AN OMEN.
Hanbury turned west and led the way. He smiled grimly but said
nothing. Here was poetic justice for Dora with a vengeance. Here was
Nemesis in the person of this misshapen representative of the people.
Here was a bridegroom of Democracy from a Chelsea slum. She had been
anxious to see the people of the slums and now one of the people was
anxious to see her. Poetic justice was fully vindicated or would be
when he introduced this stunted demagogue to the daughter of a hundred
earls.
For a while Leigh said nothing, so that Hanbury had ample time for
thought. Two years ago he had made his first appearance on a platform
as a Tory Democrat. His own birth and surroundings had been of neither
the very high nor the very low. His father, years dead, William
Hanbury, had been a merchant in Fenchurch Street, his mother, still
living, was daughter of the late Sir Ralph Preston, Baronet, and
brother of the present General Sir Edward Preston. John Hanbury did
not know much about his father's family. For two or three generations
the Hanburys had lived as private gentlemen of modest means, until
some whim took his father, and he went into business in Fenchurch
Street and made money. John was the only child, and had a couple of
thousand a year of his own, and the reversion of his mother's money.
He was thus well off for a young man, and quite independent. He had
money enough to adopt any career or pursue none.
Up to a couple of years ago he had been roving in taste. Then he made
a few speeches from Tory Democratic platforms and people said he was a
born orator, and born orators, by perversion of thought, are supposed
to be born statesmen as well. Hence he had made up his mind to devote
himself to politics. But up to this time he had few strong political
views and no political faith.
He seemed to be about growing into a philosophical politician, that
is, a politician useful at times to each party and abhorred by both.
In feeling and tastes John Hanbury was an aristocrat. Although his
father had been in business he had never sunk to the level of a City
man, whose past and present was all of the City. William Hanbury had
been known before his migration into the regions of commerce, and
William Hanbury's wife was a baronet's daughter, and no baronet of
yesterday either, and John Hanbury had had two grandfathers who did
not work, and furthermore the money which William Hanbury put into
business had not, as far as could be traced, come out of business.
It was about a year after John Hanbury made his first platform speech
that he became very friendly with the Ashtons. He had known Dora's
father for a little while as a member of a non-political West End
club. When Mr. Ashton saw that the young man had been haranguing from
a platform he took him in hand one day at luncheon at the club and
pointed out that meddling in politics meant suicide to happiness.
"Both my wife and my daughter are violent politicians; but I will
encourage no politics while I am at home. A man's house is to cover
and shield him from the storms of the elements, and the storms of
parties, and I will have no wrangle under the house tree. I don't want
to say anything against politicians, but I don't want to have anything
to do with them."
"And what side do Mrs. Ashton and Miss Ashton hold with?"
"The wrong side, of course, sir; they are women. Let us say no more of
them. I do not know what their side is called by the charlatans and
jugglers of to-day. I hear a jargon going on often when it is fancied
I am not attending to what is being said. With everything I hear I
adopt a good and completely impartial plan. I alter all the epithets
before the nouns to their direct opposite. This, sir, creates as great
a turmoil and confusion in my own head as though I were an active
politician; but, sir, I save my feelings and retain my self-respect by
giving no heed, taking no interest, saying no word. When a man adopts
politics he takes a shrew, an infernal shrew, sir, for a wife."
The Honourable Mrs. Ashton (she was daughter of Lord Byngfield) saw
the summarised report of Hanbury's speech and immediately took an
intense interest in the young man. From the printed reports and the
verbal accounts she got of him she conceived a high expectation of the
future before him, if he were taken in hand at once, for, alas! was he
not on the wrong path?
Accordingly she made up her mind to lie in wait for him and catch him
and convert him or rather divert him, for as yet he was not fully
committed to any party. She met him in the drawing-room of a friend.
She invited him to her small old house in Curzon Street, and when he
came set about the important work of conversion or diversion.
Mrs. Ashton was a tall, thin woman of forty-five with very great
vitality and energy. How so frail and slender a body sufficed to
restrain so fiery and irrepressible a spirit was a puzzle. It seemed
as though the working of the spirit would shake the poor body to
pieces. It was impossible to be long near her without catching some of
her enthusiasm, and at first John Hanbury, being a young man and quite
unused to female propagandists, was almost carried away. But in time
he recovered his breath and found himself firm on his feet and at
leisure to look around him.
Then he saw Miss Ashton, Dora Ashton, and she was another affair
altogether, and affected him differently. He fell in love with Dora.
She certainly was the loveliest and most sprightly girl whose hand his
hand had ever touched. Notwithstanding the fiery earnestness of her
mother, and the statement of her father that his wife and daughter
were politicians, she was no politician in a party sense. She was an
advocate of progress and the poor, subjects which all parties profess
to have at heart, but prominence to which justly or unjustly gives a
decidedly Liberal if not Radical tinge to the banner carried by their
advocates.
In time Dora began to show no objection to the company of John Hanbury
and later the two became informally engaged. They were both opposed to
affording the world food for gossip and they agreed to say nothing of
their engagement until a very short time before their marriage. They
understood one another. That was enough for them. It was certain
neither family would object. No question of money was likely to arise.
In fact true love would run as smooth as the Serpentine. A little
savour of romance and difficulty was imported by a wholly unnecessary
secrecy.
John Hanbury had not yet made any distinct profession of political
faith. Dora said the man who had not settled his political creed was
unfit for matrimony. This was said playfully, but the two agreed it
would be advisable for John to take his place in public before he took
his place as a householder. At present he lived with his widowed
mother, who had for some secret reason or other as great, nay, a
greater horror of politics than even Mr. Ashton himself.
Dora had long importuned John to take her through some of the poorer
streets of Westminster, the Chelsea district, for instance. She did
not mean slumming in the disguise of a factory girl, but just a stroll
through a mean but reputable street. Under persistent pressure he
consented, and out of this walk to-day had sprung the meeting with
this strange being at his side and the meeting with the beautiful girl
so astonishingly like Dora.
Dora had asked, insisted in her enthusiastic way, upon piercing this
unknown region of Westminster in order to see some of the London poor
in the less noisome of their haunts. At the shocking catastrophe which
had overtaken the negro, one of the people, he had fainted and fallen,
for the purposes of blighting ridicule, into the hands of this man of
the people by his side. This man of the people had mistaken Dora for
that girl in Grimsby Street and he had mistaken the girl in Grimsby
Street for Dora. This man of the people had introduced him to that
girl who was so like Dora, and now claimed to be introduced to Dora
who was so like that girl. This was indeed the ideal of poetic
justice! Dora had been the cause of bringing this man and him together
and putting him in this man's power. Dora was an aristocratic advocate
of the people. By introducing this man to Dora in Curzon Street he
should silence him, thus getting back to the position in which he was
before he set out that afternoon and this man should have introduced
him to Miss Grace, who was Dora's double, and he should have
introduced this man to Dora who was Miss Grace's double.
So far the situation had all the completeness of a mathematic problem,
of a worked-out sum in proportion, of a Roland for an Oliver, or a
Chinese puzzle.
But over and above there was, for John Hanbury, a little gain, a tiny
profit. Dora in her enthusiasm might have no objection to walk through
the haunts of the people; how would she like the people to walk into
her mother's drawing-room, particularly when the people were
represented by the poor, maimed, conceited creature at his side.
John Hanbury suddenly looked down. Leigh was hobbling along
laboriously at his side. It all at once struck Hanbury with remorse
and pity that he had been walking at a pace in no way calculated for
the comfort of his companion. In his absorption he had given no heed
to the stunted legs and deformed chest at his side. He slackened his
steps and said, with the first touch of consideration or kindness he
had yet displayed: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leigh. I fear I have been
going too fast."
"Hah!" said the little man, "most young men go too fast."
"I assure you," said he, keeping to the literal meaning of his words,
"I was quite unconscious of the rate I was walking at."
"Just so. You forgot me. You were thinking of yourself."
"I am afraid I was not thinking of you."
"Don't bother yourself about me. I am used to be forgotten unless when
I can make myself felt. Now you would give a good deal to forget me
altogether. Hah!"
"We have not very much farther to go. But I ought to have called a
cab."
"And deprived me of the honour of walking beside you! That would have
been much more unkind. But I am glad we have not much farther to walk.
And you are glad we have not much farther to walk--together. Do you
know why you are taking this stroll with me?"
"Oh, yes. It is part of our bargain."
"Ah, the bargain is only an accident. The reason why you are taking
this stroll with me is because you do not want to cut a ridiculous
figure in the papers."
"No doubt."
"Because you do not want to appear contemptible for a few hours, a few
days, a few weeks. How would you like to walk from your childhood to
your grave the butt and derision of all who set eyes on you?"
Hanbury did not answer the question.
"This little walk I am taking with you now is only a short stage on
the long road I am always travelling between lines of people that
point and laugh and jeer and grin and howl at me. I am basking in the
splendours of your youth and your fame."
Hanbury did not see his way to say anything to this either.
"Have you read much fiction?" asked Leigh after a pause.
"Well, yes," with a laugh. "Government statistics and Blue Books
generally." He wanted to alter the current of conversation if
possible.
"I don't mean books of fiction dealing with figures of that kind, but
works of fiction dealing with figures of another kind. With human
figures, for instance? For instance, have you read Hugo's 'Notre
Dame'?"
"Yes," with a frown.
"And Dickens's 'Old Curiosity Shop'?"
"Yes," with a shudder.
"And which do you consider the most hideous and loathsome, Quasimodo,
Quilp, or Leigh?"
"Mr. Leigh, you surely are not adopting this means of punishing me for
my heedlessness in hurrying just now? If so you are adopting an
extremely painful way of reminding me of my rudeness."
"Painful means! Painful means! As I live under Heaven, this man is
thinking of himself now! Thinking of himself still! He is thinking of
the pain it gives him to remember I am a hump-backed cripple, and not
of the pain it is to me to be the hump-backed cripple!--to be the
owner of the accursed carrion carcase he would spurn into a sewer if
he met one open _and it were dark!_"
Leigh paused and flamed and frothed.
"If you allow yourself to give way to such absurd vagaries as these,
how do you expect me to fulfil the final part of our compact?"
"Quite right, Mr. Hanbury. I will moderate my raptures, sir. This is
not, as you might say, either the time or place for heroics. The idiot
boy is a more engaging part than the iconoclast maniac. The truth is,
I have eaten nothing to-day yet, and I am a bit lightheaded. You don't
use eau-de-cologne? Few men do. I do. It is very refreshing. Now let
us go on. I am quite calm."
They had stopped a minute, and Leigh spilled some perfumed spirit from
his small silver flask, and inhaled the spirit noisily.
"Hah! I feel all right again. Speaking of the idiot boy makes me think
of asking you if, when you were at school, you had the taste for
speaking?"
"Mr. Leigh," said Hanbury severely, "you allow yourself great freedom
with liberties."
"Ha-ha-ha! Capital. You are right. I should not have said that. You
will try to forgive me. I shall remember your words, though. They
would go well in a play. But we must dismiss folly. The weather is too
hot for repartee. At least, I find it too hot. Talking of heat reminds
me of a furnace, and that brings me back to something I said to you
about my having made a discovery or invention in chemistry, which will
completely outshine mystery gold. The Italians have a saying that as a
man grows old he gives up love, and devotes himself to wine. Love has
never been much in my way, and now that I have passed the bridge, the
_pons asinorum_ over which all men who are such asses as to live long
enough go when they turn thirty-five, I have no intention of taking to
wine, for it does not agree with me. But I am seriously thinking of
taking to gold. Gold, sir, is a thing that becomes all times of life,
and glorifies age. There is a vast fortune in my discovery. Hah!"
"And what may be the nature of your discovery?"
"Do you know anything of chemistry?"
"Nothing."
"Or of metallurgy even?"
"No."
"What a pity! I cannot therefore hope to rouse in you the divine
enthusiasm of a scientist. I had just come back from Stratford-at-Bow
when I had the pleasure and honour of meeting you to-day. I had been
down there looking after the first drawing of the retorts, and my
expectations had never dared to contemplate such a result as I have
reached."
"May I know what your discovery is?"
"The philosopher's stone, sir. Ha-ha ha! You will laugh at me. So will
all sensible men laugh at me when I say I have discovered the
philosopher's stone. The universal agent. The great solvent. The
mighty elixir. But remember, sir, in the history of the world's
progress it is always the sensible men who have been the fools."
"I am afraid you will not have many believers in the beginning."
"I know I shall not. But I do not want many believers. I am not like
the advertising stockbrokers who are willing to make any man's fortune
but their own. I shall keep my secret dark, and make my fortune in
quiet, with no more noise about how I am doing it than an army
contractor."
"And what do you purpose making gold out of--lead?"
"No, sir, phosphorus. Out of phosphorus."
"It is the right colour, to begin with."
"And it is in the right place."
"Where?"
"Here," tapping his brown, wrinkled forehead, "in my brain. I am going
to turn the phosphorus of my brain into gold. All the things that have
been made by man have been made out of the phosphorus of the brain,
why not gold also?"
"Truly, why not gold also?"
"You were right when you said I should have few believers at first. In
the beginning there will be little or no profit. Bah, let me not talk
like a fool. Of course, you and I know that gold cannot be made until
we discover the universal atom and learn how to handle it. My
discovery is a combination of substances which will defy all the known
tests for gold. The dry or the wet method will be powerless confronted
with it. The cupel and acid will proclaim it gold. It will scorn the
advances of oxygen and remain fixed a thousand years in the snowy
heart of the furnace. It will be as flexible as ribbed grass, as
ductile as the web of a spider, as malleable as the air between the
gold-beater's skins.
"You say it will be almost as dear as gold itself at the beginning."
"Yes, almost as dear as gold."
"How much will it cost?"
"I have not yet counted up all the cost. There are certain ingredients
the cost of which it is difficult to ascertain," he said in an
abstracted voice.
"This is Mrs. Ashton's house."
Leigh aroused out of the abstraction and looked up. Miss Ashton was at
the open window of the drawing-room.
"I am so troubled about the calculation that I am not sure whether it
will pay at all to make it. Yesterday morning I had given up all
thought of my alchemy. I resolved to direct my studies towards the
elixir of life. Yesterday I made up my mind the elixir was beyond me,
and I resolved to go on making the gold. To day I am in doubt again.
Like all alchemists, I am superstitious. I shall look for an omen to
guide me."
"Miss Ashton is at the window. She recognises you. She is saluting
you."
The dwarf drew a pace back from the house and swept the ground with
his hat.
"Take that for a good omen," said Hanbury, as he went up to the door.
"Did I not tell you I would show you something more wonderful than
mystery gold?"
"Yes."
"Did I keep my word?"
"The likeness is most astonishing. Come in."
"If the likeness is not complete it may go hard with the miracle
gold."