Sir John smiled. "My dear lady," he asked, "doesn't life consist largely
of insults from the strong to the weak?"
"And were all these people so weak, then?"
"No, in their own way they were fairly important, I suppose, but
compared to Morton they were weak--very weak--Ah, yes! I like this
custom of smoking at table. Thanks!" He selected a cigarette
deliberately, and stooped toward the proffered match. The flame
illumined the swarthy curve of his beard and the heavy lines of his dark
face. "You see," he began, straightening up in his chair, "the whole
thing--that part of it, and the part I'm to tell--is really, if you
choose, an allegory of strength, of strength and weakness. On the one
side Morton--there's strength, sheer, undiluted power, the thing that
runs the world; and on the other Bewsher, the ordinary man, with all his
mixed-up ideas of right and wrong and the impossible, confused thing he
calls a 'code'--Bewsher, and later on the girl. She too is part of the
allegory. She represents--what shall I say? A composite portrait of the
ordinary young woman? Religion, I suppose. Worldly religion. The
religion of most of my good friends in England. A vague but none the
less passionate belief in a heaven populated by ladies and gentlemen who
dine out with a God who resembles royalty. And coupled with this
religion the girl had, of course, as have most of her class, a very
distinct sense of her own importance in the world; not that
exactly--personally she was over-modest; a sense rather of her
importance as a unit of an important family, and a deep-rooted
conviction of the fundamental necessity of unimportant things: parties,
and class-worship, and the whole jumbled-up order as it is. The usual
young woman, that is, if you lay aside her unusual beauty. And, you see,
people like Bewsher and the girl haven't much chance against a man like
Morton, have they? Do you remember the girl, my dear?" he asked, turning
to his wife.
"Yes," murmured Lady Masters.
"Well, then," continued Sir John, "you must imagine this Morton, an ugly
little boy of twelve, going up on a scholarship to a great public
school--a rather bitter little boy, without any particular prospects
ahead of him except those his scholarship held out; and back of him a
poor, stunted life, with a mother in it--a sad dehumanized creature, I
gathered, who subsisted on the bounty of a niggardly brother. And this,
you can understand, was the first thing that made Morton hate virtue
devoid of strength. His mother, he told me, was the best woman he had
ever known. The world had beaten her unmercifully. His earliest
recollection was hearing her cry at night.... And there, at the school,
he had his first glimpse of the great world that up to then he had only
dimly suspected. Dramatic enough in itself, isn't it?--if you can
visualize the little dark chap. A common enough drama, too, the Lord
knows. We people on top are bequeathing misery to our posterity when we
let the Mortons of the world hate the rich. And head and shoulders above
the other boys of his age at the school was Bewsher; not that
materially, of course, there weren't others more important; Bewsher's
family was old and rich as such families go, but he was very much a
younger son, and his people lived mostly in the country; yet even then
there was something about him--a manner, an adeptness in sports, an
unsought popularity, that picked him out; the beginnings of that Norman
nose that Mr. Burnaby has mentioned. And here"--Sir John paused and
puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette--"is the first high light.
"To begin with, of course, Morton hated Bewsher and all he represented,
hated him in a way that only a boy of his nature can; and then, one
day--I don't know exactly when it could have been, probably a year or
two after he had gone up to school--he began to see quite clearly what
this hate meant; began to see that for such as he to hate the Bewshers
of the world was the sheerest folly--a luxury far beyond his means.
Quaint, wasn't it? In a boy of his age! You can imagine him working it
out at night, in his narrow dormitory bed, when the other boys were
asleep. You see, he realized, dimly at first, clearly at last, that
through Bewsher and his kind lay the hope of Morton and his kind. Nice
little boys think the same thing, only they are trained not to admit
it. That was the first big moment of Morton's life, and with the
determination characteristic of him he set out to accomplish what he had
decided. In England we make our future through our friends, in this
country you make it through your enemies. But it wasn't easy for Morton;
such tasks never are. He had a good many insults to swallow. In the end,
however, from being tolerated he came to be indispensable, and from
being indispensable eventually to be liked. He had planned his campaign
with care. Carefulness, recklessly carried out, has been, I think, the
guiding rule of his life. He had modelled himself on Bewsher; he walked
like Bewsher; tried to think like Bewsher--that is, in the less
important things of life--and, with the divination that marks his type
of man, the little money he had, the little money that as a schoolboy he
could borrow, he had spent with precision on clothes and other things
that brought him personal distinction; in what people call necessities
he starved himself. By the time he was ready to leave school you could
hardly have told him from the man he had set out to follow: he was
equally well-mannered; equally at his ease; if anything, more conscious
of prerogative than Bewsher. He had come to spend most of his holidays
at Bewsher's great old house in Gloucestershire. That, too, was an
illumination. It showed him what money was made for--the sunny quiet of
the place, the wheels of a spacious living that ran so smoothly, the
long gardens, the inevitableness of it all. Some day, he told himself,
he would have just such a house. He has. It is his mistress. The world
has not allowed him much of the poetry that, as you must already see,
the man has in him; he takes it out on his place.
"It was in Morton's last year at Oxford, just before his graduation,
that the second great moment of his life occurred. He had done well at
his college, not a poor college either; and all the while, you must
remember, he was borrowing money and running up bills. But this didn't
bother him. He was perfectly assured in his own mind concerning his
future. He had counted costs. In that May, Bewsher, who from school had
gone to Sandhurst, came up on a visit with two or three other fledgling
officers, and they had a dinner in Morton's rooms. It turned into rather
a 'rag,' as those things do, and it was there, across a flower-strewn,
wine-stained table, that Morton had his second revelation. He wasn't
drunk--he never got drunk; the others were. The thing came in upon him
slowly, warmingly, like the breeze that stirred the curtains. He felt
himself, as never before, a man. You can see him sitting back in his
chair, in the smoke and the noise and the foolish singing, cool, his
eyes a little closed. He knew now that he had passed the level of these
men; yes, even the shining mark Bewsher had set. He had gone on, while
they had stood still. To him, he suddenly realized, and to such as he,
belonged the heritage of the years, not to these men who thought they
held it. These old gray buildings stretching away into the May dusk, the
history of a thousand years, were his. These sprawled young aristocrats
before him--they, whether they eventually came to know it or not, they,
and Bewsher with them--would one day do his bidding: come when he
beckoned, go when he sent. It was a big thought, wasn't it, for a man of
twenty-two?" Sir John paused and puffed at his cigarette.
"That was the second high light," he continued, "and the third did not
come until fifteen years later. Bewsher went into the Indian army--his
family had ideas of service--and Morton into a banking-house in London.
And there, as deliberately as he had taken them up, he laid aside for
the time being all the social perquisites which he had with so much
pains acquired. Do you know--he told me that for fifteen years not once
had he dined out, except when he thought his ambitions would be
furthered by so doing, and then, as one turns on a tap, he turned on the
charm he now knew himself to possess. It is not astonishing, is it, when
you come to think of it, that eventually he became rich and famous?
Most people are unwilling to sacrifice their youth to their future. He
wasn't. But it wasn't a happy time. He hated it. He paid off his debts,
however, and at the end of the fifteen years found himself a big man in
a small way, with every prospect of becoming a big man in a big way.
Then, of course--such men do--he began to look about him. He wanted
wider horizons, he wanted luxury, he wanted a wife; and he wanted them
as a starved man wants food. He experienced comparatively little
difficulty in getting started. Some of his school and university friends
remembered him, and there was a whisper about that he was a man that
bore watching. But afterward he stuck. The inner citadel of London is by
no means as assailable as the outer fortifications lead one to suppose.
"They say a man never has a desire but there's an angel or a devil to
write it down. Morton had hardly made his discovery when Bewsher turned
up from India, transferred to a crack cavalry regiment; a sunburnt,
cordial Bewsher, devilishly determined to enjoy the fulness of his
prime. On his skirts, as he had done once before, Morton penetrated
farther and farther into the esoteric heart of society. I'm not sure
just how Bewsher felt toward Morton at the time; he liked him, I think;
at all events, he had the habit of him. As for Morton, he liked Bewsher
as much as he dared; he never permitted himself to like any one too
much.
"I don't know how it is with you, but I have noticed again and again
that intimate friends are prone to fall in love with the same woman:
perhaps it is because they have so many tastes in common; perhaps it is
jealousy--I don't know. Anyhow, that is what happened to these two,
Morton first, then Bewsher; and it is characteristic that the former
mentioned it to no one, while the latter was confidential and expansive.
Such men do not deserve women, and yet they are often the very men women
fall most in love with. At first the girl had been attracted to Morton,
it seems; he intrigued her--no doubt the sense of power about him; but
the handsomer man, when he entered the running, speedily drew ahead. You
can imagine the effect of this upon her earlier suitor. It was the first
rebuff that for a long time had occurred to him in his ordered plan of
life. He resented it and turned it over in his mind, and eventually, as
it always does to men of his kind, his opportunity came. You see, unlike
Bewsher and his class, all his days had been an exercise in the
recognition and appreciation of chances. He isolated the inevitable fly
in the ointment, and in this particular ointment the fly happened to be
Bewsher's lack of money and the education the girl had received. She was
poor in the way that only the daughter of a great house can be. To
Morton, once he was aware of the fly, and once he had combined the
knowledge of it with what these two people most lacked, it was a simple
thing. They lacked, as you have already guessed, courage and directness.
On Morton's side was all the dunder-headism of an aristocracy, all its
romanticism, all its gross materialism, all its confusion of ideals. But
you mustn't think that he, Morton, was cold or objective in all this:
far from it; he was desperately in love with the girl himself, and he
was playing his game like a man in a corner--all his wits about him, but
fever in his heart.
"There was the situation, an old one--a girl who dare not marry a poor
man, and a poor man cracking his brains to know where to get money from.
I dare say Bewsher never questioned the rightness of it all--he was too
much in love with the girl, his own training had been too similar. And
Morton, hovering on the outskirts, talked--to weak people the most fatal
doctrine in the world--the doctrine of power, the doctrine that each man
and woman can have just what they want if they will only get out and
seek it. That's true for the big people; for the small it usually spells
death. They falter on methods. They are too afraid of unimportant
details. His insistence had its results even more speedily than he had
hoped. Before long the girl, too, was urging Bewsher on to effort. It
isn't the first time goodness has sent weakness to the devil. Meanwhile
the instigator dropped from his one-time position of tentative lover to
that of adviser in particular. It was just the position that at the time
he most desired.
"Things came to a head on a warm night in April. Bewsher dropped in upon
Morton in his chambers. Very handsome he looked, too, I dare say, in his
evening clothes, with an opera-coat thrown back from his shoulders. I
remember well myself his grand air, with a touch of cavalry swagger
about it. I've no doubt he leaned against the chimney-piece and tapped
his leg with his stick. And the upshot of it was that he wanted money.
"Oh, no! not a loan. It wasn't as bad as that. He had enough to screw
along with himself; although he was frightfully in debt. He wanted a big
sum. An income. To make money, that was. He didn't want to go into
business if he could help it; hadn't any ability that way; hated it. But
perhaps Morton could put him in the way of something? He didn't mind
chances."
"Do you see?" Sir John leaned forward. "And he never realized the
vulgarity of it--that product of five centuries, that English gentleman.
Never realized the vulgarity of demanding of life something for nothing;
of asking from a man as a free gift what that man had sweated for and
starved for all his life; yes, literally, all his life. It was an
illumination, as Morton said, upon that pitiful thing we call 'class.'
He demanded all this as his right, too; demanded power, the one precious
possession. Well, the other man had his code as well, and the first
paragraph in it was that a man shall get only what he works for. Can you
imagine him, the little ugly man, sitting at his table and thinking all
this? And suddenly he got to his feet. 'Yes,' he said, 'I'll make you a
rich man.' But he didn't say he would keep him one. That was the third
high light--the little man standing where all through the ages had stood
men like him, the secret movers of the world, while before them,
supplicating, had passed the beauty and the pride of their times. In the
end they all beg at the feet of power--the kings and the fighting men.
And yet, although this was the great, hidden triumph of his life, and,
moreover, beyond his hopes a realization of the game he had been
playing--for it put Bewsher, you see, utterly in his power--Morton said
at the moment it made him a little sick. It was too crude; Bewsher's
request too unashamed; it made suddenly too cheap, since men could ask
for it so lightly, all the stakes for which he, Morton, had sacrificed
the slow minutes and hours of his life. And then, of course, there was
this as well: Bewsher had been to Morton an ideal, and ideals can't die,
even the memory of them, without some pain."
Mrs. Malcolm, watching with lips a little parted, said to herself: "He
has uncoiled too much."
"Yes"--Sir John reached out his hand and, picking up a long-stemmed rose
from the table, began idly to twist it in his fingers. "And that was the
end. From then on the matter was simple. It was like a duel between a
trained swordsman and a novice; only it wasn't really a duel at all, for
one of the antagonists was unaware that he was fighting. I suppose that
most people would call it unfair. I have wondered. And yet Bewsher, in a
polo game, or in the game of social life, would not have hesitated to
use all the skill and craft he knew. But, you say, he would not have
played against beginners. Well, he had asked himself into this game; he
had not been invited. And so, all through that spring and into the
summer and autumn the three-cornered contest went on, and into the
winter and on to the spring beyond. Unwittingly, the girl was playing
more surely than ever into Morton's hand. The increasing number of
Bewsher's platitudes about wealth, about keeping up tradition, about
religion, showed that. He even talked vaguely about giving up the army
and going into business. 'It must have its fascinations, you know,' he
remarked lightly. In the eyes of both of them Morton had become sort of
fairy godfather--a mysterious, wonderful gnome at whose beck gold leaped
from the mountainside. It was just the illusion he wished to create. In
the final analysis the figure of the gnome is the most beloved figure in
the rotten class to which we belong.
"And then, just as spontaneously as it had come, Bewsher's money began
to melt away--slowly at first; faster afterward until, finally, he was
back again to his original income. This was a time of stress, of hurried
consultations, of sympathy on the part of Morton, of some rather ugly
funk on the part of Bewsher; and Morton realized that in the eyes of the
girl he was rapidly becoming once more the dominant figure. It didn't do
him much good"--Sir John broke the stem of the rose between his fingers.
"Soon there was an end to it all. There came, finally, a very unpleasant
evening. This too was in April; April a year after Bewsher's visit to
Morton's chambers, only this time the scene was laid in an office.
Bewsher had put a check on the desk. 'Here,' he said, 'that will tide me
over until I can get on my feet,' and his voice was curiously thick; and
Morton, looking down, had seen that the signature wasn't genuine--a
clumsy business done by a clumsy man--and, despite all his training,
from what he said, a little cold shiver had run up and down his back.
This had gone farther than he had planned. But he made no remark, simply
pocketed the check, and the next day settled out of his own pockets
Bewsher's sorry affairs; put him back, that is, where he had started,
with a small income mortgaged beyond hope. Then he sent a note to the
girl requesting an interview on urgent business. She saw him that night
in her drawing-room. She was very lovely. Morton was all friendly
sympathy. It wasn't altogether unreal, either. I think, from what he
told me, he was genuinely touched. But he felt, you know--the urge, the
goad, of his own career. His kind do. Ultimately they are not their own
masters. He showed the girl the check--not at first, you understand,
but delicately, after preliminary discussion; reluctantly upon repeated
urging. 'What was he to do? What would she advise? Bewsher was safe, of
course; he had seen to that; but the whole unintelligible, shocking
aspect of the thing!' He tore the check up and threw it in the fire. He
was not unaware that the girl's eyes admired him. It was a warm night.
He said good-by and walked home along the deserted street. He
remembered, he told me, how sweet the trees smelled. He was not happy.
You see, Bewsher had been the nearest approach to a friend he had ever
had.
"That practically finished the sordid business. What the girl said to
Bewsher Morton never knew; he trusted to her conventionalized religion
and her family pride to break Bewsher's heart, and to Bewsher's
sentimentality to eliminate him forever from the scene. In both surmises
he was correct; he was only not aware that at the same time the girl had
broken her own heart. He found that out afterward. And Bewsher
eliminated himself more thoroughly than necessary. I suppose the shame
of the thing was to him like a blow to a thoroughbred, instead of an
incentive, as it would have been to a man of coarser fibre. He went from
bad to worse, resigned from his regiment, finally disappeared.
Personally, I had hoped that he had begun again somewhere on the
outskirts of the world. But he isn't that sort. There's not much of the
Norman king to him except his nose. The girl married Morton. He gave her
no time to recover from her gratitude. He felt very happy, he told me,
the day of his wedding, very elated. It was one of those rare occasions
when he felt that the world was a good place. Another high light, you
see. And it was no mean thing, if you consider it, for a man such as he
to marry the daughter of a peer, and at the same time to love her. He
was not a gentleman, you understand, he could never be that--it was the
one secret thing that always hurt him--no amount of brains, no amount of
courage could make him what he wasn't; he never lied to himself as most
men do; so he had acquired a habit of secretly triumphing over those who
possessed the gift. The other thing that hurt him was when, a few months
later, he discovered that his wife still loved Bewsher and always would.
And that"--Sir John picked up the broken rose again--"is, I suppose, the
end of the story."
There was a moment's silence and then Burnaby lifted his pointed chin.
"By George!" he said, "it _is_ interesting to know how things really
happen, isn't it? But I think--you have, haven't you, left out the real
point. Do you--would you mind telling just why you imagine Morton did
this thing? Told his secret before all those people? It wasn't like him,
was it?"
Sir John slowly lighted another cigarette, and then he turned to Burnaby
and smiled. "Yes," he said, "it was extremely like him. Still, it's very
clever of you, very clever. Can't you guess? It isn't so very
difficult."
"No," said Burnaby, "I can't guess at all."
"Well, then, listen." And to Mrs. Malcolm it seemed as if Sir John had
grown larger, had merged in the shadows about him; at least he gave that
impression, for he sat up very straight and threw back his shoulders.
For a moment he hesitated, then he began, "You must go back to the
dinner I was describing," he said--"the dinner in London. I too was
intrigued as you are, and when it was over I followed Morton out and
walked with him toward his club. And, like you, I asked the question. I
think that he had known all along that I suspected; at all events, it is
characteristic of the man that he did not try to bluff me. He walked on
for a little while in silence, and then he laughed abruptly. 'Yes,' he
said, 'I'll tell you. Yes. Just this. What there is to be got, I've got;
what work can win I've won; but back of it all there's something else,
and back even of that there's a careless god who gives his gifts where
they are least deserved. That's one reason why I talked as I did
to-night. To all of us--the men like me--there comes in the end a time
when we realize that what a man can do we can do, but that love, the
touch of other people's minds, these two things are the gifts of the
careless god. And it irritates us, I suppose, irritates us! We want them
in a way that the ordinary man who has them cannot understand. We want
them as damned souls in hell want water. And sometimes the strain's too
much. It was to-night. To touch other minds, even for a moment, even if
they hate you while you are doing it, that's the thing! To lay yourself,
just once, bare to the gaze of ordinary people! With the hope, perhaps,
that even then they may still find in you something to admire or love.
Self-revelation! Every man confesses sometime. It happened that I chose
a dinner party. Do you understand?'" It was almost as if Sir John
himself had asked the question.
"And then"--he was speaking in his usual calm tones again--"there
happened a curious thing, a very curious thing, for Morton stopped and
turned toward me and began to laugh. I thought he would never stop. It
was rather uncanny, under the street lamp there, this usually rather
quiet man. 'And that,' he said at length, 'that's only half the story.
The cream of it is this: the way I myself felt, sitting there among all
those soft, easily lived people. That's the cream of it. To flout them,
to sting them, to laugh at them, to know you had more courage than all
of them put together, you who were once so afraid of them! To feel
that--even if they knew it was about yourself you were talking--that
even then they were afraid of you, and would to-morrow ask you back
again to their houses. That's power! That's worth doing! After all, you
can keep your love and your sympathy and your gentlemen; it's only to
men like me, men who've sweated and come up, that moments arise such as
I've had to-night.' And then, 'It's rather a pity,' he said, after a
pause, 'that of them all you alone knew of whom I was talking. Rather a
pity, isn't it?'" Sir John hesitated and looked about the table. "It
was unusual, wasn't it?" he said at length gently. "Have I been too
dramatic?"
In the little silence that followed, Mrs. Malcolm leaned forward, her
eyes starry. "I would rather," she said, "talk to Bewsher in his teepee
than talk to Morton with all his money."
Sir John looked at her and smiled--his charming smile. "Oh, no, you
wouldn't," he said. "Oh, no! We say those things, but we don't mean
them. If you sat next to Morton at dinner you'd like him; but as for
Bewsher you'd despise him, as all right-minded women despise a failure.
Oh, no; you'd prefer Morton."
"Perhaps you're right," sighed Mrs. Malcolm; "pirates are fascinating, I
suppose." She arose to her feet. Out of the shadows Lady Masters
advanced to meet her. "She _is_ like a mist," thought Mrs. Malcolm.
"Exactly like a rather faint mist."
Burnaby leaned over and lit a cigarette at one of the candles. "And, of
course," he said quietly, without raising his head, "the curious thing
is that this fellow Morton, despite all his talk of power, in the end is
merely a ghost of Bewsher, after all, isn't he?"
Sir John turned and looked at the bowed sleek head with a puzzled
expression. "A ghost!" he murmured. "I don't think I quite understand."
"It's very simple," said Burnaby, and raised his head. "Despite all
Morton has done, in the things worth while, in the things he wants the
most, he can at best be only a shadow of the shadow Bewsher has left--a
shadow of a man to the woman who loves Bewsher, a shadow of a friend to
the men who liked Bewsher, a shadow of a gentleman to the gentlemen
about him. A ghost, in other words. It's the inevitable end of all
selfishness. I think Bewsher has rather the best of it, don't you?"
"I--I had never thought of it in quite that light," said Sir John, and
followed Mrs. Malcolm.
They went into the drawing-room beyond--across a hallway, and up a
half-flight of stairs, and through glass doors. "Play for us!" said Mrs.
Malcolm, and Burnaby, that remarkable young man, sat down to the piano
and for perhaps an hour made the chords sob to a strange music, mostly
his own.
"That's Bewsher!" he said when he was through, and had sat back on his
stool, and was sipping a long-neglected cordial.
"Br-r-r-!" shivered Mrs. Selden from her place by the fire. "How
unpleasant you are!"
Sir John looked troubled. "I hope," he said, "my story hasn't depressed
you too much. Burnaby's was really worse, you know. Well, I must be
going." He turned to Mrs. Malcolm. "You are one of the few women who can
make me sit up late."
He bade each in turn good-night in his suave, charming, slightly Hebraic
manner. To Burnaby he said: "Thank you for the music. Improvisation is
perhaps the happiest of gifts."
But Burnaby for once was awkward. He was watching Sir John's face with
the curious, intent look of a forest animal that so often possessed his
long, dark eyes. Suddenly he remembered himself. "Oh, yes," he said
hastily, "I beg your pardon. Thanks, very much."
"Good-night!" Sir John and Lady Masters passed through the glass doors.
Burnaby paused a moment where he had shaken hands, and then, with the
long stride characteristic of him, went to the window and, drawing aside
the curtain, peered into the darkness beyond. He stood listening until
the purr of a great motor rose and died on the snow-muffled air. "He's
gone!" he said, and turned back into the room. He spread his arms out
and dropped them to his sides. "Swastika!" he said. "And God keep us
from the evil eye!"
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Malcolm.
"Sir John," said Burnaby. "He has 'a bad heart.'"
"Stop talking your Indian talk and tell us what you mean."
Burnaby balanced himself on the hearth. "Am I to understand you don't
know?" he asked. "Well, Morton's Masters, and 'the girl's' Lady Masters,
and Bewsher--well, he's just a squaw-man."
"I don't believe it!" said Mrs. Malcolm. "He wouldn't dare."
"Wouldn't dare?" Burnaby laughed shortly. "My dear Minna, he'd dare
anything if it gave him a sense of power."
"But why--why did he choose us? We're not so important as all that?"
"Because--well, Bewsher's name came up. Because, well, you heard what he
said--self-revelation--men who had sweated. Because--" suddenly Burnaby
took a step forward and his jaw shot out--"because that shadow of his,
that wife of his, broke a champagne-glass when I said Geoffrey
Boisselier Bewsher; broke her champagne-glass and, I've no doubt, cried
out loud in her heart. Power can't buy love--no; but power can stamp to
death anything that won't love it. That's Masters. I can tell a
timber-wolf far off. Can you see him now in his motor? He'll have turned
the lights out, and she--his wife--will be looking out of the window at
the snow. All you can see of him would be his nose and his beard and the
glow of his cigar--except his smile. You could see that when the car
passed a corner lamp, couldn't you?"
"I don't believe it yet," said Mrs. Malcolm. "It's too preposterous."