as the soul of
another. But in this world God has ordained that certain classes should
exist, and we must not presume to question His ordinance. Our Lord said:
'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.'"

"But what I cannot see," the duke broke in, "is why, when wealth is
produced by labour, the people who produce it should have no share in
it. Don't think, Lord Camborne, that I am a Socialist, or infected in
any way with socialistic doctrines." He spoke more rashly than he knew.
"But I should like to know the economic answer to the things which Mr.
Rose, and Mr. Conrad, and their friends told me when I was ill."

"The answer," replied the bishop, "is perfectly simple. It is intellect,
and not labour, that is the creator of wealth. Let me give you a little
example."

As he spoke he placed his elbows upon the table, joined the tips of his
fingers together, and looked at his young audience with a suave smile.

"Let me instance the case of a saw!"

"A saw, father?" Lady Constance said. "What on earth has a saw to do
with Socialism?"

"Listen," the bishop replied, "and I will tell you. If a saw had not
been invented, planks, which are absolutely necessary for the
construction of building, and, indeed, for almost all the conveniences
of modern life, must be split up out of the trunks of trees by means of
wedges, a most clumsy and wasteful method.

"Your labourer says that he produces wealth which the planks make. This,
of course, is an absolute fallacy. Labour alone might rend the trunk of
a tree into separate pieces, though, to be sure, it would be a difficult
business enough. But only labour, working with tools, could split up the
trunk of a tree with wedges, saw it with a saw, or cut it with a knife.
Don't you see, my dear Connie, labour makes the noise, but it is
intellect which is responsible for the tune. Men move by labour, but
they only move effectually and profitably by intellect. Labour is the
wind, intellect the mill. Though there is as much wind blowing about now
as there was three thousand years ago, some of it now grinds corn, saves
time, and increases wealth. This difference is due, not to the wind, but
to the wiser utilisation of the wind through intellect.

"And the same is true of labour. Without the inventions and the
improvements of the few, labour would produce a bare subsistence for
naked savages. It could not, however, produce wealth, because wealth is
essentially something over and above a bare subsistence. A bare
subsistence means consuming as fast as producing; and thus, all that
labour does when not enabled to be efficient and profitable by the
superior intelligence of the few.

"So that the real truth is that wealth, as such, is something over and
above a mere subsistence, and, so far from being due to labour, is
rather due to that diminution of toil which enables things to be
produced more quickly than they are consumed. But such diminution is due
to the time-shortening processes, methods, and inventions of the few.
The fact is that the general mass of men are of far too dull and
clownish a character to do much for real advancement.

"Any forward step which produces wealth is taken by somebody in
particular, and not by everybody in general.

"Of course it is easy enough to copy and profit by inventions and
improvements after somebody else has made them."

The bishop stopped, and sipped his glass of Contrexeville, looking with
a pleased smile at the young people before him.

No one could talk with a more accurate and sustained flow of English
than Lord Camborne. He knew it. The public knew it, and he knew that the
public knew it.

From some men such a sustained monologue would have been excessively
tedious, even though the people to whom it was addressed were, like Miss
Rose Dartle, "anxious for information." In the bishop, however, there
was such a blandness and suavity--he was such a handsome old man, and
had cultivated the grand manner to such perfection--that he really was
able, on all occasions, to indulge in his favourite amusement without
boring anybody at all. He was, in short, one of the few men in Europe
who could enjoy the pleasure of hearing himself talk at considerable
length without an uneasy feeling that, in giving way to his ruling
passion, he was not alienating friends.

"I see, father!" Lady Constance said as the stately old gentleman
concluded his rounded periods. But there was a slight note of
indifference in her voice. The bishop did not hear it, Lord Hayle did
not hear it, but the duke detected it with a slight sensation of
surprise. His senses were sharpened to apprehend every inflection in
the voice of the girl he loved. And he wondered that she, apparently,
was a little bored by the bishop's explanation.

He did not realise, being a young man, and one who had enjoyed a long
minority, and had known but little of his parents, that, even though a
prophet may sometimes have honour in his own country, his children do
not always pay him his due meed of recognition when he is, so to speak,
"unbuttoned and at home."

The duke had never heard the story of the angry old gentleman who was
threatening two little boys, who had thrown some orange peel at him,
with the imminent arrival of a policeman upon the other side of the
road. "Garn!" said the little boys in chorus. "Why, that's farver!"

The duke himself was intensely interested in the bishop's logical and
singularly powerful exposition of socialistic fallacies.

He had been uneasy for a long time now. He had had an alarming suspicion
that the arguments of Fabian Rose and his companions were unanswerable,
and, on that very afternoon, he had been specially struck by the vigour
and force of the concluding chapter of Arthur Burnside's book.

Now he was reinstated in all his old ideas. His mental trouble seemed to
pass away like a dream. The world was as it had been before! The
remainder of the dinner passed off as brightly and merrily as it had
begun. Lord Camborne was a charming host. He could tell stories of the
great people of the Victorian Era, for he had been upon intimate terms
with all of them. As a young man he had sat with Lord Tennyson in a
Fleet Street chop-house in the first days of the _Saturday Review_. He
had been in Venice when Browning wrote that beautiful poem beginning--


     "Oh, to be in England, now that April's there!"


and had been cynically amused at the poet's steadfast determination to
remain in the City of Palaces until the cold weather of his native land
was definitely over.

He had been an honoured guest at the wedding of the Prince and Princess
of Wales, and many years afterwards he had sat at the hospitable table
of Sandringham, and had reminded the King and Queen of the scene of
their marriage.

It was very fascinating to the duke to hear these stories told with a
delicate point and wit, and with the air which reminded the young man
pleasantly of the fact that he, too, all his life, had been of these
people, and was, indeed, a leader in England.

Since his association with Fabian Rose--an association which pleased and
interested him, he had, nevertheless, found a great diminution of his
own importance. That sense had been so carefully cultivated from his
very earliest years that the loss of it had occasioned him much
uneasiness. Now it all seemed restored to him. He was in his own proper
_milieu_, and as he looked constantly at Lady Constance Camborne, more
and more he felt that here, indeed, was his destined bride.

Lord Camborne, himself one of the astutest and shrewdest readers of
character in England, gathered something of what was passing in the
young man's mind. He wanted the duke for a son-in-law. It was all so
eminently suitable. The two young people were both exactly the two young
people who ought to marry each other. The news of their engagement
would, the bishop knew, be very welcome at Court, and society would
acclaim it as the most fitting arrangement that could be made.

"If I am not very much mistaken," the old gentleman thought to himself,
"the dear boy will ask Connie to marry him to-night. I must see if an
opportunity cannot be arranged."

Lord Hayle, as it happened, was going to a bridge-party of young men,
which was to be held in one of the card-rooms at the Cocoa Tree Club. He
had asked the duke to accompany him, but the duke had already refused.

"I hate cards, my dear Gerald, as you know; and, really, I am not
feeling too fit to-night."

"Very well, then," the bishop said, "we will smoke a cigar and have a
chat, Paddington, and perhaps Connie will make some music for us? Sir
William expressly asked me to see that you did not do too much, and went
early to bed, after your terrible experiences, and I am not going to
let you spoil your recovery."

"What a pompous old bore Sir William is," the duke said, laughing. "But
I suppose he really does know about what he says."

"The greatest doctor alive at present," said the bishop.

Lady Constance did not leave the table after dessert, as they were all
so intimate and at home. The young men were allowed to light their
cigarettes, the bishop preferring to go to the library before he smoked.

Suddenly Lady Constance, who had cracked an almond, held out the kernel
to the duke.

"Look," she said with almost childish glee, "this nut has two kernels.
Now, let us have a phillipine. Will you, duke?"

"Of course I will, Lady Constance," he answered. "We must arrange all
about it. I forget the rules. Is it not the first person who says
'phillipine' to-morrow morning who wins?"

"That's it," she answered. "Now, what are you going to give me, or what
am I going to give you?"

"Whatever you like," said the duke.

"Well, you choose first," said Lady Constance.

"I don't quite know what I want," said the duke.

The bishop laughed softly. Things were going excellently well.

"Surely, my dear boy," he said, "even you--fortunate as you are--cannot
say that there is nothing in the world that you don't want?"

"I know!" the duke answered suddenly, with a quick flush. "There is one
thing which I want very much!"

"Well, then, if it is not too expensive," Lady Constance said, "and if
you win, of course, I will give it to you. But what is it?"

"I don't think I will tell you now," the duke replied. "We will wait and
see the issues. But what do you want, Lady Constance?"

"Well, I don't know, either," she said. "Oh, yes, I do. I saw Barrett's
the other day--the place in Piccadilly, you know--there were some
delightful little ivory pigs. I should like a pig to add to my
collection of charms. I meant to have bought one then, only I was rather
in a hurry, and besides, your chain charms ought always to be given to
you if they are to bring you good luck."

"Very well, then, that is settled," said the duke.

"I don't think it is at all fair, all the same," she said, "not to tell
me what your prize is to be if you win."

"My resolution upon that point is inflexible, Lady Constance," he
answered.

Then there was a curious momentary silence. Nobody looked at the other.
Lord Hayle was thinking of the bridge-party to which he was going. The
bishop had realised what the duke meant, and was wondering if his
daughter had realised it also. The duke wondered if, carried away by
the moment, he had been a little too explicit. Lady Constance? What did
Lady Constance wonder?

The bishop saved the situation, if, indeed, it needed salvage.

"Well," he said, "shall we go into the drawing-room? Gerald, I know,
wants to get away, and I and Paddington will be allowed to smoke, as
there's nobody else there. Connie won't mind, I know."

"Oh, I sha'n't mind a bit," Lady Constance answered. "Father's
disgraceful when we're alone. He smokes everywhere. But the butler has
invented a wonderful way of removing all traces of smoke in the air by
the next morning. He makes one of the maids put down a couple of great
copper bowls full of water, and they seem to absorb it all. Then, we
will go."

Laughing and chatting together, they passed out of the dining-room and
mounted to the drawing-rooms on the first floor.

Lord Camborne and his guest sat by one of the fire-places and played a
game of chess. Lady Constance was at the Erard, some distance away. Her
touch of the piano was perfect, and she played brilliant little trifles,
snatches from Grieg or Chopin, and once she played a Tarantelle of
Miguel Arteaga--a flashing, scarlet thing, instinct with the heat and
spirit of the South.

The bishop won the game of chess. He was, as a matter of fact, though
the duke did not know it, one of the finest amateurs of the game then
living.

The duke was at his best an indifferent performer.

A minute or two after the game was over Mr. Westinghouse, the chaplain,
came into the drawing-room. He had been dining in his own rooms that
night, as he was very busy upon some special correspondence for the
bishop. It was then that Lord Camborne saw his chance.

"Westinghouse," he said, "I think we had better go through those letters
now, because some of them are most important. I am sure, Paddington, you
will excuse me for a few minutes? Come along, Westinghouse, and we will
get the whole thing done, and then we will come back, and my daughter
will sing to us."

Together the two clergymen left the drawing-room.

Lady Constance was still at the piano, playing soft and dreamy music to
herself.

The duke was standing in front of the fire looking out upon the great
room lit with its softly-shaded electric lights. The harmonies of colour
at that discreet and comfortable hour blended charmingly. It was a room
designed by some one who knew what a beautiful room should be. The
flowers standing about everywhere blended into the colour scheme. It was
as lovely a place as could be found in London on that winter's night.

The duke stood there, tall, young-looking, and with that unmistakable
aura which "personality" gives--motionless, and saying nothing. His head
was a little bowed; he was thinking deeply.

Suddenly he left the hearth-rug, took three quick steps out into the
middle of the room, and then walked up to the piano. He leant over it
and looked at the beautiful girl, who went on playing, smiling up at
him.

"What are you playing?" he asked.

"It is the incidental music of a little play called _Villon_ by Alfred
Calmour," she said. "I don't know who wrote the music in the first
instance, but it was afterwards collected and welded into a sort of
musical pictorial account of the play. You know about Villon, I
suppose?"

"He was a French medieval poet, wasn't he? And rather a rascal, too?"
the duke said.

"Yes," she replied. "The story is this: Villon lived with robbers and
cut-throats, despite all his beautiful poetry. One night he and two
friends, called Beaugerac and Rene de Montigny, decided to rob an old
man, who was said to have a lot of money stowed away. His name was
Gervais.

"It was a bitter night in old Paris, and people said that wolves would
be coming into the streets. The rich man's house was on the outskirts of
the town. Villon is to go to the house, knock at the door, and ask for
shelter. Then, when he is once inside, he is to make a signal to
Beaugerac and Montigny, who are to rush in and kill the old man, tie up
his daughter, who lives with him, and take away the money.

"Villon goes through the snow, and is admitted by the daughter, Marie.

"The old man is there, and asks him to sit down and share their simple
supper. Villon does so, and during the meal the old man says: 'What is
your name, stranger, who have come to us to share our meal this cold
winter's night?"

"Taken unawares, Villon told the truth. 'I, sir,' he said, 'am one
Francois Villon, a poor master of arts of the University of Paris.'

"'Villon!' says the girl suddenly. 'Villon, the poet!'

"'None other! At your service, mademoiselle,' he answers, rising.

"'Villon!' said the old man, 'Villon, the poet! who associates with
cut-throats and robbers? Begone from my house!'

"'Sir,' the poet answers, 'I wish you a very good night. Mademoiselle,
you have then read my poems?'

"'Ay, and loved them truly,' Mary answers in a whisper.

"'Begone!' Gervais says once more.

"Villon casts a last look at the girl and goes to the door and opens it.
Flakes of snow are driven in by the wind as he does so. There is a
sudden snarl of anger, a shriek of pain, and then a low gurgle.

"Beaugerac and Montigny have watched their confederate through the
window, sitting at supper, and have come to the conclusion that he has
betrayed them. So Villon lies dying on the threshold as they rush away,
frightened at what they have done, and the girl bends over him and
places a crucifix upon his lips."

She stopped. "Now then," she said, "I will play you the piece. It is
marvellously descriptive of the little story of the play."

Her face, as she looked up at him, was so sweet and lovely, so throbbing
with the pity of the little tale, that he could hesitate no longer.

"No," he said, "you shall not play me the music now. Listen, oh, my
dear, listen instead to my story, because I love you!"




CHAPTER XVIII

A LOVER, AND NEWS OF LOVERS


Mary Marriott sat alone in her little flat at the top of the old house
in Bloomsbury. The new year had begun, bright and cold from its very
first day until the present--eight days after its birth.

The terrible fogs and depression of the old year had vanished as if they
had never been. On such a morning as this was they seemed but a dim
memory.

And yet how much had happened during those weeks when London lay under a
leaden pall. For Mary at least they had been the most eventful weeks of
her life.

Everything had been changed for her. From obscurity she had been given
an unparalleled opportunity of gaining fame--swift and complete--a fame
which some of the best judges in London told her was already assured.
Nor was this all, stupendous though it was. A few weeks ago she had been
as friendless and lonely a girl as any in London; now she had troops of
friends, distinguished, brilliant, and fascinating, and among all these
kind people she was, as it were, upon a pedestal. They regarded her as a
great artist, took her on trust as that; they regarded her also as a
tremendous force to aid the victory of the Cause they had at heart.

And there was more even than this. In the old days her art had always
been her one ideal in life. The art of the theatre was everything to
her. It was so still, but it was welded and fused with another ideal.
Art for art's sake, just that and nothing more, was welded and fused
with something new and uplifting. She saw how her art might become a
means of definitely helping forward a movement which had for its object
the relief of the down-trodden and oppressed, the doing away with
poverty and misery, the ushering in--at last--of the Golden Age! She was
to fulfil her artistic destiny, to do the work she came into the world
to do, and at the same time to consecrate that work to the service of
her sisters and brethren of England.

In all the socialistic ranks there was no more enthusiastic convert than
this lovely and brilliant girl. She was singing now as she sat in her
little room, and the crisp, bright winter sunshine poured into it;
crooning an old Jacobite song, though her eyes were fixed upon the
typewritten manuscript of her part in the new play at the Park Lane
Theatre. Her ivory brow was wrinkled a little, for she was deep in
thought over a detail of her work--should the voice drop at the end of
that impressive line, or would not the excitement in which it was to be
uttered give it a sharper and more staccato character?--it required
thinking out.

The little sitting-room was not quite the same as it had been. Another
bookshelf had been added, and it was filled with the literature of
Socialism. On the top shelf was a long row of neat volumes bound in
grey-green, the complete works of James Fabian Rose, presented to Mary
by the author himself. All over the place masses of flowers were
blooming, pale mauve violets from the Riviera, roses of sulphur and
blood-colour from Grasse, striped carnations from Nice. Mary had many
friends now who sent her flowers. They came constantly, and her tiny
room was redolent of sweet odours. The walls of the room now bore
legends painted upon them in quaint lettering. Mr. Conrad, the
socialistic clergyman, Fabian Rose's friend, was clever with his brush,
and had indeed decorated his church with fresco work. He had painted
sentences and socialistic texts upon the walls of Mary's sitting-room.

"The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them
all," was taken from the Book of Proverbs and painted over the door.
Upon the board over the fire, painted in black letter, was this
quotation from Sir Thomas More: "I am persuaded that till property is
taken away there can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor
can the world be happily governed, for so long as that is maintained the
greatest and the far best of mankind will be still oppressed with a
load of cares and anxieties."

There were many other pregnant and pithy sayings upon the walls, and
Mary, who used to speak of her cosy little attic as her "sanctum" or
"nest," now laughingly called it her "Profession of faith."

Mary also was not quite as she had been. A larger experience of life,
new interests, new friends, and, above all, a new ideal had added to her
grace and charm of manner, given fulness and maturity even to her
beauty. More than ever she was marvellously and wonderfully alive,
charged with a kind of radiant energy and force, a joyous power of true
correspondence with environment which had made Conrad whisper to James
Fabian Rose--one night in the house at Westminster: "For she on
honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise." Indeed, her
experiences had been strangely varied and diversified during the last
few weeks.

Rose and his friends had spared nothing in the effort to make her a very
perfect instrument which should interpret their ideas to the world at
large. They had found their task not only easy, but full of intense
pleasure. The girl was so responsive, so quick to mark and learn, of
such an enthusiastic and original temper of mind that her education on
new lines was a specific joy, and their first hopes seemed already
assured of fruition.

It was now only a few days before the play upon which so many hopes
depended was to be produced at the Park Lane Theatre.

Already the whole of London was in a fever of curiosity about it. Mr.
Goodrick had begun the stimulation of public curiosity in the _Daily
Wire_, Lionel Westwood had continued the work until the whole Press had
interested itself and daily teemed with report, rumour, and conjecture.

Almost everyone in the metropolis knew that something quite out of the
ordinary, unprecedented, indeed, in the history of the theatre was
afoot. Absolutely correct information there was none. Goodrick was
reserving full and accurate details for the day before the production,
when the _Daily Wire_ promised a complete and authoritative statement of
an absolutely exclusive kind.

The three facts which had leaked out in more or less correct fashion,
and which were responsible for much of the eager curiosity of London,
were the three essential ones. _The Socialist_, which was announced as
the title of the play, was known to be the first step in an organised
attempt to use the theatre as a method of socialistic propaganda. It was
also said that the play was indubitably the masterpiece of James Fabian
Rose. This in itself was sufficient to attract marked interest.

Secondly, every one seemed to be aware that a young actress of
extraordinary beauty and talent had been discovered in the provinces and
was about to burst into the theatrical firmament as a full-fledged
star, a new Duse or Bernhardt, a star of the first magnitude.

Again, there were the most curious rumours afloat in regard to the
actual plot of the play. It was said that the whole scheme was nothing
more or less than a virulent attack upon a certain great nobleman who
owned a large portion of the West End of London and whose name had been
much in the public mouth of late. No newspaper had as yet ventured to
print the actual name, but it was a more or less open secret that the
Duke of Paddington was meant.

Mary had seen but little of the duke, and then she had thought his
manner altered. She had met him once or twice at the Roses' house, and
he seemed to her to have lost his usual serenity. He was as a man on
whose mind something weighs heavily. Restless, and with a certain appeal
in his eyes. He looked, Mary reflected upon one of these occasions, like
a man who had made some great mistake and was beginning to find it out.
She had had little or no private talk with him except on one occasion,
and then only for a moment.

One afternoon the duke had taken her and Mrs. Rose to Paddington House
in Piccadilly, and showed the two ladies the treasures of the historic
place. It was an old-standing promise, dating from the time of his
illness at Westminster, that he should do so.

He had called for them in his motor-brougham, and they had noticed his
restlessness and depression, both of which seemed accentuated. After a
little while the young man's spirits began to improve, and he had not
been with them for half an hour when he became bright and animated. In
some subtle way he managed to convey to Mary--and she knew that she was
not mistaken--a sense that he was glad to see her, glad to be with her,
that he liked her.

When they were in the picture gallery Mrs. Rose had walked on a few
yards to examine a Goya, and the two younger people were left alone for
a minute.

"I have secured my box for the first performance of _The Socialist_,
Miss Marriott," the duke said.

Mary flushed a little, she could not help it. "I am sure----" she began,
and then hesitated as to what she should say.

"You mean that I had better not come," the duke answered with a smile.
"Oh, I don't think I shall mind Rose's satire, judging from what I heard
when the play was read, at any rate, and, besides, I quite understand
that it is not I personally who am shot at so much as that I am
unfortunately a sort of typical target. The papers I see are full of it
and all my friends are chaffing me."

Mary looked at him, her great eyes full of doubt and musing. There was
something in his voice which touched her--a weariness, a sadness. "I
don't know," she said, "but I think it very likely that when you see the
play as it is now you will find it hits harder than you expect. We are
all very much in earnest. I think it is very good of you to come at all.
I hope at any rate that you will forgive me my part in it. You and I
live in very different ways of life, but since we have met once or twice
I should not like you to think hardly of me."

She spoke perfectly sincerely, absolutely naturally, as few people ever
spoke to him.

The duke's answer had been singular, and Mary did not forget it. "Miss
Marriott," he said in a voice which suddenly became intensely earnest
and vibrated strangely, "let me say this, once and for all, Never, under
any circumstances whatever, could I think hardly or unkindly of you. To
be allowed to call myself your friend, if, indeed, I may be so allowed,
is one of the greatest privileges I possess or ever can possess."

He had been about to say more, and his eyes seemed eloquent with further
words, when Mrs. Rose rejoined them. Mary heard him give a little weary
sigh, saw the light die out of his eyes, and something strangely like
resignation fall over his face.

She had wondered very much at the time what were the causes of the
recent changes in the duke's manner, what trouble assailed him. When he
had spoken to her in the picture gallery there had been almost a note of
pleading in his voice. It hurt her at the time, and she had often
recalled it since, more especially as she had seen nothing of him for
some time. He had not been to see the Roses, and had, it seemed, quite
dropped out of the life of Mary and her friends.

The girl was sorry, perhaps more sorry than she cared to admit to
herself. Quite apart from the romance of their first meeting, without
being in any way influenced by the unique circumstances of his rank and
wealth, Mary liked the duke very much indeed. She liked him better,
perhaps, than any other man she had ever met. It was always a pleasure
to her to be in his society, and she made no disguise about it to
herself.

Mary put down the manuscript of the play and glanced at the little
carriage clock, covered in red leather, which stood on the mantelshelf.

It was eleven o'clock, and she had to be at the theatre at the half hour
to meet Aubrey Flood and discuss some details of stage business with
him. Then she was to lunch with the Roses at Westminster, after which
she would return to the theatre and begin a rehearsal, which, with a
brief interval for dinner, might last till any hour of the night.

She put on her hat and jacket, descended the various flights of stairs
which led to her nest in the old Georgian mansion, and walked briskly
towards Park Lane.

Mr. Flood had not yet arrived, she was told by the stage-door keeper,
and thanking him she passed down a short stone passage and pushed open
the swing door which led directly on to the stage itself.

She was in a meditative mood that morning, and as her feet tapped upon
the boards of the huge empty space she wondered if indeed she was
destined to triumph there. Was this really to be the scene in which she
would realise her life-long dreams or---- She put the ugly alternative
away from her with a shudder and fell to considering her part, walking
the boards and taking up this or that position upon them in solitary
rehearsal.

The curtain was up and the enormous cavern of the auditorium in gloom,
save only where a single pale shaft of sunlight filtered through a
circular window in the roof. The brown holland which covered all the
seats and gilding seemed like some ghostly audience. To Mary's right, on
the prompt side of the proscenium, a man stood upon a little railed-in
platform some eight feet above the stage-floor level. He was an
electrician, and was busy with the frame of black vulcanite, full four
feet square and covered with taps and switches of brass. From here the
operator would control all the lights of the stage as the play went on.
A click, and the moon would rise over the garden and flood it with soft,
silver light; a handle turned this way or that, and the lights of the
mimic scene would rise or die and flood the stage with colour--colour
fitted to the emotion of the moment, as the music of the orchestra would
be fitted to it also--science invoked once more to aid the great
illusion.

Mary looked up at the man and the thought came to her swiftly. Yes, it
was illusion, a strange and dream-like phantasma of the truth! She
herself was a shadow in a dream, moving through unrealities, animated by
art, so that the dream should take shape and colour, and the others--the
real people--on the other side of the footlights should learn their
lesson and take a forceful memory home. It was a strange and confusing
thought, remote from actuality, as her mood was at that moment. She
looked upwards into a haze of light, far away among the network of beams
and ropes and hanging scenery of the "grid."

A narrow-railed bridge crossed the open space nearly forty feet above
her. Two men in their shirt-sleeves were standing there talking, small
and far away. They seemed like sailors on the yard of a ship, seen from
the deck below.

The girl had seen it all a thousand times before, under every aspect of
shifting light and colour, but to-day it had a certain unfamiliarity and
strangeness. She realised that she was not quite herself, her usual
self, this morning, though for what reason she could not divine. Perhaps
the strain of hard work, of opening her mind to new impressions and
ideals, was beginning to tell a little upon her. Life had changed too
suddenly for her, perhaps, and, above all, there was the abiding sense
of waiting and expectation. Her triumph or her failure were imminent.
One thing or the other would assuredly happen. But, meanwhile, the
waiting was trying, and she longed for the moment of fruition--this way
or that.

Her reverie was broken in upon. With quick footsteps, quick footsteps
which echoed on the empty stage, Aubrey Flood came up to her. He was
wearing a heavy fur coat, the collar and cuffs of Persian lamb. His hat
was of grey felt--a hard hat--for he had a little farm down at Pinner,
where he went for week-ends, and affected something of the country
gentleman in his dress.

Mary was glad to see him at last, not only because she had been waiting
for him to discuss business matters, but because a friendly face at this
moment cut into her rather weary and dreamy mood, and brought her back
to the life of the moment and the movement of the day.

"Oh, here you are!" she said gladly. "I've been waiting quite a long
time, and I've been in the blues, rather. The empty theatre, when one is
the only person in it, suggests horrible possibilities for the future,
don't you think?"

He answered her quickly. "No, I don't think anything of the sort. Mary,
you are getting into that silly nervous state which comes to so many
girls before the first night, the first important night, I mean. You
must not do it, I won't allow it, I won't let you. You're overstrained,
of course. We're all very much over-strained. So much depends upon the
play. But, all the same, we all know that everything is sure and
certain. So cheer up, Mary."

Flood had called her by her Christian name for two weeks now. The two
had become friends. The celebrated young actor-manager and the unknown
provincial actress had realised each other in the kindliest fashion. The
girl had never met a cleverer, more artistic, nor more chivalrous man in
the ranks of her profession, and Flood himself, a decent, clean-living
citizen of London, had not grasped hands with a girl like Mary for many
months.

Mary Marriott sighed. "Oh," she said, "it's all very well for you to
talk in that way. But you know, Mr. Flood, how all of you have poured
the whole thing on to me, as it were. You have insisted that I am the
pivot of it all, and there are moments when it is too overwhelming and
one gets tired and dispirited."

"Don't talk nonsense," he answered quickly.

"All right, then, I won't," she replied. "Now let's go into the question
of that business in the second act. My idea is, that Lord Winchester
should----"

He cut her short with a single exclamation. "That's a thing we can talk
over later," he said. "At the moment I have something more important to
say."

Mary stopped. Flood's voice was very earnest and urgent. She felt that
he had discovered some flaw in the conduct of the rehearsals, that some
very serious hitch had occurred.

Her voice was anxious as she said that they had better discuss the thing
immediately. "I hope that it's nothing very serious," she said, alarmed
by the disturbance in his voice. "I am going to lunch with the Roses,
and as you're late I ought to be off in a few minutes. But what's gone
wrong?"

"As yet," he replied, "nothing has gone wrong at all."

"I hope nothing will," she said, by now quite alarmed by his tone.
"Please tell me at once."

"I can't tell you here," he replied. "Would you mind coming into my
room?"

She followed him, wondering.

They went into Flood's private room. It faced west, and the winter sun
being now high in the heavens did not penetrate there at this hour. The
fire was nearly out, only a few cinders glowed with their dull black and
crimson on the hearth.

"How cheerless!" Mary said as she came into the room.

With a quick movement Aubrey Flood turned to the wall. There was a
succession of little clicking noises, and then the electric light leaped
up and the place was full of a dusky yellow radiance.

"That's better," he said in a curiously muffled voice, "though it's not
right. Somehow I know it's not right. No, I am sure that it's not
right!"

His voice rang with pain. His voice was full of melancholy and pain as
he looked at her. Never, in all his stage triumphs in the mimic life he
could portray so skilfully and well, had his mobile, sensitive voice
achieved such a note of pain as now.

Suddenly Mary knew.

"What do you mean, Mr. Flood?" she said faintly.

He turned swiftly to her, his voice had a note of passion also now. His
eyes shone, his mobile lips trembled a little--they seemed parched and
dry.

"Mary," he said, "I love you as I have never loved any one in the world
before, and I am frightened because I see no answering light in your
eyes, they do not change when you see me."

He paused for a moment, and then with a swift movement he caught her by
the hands, drew her a little closer to him, and gazed steadily into her
face. His own was quite changed. She had never seen him like this
before. It was as if for the first time a mask had been suddenly peeled
away and the real man beneath revealed. He had made love to Mary during
rehearsals, he was her lover in the play of James Fabian Rose--but this
was quite different.

He spoke simply without rhetoric or bombast. He was a man now, no
longer an actor.

"Oh, my dear!" he said, "I have no words to tell you how I love and
reverence you. I am not playing a part now, I'm not a puppet mouthing
the words of another man any longer, and I can't find expression. I can
only say that my whole heart and soul are consumed by one wish, one
hope. It is you! Ever since I first met you at Rose's house I have
watched you with growing wonder and growing love. Now I can keep silence
no longer. Dear, do you care for me a little? Can you ever care for me?
I am not worthy of one kind look from your beautiful eyes, I know that
well. But I am telling you the truth when I say that I have not been a
beast as so many men in the profession are. You know how things
sometimes are with actors, every one knows. Well, I've not been like
that, Mary; I've kept straight, I can offer you a clean and honest love,
and though such things would never weigh with you, I am well-to-do. My
position on the stage, you know. I am justified in calling it a fairly
leading one, am I not? We should have all the community of tastes and
interests that two people could possibly have. We love the same art. My
dear, dear girl, my beautiful and radiant lady, will you marry me? Will
you make me happiest of living men?"

His urgent, pleading voice dropped and died away. He held her hands
still. His face shone with an earnestness and anxiety that were almost
tragic.

Mary was deeply moved and stirred. No man had ever spoken to her like
this before. Her life had been apart from anything of the kind. All her
adult years had been spent upon the stage and touring about from one
place to another in the provinces. She had always lived with another
girl in the company, and had always enjoyed the pleasant, easy bohemian
_camaraderie_ with men that the touring life engenders. Men had flirted
with her, of course. There had been sighs and longings, equally, of
course, and now and then, though rarely, she had endured the vile
persecution of some human beast in authority, a manager, or what not.
But never had she heard words like these before, had seen an honourable
and distinguished gentleman consumed with love of her and offering her
himself and all he had, asking her to be his wife. He was saying it once
more: "Mary, will you be my wife?"

She trembled as she heard the words, trembled all over as a leaf in the
wind. It was as though she had never heard it before, it came like a
chord of sweet music.

In that moment dormant forces within her awoke, things long hidden from
herself began to move and stir in her heart. A curtain seemed to roll up
within her consciousness, and she knew the truth. She knew that it was
for this that she had come into the world, that the holy sacrament of
marriage was her destined lot.

Yet, though it was the passionate pleading of the man before her which
had worked this change and revealed things long hidden, it was not to
him that her heart went out. She thought of no one, no vision rose in
her mind. She only knew that this was not the man who should strike upon
the deep chords of her being and wake from them the supreme harmonies of
love.

She was immensely touched, immensely flattered, full of a sisterly
tenderness towards him. Affection welled up in her. She wanted to kiss
him, to stroke his hair, to say how sorry she was for him. She had never
had a brother, she would like a brother just like this. He was simple
and good, true, and in touch with the verities of life--down under the
veneer imposed upon him by his vocation and position upon the stage.

She answered him as frankly and simply as he had spoken to her; she was
voicing her thoughts, no more, no less. Almost instinctively she called
him by his Christian name. She hardly knew that she did it. He had bared
his soul to her and she felt that she had known him for years and had
always known him.

"It's not possible in that way, Aubrey," she said. "I know it isn't, I
can't give you any explanation. There is no one else, but, somehow, I
know it within me. But, believe me, I do care for you, I honour and
respect you. I like you more than almost any one I have ever met. I
will be your friend for ever and ever. But what you ask is not mine to
give. I can only say that." The pain on his face deepened. "I knew," he
answered sadly, "I knew that is what you would say, and, indeed, who am
I that you should love me? But you said"--he hesitated--"you said that
there was no one else."

She nodded, hardly trusting herself to speak, for his face was a wedge
of sheer despair. "Then," he said suddenly, more to himself than to her,
"then perhaps some day I may have another chance." He dropped her hands
and half turned from her. "God bless you, dear," he said simply, "and
now let us forget what has passed for the present and resume ordinary
relations again. Remember that both for the sake of our art, our own
reputations, and the cause we believe in, _The Socialist_ has got to be
a success."

In a minute more they were both eagerly discussing the technical theatre
business which was the occasion of their meeting. Both found it a great
relief.

Almost before they had concluded Flood was called away, and Mary,
looking at her watch, found that she might as well go down to
Westminster at once, for though the Roses did not lunch until a quarter
before two there was no object in going back to her flat. She went out
into the surging roar of Oxford Street at high noon, momentarily
confusing and bewildering after the gloom and semi-silence of the empty
theatre. Her idea had been to walk through the park, but when she began
she found that the scene through which she had passed had left her
somewhat shaken. She trembled a little, her limbs were heavy, she could
not walk.

She got into a hansom and was driving down Park Lane, thinking deeply as
she rolled easily along that avenue of palaces. She knew well enough
that in a sense a great honour had been done her. There was no one on
the stage with a better reputation than Aubrey Flood. He was a leading
actor; he was a gentleman against whom nothing was said; he was rich,
influential, and charming. Sincerity was the keynote of his life.
Hundreds of girls, as beautiful and cleverer than she was--so she
thought to herself--would have gladly accepted all he had to offer. She
was a humble-minded girl, entirely bereft of egotism or conceit, and she
felt certain that Aubrey Flood might marry almost any one for choice.

She had always liked him, now she did far more than that. A real
affection for him had blossomed in her heart, and yet it was no more
than that. Why had she not accepted him? She put the answer away from
her mind; she would not, dare not, face it.

There are few people with sensitive minds who take life seriously, who
value their own inward and spiritual balance, that have not
experienced--at some time or another--this most serious of all
sensations recurring within the hidden citadel of the soul.

A thought is born, a thought we are afraid of. It rises in the
subconscious brain, and our active and conscious intelligence tells us
that one thing is there. We are aware of its presence, but we shun it,
push it away, try to forget it. We exercise our will and refuse to allow
it to become real to us. It was thus with Mary now.

Mrs. Rose met her in the hall of the beautiful and artistic little house
in Westminster. She kissed the girl affectionately.

"I shall be busy for half an hour, dear," she said; "household affairs,
you know. Fabian is out; he went to breakfast with Mr. Goodrick this
morning to discuss the Press campaign in connection with the play. But
he'll be back to lunch, and he'll go with you to the rehearsal this
afternoon. Take your things off in my room and go into the drawing-room.
The weekly papers have just come, and there are all these. I will send
the morning papers up, too."

Mary did as she was bid. The beautiful drawing-room was bright and
cheery, as the sunlight poured into it and a wood fire crackled merrily
upon the hearth.

She sat down with a sigh of relief. Unwilling to think, yet afraid of
the restful silence which was so conducive to thought, she took up one
of the morning papers and opened it. Her eyes fell idly upon the news
column for a moment, and then she grew very pale while the crisp sheet
rustled in her hands.

She saw two oval portraits. One was of the Duke of Paddington, an
excellent likeness of the young man as she knew him and had seen him
look a thousand times.

The second portrait, which was joined and looped to the first by a
decoration of true lover's knots, was that of a girl of extraordinary
and patrician beauty. Underneath this was the name, "The Lady Constance
Camborne."

She read: "We are able to announce the happy intelligence that a
marriage has been arranged----" when the paper fell from her fingers
upon the carpet.

Mary knew now. The hidden thought had awakened into full and furious
life. Her pale face suddenly grew hot with shame and she covered it with
her hands. When she eventually picked up the paper and finished the
paragraph she found that the duke's engagement had been a fact for a
month past, but was only now formally announced.




CHAPTER XIX

TROUBLED WATERS


The Duke of Paddington was walking up the broad avenue of St. Giles's at
Oxford, going towards "The Corn." The trees of the historic street were
all bare and leafless in the late winter sun.

To his right was the Pusey House, headquarters of the High Church Party
in the Church of England.

To his left was the facade of St. John's College, while beyond it was
the side of Balliol and the slender spire of the Martyrs' Memorial.
Farther still, as a background and completion of the view, was the
square Saxon tower of St. Michael's. It was a grey and sober loveliness
that met his eye, a vista of the ancient university which came sharply
and vividly to the senses in all the appeal of its gracious antiquity,
unmixed with those sensuous impressions that obtain when all the trees
are in leaf and the hot sun of summer bathes everything in a golden
haze.

The Duke had been to see Lord Hayle, who was lying in the Acland Home
with a broken leg. Lord Camborne's son had been thrown from his horse on
Magdalen Bridge--a restive young cob which had been sent up from the
episcopal stables at Carlton, and been startled by the noisy passage of
an automobile.

Term was in full swing again, and the viscount lay in the private
hospital, unable to take any part in it, while the visits of the duke
and others of his friends were his only relaxation.

The duke was dressed in the ordinary Norfolk jacket and tweed cap
affected by the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge. He was smoking a
cigarette and walking at a good pace. Once or twice a man he knew passed
and nodded to him, but he hardly noticed them. His forehead was wrinkled
in thought and his upper lip drawn in, giving the whole face an aspect
of perplexity and worry.

Probably in the whole university there was not, at that moment, a young
man more thoroughly out of tune with life and with himself than he was.
He was probably the most envied of all the undergraduates resident in
Oxford. He was certainly placed more highly than any other young man,
either in Oxford, or, indeed, in England. Save only members of the Blood
Royal, no one was above him. He was, to use a hackneyed phrase, rich
beyond the dreams of avarice. His health was perfect, and he was engaged
to the most beautiful girl in the United Kingdom.

He presented to his friends and to the world at large the picture of a
youth to whom the gods had given everything within their power, given
with a lavish hand, full measure, pressed down and running over.

And he was thoroughly unhappy and disturbed.

His friends, the young aristocrats of Paul's, had long noticed the
change in him. It had become an occasion of common talk among them, and
no one was able to explain it. The general theory--believed by some and
scouted by others--was that the duke was still suffering from the shocks
of the terrible railway accident outside Paddington Station and his
torture and imprisonment at the hands of the vile gang in the West End
slum.

It was thought that his mind had not recovered tone, that his hours of
melancholy and brooding were the result of that. Men tried to cheer him
up, to take him out of himself, but with poor success. His manner and
his habits seemed utterly changed. The members of the gang who had
kidnapped and imprisoned the duke had been tried at the sessions of the
Central Criminal Court and were sentenced to various lengthy terms of
imprisonment. The duke had gone up from Oxford to be present at the
trial. When he returned he refused to speak of it, but his friends
learnt from the daily papers that the ringleader of the criminals had
been sent into penal servitude for no less than twenty years, and that,
by special permission of the judge, the duke had spent several hours
with the prisoner directly sentence had been pronounced.

Such a proceeding was so utterly unlike the duke, and his reticence
about it was so complete, that every one was lost in wonder and
conjecture.

And there was more than this: during term the duke hardly entertained at
all. His horses were exercised by grooms, and he took no part in social
life. And worse than all, from the point of view of his Oxford friends,
he began to frequent sets of whose existence he had hardly been aware
before. This shocked the "bloods" of the 'Varsity more than anything
else. It was incredible and alarming. Had the duke been a lesser man he
himself would have been dropped. Few outsiders are aware of, or can
possibly realise, the extent to which exclusiveness and a sort of
glorified snobbery prevails in certain circles at Oxford. Social
dimensions are marked with a rigidity utterly unknown elsewhere. Even
the greater Society of the outside world is not so exclusive.

It was known that the duke was in the habit of taking long walks alone
with a poor scholar of his own college. The man was of no birth at all,
a "rank outsider," called Burnside. The duke was constantly being seen
with this man and with others of his friends--fellows who wore black
clothes and thick boots and never played any games. It was nothing less
than a scandal!

Now and then men who went to the duke's rooms would find strange
visitors from London there, people who might have come from another
world, so remote were they in appearance, speech, and mode of thought.
And the worst of it all was that the duke kept his own counsel, and
nobody dared to comment upon the change in his hearing. There was a
reserve and dignity about him, a sense of power and restrained force
which chilled the curiosity of even intimate friends. They all felt that
something ought to be done; nobody knew how to set about it. Then,
unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. Lord Hayle was thrown
from his horse and was taken to the private hospital with a broken leg.
As soon as it was allowed all the men of his set--the exclusive set to
which he and the duke belonged--paid him frequent visits. Lord Hayle
himself had noted with growing dissatisfaction and perplexity the marked
change in his future brother-in-law. He saw that John was moody and
preoccupied, seemed to have some secret trouble, and was changing all
his habits. This distressed and grieved him, but he had said nothing of
it to his sister or any one else, hoping that it was but a passing
phase. Moreover, he had only seen the commencement of the change. Away
from everything in the hospital he had not been able to witness the full
development.

His friends enlightened him; they told him everything in detail, and
urged him to remonstrate.

"It will come better from you than from any one else, Hayle," they said.
"You are Paddington's closest friend, and he's going to marry your
sister. It really is your duty to try and bring him back to his old self
and to find out what really is the matter with him."

Lord Hayle had taken this advice to heart, and on this very afternoon he
had opened the whole question.

His remarks had been received quietly enough--the two men were friends
who could not easily become estranged--but the interview had been by no
means a satisfactory one. "It's perfectly true, Gerald," the duke had
said. "I am going through a period of great mental strain and
disturbance. But I can't tell you anything about it. It is a mental
battle which I must fight out for myself. No one can possibly help me,
not even you or Constance. All I can tell you is that there is
absolutely nothing in it that is in any way wrong. I am in no material
trouble at all. Let me go my own way. Some day you shall know what there
is to know, but not yet."

The duke walked down the busy "Corn" towards Carfax and the entrance to
the "High"--the most beautiful street in Europe. He was on his way to
his rooms in Paul's. The interview with Lord Hayle had disturbed him. It
had brought him face to face with hard fact, insistent, recurring fact,
which was always present and would not be denied.

His mind was busy as a mill. The thoughts churned and tossed there like
running water under the fans of a wheel. There was no peace anywhere,
that was the worst of all.

And to-day, of all days, was important. It was the early afternoon of
the evening on which the play called _The Socialist_ was to be presented
at the Park Lane Theatre. He had obtained special permission to go to
town by the evening train--there would be no accident this time--and he
knew that to-morrow, whether the play was a success or a failure, his
name would be in every one's mouth.

All Oxford, all London, all Society was talking about the play that
would see light in a few hours. The public interest in it was
extraordinary; his own interest in it was keen and fierce, with a
fierceness and keenness a thousand times more strenuous than any one
knew. He did not fear that he, as a typical representative of his class
and order, would be caricatured or held up to economic execration. Even
if it were so--and he was aware of Rose's intention--he did not care
twopence. He feared nothing of that sort. He feared that he might become
convinced.

For it had come to that.

A complete change and _bouleversement_ of opinion and outlook is not
nearly so long a process as many people are apt to suppose. To some
natures it is true that conviction, or change of conviction, comes
slowly. In the case of the majority this is not so. With many people a
settled order of mind, a definite attitude towards life, a fixed set of
principles, are the results of heredity or environment. A man thinks in
such-and-such a way, and is content with thinking in such-and-such a way
simply because the other side of the question has not been presented to
him with sufficient force. A Conservative, for example, hears Radical
arguments, as a rule, through the medium of a Conservative paper, with
all the answers and regulations in the next column.

It had been thus with the Duke of Paddington. He had lived a life
absolutely walled-in from outside influences, Eton and Oxford, an
intensely exclusive circle of that society which surrounds the Court. He
had been shut away from everything which might have turned his thoughts
to the larger issues of life.

Enlightenment, knowledge, had come suddenly and had come with
irresistible force. Reviewing the past weeks, as the duke sometimes did
with a sort of bitter wonder, he dated the change in his life from the
actual moment when he was crushed down into the swift unconsciousness
when the railway accident occurred outside Paddington Station. Since
then his mental progress had been steady and relentless. James Fabian
Rose, Mr. Goodrick, Peter Conrad, the parson, were all men of extreme
intellectual power. Arthur Burnside also was unique in his force and
grip, his vast and ever-increasing knowledge. And Mary Marriott--Mary,
the actress!--the duke thought as little of Mary Marriott as he
possibly could--she came into his thoughts too often for the peace of a
loyal gentleman pledged irrevocably to another girl.

All these forces, the cumulative effect of them, had been at work. The
duke found himself at the parting of the ways. Day by day he deserted
all the friends of his own station and all the amusements and pleasures
which had always employed his time before. For these he substituted the
society of Burnside. He went for long walks with the scholar. He drove
him out in his great Mercedes automobile; they talked over coffee during
late midnights.

An extraordinary attachment had sprung up between the two young men.
They were utterly different. One was plebeian and absolutely poor, the
other was a hereditary peer of England and wealthier than many a
monarch. Yet they were fast friends, nevertheless. Nothing showed more
completely the entire change of the duke's attitude than this simple
fact. All his prejudices had disappeared and were overcome. Regardless
of the opinions of his friends, forgetful of his rank and state, he was
a close friend of Burnside.

Their relations were peculiar. The duke had offered his companion
anything and everything. He proposed to make the scholar independent of
struggle for the rest of his life. He pressed him to accept a sum of
money which would for ever free him from sordid cares and enable his
genius to have full play.

Burnside had absolutely refused anything of the sort. He was delighted
to accept the sum which the duke was paying him for his work as
librarian of Paddington House. It meant everything to him. But he worked
for it; he knew that his work was valuable, and he accepted its due
wages.

Apart from that, apart from a mutual attraction and liking which was
astonishing enough to both of them, and which was, nevertheless, very
real and deep, the relations of the two were simply this: the poor young
man of the middle classes, the man of brilliant intellect, was the
tutor.

The duke was a simple pupil, and day by day he was learning a lesson
which would not be denied.

The duke arrived at St. Paul's College and crossed the quadrangle into
the second quad., where the "new buildings" were. He went up the oak
stairs to his rooms.

His scout, Gardener--the discreet and faithful Gardener!--was making up
the fire in the larger of the two sitting-rooms as the duke came in.

"The kit-bag and the suit cases are already packed, sir," he said. "The
valet asked me to say so. You will remember that you have given him the
afternoon off. Wilkins will be at the station ten minutes before the
train starts. Will you kindly tell me where you will be staying, sir, so
that the porter can send the late post letters up to reach you at
breakfast?"

"Oh, I shall be at the _Ritz_," the duke answered, "but you'd better
send the letters on to me yourself, Gardener."

"At the _Ritz_? Very good, your Grace," the privileged old servant
replied. "I saw in the _Telegraph_ that Lord Camborne and her ladyship
were down at Carlton, so I thought as you'd be staying at a hotel, sir.
But I'm sorry to say that I must leave the matter of the letters to the
porter, because, your Grace, I have leave of absence from the bursar
to-night, and I am going to London myself."

"Oh, well, I hope you'll enjoy yourself, Gardener," the duke answered.
"If you go to the writing-table you will find a pocket-book with five
five-pound notes in it. You can take one, and it will pay your expenses.
You're going on pleasure, I suppose?"

Gardener went to the writing-table, expressing well-bred thanks.
"Certainly your Grace is most kind," he said. "I hardly know how to
thank you, sir. You've been a very kind master to me ever since you've
been up. I don't know if you'd call it pleasure exactly, but I'm going
up to London to see this abominable play, begging your pardon. I'm going
to do the same as your grace is going to do. I'm going to see this here
_Socialist_. In a sense I felt it a kind of duty, sir, to go up and make
my bit of a protest--if hissing will do any good--especially so, sir,
since all the papers are saying that it's an attack upon your Grace."

The duke was about to reply, somewhat touched and pleased by the old
fellow's interest, when Burnside came into the room, walking very
quickly and with his face flushed.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "for bursting in like this, but I think
you arranged to walk to Iffley with me, didn't you? and I have some
specially extraordinary news to tell you!"

The old scout, who did not in the least approve of poor scholars of
Paul's becoming the intimate friends of dukes, withdrew with a somewhat
grim smile.

"What is it, Burnside?" the duke said. "You seem excited. Good news, I
hope?"

"Tremendously good!" said the young man in the black clothes, his keen,
intellectual face lit up like a lamp. "An uncle of mine, who emigrated
to Canada many years ago as quite a poor labourer, has died and left a
fortune of over three hundred thousand pounds. I never knew him, and so
I can't pretend to feel sorry for his death. To cut a long story short,
however, I must tell you that I am the only surviving heir, and that I
have heard this morning from solicitors in London that all this money is
absolutely mine!"

The duke's face became animated, he was tremendously pleased. "I'm so
glad," he said. "I can't tell you how glad I am, Burnside. Now you will
be quite safe. You will be able to complete your destiny unhampered by
squalid worries. And you won't owe your good fortune to any one."

"I'm so glad that you see it in that way," Burnside replied. "Three
hundred thousand pounds! Think of it, if money means anything to a man
of millions, like you. Why, it will mean everything to the cause of
Socialism. Fabian Rose will go mad with excitement when I put the whole
lot into his hands to be spent for the cause!"




CHAPTER XX

THE DUKE KNOWS AT LAST


The duke went to the theatre early.

The play was announced for nine o'clock, but he was in his box, the
stage box on a level with the stalls, by half-past eight. A whole
carriage had been reserved for him from Oxford to London, and a dinner
basket had been put in for him. He wished to be entirely alone, to
think, to adjust his ideas at a time of crisis unparalleled in his life
before.

A motor-brougham had met him at Paddington and taken him swiftly down to
the _Ritz_ in Piccadilly. There he had bathed and changed into evening
clothes, and now, as the clock was striking eight, he sat down in his
box.

The curtains were partially drawn and he could not be seen from the
auditorium, though he knew that when the theatre filled all Society
would know where he was, even though he was not actually visible.

At present the beautiful little theatre was but half lit. There was no
pit, and the vista of red-leather armchairs which made the stalls was
almost bare of people. There was a sprinkling of folk in the
dress-circle, but the upper circle, which took the place of gallery and
stretched up to the roof, was packed with people. It was the only part
of the aristocratic Park Lane Theatre that was unreserved.

The fire-proof curtain was down, hiding the act-drop, the orchestra was
a wilderness of empty chairs, and none of the electric footlights were
turned on. Now and again some muffled noises came from the stage, where,
probably, the carpenters were putting the finishing touches to the first
scene, and a continuous hum of talk fell from the upper circle, sounding
like bees swarming in a garden to one who sits in his library with an
open window upon a summer day.

The duke sat alone. He was in a curious mood. The perplexity and
irritation with life and circumstance which had been so poignant during
the afternoon at Oxford had quite left him. He was quite placid now. His
nerves were stilled, he remained quietly expectant.

Yet he was sad also, and he had many reasons for sadness. The old life
was over, the old ideas had gone, the future, which had seemed so
irrevocably ordered, so settled and secure for him, was now a mist, an
unknown country full of perils and alarms.

The duke was a young man who was always completely honest with himself.
As he sat alone in the box waiting for what was to ensue he knew three
things. He knew that something of tremendous importance was going to
happen to him on that night. He knew that he could no longer regard his
enormous wealth and high rank from the individualistic point of view.
And he knew that he had made a horrible, ghastly, and irremediable
mistake in asking Lady Constance Camborne to be his wife.

It was the most hideous of all possible mistakes.

It was a mistake for which there was no remedy. Carried away by a sudden
gust of passion, he had done what was irrevocable. He had found almost
at once that he did not love her, that he had been possessed by the
power of her beauty and charm for a moment; but never, under any
circumstances could he feel a real and abiding love for her.

A knock came at the door of the box, and a second afterwards James
Fabian Rose entered. The gleaming expanse of shirt-front only
accentuated the extreme pallor of his face, and beneath the thatch of
mustard-coloured hair his eyes shone like lamps.

Rose was nervous and somewhat unlike his usual self. He was always
nervous on the first nights of his plays, and lost his cool assurance
and readiness of manner. To-night he was particularly so.

"I thought I would just come in and say 'how-do-you-do,'" he said,
shaking the duke heartily by the hand. "They told me that you were in
the house."

The duke was genuinely glad to see his celebrated friend, and his face
reflected the pleasure that he felt. The visit broke in upon sad
thoughts and the ever-growing sensation of loneliness. "Oh! do sit down
for a minute or two," he said. "It's most kind of you to look me up. I
suppose you're frightfully busy, though?"

"On the contrary," Rose replied, "I have nothing on earth to do.
Everything is finished and out of my hands now. If you had said that you
supposed I was frightfully nervous, you would have been far more
correct."

The duke nodded sympathetically. "I know," he said. "I'm sure it must be
awful."

"It is; and, of course, it's worse to-night than ever before. I am
flying right in the face of Society and all convention. I'm putting on a
play which will rouse the fierce antagonism of all the society people,
who will be here in a few minutes. I'm going tooth-and-nail for your
order. And, finally, I am introducing an unknown actress to the London
stage. It's enough to make any one nervous. I'm trying to preach a
sermon and produce a work of art at one and the same moment, and I'm
afraid the result will be absolute failure."

The duke, for his part, had never expected anything else but failure for
the venture until this very evening. But to-night, for some reason or
other, he had a curious certainty that the play, would not fail. It was
an intuition without reason, but he would have staked anything upon the
event.

His strange certainty and confidence was in his voice as he answered the
Socialist.

"No," he said, "it is going to be a gigantic success. I am quite
definitely sure of it. It is going to be the success of your life. And
more than that, it is not only going to be an artistic triumph, but it
will be the strongest blow you have ever struck for Socialism!"

Rose looked at the young man with keen scrutiny. Then a little colour
came into the linen-white cheeks, and he held out his hand with a sudden
and impulsive gesture.

"You put new confidence into me," he said, "and the generosity of your
words makes me ashamed. Here I am attacking all that you hold dear,
attacking you, indeed, in a public way! And you can say that. I know,
moreover, from your tone, that it isn't mere Olympian indifference to
anything I and my socialistic brethren can do against any one so
fortified and entrenched, so highly placed as you are. It is fine of you
to say what you have said. It is fine of you to be present here
to-night. And it is finer still of you to remain friends with me and to
shake me by the hand."

The duke smiled rather sadly and shook his head.

"No," he said; "there is nothing fine in it at all, Rose. You say that I
am fortified and entrenched. So I was, fortified with ignorance and
indifference, entrenched by selfishness and convention. But the castle
has been undermined though it has not fallen yet. Already I can hear the
muffled sound of the engineers in the cellars! I am not what I used to
be. I do not think as I used to think. You are responsible, in the first
instance, for far more than you know or suspect."

Rose had listened with strange attention. The colour had gone again from
his face, his eyes blazed with excitement. The lips beneath the
mustard-coloured moustache were slightly parted. When he replied it was
in a voice which he vainly tried to steady.

"This is absolutely new to me," he said. "It moves me very deeply. It is
startling but it is splendid! What you have said fills me with hope. Do
you care to tell me more--not now, because I see the theatre is filling
up--but afterwards? We are having a supper on the stage when the show is
over--success or not--and we might have a talk later. I didn't like to
ask you before."

"I shall be delighted to come," the duke answered. "I have spoken of
these things to a few people only. Arthur Burnside has been my chief
confidant."

"Splendid fellow, Burnside!" Rose said, with enthusiasm. "A brilliant
intellect! He will be a power in England some day."

"He is already," said the duke, with a smile. "He has inherited three
hundred thousand pounds from a distant relative, who made a fortune in
Canada, and has died intestate. He tells me he is going to devote the
whole of it to the socialistic cause."

Rose gasped. "Three hundred thousand pounds!" he said. "Why it will
convert half England! You spring surprise after surprise upon me. My
brain is beginning to reel. Upon my word, I do believe that this night
will prove to be the crowning night of my career!"

"I'm sure I hope so," the duke answered warmly. "But isn't it fine of
Burnside! To give up everything like that."

"It is fine," Rose answered; "but there are many Socialists who would do
it--just as there are, of course, plenty of Socialists who would become
individualists within five minutes of inheriting a quarter of a million!
But Burnside will not give it all up; I shall see to that."

"But I thought----"

"Many people fail to understand that we don't want, at any rate, in the
present state of things and probably not for hundreds of years, to
abolish private property. We want to regulate it. We want to abolish
poverty entirely, but we don't say yet that a man shall not have a fair
income, and one in excess of others. I shall advise Burnside, for he
will come to me, to retain a sufficient capital to bring him in an
income of a thousand pounds a year. If the possession of capital was
limited to, say, thirty thousand pounds in each individual case, the
economic problem would be solved. But I must go. The world arrives, the
individualists and aristocrats muster in force!"

"What are you going to do? Why not sit here with me?"

Rose smiled. "I never watch one of my plays on the first night," he
said. "It would be torture to the nerves. I am going to forget all about
the play and go to a concert at the Queen's Hall. I shall come back
before the curtain is rung down--in case the audience want to throw
things at me! Au revoir, until supper--you've given me a great deal to
think about."

With a wave of his hand, Rose hurried away, and the duke was once more
alone.

The theatre was filling up rapidly as the duke moved a little to the
front of the box and peeped round the curtains.

Party after party of well-dressed people were pouring into the stalls.
Diamonds shimmered upon necks and arms which were like columns of ivory,
there was a sudden infusion of colour, pinks and blues, greens and
greys, wonderfully accentuated and set off by the sombre black and white
of the men's clothes.

A subtle perfume began to fill the air, the blending of many essences
ravished from the flowers of the Cote d'Azur. The lights in the roof
suddenly jumped up, and the electric candelabra round the circle became
brilliant. There was a hum of talk, a cadence of cultured and modulated
voices. The whole theatre had become alive, vivid, full of colour and
movement.

And, in some electric fashion, the duke was aware that every one was
expecting--even as he was expecting--the coming of great things. There
was a subtle sense of stifled excitement--apprehension was it?--that was
perfectly patent and real.

Everybody felt that something was going to happen. It was not an
ordinary first night. Even the critics, who sat more or less together,
were talking eagerly among themselves and had lost their somewhat
exaggerated air of nonchalance and boredom.

The duke saw many people that he knew. Every one who was not upon the
Riviera was there. Great ladies nodded and whispered, celebrated men
whispered and nodded. A curious blend of amusement and anxiety was the
keynote of the expression upon many faces.

To-night, indeed, was a night of nights!

The duke had not written to Lady Constance Camborne to say that he was
going to be present at the first night of _The Socialist_. She had made
some joking reference to the coming production in one of her letters but
he had not replied to it. He had kept all his new mental development
from her--locked up in his heart. From the very first he had never known
real intimacy with her.

As Society took its seats he was certain that every one was talking
about him. Sooner or later some one or other would see him, and there
would be a sensation. He was sure of it. It would create a sensation.

For many reasons the duke was glad that neither Lord Hayle, the bishop,
nor Constance were in the theatre. Gerald, of course, was in hospital at
Oxford, the earl and Constance were down at Carlton.

Even as the thought came to his mind, and he watched the stalls
cautiously from the back of the darkened box, he started and became
rigid. Something seemed to rattle in his head, there was a sensation as
if cold water had been poured down his spine.

The Earl of Camborne and his daughter had entered the opposite box upon
the grand circle tier.

The duke shrank back into the box, asking himself with fierce insistence
why he felt thus--guilty, found out, ashamed?

At that moment the overture ended and the curtain rose upon the play.

Then the duke knew.




CHAPTER XXI

IN THE STAGE BOX AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE


The curtain rose upon a drawing-room scene, perfectly conceived and
carried out, an illusion of solid reality, immense and satisfying to eye
and intelligence alike.

Here was a silver table, covered with those charming toys, modern and
antique, which fashionable women collect and display.

There was a revolving book-shelf of ebony and lapis lazuli which
held--so those members of the audience who were near could see--the
actual novels and volumes of _belles lettres_ of the moment; the things
they had in their own drawing-rooms.

The whole scheme was wonderfully done. It was a room such as Waring and
Liberty, assisted by the individual taste of its owner, carry out.

Up to a certain height the walls--and how real and solid they
appeared!--were of pale grey, then came a black picture rail, and above
it a frieze of deep orange colour. Black, orange, and grey, these were
the colour notes of all the scene, and upon the expanses of grey were
rows of old Japanese prints, or, rather, the skilful imitation of them,
framed in gold.

The carpet was of orange, carrying a serpentine design of dead black,
two heavy curtains of black velvet hung on either side of a door leading
into a conservatory, softly lit by electric lights concealed amid the
massed blossoms, for it was a night scene that opened the play.

There was a low murmur of applause and pleasure from the crowded
theatre, for here was a picture as complete and beautiful as any
hardened playgoers had seen for many years. Then the sound died away.
The new actress was upon the stage, the unknown Mary Marriott; there was
a great hush of curiosity and interest.

As the curtain rose the girl had been sitting upon a Chesterfield sofa
of blue linen at the "O. P." side of the stage. For a moment or two she
had remained quite motionless, a part of the picture, and, with a
handkerchief held to her face, her shoulders shaking convulsively.

She was dressed in an evening gown of flame-colour and black.

In front of her, and in the centre of the stage, two odd and incongruous
figures were standing.

One was a shabby, middle-aged woman, pale, shrinking, and a little
furtive among all the splendours in which she found herself. She wore a
rusty bonnet and a black cape scantily trimmed with jet.

By the woman's side stood a tall girl in a hat and a cheap,
fawn-coloured jacket. The girl held a soiled boa of white imitation fur
in one restless hand. She was beautiful, but sullen and hard of face.

Not a word was spoken.

It might have been a minute and a half before a word was said. The only
sound was that of the sobbing from the richly-dressed woman upon the
couch and the timid, shuffling feet of the two humble people--mother and
daughter evidently--who stood before her.

Yet, curiously enough--and, indeed, it was unprecedented--not a sigh nor
sound of impatience escaped the audience. One and all were as still as
death. Some extraordinary influence was already flowing over the
footlights to capture their imaginations and their nerves.

As yet they hadn't seen the face of the new actress, of whom they had
heard so much in general talk and read so much in the newspapers.

A minute and a half had gone by and not a word had been spoken.

They all sat silent and motionless.

Suddenly Mary jumped up from the sofa and threw her handkerchief away.

They saw her for the first time; her marvellous beauty sent a flutter
through the boxes and the stalls, her voice struck upon their ears
almost like a blow.

Never was a play started thus before. Mary--upon the programme she was
Lady Augusta Decies, a young widow--leapt up and faced the two
motionless figures before her. Tears were splashing down her cheeks,
her lovely mouth quivered with pain, her arms were outstretched, and her
perfect hands were spread in sympathy and entreaty.

"Oh, but it shan't be, Mrs. Dobson! It can't be! I will stop it! I will
alter it for you and Helen and all of you!"

These were the first words of the play. They poured out with a music
that was terribly compelling.

There was a cry of agony, a hymn of sympathy, and a stern resolve. An
audible sigh and shudder went round the theatre as that perfect voice
swept round it.

"What was this play to be? Who was this girl? What did it all mean?"

Some such thought was in the mind of every one.

Such a voice had not been heard in a London theatre for long. Sarah
Bernhardt had a voice like that, Duse had a voice like that--a voice
like liquid silver, a voice like a fairy waterfall falling into a lake
of dreamland. Most of the people there had heard the loveliest speaking
voices of the modern world. But this was as lovely and compelling as any
of them, and yet it had something more. It had one supreme quality--the
quality of absolute conviction.

The new player--this unknown Mary Marriott--was hardly acting. It was a
real cry of anguish straight from the heart itself.

Every one there felt it, though in different ways and according to the
measure of their understanding.

To one man it came as a double revelation; it came with the force and
power of a mighty avalanche that rushes down the sides of a high Alp,
sweeping forests and villages away in its tremendous course.

The duke knew that here was one of the very greatest artists who had
ever come upon the boards, and he knew also--oh, sweet misery and sudden
shame!--that this was the woman he had loved from their first
meeting--had loved, loved now, hopelessly, for ever and a day!

In that moment he lowered his head and prayed.

He sent up an inarticulate prayer to God, a wild, despairing
ejaculation, that he might be given power to bear the burden, that he
might be a man, a gentleman, and keep these things hid.

From where he sat in the shadow of the box he could see Lady Constance
Camborne opposite. Both she and the bishop were leaning forward with
polite attention stamped upon their faces. There was the girl who was to
be his wife. He was bound to her for always, but she didn't know--she
never should know! Above all, he must be a gentleman!

Never did play have such an extraordinary beginning, one only possible
to an artist of consummate ability and knowledge, to a playwright of
absolute unconventionality and daring in art.

In ten minutes the whole attention of the house was engrossed, after the
first quarter of an hour the audience was perfectly still.

But this was curious. Throughout the whole of the first act there was
hardly any applause--until the fall of the curtain. What little clapping
of hands there was came from the huge upper circle, which combined in
itself the functions of pit, upper circle, and gallery in the Park Lane
Theatre.

But it was not a chilling silence; it was by no means the silence of
indifference, of boredom. It was a silence of astonishment at the daring
of the play. It was also a silence of wonder at, and appreciation of,
the supreme talent of the writer, and the players who interpreted him.

There were many Socialists in the house, more especially in the upper
tiers, but these were in a large minority.

Rose and Flood had allowed but few tickets to be sold to the libraries
and theatre agents for the first three nights.

They had laid their plans well; they wanted Society to see the play
before other classes of the community did so.

The "boom" which had been worked up in the general Press of London, more
especially owing to the skilful direction of it by that astute editor,
Mr. Goodrick, of the _Daily Wire_, had been quite sufficient to ensure
an enormous demand for seats.

The manager of the box office had his instructions, and as a result the
theatre was crammed with people to whom socialistic doctrines were
anathema, and who sat angry at the doctrine which was being pumped into
their brains from the other side of the footlights, but spellbound by
the genius that was doing it.

Yet the plot of the play was quite simple. It seemed fresh and new
because of the subtlety of its treatment, yet, nevertheless, it was but
a peg on which to hang an object lesson.

Mary, the heroine, represented a woman of the wealthy class which
controls the "high finance." Her late husband had left her millions. As
a girl she was brought up in the usual life of her class, shielded from
all true knowledge of human want, the younger daughter of an earl,
married at twenty to a gentlemanly high priest of the god Mammon, who
had died five years after the marriage, leaving her with one child, a
boy, and mistress of his vast fortune. At the period when the play
opened she was engaged to the young Marquis of Wigan, a peer, also
immensely wealthy. She was deeply in love with him--real love had come
to her for the first time in her life--and he adored her. They were soon
to be married. They lived in a rosy dream. They knew nothing of the
outside world.

It was at her first real contact with the outside world, at terrible,
stinging, and bitter truths, which were told her by an ex-kitchenmaid
whom she had employed in the past but never seen, which struck the
keynote of the play.

It was a play of black and white, of yellow and violet--of incredible
contrasts.

No such brutal and poignant thing had been seen upon the stage of a West
End theatre before. In all its shifting scenes and changes there was a
hideous alternation.

The perfection of cultured luxury, of environment and thought, was shown
with the most lavish detail and fidelity. No scenes in the lives of
wealthy and celebrated people had ever been presented with such entire
disregard of cost before.

The pictures were perfect. They were recognized by every one there--they
lived in just such a way themselves.

But the other scenes?--the hideously sombre pictures--these struck into
the heart with chilling horror and dismay.

Every one knew in a vague sort of way that such things went on. They had
always known it, but they had put the facts away from themselves and
refused to recognize them.

They were trapped now.

They had to sit and watch a supremely skilful imitation of real life in
the malign slums of London. They had to sit and listen to dialogue which
burnt and blistered, which seared even the most callous heart, truths
from the hell of London forced into their ears, phrases which lashed
their soft complacency like burning whips.

The act-drop came down in absolute silence after the last scene of the
first act, a scene in an East-End sweater's den, so cruel and relentless
in its realism that dainty women held handkerchiefs of filmy lace to
their nostrils as if the very foul odour and miasma of the place might
reach them.

There was a long sigh of relief as the horror was shut out. The dead,
funereal silence was continued for a moment, and then everybody suddenly
realized something.

The whole audience realized that they had been witnessing an artistic
triumph that would always be historic in the annals of the stage.

Mary Marriott had done this thing. The fire of her incarnate pity and
sorrow had played upon their heart-strings till all of them--wishful,
greedy, worldly, sensual--were caught up into an extraordinary emotion
of gratitude and sympathy.

A burst of cheering, a thunder of applause absolutely without precedent,
rang and echoed in the theatre. The evening pedestrians upon the
pavements of Oxford Street heard it and halted in wonder before the
facade of the theatre.

High up in the "grid" the distant stage carpenters heard it and looked
at each other in amazement. Up stone flights of stairs in far-away
dressing-rooms members of the company heard it and gasped.

Mary Marriott and Aubrey Flood came before the curtain and bowed.

The full-handed thunder rose to a terrifying volume of sound, and the
Duke of Paddington, forgetful of all else, leaned forward in his box and
shouted with the rest.

The tears were falling down his cheeks, his voice was choked and hoarse.
As she retired Mary Marriott looked at him and smiled a welcome!

       *       *       *       *       *

There were only three acts.

In the course of the plot, simply but ingeniously construed, the Marquis
of Wigan and Lady Augusta Decies were taken into the most awful and
hopeless places of London. There was a third principal character, a
cynical cicerone with a ruthless and bitter tongue, who explained
everything to them and was the chorus of their progression.

In Doctor Davidson, a prominent socialistic leader, every one recognized
a caricature of James Fabian Rose by himself, put before them to ram the
message home!

The struggle in the woman's mind and heart was manifested with supreme
art. Piece by piece the audience saw the old barriers of caste and
prejudice crumbling away, until the culminating moment arrived when the
young marquis must choose between the loss of her and the abandonment
of all his life theories and the prejudices of race.

The end came swiftly and inevitably.

There was a great culminating scene, in which the girl appealed to her
lover to give up almost everything--as she herself was about to do--for
the cause of the people, for the cause of brotherhood and humanity. He
hesitates and wavers. He is kindly and good-hearted, he wants her more
than anything else, but in him caste and long training triumphs.

There is a final moment in which he confesses that he cannot do this
thing.

With pain and anguish he renounces his love for her in favour of his
order, the order to which she also belongs.

Even for her he cannot do it. He must remain as he has always been; he
must say good-bye.

The last scene is the same as the first--it is Lady Augusta's
drawing-room. Everything is over; they say farewell at the parting of
the ways.

But she holds the little son by her first husband up to him.

"Good-bye, dear Charles!" she says. "You and I go different ways for
ever and a day. God bless you! But this little fellow, with the blood of
our own class in his veins, shall do what you cannot do. Good-bye!"

As the last curtain fell a tall and portly figure came into the Duke of
Paddington's box.

"John," said the Earl of Camborne and Bishop of Carlton, "I have known
that you were here for the last hour. Constance has gone back to
Grosvenor Street, but I want to speak to you very seriously indeed."

The duke looked up quickly, his voice was decisive.

"I didn't know that either you or Connie were in London," he said. "I
understood from Gerald that you were both down at the palace. I'm very
sorry, but I'm afraid we shall have to postpone our talk until to-morrow
morning. I'll turn up at Grosvenor Street at whatever time you wish.
To-night, however, now, as a matter of fact, I am very particularly
engaged indeed."




CHAPTER XXII

THE SUPPER ON THE STAGE


The success of the play was beyond all question. It was stupendous,
overwhelming and complete.

For ten minutes the house shouted itself hoarse and Mary Marriott was
recalled over and over again. Great baskets of flowers had made their
appearance as she stood bowing for the tenth time, and were handed up to
her till she stood surrounded by a mass of blossom.

Hundreds of opera glasses were levelled at her, eager, critical and
admiring faces watched this lovely and graceful girl who stood before
them, quietly and modestly, and with a great joy shining in her eyes.

For she had stirred them, stirred them by the depths of her art and the
passion of her playing. They knew that in one night a great artist had
suddenly appeared. However much they might disagree and dislike the
doctrines preached in _The Socialist_ they knew that the play was a work
of genius, and had been interpreted with supreme talent. Aubrey Flood
they were fond of. He was a popular favourite, he had acquitted himself
well upon this eventful night. He had received his meed of praise.

But for Mary Marriott there was a reception so whole-hearted and
magnificent that the tears might well come into the young girl's eyes
and the slim, flower-laden hands tremble with emotion as she bowed her
gratitude.

James Fabian Rose had to make a little speech.

He did it with extraordinary assurance and aplomb, and he was received
with shouts of applause and good-natured laughter. He had amused and
pleased society, and that was enough. The few mocking and brilliant
epigrams he flung at them were taken in good part. The deep undercurrent
of seriousness seemed but to harmonise with the electric, emotional
influences of the moment.

For a minute or two--until they should be seated at supper in the smart
restaurants, clubs, and houses--they were all Socialists!

And the fact that their convictions of the truth would vanish with the
first plover's egg and glass at Pol Roger, by no means affected their
butterfly enthusiasm as the famous author talked to and at them.

The Duke of Paddington watched it all with a strange sense of
exhilaration and joy. Lord Camborne had given him an appointment in
Grosvenor Street for the morrow, and had hurried away in the most marked
perplexity and annoyance.

Lord Hayle had been writing to his father, the duke saw that at once,
but he was not perturbed. He had made his resolve. He was master of his
own fate, captain of his own soul--what did anything else matter? What
was to be done was to be done, come what might. One must be true to
oneself!

As the weary, excited audience began at last to press out of the stalls
and boxes, there was a tap upon the door of the duke's, and Mr.
Goodrick, the editor of the _Daily Wire_, entered. The little man's face
was flushed with excitement, and he was smiling with pleasure.

Yet even under these conditions of animation he still seemed a quiet,
insignificant little person, and did not in any way suggest the keen,
sword-like intellect, the controller of a vast mass of public opinion
that he was.

"Rose has sent me to say that supper will be ready in ten minutes," he
began, "and Mary Marriott especially charged me to tell you how grateful
she is that you have come here to-night. What a success! There has never
been anything like it! All London will go mad about the thing to-morrow!
I had three members of the staff here to-night--Masterman, who does the
dramatic criticism, purely from the standpoint of dramatic art, don't
you know; William Conrad, the parson's younger brother, who is one of
our political people; and old Miss Saurin, who does the society and
dress. They're all three gone down to the office in cabs in a state of
lambent enthusiasm and excitement. We shall have a fine paper to-morrow
morning!"

"I'm sure you will, Mr. Goodrick," the duke answered. "Perhaps finer
than you know."

The little man laughed as he lit a cigarette and offered the case to his
companion. "Yes," he said, "but this time it won't be a 'scoop' as it
was when I first had the pleasure of meeting you. Good heavens! what a
boom that was for the _Wire_. I shall never forget it as long as I live!
We were absolutely the only paper in the kingdom to publish the full
details of your disappearance and recovery. You don't know how much we
owe you, your Grace, from the journalistic point of view. Such things
don't come twice, more's the pity!"

"I'm not so sure of that, Mr. Goodrick," the duke replied slowly.
"Perhaps to-night, within an hour or so, I am going to provide you with
a 'scoop' as you call it, to which the first was a mere nothing!"

The editor stiffened as a setter stiffens in the stubble when the birds
are near. "Your voice has no joking in it," he said. "There is meaning
in your Grace's words--what is it?"

As he spoke a waiter came into the box. "Supper is prepared upon the
stage, your Grace," he said. "Miss Marriott, Mr. Rose, and Mr. Aubrey
Flood request the honour of your Grace's presence."

"Come along, Mr. Goodrick," the duke said, laughing a little. "You see
you will have to wait an event like any one else in this world! But I
promise you the 'scoop' all the same!"

They went out of the box, the waiter leading the way to the sliding iron
"pass door," which led directly on to the stage. For the first few steps
they were in semi-darkness, for a boxed-in screen had been hurriedly set
by the carpenters to make a supper-room. Then, pushing open a canvas
door, they came out into the improvised supper-room.

Some forty people were standing upon the stage in groups, talking
animatedly to each other. In the background were flower-covered tables
gleaming with glass and silver and covered with flowers, among which
many tiny electric lights were hidden.

Mary Marriott stood in the centre of a laughing happy group of men and
women. She wore a long tea-gown of dark red, made of some Indian fabric,
and edged with a narrow band of green embroidery upon a biscuit-coloured
ground. She wore dark-red roses in the coiled masses of her marvellous
black hair, the paint of the theatre had been washed from her face, and
her eyes were brighter, her cheeks more lovely, than any art could make
them. She was a queen come into her own on that night! An empress of her
art, throned, acknowledged, and wonderful.

To her came the duke.

It was a strange and almost symbolic meeting to some of the quick-wits
and artists' brains there. Here was a real prince of this world, a
prince who had suffered the hours of a keen and bitter attack with fine
dignity and chivalry--James Fabian Rose had not spared words--and there
was a princess of art, who from nothing had made a more enduring
kingdom, a more splendid realm, than even the long line of peers,
statesmen, and warriors had bestowed upon the young man before her.

Yet they were both royal, they looked royal, there was an emanation of
royalty as the duke bowed over the hand of the actress and touched it
with his lips.

"_Hommage au vrai Art_," he murmured, quoting the words which a king had
once used as he kissed the hand of the greatest French actress of his
time.

"It was so good of you to come," she said, and he thought that her voice
sounded like a flute. "It is kinder still of you to be here now. But
they are sitting down to supper. I believe we are placed together; shall
we go?"

She took his arm, and his whole being thrilled as the little white hand
touched his sleeve and her gracious presence was so near.

They sat down together in the centre of one of the long tables. The duke
sat on one side of Mary, James Fabian Rose upon the other.

The waiters began to serve the clear amber consomme in little porcelain
bowls; the champagne, cream and amber, flowed into the glasses.

Every one was in the highest spirits--actors, authors, journalists,
socialistic leaders--every one.

It was an odd gathering enough to the casual eye. The ladies of the
stage were radiant in their evening gowns and flowers, some of the
ladies in the ranks--or rather upon the staff--of the Socialist army
were in evening frocks also, others, hard-featured, earnest-eyed women,
with short hair and serviceable coats and skirts, were scattered among
them, grubs among the butterflies, scorning gay attire.

The men were the same, though the majority of them were in conventional
evening clothes. Yet, sitting by Mrs. Rose, charming in pale blue, and
with sapphires upon her neck, sat a man in a brown suit with a turn-down
collar of blue linen, a grey flannel shirt, and a red tie. It was Mr.
William Butterworth, the great Socialist M.P. for one of the Lancashire
manufacturing towns, who had never worn a dress suit in his life, and
never meant to, on principle. Such contrasts were everywhere apparent,
but to-night they were mere superficial accidents.

Every one was rejoicing at the immense success of _The Socialist_, every
one realised that to-night a new and hitherto undreamed of weapon had
been forged.

An artery was beating in the duke's head--or was it his heart?--beating
with the sound of distant drums. He was speaking to Mary in a low
voice, and she was bending a little towards him. "Oh, it was far more
wonderful and moving than you yourself can ever know!" he said. "I have
seen all the great players of our day. But you are queen of them all!
There has never been any one like you. There never will be any one like
you."

He stopped, unable to say more. The drumming within gathered power and
sound, became imminent, near, a mighty crescendo, a tide! a flood!

"It is sweet of you to say such things," she answered in her low,
flute-like voice, "but of course they are not true. I am only a very
humble artist indeed. And no one could have helped playing fairly well
in such a play as this, especially when the cause it advocates has
become very dear to me. I am a Socialist heart and soul now, you know."
She sighed, hesitated for a moment, and then went on: "I hope you were
not hurt to-night by anything upon the stage. I could not help thinking
of you. I knew you were in the box, and it was, by the very nature of
it, aimed so directly at you, or rather the class to which you belong
and lead. Since I have been converted to Socialism I have tried to put
myself into the place of other people--to imagine how they see things.
And I know how subversive and outrageous all our ideas must seem to
you."

"Then you were really sorry for me?"

"Really and truly sorry." Perhaps the lovely girl's voice betrayed her
a little, its note was so strangely intimate and tender.

He started violently, and a joyful, wonderful, and yet despairing
thought flashed into his mind. He was silent for some seconds before he
replied.

"No, I wasn't hurt a bit," he said at length. "Not in the very least. I
have something to tell you, Mary"--he was quite unconscious that he had
called her by her Christian name. She saw it instantly, and now it was
her turn to feel the sudden, overwhelming stab of joy and wonder--and
despair!

"Tell me," she said softly.

"I was not hurt," he answered, "because all my ideas are changed also.
I, too, have seen the light. The mists of selfishness and individualism
have vanished from around me. The process has been gradual. It has been
terribly hard. But it has been inevitable and sure, and it dates from
the day on which I first saw you by my bedside in the house of James
Fabian Rose. To-night you and he together have completed my conversion.
With a full knowledge of all that this means to me, I still say to you
that from to-night onwards I am a Socialist heart and soul!"

She looked at him, and the colour faded out of her flower-like face, and
her great eyes grew wide with wonder. Then the colour came stealing
back, pink, like the delicate inside of a shell, crimson with
realisation and gladness.

"Then----" she began.

"You will hear to-night," he answered, and even as he did so Aubrey
Flood, flushed with excitement, and his voice trembling with emotion,
rose, and in a few broken, heart-felt words proposed the health of Mary
Marriott and James Fabian Rose.

The toast was drunk with indescribable enthusiasm and _verve_. The high
grid of the stage above echoed with the cheers. The very waiters,
forgetting their duties, were caught up in the swing and excitement of
it and shouted with the rest.

It was some minutes before the pale man with the yellow beard could
obtain a hearing. He stood there smiling and bowing and patting Mary
upon the shoulder.

Then he began. He acknowledged the honour they had done Mary and himself
in a few brief words of deep feeling. Then, taking a wider course, he
told them what he believed this would mean for Socialism, how that the
theatre, a huge educational machine with far more power and appeal than
a thousand books, a hundred lectures, was now their own.

A new era was opening for them, and it dated from this night. Everything
had been leading up to it for years, now the hour of fulfilment had
come.

He took a letter from his pocket.

It was from Arthur Burnside, and had arrived from Oxford, during the
course of the play. He had found it waiting for him when he returned to
the theatre as the curtain fell on the last act.

He told them the great news in short, sharp sentences of triumph, how
that on this very night of huge success a great fortune was placed in
their hands for the furtherance of the great work of humanity.

When the second prolonged burst of applause and cheering was over Rose
concluded his speech with a sympathetic reference to the duke's presence
among them.

As he concluded the duke leaned behind Mary's chair and whispered a word
to him.

Immediately afterwards the leader rose and said that the Duke of
Paddington asked permission to speak to them for a moment.

There was a second's silence of surprise, a burst of generous cheers,
and the duke was speaking in grave, quiet tones the few sentences which
were to agitate all England on the morrow and alter the whole course of
his life for ever and a day.

Mr. Goodrick had a notebook before him and a pencil poised in his right
hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the duke, "what I have to say shall be said
in the very fewest words possible. My friend Mr. Rose has said in his
kind remarks about my presence here that to-night I must have felt like
a Daniel in a den of lions, or a lion in a den of Daniels--he was not
sure which. I felt like neither one nor the other. Miss Marriott said to
me just now that she hoped I was not hurt by the attack upon that class
of the community which I may be thought to represent. Miss Marriott was
wrong also. I have gone through experiences and learnt lessons which I
need not trouble you with now. There stands my master in chief"--he
pointed to Mr. Rose--"and there have been many others. I came to the
theatre to-night as nearly a Socialist in heart and mental conviction as
any man could be without an actual declaration. At this moment I
announce and avow myself a true and convinced Socialist. I am with you
all heart and soul! Allow me a personal reference. I am extremely
wealthy. I have great estates in London and other parts of England. Some
of these are entailed upon my heirs, and I only enjoy the emoluments
during my own lifetime. The rest--and owing to past circumstances and my
long minority the more considerable part--are mine to do with as I will.
They are mine no longer. I give them freely to the Cause and to England.
I join with my friend, Arthur Burnside, in renouncing a vast property in
favour of the people. I shall retain only a sufficient sum to provide
for me in reasonable comfort. All the details will be settled by the
Central Committee of our party--it will take many months to arrange
them, but that is by the way. And I offer myself and my work, for what
they are worth, to the Cause also. I have no more to say, ladies and
gentlemen."

He sat down in his chair, swayed a little, and as Mary bent over him and
every one present rose to their feet, he swooned away.

Mr. Goodrick stole out from his seat, rushed down the passage to the
stage door, clasping his note-book, and leaped into a waiting cab.

"A sovereign if you get me to the offices of the _Daily Wire_, in Fleet
Street, in half an hour!" said Mr. Goodrick.




CHAPTER XXIII

POINTS OF VIEW FROM A DUKE, A BISHOP, A VISCOUNT, AND THE DAUGHTER OF AN
EARL


The rain was pouring down and it was a horribly gloomy, depressing
morning.

The rain fell through the drab, smoke-laden air of London like leaden
spears, thrown upon the metropolis in anger by the gods who control the
weather.

The duke woke up and through the window opposite the foot of his bed saw
the rain falling. He was in the same guest-room in the house of James
Fabian Rose to which he had been carried when the exploring party had
found him in the hands of the criminals of the West End slum. How long
ago that seemed now, he thought, as he lay there in the grey, dreary
light of the London morning.

When he had fainted on the night before he had been carried into Aubrey
Flood's dressing-room, and speedily recovered consciousness.

His swoon was nothing more than a natural protest of the nerves against
an overwhelming strain. It could hardly have been otherwise. One does
not undergo weeks of mental strain and dismay without overtaxing the
strength. One does not go through a night in which conviction of truth
comes to one, the knowledge of love, the certainty that, in honour, that
love could never be declared, the solemn and public renunciation of
almost everything is realised and declared, without collapse.

He had found Mrs. Rose and Mary Marriott--ministering angels--by his
side when he came back to the world.

Rose had entered, and would not hear of the duke's return to the _Ritz_.
A messenger had been sent home for his things, and now he woke in the
old familiar room upon this grey, depressing morning.

He was feeling the inevitable reaction. He could not help but feel it.
It was eight o'clock he saw from his watch, the same watch which had
been taken from him by force on the night of the railway accident.

The morning papers were out. One of these papers he knew would be even
now having a record sale. The _Daily Wire_ was having a huge boom. The
general public were already learning of his renunciation. Before mid-day
all society would know of it also. His hundreds of relations and
connections would be reading the story. It would be known at Buckingham
Palace and at Marlborough House. Lord Camborne would know of it, the
news would reach Lord Hayle on his sick-bed at Oxford. Lady Constance
would know it.

Before lunch he had to go to Grosvenor Street He must keep his
appointment with his future father-in-law.

And he was fearing this interview as he had never feared anything in
this world before. What was going to happen he didn't know. But he was
certain that the meeting would be terrible. He felt frightfully alone,
and there was only one little gleam of satisfaction in the outlook.
Constance would stand by him. The beautiful girl who was to be his wife
had often expressed her sympathy with the down-trodden and the poor. He
could rely on her at least.

He did not love her. He could never love her. He loved some one else
with all his heart and soul, and believed--dared to believe--that she
loved him also.

That was a secret for her and for him for ever and ever. The thing might
not be. He had to keep his word inviolable, his honour unstained. They
both had duties to do--he and Mary! They must live for the Cause, apart,
lonely, but strong.

He was pledged to Constance Camborne, and hand in hand, good comrades,
they would work together for the common weal.

The joy of life must be found in just that--in the "stern lawgiver"
Duty. The other and divinest joy was not for him, and he must face the
fact like a man of a great race.

"So be it," he muttered to himself with a bitter smile. "Amen!" Then he
rose and plunged into the cold bath prepared for him in an alcove of
the bedroom.

He breakfasted alone with James Fabian Rose. Mary Marriott was staying
in the house but both she and Mrs. Rose were utterly exhausted and would
not be visible for many hours.

The duke was quite frank with his host. He unburdened himself of the
"perilous stuff" of weeks to him; he laid everything bare, all the
mental processes which had led to his absolute change of view. He spoke
of the future and reiterated his determination to become a leader in the
new Israel. He even told Rose of his fear and terror at the approaching
interview with Lord Camborne, but of the most real and deep pain and
distress he said never a word.

He did not mention Mary Marriott, he said nothing of Lady Constance
Camborne. Rose appeared to him then in a new light.

The apostle of Socialism, the caustic wit, the celebrated man of
literature was as gentle and tender as a child. He seemed to know
everything, to enter into the psychology of the situation with an
intuition and understanding which were as delicate and sure as those of
a woman. He said no single word to indicate it, but the duke felt more
and more certain as the meal went on that this wonderful man had
penetrated, more deeply than he could have thought possible, to the
depths of his soul.

Rose knew that he loved Mary Marriott and must marry Constance
Camborne. Twice during breakfast a swift gleam of sardonic but utterly
kindly and sympathetic amusement flashed into the dark eyes of the
pallid man. It was a gleam full of promise and understanding. But the
duke never saw it, he did not see into the immediate future with the
unerring certainty that the writer of plays and student of human life
saw it.

The duke had no hint of his own deliverance, but the elder man saw it
clear and plain, and he would say nothing. A martyr must undergo his
martyrdom before he wins his proper peace, it is the supreme condition
of self-sacrifice, and James Fabian Rose knew that very well.

       *       *       *       *       *

The duke stood waiting in the bishop's library at Grosvenor Street.

"His lordship will be with you in a moment, your Grace," the butler
said, quietly closing the door of that noble room. It might have been
imagination, but the young man thought that he saw a curious expression
flit over the man's face, the half-compassionate, half-contemptuous look
with which callous intelligence regards a madman.

"Ah!" he thought to himself, "I suppose that sort of look is one to
which I must become familiar in the future, it is part of the price that
I must pay for living up to the truth that is in me. Very well, let it
be so, I can keep a stiff upper lip, I believe. I must always remember
the sort of people from whom I am descended. Many of them were robbers
and scoundrels, but at least they were strong men."

It was in this temper of mind that he waited in the splendid library,
among all the hushed silence that a great collection of books seems to
give a room, until the bishop should arrive.

The duke had not long to wait.

The distinguished and commanding old man entered, closed the door behind
him, and walked straight up to him.

The bishop's face was very stern and the lines of old age seemed more
deeply cut into it than usual. But there was a real pain in the
steadfast and proud red eyes which added a pathos to his aspect and
troubled the duke.

"John," Lord Camborne began, "when I saw you last night at that wicked
and blasphemous play I trembled to think that most disquieting news
which had reached me was true."

"And what was that, my lord?"

"Suffer me to proceed in my own way, please, and bear with me if I am
prolix. I am in no happy mind. I went to that play as a public duty, and
I took my daughter that she might see for herself the truth about the
Socialists and the godless anarchy they preach. You had made no mention
of your intention to be present, and I was glad to think that you would
be quietly at Oxford. I had heard from Gerald--than whom you have no
greater friend--that you were associating with disreputable and doubtful
people, forsaking men of your own class and living an extraordinary
life."

"It was a lie," the duke answered shortly. "Gerald has been ill in bed,
he has been misinformed."

"It was not only Gerald," the old man went on, "but letters reached me
from other sources, letters full of the most disturbing details."

"Do you set spies upon my actions, Lord Camborne?"

"That is unworthy of you, John," the bishop answered gently, "unworthy
both of you and of me. You are well aware that I could not stoop to such
a thing. Do you forget that in your high position, with all its manifold
responsibilities to God, to your country, and to yourself, your
movements and dispositions are the object of the most wise and watchful
scrutiny on the part of your tutors?"

"I am sorry I spoke wrongly."

"I make allowances for you. The word was nothing, but it is a far harder
task to make allowances for you in another way. You seem to have
committed yourself irrevocably."

The old man's voice had become very stern. The duke saw at once that he
had read the _Daily Wire_. He said nothing.

"You have been a traitor to your order," the pitiless voice went on.
"You have publicly blasphemed against the wise ordinances of God. A
great peer of England, pledged to support the Throne, you have cast in
your lot with those who would destroy it. I say this in the full
persuasion that the report of what occurred last night is correctly set
forth in that pestilent news-sheet, the _Daily Wire_."

"It is perfectly true," said the duke.

"You intend to abide by it?"

"Unswervingly. My reason is convinced and my honour is pledged."

The bishop turned and strode twice up and down the library, a noble and
reverend figure as he struggled with his anger.

"I have seen Constance," he said at length, speaking with marked
difficulty. "Of course any idea of your marriage is now out of the
question."

The suddenness of the words hit the duke like a blow.

"And Constance?" he said in a faint voice; "she----"

"She is of one mind with me," Lord Camborne answered. "The blow has been
terrible for her, but she is true to her blood. An announcement that the
marriage will not take place will be sent to the papers to-day."

"May I see her?"

"You may see her, John," the bishop said brokenly. "Oh, why have you
brought this shame and public disgrace upon us? I did not intend to make
an appeal to you, but I knew your father, I have loved you, and there is
my dear daughter. Is it too late? Cannot you withdraw? Can it not be
explained as a momentary aberration, a freak, a joke, call it what you
will? There would be talk and scandal, of course, but it would soon blow
over and be forgotten. It could be arranged. I have great influence. Is
it too late? Remember all that you are losing, think well before you
answer."

There were tears in the bishop's voice.

There were tears in the duke's eyes as he answered. "Alas!" he said, "it
is too late, I would not change even if I could, I must be true to
myself."

"God help you, preserve you, and forgive you," Lord Camborne replied
with lifted hand. "And now good-bye, in this world we shall not meet
again. I will send Constance to you. Do not keep her long. Remember that
you have an old man's blessing."

With his hand over his eyes the bishop went from the room. More than
once he stumbled in his walk. He was weeping.

It was awful to see that high and stately old man stricken, to see that
white and honourable head bowed in sorrow and farewell.

Lady Constance came into the room. She was very pale, her eyes were
swollen as if she also had been weeping.

She went straight up to the duke, tall and erect as a dart, and held out
her hand to him.

"John," she said. "I've come to say good-bye. Father has allowed me
five minutes and no more. Father is terribly shaken."

He held her hand in his for a moment. She was very beautiful, very
patrician, a true daughter of the race from which she had sprung.

"Then it is really all over, Constance?" he said with great sadness.

"It must be all over for you and me," she answered.

"Tell me this, dear. Is what you say said of your own free will, or is
it said because of your father's authority and pressure? He has been
very kind to me, kinder than from his natural point of view I can ever
deserve. But I must know. I am ready and anxious. I am putting it
horribly, but the situation is horrible. Constance, won't you marry me
still?"

"You are not putting it horribly," she said with a faint smile. "You are
putting it chivalrously and like a gentleman. Let us be absolutely frank
one with another. We come of ancient races, you and I. We have blood in
us that common people have not. We are both of us quietly and intensely
proud of that. 'Noblesse oblige' is our creed. Very well, I will not
marry you for three reasons. First of them all is that you do not love
me. No, don't start, don't protest. This is our last real meeting, and
so in God's name let's be done with shame. You admire me, you have a
true affection for me. But that is all. We were both dazzled and
overcome by circumstances and the moment. You wanted me because I am
beautiful, of your rank, because we should get on together. I was ready
to marry you because I am very fond of you and because I know and feel
that it is my destined lot in life to make a great marriage, to lead
Society, always to be near the throne. The second reason that I won't
marry you is that by your own act you have deprived yourself of those
material things that are my right and my destiny, and the third reason
is that my father forbids it. John, I think I honour and like you more
than I have ever done before for what you are doing. You have chosen
your path, find peace and joy in it. I pray that you will ever do so,
and I know that you are going to be very happy."

"Very happy, Constance?"

"Very happy, indeed. Oh, you foolish boy, did I not see your face at the
theatre last night! Oh, foolish boy!"

She wore a little bunch of violets at her breast.

She took them and held them out to him. "Give them to her with my love,"
she said.

She bent forward, kissed him upon the forehead, and left the room
without even looking back.

A noblewoman always.




CHAPTER XXIV

"LOVE CROWNS THE DEED"


The duke stood on the pavement outside Lord Camborne's house in
Grosvenor Street.

It was still pouring heavy drops of rain, which beat a tattoo upon his
umbrella.

He glanced back at the massive green-painted door which the butler had
just closed behind him. Never again would that hospitable door open for
him! He would see none of his kind friends any more. Gerald, who had
been as a brother to him for so long, would never shake him by the hand
again--he knew Lord Hayle's temperament too well to expect it.

Constance, beautiful, frank, and stately, had vanished from his life.
The earl, a prince of the Church and a princely old man, would never
again tell him his genial and courtly stories of the past.

The duke stood there alone. Alone!--the word tolled in his ears like a
bell, making a melancholy accompaniment to the rain.

He began to walk towards Bond Street in a shaken and melancholy mood.

How swift and strange it all was! How a few months had altered all his
life, utterly and irrevocably! An infinitesimal time back he had not a
care in the world. He was Prince Fortunatus, enjoying every moment of
his life and position in a dignified and becoming fashion.

And what was he now?

He laughed a small, bitter laugh as he asked himself the question. He
was still the Duke of Paddington, the owner of millions, the proprietor
of huge estates, perhaps the most highly-placed young man in England.
Even now it was not too late to undo much of what he had done.
Everything would be condoned and forgiven to such a man as he.

He could buy a great yacht, go round the world for a year with a choice
society of friends of his own standing, and when he returned Court and
Society would welcome him with open arms once more--all this he
understood very well.

He had but to say a few words and all that was now slipping away from
him would be his own once more.

Struggles against conscience and convictions are either protracted or
very short. The protracted struggle was over in his case. He had fought
out the battle long before. His public action on the night before had
been the outcome. But there was still the last after-temptation to be
faced, the final and conclusive victory to be won.

It was not far from Lord Camborne's town house to Bond Street, but
during the distance the battle within the young man's mind raged
fiercely.

He must not be blamed. The whole of his past life must be taken into
consideration. It must be remembered that he had just been enduring a
succession of shocks, and it must also be taken into account that no one
feels the same enthusiasm on a grey, wet morning, when he is alone, as
he does in a brilliant, lighted place at midnight, surrounded by troops
of friends and sympathisers.

A tiny urchin, wet and ragged, with bare feet, came pattering round the
corner. Under his arm he held a bundle of pink papers in an oil-skin
wrapper. In front of him, as a sort of soiled apron, was the limp
contents-bill of an evening paper.

The duke saw his own name upon it. He realised that by now, of course,
the early editions of all the evening papers were on the streets, and
that they had copied the news from the _Daily Wire_.

"Pyper, m'lord!" said the urchin, turning up a shrewd and dirty face to
the duke, who shook his head and would have passed on.

"Yer wouldn't sye no, m'lord, if yer noo the noos!" said the child.
"'Ere's a bloomin' noo hactress wot's goin' to beat the bloomin' 'ead
orf of all the other gels, just a cert she is! And there's a mad dook
wot's gone and give all is oof to the pore! P'raps I shell get a bit of
it--I don't fink!--'ave a pyper, sir?"

The impish readiness of the boy amused the duke, though his words stung.
Yes! all the world was ringing with his name. The knowledge, or rather
the realisation of what he had known before, acted as a sudden tonic. In
a swift moment he set his teeth and braced himself up. A mad duke, was
he?--_au contraire_, he felt particularly sane! The past was over and
done--let it be so. The future was before him--let him welcome it and be
strong. If he was indeed mad, then it should be a fine madness--a
madness of living for humanity!

He looked at the pinched and anxious face of the boy. A sudden thought
struck him. He would begin with the boy.

"Hungry?" he said.

"Not 'arf!" said the boy.

"Father and mother?"

"Old man's doin' five years, old woman's dead--Lock Orspital."

"Home?"

"Occasional, as you might sye," said the imp reflectively; "but Hadelphi
Harches as hoften as not--blarst 'em!"

"Very well," said the duke. "Now you're going to have as much as you
like to eat, good clothes, and a happy life if you come with me. I'll
see you through."

"Straight?--no bloomin' reformatory?"

"Come along with me, you little devil," said the duke genially. "Do you
think I'm going to let you in? If you do--scoot!"

"I'm on," said the child, much reassured at being called a little
devil. "Carn't be much worse off than nah, wotever 'appens."

Two cabs were found at the corner.

"Jump in that one," the duke said, pointing to the last. "Follow me," he
said to the driver, getting into the first cab as he did so, and giving
the address of Rose's house in Westminster.

The two cabs started without comment or question.

There was something very authoritative about his Grace of Paddington
sometimes.

The two cabs drove up to the little house in Westminster just as the
rain cleared off, and a gleam of sunlight bursting through the clouds
shone on the budding trees which topped the high wall of the Westminster
sanctuary and jewelled them with prismatic fires. High above, the towers
of the Abbey seemed washed and clean, rising into an air purged for a
moment of grime and smoke, while the wet leaden roof of the nave shone
like silver.

James Fabian Rose was on the doorstep of his house, and in the act of
unlocking the door with his latchkey.

"Hallo!" he said. "So you're back, duke--home again! The ordeal is over,
then!"

"Yes, it's quite over," the duke answered.

"Who's this ruffian?" said Rose, smiling at the little newsboy.

"A recruit!" the duke said. "I'm responsible for him for the future.
And meanwhile he's confoundedly hungry."

"So I bloomin' well am," said the imp--though "blooming" was not the
precise word he used.

Rose took the urchin by the ear.

"Come along, embryo Socialist," he said; "there's lots to eat
inside--I'll take him to the kitchen, duke, and meet you in a moment in
my study. My wife's in the kitchen helping the cook. She'll see to this
youngster."

The duke paid the cabmen. As he gave half-a-crown to the second man, the
fellow leaned down from his box and said, "God bless you, my lord. I
knew you as soon as you got into my cab. It'll be many years before you
know the good you done last night. People like us know wot you done and
are goin' to do. I arst you to remember that."

He gave a salute with his whip and clattered away.

The duke went into the house.

As the door closed behind him and he stood alone in the narrow hall, the
final revelation, the complete realisation came to him.

Mechanically he took off his wet overcoat and bowler hat, hanging them
upon the rack. He put his dripping umbrella in the stand and went
upstairs to the first floor.

Rose's study was on the first floor, facing the drawing-room.

He opened the door and went in.

The room, lined with books, a working-room, was rather dark. It did not
face the newly-arrived sun.

But a dancing fire burned upon the hearth, and in a chair by the side of
it Mary Marriott sat alone.

Her face was pale, she wore a long, flowing tea-gown, round her feet
were scattered the innumerable daily papers in which she had been
reading the extraordinary chorus of praise for her triumph of the night
before.

She was leaning back in a high-backed armchair covered in green Spanish
leather, looking like one of Sargeant's wonderful portraits that catch
up eye and heart into a sort of awe at such cunning and splendour of
presentation.

The duke stopped upon the threshold for a second--only for a second. He
had known what he had come to do directly he was in the
house--immediately he had entered the house and felt the influence which
pervaded it.

He went quickly up to her and sank on his knees beside her chair.

He took her white hands in his--things of carved ivory, with a soul
informing them. An hour ago he had held another pair of hands as
beautiful as these.

Her face flushed deeply, her eyes grew wide, her lips parted. She tried
to draw her hands away.

The words burst from her lips as if she had no power to control them.
Her soul spoke, her heart spoke; it was an absolute avowal. But
conscience, her sense of right and duty, her high thought for him and
for herself spoke also.

"No, no! It is dishonourable, you are vowed!"

He held her fast, the strong male impulse dominated her, she was sick to
death with surrender.

"But you love me, Mary?"

"Yes!--oh, what am I saying? God help me!--go, for you are a gentleman,
and must preserve our hearts unstained!"

"Darling!" he cried, "God is with us. I break no troth! All that is over
and done--I am free, I am yours."

He had her little hands in his, tight, close--ah, close!

Swift, passionate words come from his lips, fierce loving words caught
up in sobs, broken with the hot tears of happiness in that he is so
blessed and she so dear!

Her face, in its supreme loveliness, its tenderness, its joy, is turned
full to his now.

The river of his speech rushes down upon her heart, surging over her.
His words catch her up upon their flood, her will seems to her merged in
his, she swoons with love.

For her! For her--this wonder is for her! It is an echo from the love of
the august parents in the sweet garden of Eden.

Gone is the world, the world in which she has always moved. Gone are
ideals and causes, gone are art and triumph, homage and success!
Gone--vanished utterly away--while her own lover holds her hands in his.

She bent her lovely head. No longer did she look up into her lover's
face with happy eyes. A deep flush suffused her face and the white
column of her neck.

"So you see, dearest--best, I had to tell you. This is the moment when
the love that throngs and swells over a man's heart bursts all bonds of
repression and surges out in a great flood. Oh! darling! there has never
been any one like you--there will never be any one like you again! My
love and my lady, dare I ask you to be mine? Oh, I don't know--I can't
say! I kneel before you as a man kneels before a shrine. I wonder that I
have even words to speak to you, so peerless, so gracious, and so
beautiful!"

His voice dropped and broke for a moment. He could say no more. Mary
said no word. The firelight made flickering gleams in the great masses
of dead-black hair. The wonderful face was hidden by the white hands
which she had withdrawn from his.

His own strong hands were clasped upon her knees.

They shook and trembled violently.

What was she thinking? How did she receive his words?--his winged and
fiery words. He knelt there in an agony of doubt.

Then, in one swift access of passion, his mood changed to one of
greater power.

She was a woman, and therefore to be won! The clear, strong thought came
down upon him like fire from heaven. He knew then that he was her
conqueror, the man she must have to be her mate, her strength, her
lover!

His strong arms were round her. They held her close. "Darling!" he
whispered, "my arms are the home for you. That is what the old Roman
poet said. Horace said it in the vineyards and the sun. I say it now.
See, you are mine, mine!--only mine! You shall never break away, my own,
incomparable lady and love!"

The whole world went away from her and was no more. She only knew, in a
super-sensual ecstasy, that his kisses fell upon her cheek like a hot
summer wind.

She found a little voice, a little, crushed, happy voice.

"But you are a duke, you are so much that is great! I am only Mary
Marriott, the actress!"

"You are only the supreme genius of the stage. I am the greatest man in
the world because you love me. Mary, it is just like that--and that is
all."

She kissed him. He knew the supreme moment. All life, all love, all
nature were revealed to him in one flash of joy for which there is no
name.

Both of them heard an echo of the harps that the saints were playing in
another world.

The whole heavenly orchestra was sounding an accompaniment to their
story.

"Love!"

"Love!"

"Husband!"

"Wife!"

There was a knock at the door.

"Please, miss," said the housemaid, "lunch is ready. Mr. Goodrick has
come, your Grace. And the downstairs rooms are full of gentlemen of the
press. And there's men with photographic cameras, too. I've asked the
master what I am to do, but he only laughs, miss! I can't get anything
out of him. But lunch is ready!"

"Sweetheart," the duke said, "lunch is ready! There's a _fact_! Let's
cling to it! And if Rose is laughing, let's laugh, too, and dodge the
journalists!"

"It will be a very happy laughter, John," she said.

As the couple came into the luncheon-room--which was full of the leaders
of the socialistic movement--Mr. Goodrick cast a swift glance at the
duke and Mary, and then left the place with an unobtrusive air.

The _Daily Wire_ had no evening edition.

But it had an extraordinary reputation for being "first there" with
intimate news at breakfast time.




EPILOGUE


Upon the Chelsea Embankment there is a house which, for some months
after its new occupants had taken possession of it, was an object of
considerable interest to those who passed by.

People used to point there, at that time, and tell each other that
"That's where the Socialist duke and his actress wife have gone to live.
The Duke of Paddington--_you_ know!--gave up all his possessions, or
nearly all, to be held in trust for the Socialists. They say that he's
half mad, never recovered from being captured by those burglars on the
night of the big railway smash on the G.E.R."

"Silly Juggins!" would be the reply. "Wish _I'd_ have had it. You
wouldn't see _me_ giving it all up--not half!"

But for several years the house has been just like any ordinary house
and few people point to it or talk about it any more.

There have been hundreds of sensations since the duke and his wife
settled down in Chelsea.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon.

The duke sat in his library in Cheyne Walk. It was a large and
comfortable room, surrounded by books, with a picture here and there
which the discerning eye would have immediately seen to be of unusual
excellence, and, indeed, surprising in such a house as this. A barrister
earning his two thousand a year, a successful doctor not quite in the
first rank, a county court Judge or a Clerk in the Houses of Parliament
would have had just such a room--save only for the three pictures.

The duke had changed considerably in appearance during the past five
years.

The boyishness had departed. The serenity and impassivity of a great
prince who had never known anything but a smooth seat high upon Olympus
had gone also.

The face, now strong with a new kind of strength, showed the marks and
gashes of Experience. It was the mask of a man who had done, suffered,
and learned, but it was, nevertheless, not a very happy face.

There was, certainly, nothing of discontent in it. But there was a
persistent shadow of thought--a brooding.

Much water had flowed under the bridge since the night at the theatre
when he had made a public renunciation of almost everything that was
his.

Life had not been placid, and for many reasons. There had been the long
and terribly difficult breaking away from his own class and order, for
he had not been allowed to go into "outer darkness" without a protracted
struggle.

All the forces of the world had arrayed themselves against him. The
wisest, the most celebrated, the highest placed, had combined together
in that they might prevent this dreadful thing.

He was not as other men.

Hardly a great and stately house in England but was connected with him
by ties of kindred. His falling away was a menace to all of them in its
opening of possibilities, a real grief to many of them. There had been
terrible hours of expostulation, dreadful scenes of sorrow and
recrimination.

Compromise had assailed him on every side. His wife would have been
received everywhere--it was astonishing how Court and Society had
discovered that Mary Marriott was one of themselves after all--a
"Mem-Sahib." He could do what he liked within reason, and still keep his
place.

A prime minister had pointed out to him that no one at all would object
to his countenance of the Socialistic party. He might announce his
academic adherence to Socialism as often and as loudly as he pleased. It
would, indeed, be a good thing for Socialism, in which--so his lordship
was pleased to say--there was indubitably a germ of economic good. All
great movements had begun slowly. These things must ripen into good and
prove themselves by their own weight. But it was economically wrong, and
subversive of all theories of progress, that a sudden and overpowering
weight should be put into one side of the scale by a single individual.

"It will disturb everything" said the Prime Minister. "And any one who,
from an individual opinion, disturbs the balance of affairs is doing
grave, and perhaps irreparable, harm."

In short, they would have allowed him to do anything, but give up his
PROPERTY. They would have let him marry any one if he did not give up
his PROPERTY.

For all of them had won their property and sovereignty by predatory
strength throughout the centuries, or the years. Landowners of ancient
descent, millionaires of yesterday, all knew the power of what they held
and had. All loved that power and were determined to keep it for
themselves and their descendants.... And, all had sons, young and
generous of mind as yet, to whom the duke's example might prove an
incentive to a repetition of such an abnegation.

They were very shrewd and far-seeing, all these people. Collectively,
they were the most cultured, beautiful, and charming folk in England.
They were the rulers of England, and by birth, temper, and inheritance
he was one of them. The pressure put upon him had been enormous, the
strain terrible.

A resolution made in a moment of great emotion, and an enthusiasm
fostered by every incident of time and circumstance, seems a very
different thing regarded dispassionately when the blood is cool, and, so
to speak, the footlights are lowered, the curtain down, the house empty.

Once, indeed, he had nearly given in. He had been sent for privately to
the Palace, and some wise and kindly words had been spoken to him there
by A Personage to whom he could not but listen with the gravest and most
loyal attention.

Compromise was once more suggested, he was bidden to remember his order
and his duty to it. He was again told that his opinions were his own,
that short of taking the irrevocable step he might do almost anything.

Nor does a young man whose inherited instincts are all in fierce war
with his new convictions listen unmoved to gracious counsel such as this
from the Titular Head of all nobility, for whose ancestors his own had
bled on many a historic field.

He had stood quite alone. Mary Marriott, his wife that was to be, had
given him no help. Tender, loving, ready to marry him at any cost, she
nevertheless stood aloof from influencing his decision in the hour of
trial.

He tried hard to get help and support from her, to make her love confirm
his resolution, but he tried in vain. With the clear sanity of a noble
mind, the girl refused to throw so much as a feather-weight into the
scale of the balance, though in this she also suffered (secretly) as
much as he.

Then he went to the others, sick and sore from the buffetings he was
receiving at all hands--from his own order and from the great public
press they influenced, from the great solid middle-class of the country
which, more than anything else perhaps, preserves the level of
wise-dealing and order in England. The others were as dumb as the girl
he loved. It was true that a section of the Socialist party, the noisy,
blatant--and possibly insincere--big drum party, hailed him as prophet,
seer, martyr, and Galahad in one. But there was a furious vulgarity
about this sort of thing which was more unnerving, and made him more
wretched than anything else at all. Such people spoke a different
language from his own, a different language from that of Fabian Rose and
his friends. They said the same thing perhaps--he was inclined to doubt
even that sometimes--but the dialect offended fastidious ears, the
attitude offended one accustomed to a certain comeliness and reticence
even in the new life and surroundings into which he had been thrown.
Both the Pope and General Booth, for example, serve One Master, and live
for Our Lord. But it is conceivable that if the Bishop of Rome could be
present at a mass meeting of the Salvation Army in the Albert Hall, he
would leave it a very puzzled and disgusted prelate indeed.

Rose and his friends avoided influencing the duke, of set purpose. They
were high-minded men and women, but they were also psychologists, and
trained deeply in the one science which can dominate the human mind and
human opinion.

They wanted the Duke of Paddington badly. They wanted the enormous
impetus to the movement that his accession would bring; they wanted the
great revenues which would provide sinews of war for a vast campaign.
But they knew that nothing would be more disastrous than an illustrious
convert who would fall away. The duke had been left alone.

For a month after the few words he had addressed to the people at the
theatre supper, the struggle had continued. His name was in every one's
mouth. It would not be too much to say that all Europe set itself to
wonder what would be the outcome. The journals of England and the
Continent teemed with denunciation, praise, sneers. Tolstoi sent a long
message--the thing fermented furiously, and, instructed by the
journalists, even the man in the street recognised that here was
something more than even the renunciation of one man of great
possessions for an idea--that it would create--one way or the other--a
disintegrating or binding force, that a precedent would establish
itself, that vast issues were involved.

After a week of it, the duke disappeared. Only a few of his friends knew
where he was, and they were pledged not to say. He was fighting it out
alone in a little mountain village of the Riviera--Roquebume, which
hangs like a bird's nest on the Alps between Monte Carlo and Mentone,
and where the patient friendly olive growers of the mountain steppes
never knew who the quiet young Englishman was who sat in the little
_auberge_ under the walls of the Saracen stronghold and watched the
goats and the children rolling in the warm dusk, or stared steadfastly
out over the Mediterranean far below, to where the distant cliffs of
Corsica gleamed like pearls in the sun.

He came back to England, his decision made, his first resolve
strengthened into absolute, assured purpose. The ruffians who had
kidnapped him on the night of the railway accident had been unable to
torture him into buying his freedom. For what to him would have been
nothing--a penny to a beggar--he might have gone free. And yet he had
nearly died rather than give in. Save for the chance or Providence which
brought his rescuers to him in the very last moment, he would have
died--there is no doubt about it.

Now again, he was firm as granite. His mind was made up, nothing could
alter it nor move it. His hand had been placed upon the plough. It was
going to remain there, and he left the palms and orange groves of the
South a man doubly vowed. He had married at once. Mary Marriott became a
duchess. Several problems arose. Should he drop his title--that was one
of them. He refused to do so, and in his refusal was strongly backed up
by the real leaders of the movement. "You were born Duke of Paddington,"
said Rose, "and there is no earthly reason why you should become Mr.
John something or other. It would only be a pretence, and if you do, I
shall change my own name to James Fabian Turnip! and as I have always
told you Socialism never says that all men are equal--true Socialism
that is. It only says that all men have equal rights! At the same time
some of our noisy friends will go for you--though you won't mind that!"
They did "go for" him. Despite the fact that he had given up
everything--his friends and relatives, his order, his tastes, there was
not wanting a certain section of the baser socialistic press which spoke
of "The young man with great possessions" who would give up much but not
all; like all professional sectarians, rushing to the Gospels in an
extremity to pick and choose a few comfortable texts from the history of
One whom they alternately held up as the First Great Socialist, and then
denied His definite claims to be the Veritable Son of God.

The duke minded their veiled sarcasms not at all; an open attack was
never dared. But the attitude gave him pain, and much material
forethought. They were always quoting "The Christ," "The Man Jesus."
They continually pointed out--as it suited them upon occasion--that
private property, privilege, and monopoly were attacked by Jesus, who
left no doubt as to the nature of His mission.

They said, and said truly enough, that "He pictured Dives, a rich man,
plunged into torment, for nothing else than for being rich when another
was poor; while Lazarus, who had been nothing but poor and afflicted, is
comforted and consoled. For that, those Evangelical-Nonconformists, the
Pharisees, who were covetous, derided him. By the force of His
personality (it was not the scourge that did it!), He drove the banking
fraternity (who practised usury then as they do to-day) out of their
business quarters in the Temple, and named them thieves. 'Woe to you
rich, who lay up treasures, property, on earth,' He cried. And 'Blessed
are ye poor, who relinquish property and minister to each other's
needs,' He cried." And yet, in the same breath with which they spoke of
this Supreme Man they denied His Divinity, trying to prove Him, at the
same moment, an inspired Socialist, and what is more a very _practical_
One, and also a Dreamer who spoke in simile of His claims to Godhead,
or, and this was the more logical conclusion of their premisses, a
conscious Pretender and Liar.

"He was," they said, "a Seer, as the ancient prophets were, as John,
Paul, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Swedenborg, Fox, and Wesley, were. Such
men, modern Spiritualists and Theosophists would call 'mediums.' So
great was He in wisdom and power of the spirit, that in His own day He
was called 'the Son of God,' as well as 'the Son of Man,'--that is, the
pre-eminent, the God-like, Man."

Who need dispute over the stories of the "miracles" wrought by Him and
His disciples? To-day, no scientific person would say they were
impossible; we have learned too much of the power of "mind" over
"matter," for that, by now. There were well-attested marvels in all
ages, and in our own living day, which were not less "miraculous" than
the Gospel miracles. Therefore, they would not reject the story of Jesus
because He was affirmed to have worked many signs and wonders.

The Sermon on the Mount, therefore, was a piece of practical politics
which was epitomised in the saying "Love one another." The clear and
definite statements which Jesus made then ought to obtain to-day in
their literal letter. The equally clear and definite statements which
Jesus made as to His own Divine Origin were the misty utterances of a
"medium"! The Incarnation was not a fact.

"Love one another" was the supreme rule of conduct--which made it odd
and bewildering that the young man who had given up everything should be
covertly assailed for holding fast to the name in which he had been
born. But the duke steeled himself. He honestly realised that class
hatred must still exist for generations and generations. It was not the
fault of one class, or the other, it was the inevitable inheritance of
blood. Yet he found himself less harsh in spirit than most of those who
forgot his sacrifices, and grudged him his habits of speaking in decent
English, of courteous manner, of taste, of careful attention to his
finger nails. To his sorrow he found that many of them still hated him
for these things--despite everything they hated him. For his part he
merely disliked, not them, but the absence in them of these things. But
from the first he found his way was hard and that his renunciation was a
renunciation indeed. He threw himself into the whole Socialistic
movement with enormous energy, but his personal consolations were found
in the sympathy and society of people like the Roses, and their
set--cultured and brilliant men and women who were, after all was said
and done, "Gentlefolk born!"

After his marriage, months had been taken up with the legal business,
protracted and beset with every sort of difficulty, by which he had
devised his vast properties to the movement.

He was much criticised for retaining a modest sum of two thousand pounds
a year for himself and his wife--until James Fabian Rose with a pen
dipped in vitriol and a tongue like a whip of steel neatly flayed the
objectors and finished them off with a few characteristic touches of his
impish Irish wit.

Then--would he go to court?--a down-trodden working-man couldn't go to
court. If he was going to be a Socialist, let him be a Socialist--and
so on.

For this sort of thing, again, the duke did not care. The only critic
and judge of his actions was himself, his conscience. He went to court,
Mary was presented also. They were kindly received. High minds can
appreciate highmindedness, however much the point of view may differ.

Mary was two things. First of all she was the Duchess of Paddington. It
was made quite plain to her that, though perhaps she was not the duchess
for whom many people had hoped, she was indubitably of the rank.
Gracious words were said to her as duchess. Even kinder words were said
to her upon another and more private occasion, as one of those great
artists whom Royalty has always been delighted to honour--recognising a
sovereignty quite alien to its own but still real!

As for the duke, he had a certain privilege at the levees. It belonged
to his house. It was his right to stand a few paces behind the Lord
Chamberlain, and when any representatives of the noble family of ----
appeared before the Sovereign, to draw his court sword and step near to
the King--an old historic custom the reasons for which were nearly
forgotten, but which was still part of the pomp and pageantry of the
Royal palace.

Upon one occasion after his renunciation, he appeared at St. James's and
exercised his ancient right. There was no opposition, nothing unkind,
upon the faces of any of the great persons there. The ceremony was gone
through with all its traditional dignity, but every one there felt that
it was an assertion--and a farewell! The duke himself knew it at the
time, and as he left St. James's he may be pardoned if, for a moment,
old memories arose in him, and that his eyes were dimmed with a mist of
unshed tears as the modest brougham drove him back to his house in
Cheyne Walk. How kind they had all been! How sympathetic in their way,
_how highly bred_! Yes! it was worth while to be one of them! It was
worth while to live up to the traditions which so many of them often
forgot. But one could still do that, one could still keep the old
hereditary chivalry of race secret and inviolable in the soul, and yet
live for the people, love the poor, the outcast, the noisy, the vulgar,
those whom Our Lord, who counselled tribute to reason, loved best of
all!... These things are an indication, not a history of the events of
the first eighteen months after the Duke of Paddington's marriage.

The story provides a glimpse into some of his difficulties, that is to
say, difficulties which were semi-public and patent to his intimate
circle of friends, if not, perhaps, to all the rest of the world.
Nevertheless, giving all that he had given, he found himself confronted
with yet another problem, which was certainly the worst of all. He had
married Mary, he loved her and reverenced her as he thought no man had
ever reverenced and loved a girl before. She loved and appreciated him
also. Theirs was a perfect welding and fusion of identity and hopes. But
she was an actress. Her love for her Art had been direct and
overwhelming from the very first. She had given all her life and talent
to it. For her it had all the sacredness of a real vocation. She was,
and always would be, a woman vowed to her Art as truly and strongly as
an innocent maiden puts on the black veil and vows herself to Christ.
Nor is this a wrong comparison, because there are very many ways of
doing things to the glory of God, and God gives divers gifts to divers
of his children. And so this also had to be faced by the duke. Since the
night upon which her great opportunity had come to her, Mary had never
looked back.

Her success, then, had been supreme and overwhelming, and, apart from
all the romantic circumstances which had attended it, her position upon
the stage had grown into one which was entirely apart from anything
outside her Art.

The world now--after five years--still knew that she was a duchess--if
she chose, that was how the world put it--but the fact had little or no
significance for the public. She was just Mary Marriott--their own
Mary--and if she so often spent her genius in interpreting the brilliant
socialistic plays of James Fabian Rose--well, what of that? They went to
see her play in the plays, not, in the first instance, to see the play
itself. And even after that, Rose was always charming--there was always
a surprise and a delightfully subversive point of view. One went home to
Bayswater and West Kensington "full of new ideas," and certainly full of
enthusiasm for beautiful Mary Marriott. "What a darling she is, mother!"
... "Charming indeed, Gertie. And do not forget that she is, after all,
the Duchess of Paddington. Of course the duke gave up his fortune to the
Socialists some years ago, but they are still quite wealthy. Maud knows
them. Your Aunt Maud was there to an afternoon reception only last week.
Every one was there. All the leading lights! They have renounced
society, of course, but quite a lot of the best people pop in all the
same--so your Aunt Maud tells me--and, of course, all the leading
painters and actors and writers, and so on. And, of course, they can go
anywhere they like directly they give up this amusing socialistic pose.
They're even asked down to Windsor. The King tolerates the young duke
with his mad notions, and of course Miss Marriott is received on other
grounds too--like Melba and Patti and Irving, don't you know. Nothing
like real Art, Gertie! It takes you anywhere." Such statements as these
were only half true. Every one came to the duke's house who was any one
in the world of Art. But they came to see his wife, not to see him. And
despite the rumours of Bayswater his own class left him severely alone
by now. The years had passed, his property was no longer his, he had
very definitely "dropped out." The duke did not care for "artistic"
people, and he knew that they didn't care for him. He could not
understand them, and on their part they thought him dull and
uninteresting. There was no common ground upon which they could meet.
Many of the people who came were actors and actresses, and when it had
been agreed between Mary and her husband that she was to continue her
artistic career, he had not contemplated the continual invasion and
interruption of his home life which this was to mean. He had a
prodigious admiration for Mary's talent; it had seemed, and still
seemed, to him the most wonderful thing in the world. His ideal had been
from the first a life of noble endeavour for the good of the world. He
had given up everything he held dear, and would spend the rest of his
life in active service for the cause of Socialism. Mary would devote her
supreme art to the same cause. But there would also be a hidden, happy
life of love and identity of aim which would be perfect. They had done
exactly as he had proposed. His enthusiasm for the abstract idea of
Socialism had never grown less--was stronger than ever now. Mary's
earnestness and devotion was no less than his. In both of them the flame
burned pure and brightly still.

But the duke knew by this time that nothing had turned out as he
expected and hoped. His home life was non-existent. His work was
incessant, but the Cause seemed to be making no progress whatever. It
remained where it had stood when he had just made his great
renunciation.

The vested interests of Property were too strong. A Liberal and
semi-socialistic government had tried hard, but had somehow made a mess
of things. The House of Lords had refused its assent to half a dozen
bills, and its members had only smiled tolerantly at the Duke of
Paddington's fervid speeches in favour of the measures which were sent
up from the Lower House. And worse than this, the duke saw, the
Socialists saw, every one saw, that the country was in thorough sympathy
with the other party, that at the next general election the
Conservatives would be returned by an overwhelming majority. And there
was one other thing, a personal, but very real thing, which contributed
to the young man's general sense of weariness and futility of endeavour.
He loved his wife with the same dogged and passionate devotion with
which he had won her. He knew well that her own love for him was as
strong as ever. But, as far as she was concerned, there was so little
time or opportunity for an expression of it. She was a public woman, a
star of the first rank in Art and in affairs. Her day was occupied in
rehearsals at the theatre or in public appearances upon the socialistic
platform. Her nights were exercised in the practice of her Art upon the
stage.

Sometimes he went to see his wife act, but his pride and joy in her
achievement was always tempered and partly spoiled by a curious--but
very natural--_physical_ jealousy which he was quite unable to subdue.
It offended and wounded all his instincts to see some painted posing
actor holding _his_ own wife--the Duchess of Paddington!--in his arms
and making a pretended love to her. It was all pretence, of course; it
was simply part of the inevitable mechanism of "Art" ("Oh, _damn_ Art,"
he would sometimes say to himself very heartily), but it was beastly all
the same. He had to meet the actor-men in private life. First with
surprise, and then with a disgust for which he had no name, he watched
their self-consciousness of pose, their invincible absorption in a petty
self, their straining efforts to appear as gentlemen, their failure to
convince any one but their own class that they were real human beings at
all--that they were any more than empty shells into which the
personality of this or that creative genius nightly poured the stuff
that made the puppets work. No doubt his ideas were all wrong and
distorted. But they were very real, and ever present with him. Nor was
it nice to know that any horrid-minded rascal with a few shillings in
his fob could buy the nightly right to sit and gloat over Mary's charm,
Mary's beauty. It was a violation of his inherited beliefs and
impulses, though, if it had been another man's wife, and not his own, he
would probably not have cared in the least!

       *       *       *       *       *

So the Duke of Paddington sat in the library of his house in Chelsea. It
was a Saturday afternoon. There was a matinee, and Mary had rushed off
after an early lunch. The duke felt very much alone. He had no
particular engagement that afternoon. His correspondence he had finished
during the morning, and he was now a little at a loss how to occupy his
time. At the moment life seemed rather hollow and empty, the very aspect
of his comfortable room was somehow distasteful, and, though he did not
feel ill, he had a definite sensation of physical mis-ease.

"I must have some exercise," he thought to himself. "I suppose it's a
touch of liver."

He debated whether he should go to the German gymnasium for an hour, to
swim at the Bath Club, or merely to walk through the town. He decided
for the walk. Thought and pedestrianism went well together, and the
other two alternatives were not conducive to thought. He wanted to
think. He wanted to examine his own sensations, to analyse the state of
his mind, to find out from himself and for himself if he really _were_
unhappy and dissatisfied with his life, if he had made a frightful
mistake or no. It was late autumn. The weather was neither warm nor
cold. There was no fog nor rain, but everything was grey and cheerless
of aspect. The sky was leaden, and there was a peculiar and almost
sinister lividity in the wan light of the afternoon.

He walked along the Embankment dreamily enough. The movement was
pleasant--he had certainly not taken enough exercise lately!--and he
tried to postpone the hour of thought, the facing of the question.

When he had crossed the head of the Vauxhall Bridge road, and traversed
the rather dingy purlieus of Horseferry, he came out by the Lords'
entrance to the Houses of Parliament. The Victoria Tower in all its
marvellous modern beauty rose up into the sky, white and incredibly
massive against the background of grey. The house was sitting, so he saw
from the distant, drooping flag above; but it was many months now since
he had ventured into the Upper Chamber. As he came along his heart
suddenly began to beat more rapidly than usual, and his face flushed a
little. A small brougham just set down the Archbishop of Canterbury as
the duke arrived at the door--the man whom in the past he had known so
well and liked so much, Lord Camborne, to whose daughter the duke had
been engaged--Lord Camborne, older now, stooping a little, but no less
dignified and serene. Time had not robbed the bishop and earl of any of
his stateliness of port, and the Primate of All England was still one of
the most striking figures of the day.

He turned and saw the duke. The two men had never met nor spoken since
the day upon which the younger had told of his new convictions. The
archbishop hesitated for a moment. His fine old face grew red, and then
paled again; there was a momentary flicker of indecision about the firm,
proud mouth. Then he held out his hand, with a smile, but a smile in
which there was a great deal of sadness.

"Ah, John!" he said, shaking his venerable head. "Ah, John! so we meet
again after all these years. How are you? Happy, I hope?--God bless you,
my dear fellow."

A pang, like a spear-thrust, traversed the young man's heart as he took
that revered and trembling hand.

"I am well, your Grace," he said slowly, "and I'm happy."

"Thank God for it," returned the archbishop, "Who has preserved your
Grace"--he put a special and sorrowful accent upon the form of address
the younger man shared with him--"for His own purposes, and has given
you _His_ grace! as I believe and hope."

And then, something kindly and human coming into his face and voice, the
ceremonial gone from both, he said: "Dear boy, years ago I never thought
that we should meet like this--as duke and as archbishop. I hoped that
you would have called me father! And since dear Hayle's death ... Well,
I am a lonely old man now, John. My daughter has other interests. I am
not long for this world. I spend the last of my years in doing what I
can for England, according to the light within me. As you do also, John,
I don't doubt it. Good-bye, good-bye--I am a little late as it is. Pray,
as I pray, that we may all meet in Heaven."

And with these last kindly words the old man went away, and the Duke of
Paddington never saw him again, for in five months he was dead and the
Church mourned a wise and courtly prelate.

The duke went on. Melancholy filled his mind. He never heard a voice now
like that of the man he had just left. It brought back many memories of
the past. He wasn't among the great of the world any more. The people
who filled his house in Chelsea were clever and charming no doubt. But
they weren't _his_ people. He had departed from the land of his
inheritance. He was no longer a prince and a ruler among rulers and
princes. The waters of Babylon were not as those of Israel, and in his
heart he wept.

... It was to be an afternoon of strain and stress. As he went up
Parliament Street towards Trafalgar Square he met a long line of
miserable sandwich men. Upon their wooden tabards he saw his wife's name
"KING'S THEATRE--MISS MARY MARRIOTT'S HUNDREDTH NIGHT," and so forth.
And as he turned into Pall Mall--for half unconsciously his feet were
leading him to a club in St. James's Street to which he still
belonged--he received another shock.

A victoria drove rapidly down the street of clubs, and in it, lovely and
incomparable in her young matronhood, sat the Marchioness of Dover,
Constance Camborne that had been, now the supreme leader and arbitrix of
Vanity Fair. She saw him, she recognised him, and he knew it. But she
made no sign, not a muscle of her face relaxed as the carriage whirled
by. Once more the duke felt very much alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

He went into the club--it was the famous old Cocoa Tree--sat down and
began to read the evening papers. He lay back upon the circular seat of
padded crimson leather that surrounds the central column of the Tree
itself. Few people were in the club this afternoon, and as he glanced
upwards to where the chocolate-coloured column disappears through the
high Georgian ceiling, a sense came to him that he was surrounded by the
shades of those august personalities who had thronged this exclusive
place of memories in the past--Lord Byron, Gibbon; farther back, Lord
Alvanley, Beau Brummell, and the royal dukes of the Regency. Their
pictures hung upon the walls--peers, statesmen, royalties, they all
seemed crowding out of the frames, and to be pressing upon him now.
Stately figures all and each, ghostly figures of men who had lived and
died in many ways, well or ill, but all people who had _ruled_--men of
his own caste and clan.

He was overwrought and tired. His imagination, never a very insistent
quality with him, was roused by the physical dejection of his nerves to
an unusual activity. And in the back of his brain was the remembrances
of recent meetings--the meeting with the Primate who might have been his
father-in-law; the meeting with the radiant and high-bred young woman
whose husband he himself might have been.

... A grave servant in the club's livery came up to him, with a
pencilled memorandum upon a silver tray.

"This has just come through by telephone, your Grace," he said. "The
telephone boy did not know that your Grace was in the house, or he would
have called you. As it was the boy took down the message." This was the
message:


     "Hoping to see you Bradlaugh Hall, Bermondsey, to-night. Slap-up
     meeting arranged, and a few words from you will be much
     appreciated. To-night we shall bump if not much mistaken. Wot O for
     the glorious cause.

     "SAM JONES, M.P."


The duke folded up the message and placed it in his pocket.

Yes! he was now little more than the figurehead, the complacent doll,
whose jerky movements were animated and controlled by Labour Members of
Parliament, captains of "hunger marchers" brigades and such-like
"riff-raff"--no! of course "salt of the earth!"

Struggling with many conflicting thoughts--old hopes and desires now
suddenly and startlingly reawakened, strong convictions up and arming
themselves in array against inherited predisposition, a tired and not
happy brain, at war with itself and all its environment--he rose from
his seat and passed out of the room through the huge mahogany doors. He
walked by the tiny room where the hall porter sits, and mounted the few
stairs which lead to the lobby in front of the doors of the
dining-rooms. The electric "column printer" machines were clicking and
ticking, while the long white rolls of paper, imprinted in faint purple
with the news of the last hour, came pouring slowly out of the glass
case, while a much-buttoned page boy was waiting to cut up the slips,
and paste them upon the green baize board under their respective
headings.

The duke went up to one of the machines, and held up the running cascade
of printed paper. As he did so, this was what he saw and read:


     3.30. MR. ARTHUR BURNSIDE, THE BRILLIANT YOUNG BARRISTER, SOCIALIST
     M.P., AND A TRUSTEE OF THE DUKE OF PADDINGTON'S PROPERTY SHARING
     SCHEME, HAS BEEN RUN OVER BY A MOTOR OMNIBUS. THE INJURED GENTLEMAN
     WAS AT ONCE TAKEN TO THE HOUSE OF MR. JAMES FABIAN ROSE BEHIND THE
     ABBEY.

     _LATER._ MR. BURNSIDE IS SINKING FAST. SIR FREDERICK DAVIDSON GIVES
     NO HOPE. MR. ROSE AND ALL OTHER LEADERS OF SOCIALIST PARTY ARE AWAY
     IN MANCHESTER EXCEPT DUKE PADDINGTON, WHOSE WHEREABOUTS ARE
     UNCERTAIN.


The duke dropped the paper. The machine went on ticking and clicking,
but he did not wish to read any more.

So Burnside was dying!--Burnside who had been the impulse, the ultimate
force which had finally directed his own change of attitude towards life
and its problems, his great renunciation.

Quite as in a dream, still without any vivid sense of the reality of
things, the duke turned to the left, entered the lavatory, and began to
wash his hands. He hardly knew what he was doing, but, suddenly, he
heard his conscious brain asking him--"Is this symbolic and according to
a terrible precedent? Of _what_ are you washing your hands?"

Then, putting the thought away from him, as a man fends off some black
horror of the sleepless hours of night by a huge effort of will he went
out of the place, found his hat and stick and got into a cab, telling
the driver to go to Westminster as if upon a matter of life and death!

       *       *       *       *       *

Burnside lay quite pale and quiet in that very bedroom where the duke
had once lain in pain and exhaustion--how many years ago it seemed now!
how much further away than any mere measure of time as we know it by the
calendar it really was! A discreet nurse in hospital uniform was there,
sitting quietly by the bedside. A table was covered with bandages and
bottles, there was a faint chemical fragrance in the air--iodoform
perhaps--and a young doctor, left behind by the great ones who had
departed, moved silently about the place.

Burnside was conscious. He turned eyes in which the light and colour
were fading towards the new arrival.

"Ah!" he said, in a voice which seemed to come from a great distance.
"So there is some one after all! You opened the door to me in the past,
duke. And it is strange that you have come here now, after all this
time, to close it gently behind me again."

"My poor old fellow," the duke said. "It's heartbreaking to find you
like this--you from whom we all hoped so much! But what ... I mean, I
wish Rose and all the rest of them could be here."

"Never mind, duke, you're here. And Some One Else is coming soon."

The duke did not understand the words of the dying man. But he sat down
beside the bed and held a hand that was ice-cold and the fingers of
which twitched now and then. The duke felt, dimly, that there ought to
be a clergyman here. In his own way he was a religious man. He went to
church on Sundays and said "Our Father," and such variations of the
prayer as suggested themselves to him, quite frequently.

Of the constant Presence of the Supernatural or Supernormal in the life
of the Catholic Church, the duke knew nothing at all. His spiritual life
had never been more than an embryo; he was surrounded by people, in the
present, many of whom were frankly contemptuous of Christianity, some of
whom avowedly hated it, others who called Jesus the Great Socialist, but
denied His Divinity. He had never discussed religious matters with his
wife, except in the most casual and superficial way. Much as he loved
her, certain as he was of her love for him, their lives were lived, to a
certain extent, apart. Her Art, his work for Socialism, kept them busy
in their own spheres--and her Art, also, had become a most powerful
weapon of the socialistic crusade--and left them tired at the close of
each crowded day. There was never time or opportunity for talk about
religion--for confidences. The duke had known--had always had a sort of
vague idea--that Burnside was what some people call "A High Churchman."
He knew that his friend belonged to the Christian Social Union, was a
friend of the Bishop of Birmingham, lived by a certain rule. But
Burnside had never obtruded the Christian Social Union upon that larger
and more militant, that _political_ socialism with which the duke was
chiefly connected. Burnside had always known that the time was not yet
ripe for that. The duke had never realised at all the quietly growing
force within the English Catholic Church.

... He held the hand of the dying man, and a singular sense of
companionship, identity of feeling came to him, as he did so. It seemed
to be stronger even than his grief and sorrow, and much as he had always
liked and appreciated Burnside, he now experienced the sensation of
being _nearer_ to him than ever before.

Burnside moved his head a little. "You can talk," he said. "Thank God,
my head is quite clear, and I am in hardly any pain. I have several
hours yet to live, the doctors tell me. Something will happen to me in
four or five hours, and I shall then pass away quite simply. Sir
William, God bless him, didn't tell me any of the soothing lies that
doctors have to tell people. He saw the case was hopeless, and he was
good enough to be explicit!"

There was something so calm and certain in the barrister's voice, that
the other man's nerves were calmed too. He saw the whole situation with
that momentary certainty of intuition which comes to every one now and
then, and which is a habit with a great soldier or doctor--a Lord
Roberts or Sir William Gull.

"Yes, let's talk, then," he answered in a calm, even voice. "I need
hardly tell you, old fellow, what this means to me, and what it means
to the movement."

"You're getting very tired of the movement, duke!" the thin voice went
on.

The duke started; the nurse held a cup of some stimulant to the lips of
the dying man. There was a silence for a minute.

"I don't quite understand you, Burnside."

"But I understand _you_, though I have never said so before. After all
your splendid and wonderful renunciations, you are beginning to have
doubts and qualms now. Tell the truth to a man who's dying!"

The duke bowed his head. At that moment of mute confession, he knew the
deep remorse that cowards and traitors know--traitors and cowards for
whom circumstances have been too strong, who are convinced of the cause
they support, but have been, in action or in thought, disloyal to it.

Burnside spoke again.

"But don't be faint-hearted or discouraged," he said. "The truths of
what we call Socialism are as true as they ever were. But only a few
Socialists, as yet, have realised the only lines upon which we can
attack the great problem. All of us have a wonderful ideal. Only a small
minority of us have found out the way in which that ideal can be
realised. And there is only one way...."

Suddenly Burnside stopped speaking. He raised himself a little upon his
pillow, some colour came into his face, some light into his eyes. The
front door bell of the house could be heard ringing down below.

The young doctor withdrew to a side of the room, and sat down upon a
chair, with a watchful, interested expression on his face. The nurse
suddenly knelt down. Then the door of the bedroom opened, and a tall,
clean-shaven man in a cassock and surplice came in, bearing two silver
vessels in his hand. Instinctively the duke knelt also. Some One Else
had indeed come into the room. And in the light of that Real Presence
many things were made clear, the solution of all difficulties flowed
like balm into the awe-struck heart of the young man who had surrendered
great possessions.

God and Man, the Great Socialist, was _there_, among them, and a
radiance not of this visible world, was seen by the spiritual vision of
four souls.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was evening as the duke walked home to Chelsea. The clergyman who had
brought the Blessed Sacrament to Burnside walked with him. Father Carr
had remained by the bedside till the quiet end--a peaceful, painless
passing away. The duke had remained also, and his grief had become
tempered by a strange sense of peace and rest, utterly unlike anything
he had ever known before. It was his first experience of death. He had
never seen a corpse before, and the strange waxen thing that lay upon
the bed spoke to him--as the dead body must to all Christians--most
eloquently of immortality. This shell was not Burnside at all. Burnside
had gone, but he was more alive than ever before, alive in the happy
place of waiting which we call Paradise.

The duke had asked the priest--who, as it happened, had no other
engagement--to come home and dine with him, and as they walked together
by the river, Father Carr told him many things about the dead man--of a
secret life of holiness and renunciation that few knew of, the simple
story of a true Socialist and a very valiant soldier of Christ.

"He saw very far indeed," said Father Carr. "I wish that all Socialists
could see as far. For, as Plato pointed out long ago, we shall never
have perfect conditions in this life until character is perfected.
Burnside knew that as well as an imaginary and revolutionary Socialism,
there is also a _moral_, that is, a _Christian_ Socialism. Christianity
paints no Utopias, describes to us no _perfect_ conditions to be
introduced into this world. It teaches us, on the contrary, to seek
perfection in another world; but it desires at the same time to help us
to struggle against earthly care and want, so that the kingdom of God,
and therewith the true kingdom of man, embracing as it does not only his
spiritual but also his material life, may come upon earth and prosper."

"These aspects are new to me," said the duke. "I must hear more of
this."

"I can send you books," replied Mr. Carr, "and you might come to some of
the meetings of the Christian Social Union also. You will find all your
present doubts and difficulties solved if you examine our contentions.
As you have just told me, you are as convinced as ever as to the truth
of a moderate and well-ordered Socialism. But you see, little progress
being made and you are uneasy in your environment. I am a convinced
Socialist also, but I see the truth--which is simply this. The nearer we
all get to our Lord Jesus Christ, the nearer we get to Socialism. There
is no other way."

It was late when Mr. Carr left the house in Chelsea, and the two men had
talked long together. The duke sat in his study alone, waiting for his
wife's return from the theatre--on matinee days she did not return home
for dinner. He was filled with a strange excitement, new and high
thoughts possessed him, and he wanted to share them with her.

At last he heard the sound of her key in the lock and the jingle of her
hansom as it drove away. He went out into the hall to meet her. A small
round table with her soup and chicken had been placed by the library
fire, and as she ate he told her of Burnside's death, and with eager
words poured out the ferment of thought within him.

"I don't know if you quite see all I mean yet, dear," he said, "and, of
course, it's all crude and undigested with me as yet. But we must make
more knowledge of it together."

An unconscious note of pleading had come into his voice as he looked at
her. She sat before him tired by the long day's work, but radiant in
beauty and charm, and he saw so little of her now!--this, and the most
priceless boon of all, it seemed that he must surrender for the good of
the Cause. Then, suddenly, she left her seat and came to where he was,
putting her arms round his neck and kissing him.

"Darling!" she said. "_Together_, that is the word. We have not been
enough together of late years. But I had to do my work for the Cause
just as you had. But now we shall be more together and happier than ever
before. In a few weeks I shall leave the stage for ever. I shall have
another work to do."

"You mean, darling----"

"I also have something to tell you"; and pressing her warm cheek to his,
with sweet faltering accents, she told him.

He held her very close. The tears were in his eyes.

"Oh, my love!" he whispered. "At last!"

THE END




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The Story of a Great Conspiracy

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End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Socialist, by
Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger Gull and Guy Thorne

*** 