CHAPTER I

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The Wayfarer's Library

THE HEART OF PENELOPE

[Illustration: Decoration]

MRS BELLOC LOWNDES

[Illustration Decoration]

J. M. Dent & Sons. Ltd.

London

[Illustration: They looked at one another for a moment.

Chapter XVI]

THE HEART OF PENELOPE

CHAPTER I

'London my home is; though by hard fate sent

Into a long and irksome banishment;

Yet since call'd back, henceforward let me be,

O native country, repossess'd by thee!'

HERRICK.

I

Sir George Downing was back in London after an absence of twenty years

from England. The circumstances which had led to his leaving his native

country had been such that he could not refer to them, even in his own

mind, and even after so long an interval, without an inward wincing more

poignant than that which could have been brought about by the touching

of any material wound.

Born to the good fortune which usually attends the young Englishman of

old lineage, a fair competence and a traditional career--in his case the

pleasant one of diplomacy--Downing had himself brought all his chances

to utter shipwreck. Even now, looking back with the dispassionate

judgment automatically produced by the long lapse of time, and

greater--ah, how much greater!--knowledge of the world, he decided that

fate had used him hardly.

What had really occurred was known to very few people, and these few had

kept their own and his counsel to an unusual degree. The world, or

rather that kindly and indulgent section of the world where young

Downing had been regarded with liking, and even the affection, so easily

bestowed on a good-looking and good-natured youngster, said to stand

well with his chiefs, took a lenient view of a case of which it knew

little. The fact that a lady was closely involved--further, that she was

one of those fair strangers who in those days played a far greater part

in diplomacy than would now be possible--lent the required touch of

romance to the story. 'A Delilah brought to judgment' had been the

comment of one grim old woman, mindful that she had been compelled to

meet, if not to receive, the stormy petrel whose departure from London

had been too hurried to admit of the leaving of P.P.C. cards on the

large circle which had entertained, and, in a less material sense, been

entertained by, her. As to her victim--only the very unkind ventured to

use the word 'tool'--his obliteration had been almost as sudden, almost

as complete.

Other men, more blamed, if not more stricken, than he had been, had

elected to spend their lives amid the ruins of their broken careers.

More than one of his contemporaries had triumphantly lived down the

memory of a more shameful record. Perhaps owing to his youth, he had

followed his instinct--the natural instinct of a wounded creature which

crawls away out of sight of its fellows--and now he had come back,

having achieved, not only rehabilitation, but something more--the

gratitude, the substantially expressed gratitude, of the most important

section of his countrymen, those to whom are confided the destinies of

an ever-increasing Empire.

Even in these prosaic days an Englishman living in forced or voluntary

exile sometimes achieves greater things for his country than can be so

much as contemplated by the men who, though backed by the power and

prestige of the Foreign Office, are also tied by its official

limitations. His efforts thus being unofficial, the failure of them can

be so regarded, and diplomacy can shrug its shoulders. But if they

should be successful, as Downing's had been, diplomacy, while pocketing

the proceeds, is not so mean as to grudge a due reward.

Happy are those to whom substantial recognition comes ere it is too

late. 'Persian' Downing, as he had, _pour cause_, come to be called,

could now count himself among these fortunate few. Fate had offered him

a great opportunity, which he had had the power and the intelligence to

seize.

Those at home who still remembered him kindly had been eager to point

out that, far from adopting American nationality, as had once been

rumoured, he had known how to prove himself an Englishman of the old

powerful stock, jealous of his country's honour and capable of making it

respected. What was more to the purpose, from a practical point of view,

was the fact that he had known how to win the confidence of a potentate

little apt to be on confidential terms with the half-feared,

half-despised Western.

That Downing had succeeded in maintaining his supremacy at a

semi-barbaric Court, where he had first appeared in the not altogether

dignified rôle of representative of an Anglo-American financial house,

was chiefly due to a side of his nature, unsuspected by those who most

benefited by it, which responded to the strange practical idealism of

the Oriental. The terrible ordeal through which he had passed had long

loosened his hold on life, bestowing upon him that calm fatalism and

indifference to merely physical consequence which is ordinarily the most

valuable asset of Orientals in their dealings with Western minds.

When he had accepted, or rather suggested, a Persian mission to his

partner, an American banker, to whose firm an influential English friend

had introduced him when he first turned his thoughts towards an

American haven of refuge, he had done so in order to escape, if only for

a few months, from a state of things brought about by what he was wont

to consider the second great misfortune of his life. Downing was one of

those men who seemed fated to make mistakes, and then to amaze those

about them by the fashion in which they face and overcome the

consequences.

Owing, perhaps, to sheer good luck, after having endured a kind of

disgrace only comparable to that which may be felt by a soldier who has

been proved a traitor to his cause and country, Downing had so acted

that in twenty years--a few moments in a nation's diplomatic life--he

had received, not only the formal rehabilitation and recognition implied

by his G.C.B., but what, to tell truth, he had valued at the moment far

more highly: a touching letter from the venerable statesman who had

rejected his boyish appeal for mercy.

The old man had asked that he might himself convey to Downing the news

of the honour bestowed on him, and he had done so in a letter full of

honourable amend, of which one passage ran: 'As I grow older I have

become aware of having done many things which I should have left undone;

the principal of these, the one I have long most regretted, was my

action concerning your case.'

Only one human being, and that a woman whose sympathy was none the less

valued because she had scarcely understood all it had meant to her

friend, was ever shown the letter which had so moved and softened him.

But from the day he received it the thought of going home, back to

England, never left him, and he would have accomplished his purpose long

before, had it not been that the consequence of his second great mistake

still pursued him.

II

Attracted by a prim modesty of demeanour and apparent lack of emotion,

new to him in women of his own class, and doubtless feeling acutely the

terrible loneliness and strangeness attendant on his new life in such a

city as was the New York of that time, George Downing had married,

within a year of his arrival in America, a girl of good Puritan-Dutch

stock and considerable fortune. Prudence Merryquick--her very name had

first attracted him--had offered him that agreeable emotional pastime, a

platonic friendship. Soon the strange relationship between them piqued

and irritated him, and, manlike, he longed to stir, if not to plumb, the

seemingly untroubled depths of her still nature. At first she resisted

with apparent ease, and this incited him to serious skilful pursuit.

Poor Prudence had no chance against a man who, in despite and in a

measure because of his youth, had often played a conquering part in the

mimic love warfare of an older and more subtle civilization. She

surrendered, not ungracefully, and for a while it seemed as if the

ex-Foreign Office clerk was like to make a successful American banker.

Their honeymoon lasted a year; then an accident, or, rather, some

exigencies of business, caused them to spend a winter in Washington.

There Downing's story was of course known; indeed, the newly-appointed

British Minister had been a friend of his father, and one of those who

had tried ineffectually to save him. This renewal of old ties brought on

a terrible nostalgia. To Prudence a longing for England was

incomprehensible--England had cast her husband out--indeed, she desired,

with a fierceness of feeling which surprised Downing, to see him become

a naturalized American, but to this he steadily refused to consent.

As winter gave way to spring they moved even further apart from one

another, and, as might have been expected, the first serious difference

of opinion, too grave to call a quarrel, concerned their future home.

Downing, on the best terms with his partners, had arranged to return

permanently to Washington. To his wife, a world composed of European

diplomatists and cosmopolitan Americans was utterly odious and

incomprehensible. She showed herself passionately intolerant of her

husband's friends, especially of those who were his own countrymen and

countrywomen, and she looked back with increasing longing to her early

married life in New York, and to the days when George Downing had

apparently desired no companionship but her own.

Both husband and wife were equally determined, equally convinced as to

what was the right course to pursue, and no compromise seemed possible.

But one day, quite early in the winter following that which had seen

them first installed in Washington, Downing received an urgent recall to

New York. With the easy philosophy which had been one of his early

charms, he went unsuspectingly, but a few days after he and Prudence had

once more settled down in the Dutch homestead inherited by her from

Knickerbocker forebears, he came back rather sooner than had been his

wont. Prudence met him at the door, for she had returned to this early

habit of their married life.

'Tell me,' he said quietly and while in the act of putting down his hat,

'did you ask Mr. Fetter to arrange for my return here?'

She answered unflinchingly: 'Yes; I knew it would be best.'

He made no comment, but within a month he had gone, leaving her alone in

the old house where she had spent her dreary childhood, and where she

had experienced the one passionate episode of her life.

Twice he came back--the first time with the honest intention of asking

Prudence to return with him to the distant land where he had at last

found a life that seemed to promise in time rehabilitation, and in any

case a closer tie with his own country. Prudence hesitated, then

communed with herself and with one or two trusted friends, and finally

refused to accompany her husband back to Teheran. Already in her

loneliness she had become interested in one of the great religious

movements which swept over America at that period of its social history.

The second time that Downing returned to New York it was to make final

arrangements for something tantamount to a separation. Of divorce his

wife would not hear; her religious principles and theories made such a

solution impossible. To his surprise and relief, she accepted the

allowance he eagerly offered. 'Not in the spirit it is meant,' he said,

half smiling, as they stood opposite to one another in the office of

their old and much-distressed friend, Mr. Fetter; 'rather, eh, Prudence,

as an offering to the Almighty on my behalf?' And she had answered quite

seriously, but with the flicker of an answering smile: 'Yes, George,

that is so;' and for years the two had not been so near to one another

as at that moment. The arrangement was duly carried out, and in time

Downing learnt that the offering foreseen by him had taken the very

sensible shape of a young immigrants' home, the upkeep of which absorbed

that portion of Mrs. Downing's income contributed by her husband.

Years wore themselves away, communications between the two became more

and more rare, and his brief married life grew fainter and fainter in

Downing's memory. Indeed, he far more often thought of and remembered

trifling episodes which had taken place much earlier, even in his

childhood. But the time came when this far-distant, half-forgotten woman

hurt him unconsciously in his only vulnerable part. He learnt with a

feeling of indescribable anger and annoyance that, having become closely

connected with a number of English Dissenters, whose tenets she shared,

she had made for some time past a yearly sojourn among them. To him the

idea that his American wife should live, even for a short space of time

each year, among his own countrymen and countrywomen, while he himself

lingered on in outer banishment appeared monstrous, and it was one of

the reasons why, even after he had already done much to effect his

rehabilitation, he preferred to remain away from his own country.

At last he was urgently pressed to return home, and it was pointed out

to him that his further absence was injurious to those financial

interests which concerned others as well as himself. This is how it came

to pass that he found himself once more in London, after an absence of

twenty years. At first Downing had planned to be in England early in

June, and those of his friends whose congratulations on the honour

bestowed on him had been most sincere and most welcome had urged him to

make a triumphal reappearance at the moment when they would all be in

town. Moreover, they had promised him--and some of them were in a

position to make their promises come true--such a welcome home from old

and new friends as is rarely awarded to those whose victories are won on

bloodless fields.

Accordingly, he had started early in May from the distant country where

his exile had proved of such signal service to England. Then, to the

astonishment and concern of those who considered his early return

desirable, he lingered through June and half July on the Continent, ever

writing, 'I am coming, I am coming,' to the few to whom he owed a real

apology for thus disappointing them. To the larger number of business

connections who felt aggrieved he vouchsafed no word, and left them to

suppose that their great man, frightened by some Parisian specialist,

had retired to a French spa for a cure.

III

In one minor, as in so many a major, matter Downing had been

exceptionally fortunate. For many returning to their native country

after long years there are none to welcome them. Those among their old

friends who have not gone where no living man can hope to reach them are

scattered here and there, and only affection, faithful in a sense rarely

found, troubles to think of how the actual arrival of the wanderer can

be made, if not pleasant, at least tolerable. But Downing found a

sincere and, what was more precious, a familiar welcome, from the

friend, Mr. Julius Gumberg, who had twenty years before sped him on his

way with those valuable business introductions with which he had been

able to build up a new career, first in America, and later in Persia.

There had been no regular correspondence between them, but now and

again, sometimes after an interval of years, a short note, pregnant with

shrewd counsel, and written in the tiny and only apparently clear hand

which was the epistolary mode of fifty years since, would form the most

welcome portion of Downing's home mail. It was characteristic of Mr.

Gumberg that he sent no word of congratulation, when the man whom he

still regarded as a youthful protégé received his G.C.B., the great

outward mark of rehabilitation. But when he learnt that Downing had

actually started for England he wrote him a line, adding by way of

postscript, 'Of course you will come to me,' and of course Downing had

come to him.

Mr. Julius Gumberg was one of those happy Londoners whose dwellings lie

between the Green Park and that group of tranquil short streets which

still remain, havens of stately peace, within a moment's walk of St.

James's and Piccadilly. The portion of the house which looked on St.

James's Place had that peculiar air of solid respectability which, in

houses belonging to a certain period, seems to apologize for the rakish

air of their garden-front. By its bow-windows Mr. Gumberg's house was

distinguished on the park side from its more stately neighbours, and his

pink blinds were so far historic that they had been noted in a

guide-book some forty years before.

Small wonder that, as Mr. Gumberg's guest passed through the door into

the broad low corridor which led into his old friend's library, he felt

for a moment as if he were walking from the present into the past, an

impression heightened by his finding everything, and almost everybody,

in the house unchanged, from his host, sitting in a pleasant book-lined

room where they had last parted, to the man-servant who had met him with

a decorous word of welcome at the door. To be sure, both master and man

looked older, but Downing felt that, while in their case the interval of

time had left scarce any perceptible mark of its passage, he himself had

in the same period lived, and showed that he had lived, a time

incalculable.

And how did the traveller returning strike Mr. Julius Gumberg? Alas! as

being in every sense quite other than the man, young, impulsive, and

with a sufficient, not excessive, measure of originality, whom he had

sped on his way to fairer fortunes twenty years before. Now, looking at

the tall figure, the broad, slightly-bent shoulders, he saw that youth

had wholly gone, that impulse had been so long curbed as to leave no

trace on the rugged secretive face, to which had come, indeed, lines of

concentration and purpose which had been lacking in that of the young

George Downing. Originality now veered perilously near that eccentricity

of outward appearance which is apt to overtake those to whom the cut of

clothes, the shearing of the hair, have become of no moment. Mr.

Gumberg's shrewd eyes had at once perceived that this no longer familiar

friend looked Somebody, indeed, many would say a very great and puissant

body; but the old man would have been better pleased to have welcomed

home a more commonplace hero.

Mr. Gumberg's sharp ears had heard, just outside his door, quick, low

interchange of words between his own faithful man-servant and the

newly-arrived guest. 'Valet? No, Jackson, I have brought no man. I gave

up such pleasant luxuries twenty years ago!' And Jackson had retreated,

disappointed of the company of the travelled gentleman's gentleman with

whom he had hoped to spend many pleasant moments.

IV

Partly in deference to his old friend's advice, Downing gave up his

first morning in London to seeing those, almost to a man unknown to him,

to whom he surely owed some apology for his delay. His own old world,

including those faithful few friends of his youth who had wished him to

return in time to add to the triumphs of the season, were already

scattered, and though he had been warmly asked, even after his

defection, to follow them to the downs, the moors, and the sea, he was

as yet uncertain what to do. 'Waiting orders,' he had said to himself

with a curious thrill of exultation as he sat in his bedroom, table and

chair drawn close to the windows from which could be seen the twinkling

lights of Piccadilly, and where he had been answering briefly the pile

of letters he had found waiting for him.

The next morning he devoted himself to the work he had in hand, and

early drove to the City in his host's old-fashioned roomy brougham. As

he drove he leant back, his hat jammed down over his eyes, unwilling to

see the changes which the town's aspect had undergone during his long

absence. But there was one pang which was not spared him.

He had been among the last of those Londoners to whom the lion upon the

gateway of Northumberland House had been as a Familiar, and in the long

low rooms and spacious galleries to which that gateway had given access

he had spent many happy hours, a youth on whom all smiled. Of course, he

knew the stately palace had gone, but the sight of all that now stood in

its place made him realize as nothing else had yet done how long he had

been away.

But when once he found himself in the City office whither he was bound,

he pushed all thoughts and recollections of the past far back into his

mind, and set himself to exercise all his powers of conciliation on the

men, for the most part unknown to him personally, who had the right to

be annoyed with him for delaying his arrival in London so long. Long,

lean, and brown, he stood before them, grimly smiling, and after the

first words, 'I fear my delay has caused some of you inconvenience,

gentlemen,' he plunged into the multiple complex details of the great

financial interests in which he and they were bound, answering questions

dealing with delicate points, and impressing them, as even the most

optimistic among them had not hoped to be impressed, by his remarkable

personality.

In the afternoon of the same day he made his way slowly, almost

furtively, into what had once been his familiar haunts. They lay close

about the house where he was now staying and at first he felt relieved,

so few were the changes noted by him; but after a while he realized that

this first impression was not a true one. Even in St. James's Street

there was much that struck him as strange. Where he had left low houses

he found huge buildings. His very boot-maker, though still flaunting the

proud device, 'Established in 1767,' across his plate-glass window, was,

though at the same number as of old, now merged in a row of shops

forming the ground-floor of a red-brick edifice which seemed to dwarf

the low long mass of St. James's Palace opposite.

In that square quarter-mile, bounded on the one side by Jermyn Street

and on the other by Pall Mall, he missed, if not whole streets, at least

many houses through whose hospitable doors he had often made his way.

Then a chance turn brought him opposite the place where he had spent the

last three years of his London life, and, by a curious irony, here alone

time seemed to have stood still. He looked consideringly at the old

house, up at the narrow windows of the first-floor at which a young and

happy George Downing had so often stood full of confidence in a kind

world and in himself; then, following a sudden impulse, he walked across

the street and rang the bell.

A buxom, powerful-looking woman opened the door; Downing recognised her

at once as a certain Mary Crisp, the niece of his old landlord, and as

she stood waiting for him to speak he remembered that as a girl she had

not been allowed to do much of the waiting on her uncle's 'gentlemen.'

There was no glimmer of recognition in her placid face, and, in answer

to the request that he might see the rooms where he had once lived 'for

a short time,' she invited him civilly enough to come in, and to follow

her upstairs.

'I expect it's the same paper, sir,' she said, as she opened the door of

what had been his sitting-room. 'It was put up when uncle first took on

the house, and, as it cost half a crown a foot, we always cleans it once

every three years with breadcrumbs, and it comes out as new.'

How well Downing remembered the paper, with its dark-blue ground thickly

sprinkled with gold stars! indeed, before she spoke again, he knew what

her next words would be. 'It's the same pattern that the Queen and

Prince Albert chose for putting up at Windsor Castle; you don't see such

a good paper, nor such a good pattern, nowadays; but there, I'll just

leave you a minute while you take a look round.'

V

For some moments Downing remained standing just inside the door, as much

that he had forgotten, and more that he had tried vainly to forget, came

back to him in a turgid flood of recollection. Suddenly something in the

walls creaked, and he clenched his hands, half expecting to see figures

form themselves out of the shadows. One memory was spared him; the

sombre walls, the plain, heavy old furniture, placed much as it had been

in his time, evoked no vision of the foreign woman who had brought him

to disgrace, for, with a certain boyish chivalry, he had never allowed

her to come to his rooms; instead, poor fool that he had been, he had

occasionally entertained her in his official quarters, and the fact had

been one of those which had most weighed against him with his informal

judges.

Instead, the place where he now stood brought to his mind another woman,

who had during those same years and months played a nobler, but alas! a

far minor part in his life.

Mrs. Henry Delacour had been one of those beings who, though themselves

exquisitely feminine, seem destined to go through life playing the part

of confidential and platonic friend, for, in spite of all that is said

to the contrary, platonic friendships, sometimes disguised under another

name, count for much in our over-civilized world. The second wife of a

permanent Government official much older than herself, her thoughts, if

not her heart, enjoyed a painful and a dangerous freedom. At a time when

sentiment had gone for the moment out of fashion, she lavished much

innocent sentiment on those of her husband's younger colleagues who

seemed worthy of her interest, and, for she was a kind woman, in need

of it. She had first met George Downing after she had attained the age

when every charming woman feels herself privileged to behave as though

she were no longer on the active list, while yet quite ready, should the

occasion offer, to lead a forlorn hope. What that time of life is should

surely be left to each conscience, and almost to each nationality. In

the case of this lady the age had been thirty-eight, Downing being

fifteen years younger--a fact which he forgot, and which she

conscientiously strove to remember, whenever he found himself in her

soothing, kindly presence.

Their relationship had been for a time full of subtle charm, and had

George Downing been as cosmopolitan as his profession should have made

him, had he even been an older man, he might have been content with all

that she felt able to offer him--all, indeed, that was possible. But

there came a time when he found himself absorbed in a more ardent, a

more responsive friendship, and when his feet learnt to shun the quiet

street where Mrs. Delacour dispensed her gracious hospitality; indeed,

the moment came when he almost forgot how innocently near they had once

been to one another.

Yet now, as he stood inside the door of his old room, Mrs. Delacour

triumphantly reasserted herself, for she had come to him on the last

evening of his life in London. He advanced further into the room, and

slowly the scene reconstituted itself in his mind. It had been one which

no man was likely ever wholly to forget, and it came back to Downing, in

spite of the lapse of twenty years, with extraordinary vividness.

Having arranged to leave early the next morning, he had given strict

orders that none of his friends were to be again admitted. Sick at

heart, he had been engaged in sorting the last batch of letters and

bills, when the door, opening, had revealed Mrs. Delacour, dressed in

the soft, rather shadowy colouring which, though at the time wholly out

of fashion, had always seemed to him, the young George Downing, an

essential part of her personality. For a moment, as she had hesitated in

the doorway, he had noticed that she carried a basket.

With the egotism of youth, as he had taken the kind trembling little

hand and led his visitor into the room, he had uttered the words, 'Now I

know without doubt that I am dead!' As he stood there now, in this very

room which had witnessed the pitiful scene, he felt a rush of shame,

remembering how he had behaved during the hours that followed, for he

had sat, sullenly looking on, while she had packed the portmanteaux

lying on the floor, tied up packets of letters, and sorted bills. At

intervals he had asked her to leave him, begged her to go home, but she

had worked on, saying very little, looking at him not at all, and

showing none of the dreadful tenderness which had been lavished on him

by so many of his friends.

Then had come the moment when he had roused himself sufficiently to

mutter a few words of thanks, reminding her, not ungently, that her

husband would be expecting her back to dinner. 'Is any one coming?' she

had asked, with a tremor in her voice; and on his quick disclaimer the

basket had been unpacked, and food and wine put upon the table.

'Henry,' she had said, in the precise, rather anxious voice he recalled

so well--'Henry remembered how well you thought of this claret;' and she

had sat down, and by her example gradually compelled him to eat the

first real meal he had had for days.

When at last the moment came when she had said, sadly enough, 'Now I

suppose I must go home,' he was glad to remember that he had tried to

bear himself like a man, tried to thank her for her coming. As he had

stood, saying good-bye, she had suddenly lifted the hand which grasped

hers, and had laid it against her cheek with the words, said bravely,

and with a smile, 'You will come back, George--I am _sure_ you will

come back.'

As Downing stood once more in the street, now grey with twilight, after

he had slipped a sovereign in Mary Crisp's hand, she asked him with

natural curiosity, 'And what name shall I say, sir, when uncle asks who

called? He always likes to hear of his gentlemen coming back.' Downing

hesitated, and then gave the name of the man who he knew had had the

rooms before him. The woman said nothing, but a look of fear came into

her face as she shut the door quickly. As she did so Downing remembered

that the man was dead.