A SUBSTITUTE FOR GOLD.
The air of pleasant badinage which pervaded the room had no more
effect on Oscar Leigh than on the gasalier. No one spoke to him, for
no one knew him. Except what passed between Leigh and Hanbury all
words were intended for any ears who might hear. Intensities of
individuality were laid aside at the threshold. Those whose
individuality pursued and tyrannized over them like a Frankenstein
remained away. They did not put it to themselves in this way. They
told themselves they found the place too mixed or too light or too
frivolous or too distracting.
Oscar Leigh was in no degree influenced by the humour or manner of the
people present. These chattering men and women were indifferent to
him, so long as he did not see how to put them to any use or find them
in his way. He was not accustomed to the society of ladies and
gentlemen, and consequently he omitted little customary observances.
But he was not inured to any society at all, and this saved him from
vulgarities; and then he was much used to commune with himself, which
gave him directness and simplicity of manner.
One of the things affording freshness and vitality to Leigh was that
he did not feel the need of common-places. Common-places are the
tribute which intelligence pays to stupidity. They are the inventions
of a beneficent Satan in the interest of the self-respect of fools.
"Miss Ashton," said Leigh bowing without emphasis or a smile, "I have
ventured to come to beg a cup of tea of you."
She looked at him with a smile and said, "You have chosen the right
moment. I have just got a fresh supply."
"This is a very fortunate day for me. It may be the most fortunate day
of my life."
"And what is the nature of the good fortune you have found to-day?"
she asked, handing him a tiny cup, while the servant who still
lingered near offered him some thin bread-and-butter. There were
half-a-dozen films on an exquisite china dish. Leigh took one doubled
it twice and ate it greedily.
"You will let me have all? I have tasted no food to-day."
"Oh, certainly. I am afraid all is very little. But James can get us
more." A faint colour had come into Miss Ashton's face. James, the
servant, who had been christened Wilfrid, passed his disengaged hand
over his mouth to conceal a smile. Hanbury flushed purple. For a
moment there was a pause in the talk of those within hearing.
"What's the matter?" asked a very young man with a very fresh
healthy-looking face of a chatty dowager who was looking through a
gold-rimmed eye-glass at the dwarf.
"Hanbury's friend, the dwarf, is _eating!_"
"Good Heavens!" cried the young man leaning against the wall at his
back as in dismay.
Leigh went on eating.
"It is excellent bread-and-butter," said he when he had finished the
last slice. "I have never tasted better."
Hanbury stooped to pick up nothing and whispered "This is not a
restaurant," fiercely into Leigh's ear.
"Eh? No. I am well aware of that," said the other in an ordinary tone
and quite audibly. "You would not find such good bread-and-butter as
that in any restaurant I know of. Or it may be that I was very
hungry."
"Shall I get some more?" asked Miss Ashton, who had by this time
recovered from her surprise and was beaming with good-natured
amusement.
"You are very kind, thank you. It was enough."
"I tell you what it is, Lady Forcar, that is a remarkable person,"
said the young man with the fresh complexion, to the dowager.
"If people hear of this it will become the fashion," said Lady Forcar,
whose complexion never altered except in her dressing-room or when the
weather was excessively hot.
"What?" asked the young man. "What will become the fashion?"
"Eating."
"How shocking!"
"If that man had only money and daring and a handsome young wife, he
could do anything--anything. He could make pork sausages the rage.
Have you ever eaten pork sausages, Sir Julius?"
"Thousands of times. They are often the only things I can eat for
breakfast, but not in London. One should never eat anything they can
make in London."
"Pork is a neglected animal," said Lady Forcar with a sigh. "It must
be years since I tasted any."
"You know pork isn't exactly an animal?"
"No. Pork sausages are animalculæ of pork with bread and thyme and
sweet marjoram and fennel and mint. Have you ever taken it into your
mind, Sir Julius, to explain why it is that while a pig when alive is
far from agreeable company, no sooner does he die than all the
romantic herbs of the kitchen garden gather round him?"
"No doubt it comes under the head of natural selection."
"No doubt it does. Have you ever tried to account for the fact that
there are no bones in pork sausages?"
"I fancy it may be explained by the same theory of natural selection.
The bones select some other place."
"True. Very true. _That_ never occurred to me before. Do you know I
have often thought of giving up my intellect and devoting the
remainder of my days to sensualism."
"Good gracious, Lady Forcar, that sounds appalling."
"It does. If I had as much genius as that humpbacked little man, I'd
do it, but I feel my deficiency; I know I haven't the afflatus."
"The thing sounds very horrible as you put it. For what form of
sensualism would you go in? climate? or soap? or chemical waters? or
yachting?"
"None of them. Simply pork. You observe that the people who are
nearest the sensible and uncorrupted beasts worship pork. If you hear
anyone speak well of pork, that person is a sensualist at heart. I
sigh continually for pork. The higher order of apes, including man,
live in trees and on fruits that grow nearer to Heaven than any other
thing. Cows and sheep and low types of man and brutes of moderate
grossness eat things they find on the earth, such as grass and corn,
and hares and deer and goats, but it is only pigs and men of the
lowest types that burrow into the ground for food. The lowest creature
of all is the sensualist, who not only eats potatoes and turnips and
carrots but the very pigs that root for things nature has had the
decency to hide away from the sight of the eyes of angels and of men.
Can you conceive anything lower in the scale of sensual joy or more
delicious than pork and onions? I tell you, Sir Julius, if this
humpbacked dwarf only had money, a handsome wife and courage, he could
popularize sausages being served before the soup. He is the only man
since Napoleon the Great who has the manner of power sufficient for
such a reform."
"Let us devoutly hope, Lady Forcar, that he may bring about the
blessed change, that is if you wish it."
"Wish it! Good Heavens, Sir Julius, you don't for a moment fancy me
capable of trifling with such a subject! I say to you deliberately, it
is the only thing which would now save Society from ennui and its
present awful anxiety about the temperature of the soup."
The dowager Lady Forcar was well known for her persiflage, her
devotion to her young and plain daughter-in-law, the head now of her
son's house, her inch-thick paint, of which she spoke freely and
explained on the grounds of keeping in the swim, and her intense
interest in all that affected the welfare of the rural cottager.
Sir Julius Whinfield, in spite of his very fresh young face and
affectation, was an excellent authority on Hebrew and the manufacture
of silk, so that if he had only happened to live once upon a time he
might have talked wisdom to Solomon and dresses with Solomon's wives.
He was not a clever conversationalist, but when not under pressure
could say sound things pithily. Of Lady Forcar he once declared that
he never understood what a saint must have been like when living until
he met her. This did not come to her ears and had nothing to do with
her liking for the young man.
The tall, military-looking man who had been speaking to Miss Ashton,
and who was not a soldier but a composer of music, now came up and
said:
"I am in sore need of you, Lady Forcar. I am about to start a new
crusade. I am going to try to depose the greatest tyrant of the time."
"And who is that? Wagner? Bismarck? The Russian Bear? The Higher
Culture?"
"No. Soap. I am of opinion that this age can do no good so long as it
is bound to the chariot wheels of soap. This is the age of science,
and soap is its god. Old Q. once became impatient with the river
Thames, and said he could see nothing in it----"
"He was born too soon. In his time they had not begun to spy into the
slums of nature. For my part I think the microscope is the tyrant of
this age. What did old Q. say about our father Tiber?"
"He said he could see nothing in it, that it always went
flow--flow--flow, and that was all."
"One must not expect too much of a river. A river is no more than
human, after all. But what has soap been doing?"
"Nothing; and in the fact that it has been doing nothing lies one of
my chief counts against it. Of old you judged a man by the club to
which he belonged, the number of his quarterings, the tailor who made
his clothes, the income he had, the wife he married, the horses he
backed, or the wine he drank. Now we classify men according to the
soap they use. There are more soaps now than patent medicines."
"Soaps are patent medicine for external use only," said Lady Forcar,
touching her white plump wrist.
"There may be some sense in a pill against the earthquake, or against
an unlucky star, but how on earth can soap be of any use? First you
smear a horrid compound over you, and then you wash it off as quickly
as possible. Can anything be more childish? It is even more childish
than the Thames. It can't even flow of itself. It is a relic of
barbarism."
"But are not we ourselves relics of barbarism? Suppose you were to
abolish all relics of barbarism in man, you would have no man at all.
Heads, and arms, and bodies, are relics of barbaric man. Had not
barbaric man heads, and arms, and bodies? Are you going to abolish
heads, and arms, and bodies?"
"Well," said Mr. Anstruther, the composer, "I don't know. I think they
might be reduced. Anyway," dropping his voice, and bending over her
ladyship, "our little friend here, whom Mr. Hanbury brought in,
manages to hold his own, and more than hold his own, with less of such
relics of barbarism than most of us."
"I was just saying to Sir Julius when you, Mr. Anstruther, came up,
that I consider the stranger the most remarkable man I ever met in
this house, and quite capable of undertaking and carrying out any
social revolution, even to the discrediting of soap. If you have been
introduced bring him to me."
"I haven't, unfortunately, but I'll tell Hanbury, who looks as black
as thunder, that you would like to speak to him."
"I have scarcely seen Miss Ashton to-day. Let us go to them. That is
the simplest way," said Lady Forcar, rising and moving towards the
place where Dora, Hanbury, and Leigh stood.
When Leigh finished eating the bread-and-butter and drinking the tiny
cup of tea, he said: "You wish, Miss Ashton, to know in what way I
have been lucky to-day?"
She looked in perplexity at Hanbury, and then at the dwarf. She had no
doubt he had alluded to her when he spoke of having found a model for
the Pallas-Athena. An average man accustomed to ordinary social
observances would not pursue that kind of flattery any further, but
could this man be depended on? He certainly was not an ordinary man,
and as certainly he was not accustomed to ordinary social observances.
If he pursued that subject it would be embarrassing. It was quite
plain John was in very bad humour. He deserved to be punished for his
pusillanimous selfishness to-day, but there were limits beyond which
punishment ought not to be pressed. She would forgive John now and try
to make the best of the situation. She felt convinced that John would
not have brought this man here except under great pressure. Let him be
absolved from further penalties.
She said pleasantly: "One always likes to hear of good fortune coming
to those in whom one is interested." Nothing could be more bald, or
commonplace, or trite, yet in the heart of Leigh the words made joyous
riot. She had implied, even if she did not mean her implication, that
she took an interest in _him_.
"I was speaking a moment ago about the figures of time in my clock. I
had the honour of telling Mrs. Ashton that there would be thousands of
them, and that they would be modelled, not chiefly or at all for the
display of mechanism, but in the first place as works of art; to these
works of art mechanism would be adapted later."
"Which will make your clock the only one of the kind in the world,"
said she, much relieved to find no pointed reference to herself.
"Precisely. But I did not do myself the honour of telling Mrs. Ashton
of what material the figures were to be composed."
"No. I do not think you said what they would be made of. Wax, is it
not?" With the loss of apprehension on her own account, she had gained
interest in this wonderful clock.
"The models will of course be made of wax, but the figures themselves,
the figures which I intend to bequeath to posterity, will be made of
gold."
"Gold! All those figures made of gold! Why, your clock will cost you a
fortune."
"It will not cost _me_ as much as it would cost any other man living.
I am going to make the gold too." He drew himself up, and looked
proudly round.
At this moment Lady Forcar and Mr. Anstruther came up, and
introductions took place. Leigh submitted to the introductions as
though he had no interest in them beyond the interruption they caused
in what he was saying.
Miss Ashton briefly placed Lady Forcar and Mr. Anstruther in
possession of the subject, and then Leigh went on. He no longer leant
upon his stick. He straightened himself, threw back his head
haughtily, and kept it back. He shifted his stout gnarled stick into
his left hand and thrust the long, thin, sallow, hairy fingers of his
right hand into the breast of his coat, and looked around as though
challenging denial.
"I have," he said, "invented a metal, a compound which is absolutely
indistinguishable from gold, which is in fact gold, and of which I
shall make my figures. Mystery gold was a clumsy juggle that one found
out in the fire. My gold is _bonâ fide_ a miracle, and I have called
it Miracle Gold. My gold will resist the acid, and the blow-pipe, and
the crucible. As I live, if they provoke me, I will sell them not
metal miracle gold, but perchloride of miracle gold. No one can doubt
me then!"
"And will you be able, Mr. Leigh, to make not only enough for your
figures but some for sale also?" asked Mr. Anstruther.
"I may be able to spare a little, but my gold cannot be sold for a
chapman's price. It will cost me much in money and health and risk,
and even then the yield will be small."
"In health and risk?" said Miss Ashton, in a tone of concern and
sympathy. "How in health and risk?" He seemed even now to have but
little store of health.
He lowered his head and abated the arrogance of his manner. "The steam
of fusing metals and fumes of acids are not for men who would live
long, Miss Ashton. They paralyse the muscles and eat into the
wholesome flesh of those whose flesh is wholesome, while with one who
is not fashioned fair to the four winds of attack, the end comes with
insidious speed. Then for the risk, there are conjunctions of
substances that, both in the dry and the wet, lead often to unexpected
ebullitions and rancorous explosions of gas or mere forces that kill.
There may spring out of experiments vapours more deadly than any known
now, poisons that will slay like the sight of the angel of death."
"Then, Mr. Leigh," said the girl, with eyes fixed upon him, "why need
you make these figures of time of such costly material?"
"Ah, there may be reasons too tedious to relate."
"And does the good fortune you speak of concern the manufacture of
this miracle gold?" she asked with a faint flush, and eyes shining
with anxiety.
"It does."
"A discovery which perhaps will make the manufacture less dangerous?"
"Which would make the manufacture unnecessary."
She clasped her hands before her with delight, and cried while her
eyes shone joyously into his, "Oh, that would be lucky indeed. And how
will you know if your augury of good fortune will come true?"
"You are interested?" He bent his head still lower, and his voice was
neither so firm nor so harsh.
"Intensely. You tell us your life may be endangered if you go on. Tell
us you think you can avoid the risk."
"I do not know yet."
"When can you know?"
"Would you care to hear as soon as I know?"
"Oh, yes."
"I shall, I think, be certain by this day week."
"Then come to us again next Thursday. We shall all be here as we are
now?"
"Thank you, Miss Ashton, I will. Good day."
He backed a pace and bowed to her, and then turned round, and, with
head erect and scornful eyes flashing right and left, but seeing
nothing, strode out of the room.
"Dora," whispered Lady Forcar, "you have made another conquest. That
little genius is in love with you."
The girl laughed, but did not look up for a moment. When she did so
her eyes were full of tears.