BEGINNING AT HOME.
“Charity creates much of the misery it relieves, but it does not
relieve all the misery it creates.”
Charity, as all the world knows, should begin at an “at home.” Lord
Ferriby knew as well as any that there are men, and perhaps even women,
who will give largely in order that their names may appear largely and
handsomely in the select subscription lists. He also knew that an
invitation card in the present is as sure a bait as the promise of
bliss hereafter. So Lady Ferriby announced by card (in an open envelope
with a halfpenny stamp) that she should be “at home” to certain persons
on a certain evening. And the good and the great flocked to Cambridge
Terrace. The good and great are, one finds, a little mixed, from a
social point of view.
There were present at Lady Ferriby's, for instance, a number of
ministers, some cabinet, others dissenting. Here, a man leaning against
the wall wore a blue ribbon across his shirt front. There, another,
looking bigger and more self-confident, had no shirt front at all. His
was the cheap distinction of unsuitable clothes.
“Ha! Miss Ferriby, glad to see you,” he said as he entered, holding out
a hand which had the usual outward signs of industrial honesty.
Joan shook the hand frankly, and its possessor passed on.
“Is that the gas-man?” inquired Major White, gravely. He had been
standing beside her ever since his arrival, seeking, it seemed, the
protection of one who understood these social functions. It is to be
presumed that the major was less bewildered than he looked.
“Hush!” And Joan said something hurriedly in White's large ear.
“Everybody has him,” she concluded; and the explanation brought certain
calm into the mildly surprised eye behind the eye-glass. White
recognized the phrase and its conclusive contemporary weight.
“Here's a flat-backed man!” he exclaimed, with a ring of relief. “Been
drilled, this man. Gad! He's proud!” added the major, as the
new-comer passed Joan with rather a cold bow.
“Oh, that's the detective,” explained Joan. “So many people, you know;
and so mixed. Everybody has them. Here's Tony--at last.”
Tony Cornish was indeed making his way through the crowd towards them.
He shook hands with a bishop as he elbowed a path across the room, and
did it with the pious face of a self-respecting curate. The next minute
he was prodding a sporting baronet in the ribs at the precise moment
when that nobleman reached the point of his little story and on the
precise rib where he expected to be prodded. It is always wise to do
the expected.
At the sight of Tony Cornish, Joan's face became grave, and she turned
towards him with her little frown of preoccupation, such as one might
expect to find upon the face of a woman concerned in the great
movements of the day. But before Tony reached her the expression
changed to a very feminine and even old-fashioned one of annoyance.
“Oh, here comes mother!” she said, looking beyond Cornish, who was
indeed being pursued by a wizened little old lady.
Lady Ferriby, it seemed, was not enjoying herself. She glanced
suspiciously from one face to another, as if she was seeking a friend
without any great hope of finding one. Perhaps, like many another, she
looked upon the world from that point Of view.
Cornish hurried up and shook hands. “Plenty of people,” he said.
“Oh yes,” answered Joan, earnestly. “It only shows that there is, after
all, a great deal of good in human nature, that in such a movement as
this rich and poor, great and small, are all equal.”
Cornish nodded in his quick sympathetic way, accepting as we all accept
the social statements of the day, which are oft repeated and never
weighed. Then he turned to White and tapped that soldier's arm
emphatically.
“Way to get on nowadays,” he said, “is to be prominent in some great
movement for benefiting mankind.” Joan heard the words, and, turning,
looked at Cornish with a momentary doubt.
“And I mean to get on in the world, my dear Joan,” he said, with a
gravity which quite altered his keen, fair face. It passed off
instantly, as if swept away by the ready smile which came again. A
close observer might have begun to wonder under which mask lay the real
Tony Cornish.
Major White looked stolidly at his friend. His face, on the contrary
never changed.
Lady Ferriby joined them at this moment--a silent, querulous-looking
woman in black silk and priceless lace, who, despite her white hair and
wrinkled face, yet wore her clothes with that carefulness which
commands respect from high and low alike. The world was afraid of Lady
Ferriby, and had little to say to her. It turned aside, as a rule, when
she approached. And when she had passed on with her suspicious glance,
her bent and shaking head, it whispered that there walked a woman with
a romantic past. It is, moreover, to be hoped that the younger portion
of Lady Ferriby's world took heed of this catlike, lonely woman, and
recognized the melancholy fact that it is unwise to form a romantic
attachment in the days of one's youth.
“Tony,” said her ladyship, “they have eaten all the sandwiches.”
And there was something in her voice, in her manner of touching Tony
Cornish's arm with her fan that suggested in a far-off, cold way that
this social butterfly had reached one of the still strings of her
heart. Who knows? There may have been, in those dim days when Lady
Ferriby had played her part in the romantic story which all hinted at
and none knew, another such as Tony Cornish--gay and debonair,
careless, reckless, and yet endowed with the power of making some poor
woman happy.
“My dear aunt,” replied Cornish, with a levity with which none other
ever dared to treat her, “the benevolent are always greedy. And each
additional virtue--temperance, loving-kindness, humility--only serves
to dull the sense of humour and add to the appetite. Give them
biscuits, aunt.”
And offering her his arm, he good-naturedly led her to the
refreshment-room to investigate the matter. As she passed through the
crowded rooms, she glanced from face to face with her quick, seeking
look. She cordially disliked all these people. And their principal
crime was that they ate and drank. For Lady Ferriby was a miser.
At the upper end of the room a low platform served as a safe retreat
for sleepy chaperons on such occasions as the annual Ferriby ball.
To-night there were no chaperons. Is not charity the safest as well as
the most lenient of these? And does her wing not cover a multitude of
indiscretions?
Upon this platform there now appeared, amid palms and chrysanthemums, a
long, rotund man like a bolster. He held a paper in his hand and wore a
platform smile. His attitude was that of one who hesitated to demand
silence from so well-bred a throng. His high, narrow forehead shone in
the light of the candelabra. This was Lord Ferriby--a man whose best
friend did his best for him in describing him as well-meaning. He gave
a cough which had sufficient significance in it to command a momentary
quiet. During the silence, a well-dressed parson stood on tiptoe and
whispered something in Lord Ferriby's ear. The suggestion, whatever it
may have been, was negated by the speaker on receipt of a warning shake
of the head from Joan.
“Er--ladies and gentlemen,” said Lord Ferriby, and gained the necessary
silence. “Er--you all know the purpose of our meeting here to-night.
You all know that Lady Ferriby and myself are much honoured by your
presence here. And--er--I am sure----” He did not, however, appear to be
quite sure, for he consulted his paper, and the colonial bishop near
the yellow chrysanthemums said, “Hear, hear!”
“And I am sure that we are, one and all, actuated by a burning desire
to relieve the terrible distress which has been going on unknown to us
in our very midst.”
“He has missed out half a page,” said Joan to Major White, who somehow
found himself at her side again.
“This is no place, and we have at the moment no time, to go into the
details of the manufacture of malgamite. Suffice it to say, that such
a--er--composition exists, and that it is a necessity in the
manufacture of paper. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the painful fact has
been brought to light by my friend Mr. Roden----” His lordship paused,
and looked round with a half-fledged bow, but failed to find Roden.
“By--er--Mr. Roden that the manufacture of malgamite is one of the
deadliest of industries. In fact, the makers of malgamite, and
fortunately they are comparatively few in number, stricken as they are
by a corroding disease, occupy in our midst the--er--place of the
lepers of the Bible.”
Here Lord Ferriby bowed affably to the bishop, as if to say, “And that
is where _you_ come in.”
“We--er--live in an age,” went on Lord Ferriby--and the practical Joan
nodded her head to indicate that he was on the right track now--“when
charity is no longer a matter of sentiment, but rather a very practical
and forcible power in the world. We do not ask your assistance in a
vague and visionary crusade against suffering. We ask you to help us in
the development of a definite scheme for the amelioration of the
condition of our fellow-beings.”
Lord Ferriby spoke not with the ease of long practice, but with the
assurance of one accustomed to being heard with patience. He now waited
for the applause to die away.
“Who put him up to it?” Major White asked Joan.
“Mr. Roden wrote the speech, and I taught it to papa,” was the answer.
At this moment Cornish hurried up in his busy way. Indeed, these people
seemed to have little time on their hands. They belonged to a
generation which is much addicted to unnecessary haste.
“Seen Roden?” he asked, addressing his question to Joan and her
companion jointly.
“Never in my life,” answered Major White. “Is he worth seeing?”
But Cornish hurried away again. Lord Ferriby was still speaking, but he
seemed to have lost the ear of his audience, and had lapsed into
generalities. A few who were near the platform listened attentively
enough. Some who hoped that they were to be asked to speak applauded
hurriedly and finally whenever the speaker paused to take breath.
The world is full of people who will not give their money, but offer
readily enough what they call their “time” to a good cause. Lord
Ferriby was lavish with his “time,” and liked to pass it in hearing the
sound of his own voice. Every social circle has its talkers, who hang
upon each other's periods in expectance of the moment when they can
successfully push in their own word. Lord Ferriby, looking round upon
faces well known to him, saw half a dozen men who spoke upon all
occasions with a sublime indifference to the fact that they knew
nothing of the subject in hand. With the least encouragement any one of
them would have stepped on to the platform bubbling over with
eloquence. Lord Ferriby was quite clever enough to perceive the danger.
He must go on talking until Roden was found. Had not the pushing parson
already intimated in a whisper that he had a few earnest thoughts in
his mind which he would be glad to get off?
Lord Ferriby knew those earnest thoughts, and their inevitable tendency
to send the audience to the refreshment-room, where, as Lady Ferriby's
husband, he suspected poverty in the land.
“Is not Mr. Cornish going to speak?” a young lady eagerly inquired of
Joan. She was a young lady who wore spectacles and scorned a fringe--a
dangerous course of conduct for any young woman to follow. But she made
up for natural and physical deficiencies by an excess of that zeal
which Talleyrand deplored.
“I think not,” answered Joan. “He never speaks in public, you know.”
“I wonder why?” said the young lady, sharply and rather angrily.
Joan shrugged her shoulders and laughed. She sometimes wondered why
herself, but Tony had never satisfied her curiosity. The young lady
moved away and talked to others of the same matter. There were quite a
number of people in the room who wanted to know why Tony Cornish did
not speak, and wished he would. The way to rule the world is to make it
want something, and keep it wanting.
“I make so bold as to hope,” Lord Ferriby was saying, “that when
sufficient publicity has been given to our scheme we shall be able to
raise the necessary funds. In the fulness of this hope, I have ventured
to jot down the names of certain gentlemen who have been kind enough to
assume the trusteeship. I propose, therefore, that the trustees of the
Malgamite Fund shall be--er--myself----”
Like a practiced speaker, Lord Ferriby paused for the applause which
duly followed. And certain elderly gentlemen, who had been young when
Marmaduke Ferriby was young, looked with much interest at the pictures
on the wall. That Lord Ferriby should assume the directorship of a
great charity was to send that charity on its way rejoicing. He stood
smiling benevolently and condescendingly down upon the faces turned
towards him, and rejoiced inwardly over these glorious obsequies of a
wild and deplorable past.
“Mr. Anthony Cornish,” he read out, and applause made itself heard
again.
“Major White.”
And the listeners turned round and stared at that hero, whom they
discovered calmly and stolidly entrenched behind the eye-glass, his
broad, tanned face surmounting a shirt front of abnormal width.
“Herr von Holzen.”
No one seemed to know Herr von Holzen, or to care much whether he
existed or not.
“And--my--er--friend--the originator of this great scheme--the man whom
we all look up to as the benefactor of a most miserable class of
men--Mr. Percy Roden.”
Lord Ferriby meant the listeners to applaud, and they did so, although
they had never heard the name before. He folded the paper held in his
hand, and indicated by his manner that he had for the moment nothing
more to say. From his point of advantage he scanned the whole length of
the large room, evidently seeking some one. Anthony Cornish had been
the second name mentioned, and the majority hoped that it was he who
was to speak next. They anticipated that he, at all events, would be
lively, and in addition to this recommendation there hovered round his
name that mysterious charm which is in itself a subtle form of
notoriety. People said of Tony Cornish that he would get on in the
world; and upon this slender ladder he had attained social success.
But Cornish was not in the room, and after waiting a few moments, Lord
Ferriby came down from the platform, and joined some of the groups of
persons in the large room. For already the audience was breaking up
into small parties, and the majority, it is to be feared, were by now
talking of other matters. In these days we cannot afford to give
sufficient time to any one object to do that object or ourselves any
lasting good.
Presently there was a stir at the door, and Cornish entered the large
room, followed leisurely by a tired-looking man, for whom the idlers
near the doorway seemed instinctively to make way. This man was tall,
square-shouldered, and loose of limb. He had smooth dark hair, and
carried his head thrown rather back from the neck. His eyes were dark,
and the fact that a considerable line of white was visible beneath the
pupil imparted to his whole being an air of physical delicacy
suggestive of a constant feeling of fatigue.
“Who is this?” asked Major White, aroused to a sense of stolid
curiosity which few of his fellow-men had the power of awakening.
“Oh, that,” said Joan, looking towards the door--“that is Mr. Percy
Roden.”